In the United States, severe flooding in Texas has claimed at least two lives. Greek outlet Ethnos reported that large volumes of water inundated areas that had already been devastated by floods roughly a year earlier. Dramatic video footage showed a family being rescued by helicopter, lifted from rising waters in scenes that underscored the growing frequency of extreme weather events in the region.
The disaster unfolded as wildfires in Ontario, Canada, continued to burn and send smoke drifting across the province. According to The New York Times, smoke was visible from the observation deck of Toronto’s iconic CN Tower on Thursday. The fires are part of a pattern of increasingly severe wildfire seasons that have affected air quality across wide swaths of North America in recent years.
