It's the rainy season in Asia, but it is much rainier and more devastating than usual.
Torrential rain in China, Korea and Japan has triggered record flooding and landslides and left more than 100 people dead. In Bangladesh, heavy monsoon rains have flooded a large part of the country and claimed more than 40 victims. In Europe, flooding has caused billions of dollars of damage in Poland and the Czech Republic. In Venezuela, thousands have been left homeless by flooding south of Caracas. The details:
* China: Severe flooding in southeast China, primarily on the Pearl River and its tributaries, has claimed 101 lives and forced hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes, according to the South China Morning Post.
More than 40 victims are from Guangdong province (adjacent to Hong Kong), where thousands of buildings were destroyed and many roads were washed away. Another 34 people were reported killed in Guangxi provice, where 20,000 homes were damaged.
* Bangladesh: The news media report some 57 people have died so far in flash flooding that has affected nearly a third of the country, cutting off the capital and devastating coastal areas that were already hard hit by a cyclone earlier this year.
On Saturday, the government called out the military to assist with relief efforts. Four days of heavy monsoon rain were blamed for inundating much of the northern and southeastern sections of the country, leaving nearly 250,000 people homeless. The weather office in hard-hit Chittagong on the southeast coast reported recording more than 7.8 inches of rain in one 24-hour period on Saturday.
* Venezuela: Flooding in central Venezuela has left one person dead and more than 9,000 homeless after three days of heavy rain. Nearly 2,000 homes were reported washed away in Valles del Tuy, a heavily-populated area 40 miles south of Caracas. One man drowned after falling into the rising waters and another was unaccounted for, according to a Reuters news service report.
* Czech Republic: Flooding over the last week has claimed more than 30 victims. Days of torrential rain have caused record flooding in the eastern part of the country. Some 290 Czech villages and 50 cities and towns have been damaged in the flooding, according to Czech officials. CNN is reporting that damage estimates now exceed $1 billion. Crop damage has not yet been estimated.
* Poland: The same rains and flooding that devastated the Czech Republic have pushed into southern Poland, where at least 28 people have died. Many cities have been inundated, but sandbagging operations appear to have saved the ancient center of Wroclaw, site of a university library with an irreplaceable collection.
"The (Old Town) square and the materially most precious part of Wroclaw were defended, thanks to the great solidarity and enormous efforts of the people," a government spokesman told Reuters news service. Polish officials also estimate damage at more than $1 billion, even before cleanup efforts begin. Health officials have warned hundreds of thousands of returning evacuees and survivors to clean everything, sterilize water and beware of contaminated food.
* Japan: Continued rain has forecasters predicting more flooding today in central and southern Japan. So far, landslides have already killed more than two dozen people: four near Kobe on Sunday and 21 on Thursday when a village in southern Japan was engulfed by mud.
The seasonal rainstorms, which far surpass the normal rainy season, were due to a belt of rain clouds stretching south of Taiwan and another low pressure system from China converging on Japan, according to a weather service spokesman.