Tropical storm Erick, bearing down on the southwestern coast of Mexico on the Pacific Ocean, strengthened into a hurricane Wednesday, the US National Hurricane Center said.

The hurricane is 255 kilometers (155 miles) from the town of Puerto Angel in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca and is packing maximum sustained winds of 120 kilometers an hour (75 mph), the meteorological center said.

U.S. officials proposed Monday to protect the pangolin, a small, nocturnal mammal covered in scales, under the Endangered Species Act.

The pangolin is "the most trafficked mammal in the world" in large part for its scales, used in traditional Chinese medicine, and meat, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Climate change has tripled the frequency of atmospheric wave events linked to extreme summer weather in the last 75 years and that may explain why long-range computer forecasts keep underestimating the surge in killer heat waves, droughts and floods, a new study says.

In the 1950s, Earth averaged about one extreme weather-inducing planetary wave event a summer, but now it is getting about three per summer, according to a study in Monday's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Planetary waves are connected to 2021's deadly and unprecedented Pacific Northwest heat wave, the 2010 Russian heatwave and Pakistan flooding and the 2003 killer European heatwave, the study said.

The death toll from weekend flooding in West Virginia rose to six as residents tried to clean up with the threat of more rain on the way.

At least two people remained missing in the state's northern panhandle after torrential downpours Saturday night, Gov. Patrick Morrisey said Monday. As much as 4 inches (10 centimeters) of rain fell in parts of Wheeling and Ohio County within 40 minutes. The dead included a 3-year-old child.

A fast-moving Hawaii brush fire fueled by fierce winds forced the evacuation of about 50 Maui residents on the opposite side of the same island where a devastating blaze killed over 100 people two years ago.

The fire started Sunday in a sparsely populated area with land set aside for Native Hawaiians.

Swiss authorities cleared a village in the country's east over a potential rockslide, three weeks after a mudslide submerged a vacated village in the southwest.

Residents of Brienz/Brinzauls, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) southwest of Davos, were being barred from entering the village because a rock mass on a plateau overhead has "accelerated so rapidly that it threatens to collapse," a statement from local officials said Monday.

Flash flooding caused by torrential rains killed five people in northern West Virginia and rescue crews were searching for three other people who were missing Sunday as authorities assessed damage to roads, bridges, natural gas lines and other infrastructure.

Officials said 2.5 to 4 inches (6 to 10 centimeters) of rain fell in parts of Wheeling and Ohio County within about a half hour on Saturday night.

Heavy rains in San Antonio rapidly flooded roads, swept away submerged cars and sent some people scrambling up trees to escape fast-rising waters Thursday while firefighters made dozens of rescues across the nation's seventh-largest city. At least five people died and two were still missing, authorities said.

The deaths all occurred in the northeast part of the city, where authorities found over a dozen vehicles in the water. More than a dozen smashed and overturned vehicles littered a creek after being tossed and carried by floodwaters.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the region Friday where devastating floods have left at least 78 people dead in the southeast of the country as search and rescue operations continued for a fourth day and authorities said they expect the death toll to rise.

Ramaphosa traveled to the town of Mthatha in Eastern Cape province, where the floods hit hardest when they began in the early hours of Tuesday.

Wind roared against the SUV's windows as its tires sloshed through water dumped onto the road by the downpour. A horizon-wide funnel cloud loomed out the window, several miles away. Then came the loud metallic pings on the roof. First one, then another. Then it was too fast to count and too loud to hear much of anything else.

Hailstones were pelting down, and the car was driving toward them.