Authorities in several Gulf countries have renewed weather warnings as several days of heavy rains batter the usually arid region.

The winter grassland fire that blew up along Colorado's Front Range was rare, experts say, but similar events will be more common in the coming years as climate change warms the planet — sucking the moisture out of plants — suburbs grow in fire-prone areas and people continue to spark destructive blazes.

"These fires are different from most of the fires we've been seeing across the West, in the sense that they're grass fires and they're occurring in the winter," said Jonathan Overpeck, a professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. "Ultimately, things are going to continue to get worse unless we stop climate change."

China wants to use the Beijing Winter Olympics to showcase its green credentials but there are concerns over the environmental cost of a Games relying on artificial snow in one of the driest places in the country.

A herd of endangered wild elephants are rampaging through a safari park in Bangladesh, with officials warning Sunday the creatures were acting aggressively and posed a serious safety threat.

The herd of at least 13 elephants knocked down a seven-foot (two-meter) concrete wall to break into the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Safari Park, north of the resort city of Cox's Bazar, earlier this week.

India's tiger conservation body said 126 of the endangered big cats died in 2021, the most since it began compiling data a decade ago.

A thaw-out is coming for frozen Seattle and Portland, Oregon, but not before another round of snow that could compound problems for a region more accustomed to winter rain than arctic blasts.

More snow and rain fell on California on Wednesday, causing travel disruptions on mountain routes and raising the risk of debris flows from wildfire burn scars.

The Pacific Northwest and Sierra Nevada have grappled with another day of snow, ice and unseasonable cold that has disrupted traffic, caused closures and forced people to find refuge in emergency warming shelters.

Across western Washington and Oregon, officials and private groups opened emergency spaces for people as forecasters said the extreme cold from an arctic blast that blew in Sunday could last until the weekend.

A total of 116 cities in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia were in a state of emergency because of flooding due to heavy rains that have been pounding the region since the end of November.

Cities in at least five other states in Brazil's north and southeast have also been flooded in recent days.

A powerful winter storm battered the western United States Monday, dumping much-needed snow on the drought-parched mountains of California, but causing travel misery over a wide area.

A bird flu outbreak in northern Israel has killed at least 5,200 migratory cranes and forced farmers to slaughter hundreds of thousands of chickens as authorities try to contain what they say is the deadliest wildlife disaster in the nation's history.

Uri Naveh, a senior scientist at the Israel Parks and Nature Authority, said the situation is not yet under control.