Catastrophic floods in Nigeria claim more than 500 lives and inundate thousands of homes.. video

Weather of Arabia - Catastrophic floods swept 27 out of 36 states in Nigeria, killing about 500 people and displacing 1.4 million others, as water inundated about 90,000 homes, and disrupted food and fuel supplies.

"We are currently witnessing the worst floods in ten years in Nigeria," said Matthias Schmale, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria. "The scale of the disaster ... is huge," Mustafa Habib Ahmed, director general of the National Emergency Management Agency, said in a statement, according to Reuters.

Nigerian authorities said the floods this year were caused by unusually heavy rains that have increased since early summer.

Nigeria is suffering its worst floods in a decade, which is blamed on overflowing from the Lagdu Dam in neighboring Cameroon, along with unusually heavy rainfall.

The scientific reason behind the heavy rains in Nigeria

Experts in the Arab Weather Center explain why Nigeria is exposed to heavy rains, as the country overlooks the waters of the Atlantic Ocean within the tropical region north of the equator, which makes it under the influence of western to southern air currents coming from the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, and moisture-saturated air currents when colliding with land cause clouds to form. Through the rise of moist air to the top and the occurrence of the condensation process, which results in heavy rains that cause the formation of torrents and floods.