PUBLISHED: 14:40 EST, 2 March 2013 | UPDATED: 16:49 EST, 2 March 2013
Josh Welch, a second-grader at Park Elementary School in Baltimore, said he was trying to nibble his strawberry snack into a mountain.
But when his teacher saw what he had done, the boy says she got ‘pretty mad’ and he knew he was ‘in big trouble.’ Josh was suspended for two days.
Dangerous? Josh Welch, a seven-year-old boy from Maryland, was suspended from school for two days for shaping a pastry into what his teacher thought looked like a gun
Threat: The school sent home a letter with every student informing parents that: ‘A student used food to make an inappropriate gesture
Josh’s dad was called by the school and informed that his son had been suspended for two days.
The school sent home a letter with every student informing parents that: ‘A student used food to make an inappropriate gesture.’
HAZMAT in USA on Wednesday, 27 February, 2013 at 19:58 (07:58 PM) UTC.
Description
The Johns Hopkins Hospital facility on Keswick Road in northwest Baltimore will be closed on Wednesday while health officials try to figure out what caused a hazmat situation on Tuesday. Fire crews were called to the facility, which is comprised of two buildings — north and south — shortly before 10 a.m. Tuesday. The administrative complex has 1,050 employees. Officials said medical crews called to the scene recognized that several people were exhibiting the same symptoms of feeling ill, and they immediately requested additional medical and hazardous materials resources. The mayor’s Office of Emergency Management said 17 people were sent to hospitals for treatment of a variety of illness symptoms. 11 News witnessed several people being wheeled out of the building on stretchers and others who were being treated on sidewalks. Sky Team 11 Capt. Roy Taylor reported that fire and hazmat teams searched the building and the roof for a cause of some kind of leak that may have been depleting air inside the building. Officials said the building was checked for high carbon monoxide levels, low oxygen levels and the presence of hydrogen sulfide, but crews didn’t find any bad readings. The south building was evacuated initially, but Tuesday afternoon, people were allowed to re-enter areas that had been cleared, officials told 11 News. Officials said there were no life-threatening conditions, but south building employees were allowed to leave for the day. They were told to call 911 if they felt sick and report it to their immediate supervisor. An email was sent to employees stating that the building would be closed again Wednesday so crews could continue their investigation.
…
Officials identify source of illness at Hopkins facility on Kewsick
Fire crews evacuate facility’s south building Tuesday
A hot water heater in the south building of the Johns Hopkins Hospital facility on Kewsick Road was the source of an illness that sent 17 people to the emergency room Tuesday, according to city and state health officials.
Officials said the water heater was the source of nitrates and nitrites that made their way into hot water service in the building’s north side.
Elevated nitrates and nitrites, according to a news release, can cause dizziness, nausea, breathing difficulty and vomiting. Officials said those who were sickened had been discharged from hospitals by Wednesday.
The building will be reopened Thursday, but all restrooms, sinks and other water sources served by that water heater will be off limits while more testing is done, officials said.
The facility was closed earlier Wednesday while health officials tried to figure out what caused the hazardous materials situation on Tuesday.
An Army private charged with sending U.S secrets to the website WikiLeaks had a history of suicidal thoughts and aloof behavior that outweighed a psychiatrist’s opinion that he was no risk to intentionally hurt himself, two former counselors testified Sunday.
Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Jordan and Marine Master Sgt. Craig Blenis testified on the sixth day of a pretrial hearing for Pfc. Bradley Manning at Fort Meade, near Baltimore. The hearing is to determine whether Manning’s nine months in pretrial confinement at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., were so punishing that the judge should dismiss all charges. The 24-year-old intelligence analyst is accused of sending hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the secret-spilling website in 2009 and 2010.
The counselors, both of whom worked in the brig, sat on a board that recommended to the brig commander that Manning remain in maximum custody and on either injury-prevention or suicide-risk status — conditions that kept him confined to his cell 23 hours a day, sometimes with no clothing.
Jordan said under cross-examination by defense attorney David Coombs that besides the mental-health report, he considered evidence that Manning had contemplated suicide after his arrest in Iraq in May 2010. The evidence included a noose Manning had fashioned from a bedsheet while confined in Kuwait, and a written statement he made upon arrival at Quantico in July 2010 that he was “always planning and never acting” on suicidal impulses.
Jordan acknowledged Manning had been a polite, courteous and nearly trouble-free detainee at Quantico.
“Wouldn’t his past six months of performance be an indicator of his potential for future behavior?” Coombs asked. But Jordan maintained that Manning’s unwillingness to converse with him and other brig staff was a warning sign he was at risk of self-harm.
Three people from North Laurel, Maryland have been taken to the hospital Tuesday morning with carbon monoxide poisoning, caused by a generator running inside their house. Authorities reported that Howard County Fire crews and paramedics found a man and two women inside the home in Brevard Street after responding to a 911 call which was made by one of the women. The victims suffered elevated levels of carbon monoxide. According to a spokesman from the Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue Services, the three were transported to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. The two females have been released on Tuesday morning but the male, who was in critical condition, remained in the hospital for further treatment. The spokesman confirmed that all three patients underwent therapy in the hyperbaric chamber at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center. The male patient is scheduled to receive another hyperbaric therapy. Police said the firefighters discovered a generator operating at the bottom of the stairs on the ground level of the residence. It was placed in a doorway leading to the garage, but the garage door was closed, restricting ventilation. Firefighters later confirmed that the amount of carbon monoxide inside the house was 30 times more than the normal level.
Crossroads News : Changes In The World Around Us And Our Place In It
Environmental : The Beauty Of Nature – Regeneration
Natural Regeneration Building Urban Forests, Altering Species Composition
by Staff Writers
Syracuse NY (SPX)
File image.
In forested regions of the nation, natural regeneration may help cities achieve tree cover goals at the expense of maintaining the desired tree species. A study by U.S. Forest Service scientists published recently in Urban Forestry and Urban Greening showed that on average, 1 in 3 trees in sampled cities were planted while two-thirds resulted from natural regeneration.
However, for newly established, young trees in cities in forested regions, only about 1 in 12 trees (Syracuse, N.Y.) to 1 in 20 trees (Baltimore) were planted.
The lower proportion of naturally regenerated trees in the entire city tree population may be because naturally regenerated trees have a higher mortality rate than planted trees, according to Dave Nowak, a research forester with the Forest Service’s Northern Research Station and the study’s principal investigator. Naturally regenerated trees typically have more competition for the water, light and nutrients that are needed for survival.
“Urban forests change constantly in response to human activities and environmental factors,” said Michael T. Rains, Director of the Northern Research Station. “This study is an example of the work U.S. Forest Service scientists are doing to help cities and counties achieve healthy and sustainable urban forests.”
Most of the cities included in the study are located within forested regions, where environmental conditions favor trees. The study suggests that natural regeneration may be the most cost-effective means to attain desired tree cover levels and associated ecosystem services in forested regions, but relying on natural regeneration may alter the tree species making up a given forest.
The study included Baltimore, Chicago, Hartford, Conn., Los Angeles and Syracuse, N.Y., as well as nine cities in the Canadian province of Ontario.
The percentage of planted trees within the entire tree population ranged from a low of 11.1 percent in Hartford to a high of 89 percent in Los Angeles, according to the study. Results indicated that in cities located in grassland or desert regions, a greater percentage of the urban tree population is planted compared to cities in forested regions. The percentage of planted trees also increases with increased population density and impervious cover.
The factors that affect tree cover also play a role in natural regeneration. Precipitation, air temperatures, surrounding natural vegetation type, and the distribution of land use types in the city all influence how much seed source exists and whether seedlings grow. Land use plays a role in whether seedlings are mowed down or whether paved surfaces prevent seedling establishment, and ultimately affect a city’s need for tree planting to sustain tree cover.
“Before we can say how many trees we need to plant, we need to know how many trees are regenerating naturally and how many are dying,” according to Nowak. “Planting programs to sustain tree cover can be greatly improved with long-term monitoring data to show how the urban forest is changing.”
Researchers evaluated the magnitude of natural regeneration or tree planting across an entire city system by randomly locating 0.04-hectare field plots in each city and recording tree measurements as well as an estimate of whether a sampled tree was planted or occurred through natural regeneration.
Crews based their estimates on surrounding conditions. For example, trees along fence lines or in unmaintained areas were generally classified as naturally regenerated, while trees in maintained lawn areas or street trees were typically classified as planted.
Residential and commercial/industrial areas have the highest proportion of planted trees, 74.8 percent and 61.2 percent respectively, while trees found in parks, cemeteries, golf courses, open space/vacant land, agricultural fields and wetlands are predominately the result of natural regeneration.
The study also evaluated two cities, Syracuse, N.Y., and Baltimore, more closely. An estimated 58 percent of new trees recently established in Baltimore are native species while only 35 percent of new trees in Syracuse are native species, according to the study. Fifty-two percent of the new trees were classified as invasive species in Syracuse.
The mission of the U.S. Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.
The agency manages 193 million acres of public land, provides assistance to state and private landowners, and maintains the largest forestry research organization in the world.
The mission of the Forest Service’s Northern Research Station is to improve people’s lives and help sustain the natural resources in the Northeast and Midwest through leading-edge science and effective information delivery.
At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, some of the most brilliant minds in the world work to build the spacecraft that humans use to explore their universe. But where space scientists now roam, dinosaurs used to call home, according to dino-hunter Ray Stanford.
Stanford has discovered the footprint of a lumbering, spiny dinosaur called a nodosaur in NASA’s own backyard on the Goddard Space Flight Center campus. NASA officials aren’t disclosing the precise location of the print, fearing that someone might damage or try to remove the fossilized track.
The dinner-plate-sized footprint bears the mark of four dino toes. It belongs to a nodosaur, a tank-like, armored beast studded with bony protuberances that roamed the area about 110 million years ago during the Cretaceous period, which lasted from about 125 million to 65 million years ago. Nodosaurs were plant-eaters, and this one appeared to be moving quickly across the Cretaceous mud, as its heel did not sink deeply into the ground. [See Images of the Ancient Dino-Print]
Dinosaur hunter Ray Stanford cleans the nodosaur track. The location of the print is being kept secret to protect it.
CREDIT: NASA/GSFC/Rebecca Roth
Stanford, an amateur paleontologist who has had several papers published, confirmed his find with Johns Hopkins University dinosaur expert David Weishampel. On Aug. 17, Stanford shared the location of the find with Goddard officials and with Washington Post reporter Brian Vastag, who made the discovery public the same day.
Stanford also found several smaller dinosaur footprints in the area, likely from meat-eating theropods. He called the location “poetic.”
“Space scientists may walk along here, and they’re walking exactly where this big, bungling heavy-armored dinosaur walked, maybe 110 to 112-million years ago,” Stanford told Goddard officials.
Maryland is no spring chicken when it comes to dinosaur fossils; in fact, the corridor between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Md., is known as “Dinosaur Alley,” because so many of the beasts’ fossils were discovered during iron mining in the 18th and 19th centuries, according to Weishampel. “Today, Maryland remains the only source of Early Cretaceous dinosaur fossils on the East Coast,” he wrote in a 1996 article for Johns Hopkins University magazine.
A strong earthquake has rattled the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. There are no immediate reports of damage or injuries, and no tsunami alert has been issued.
The U.S. Geological Survey says the magnitude-6.3 quake struck Friday, 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of the island of Santo, at a depth of 179 kilometers (111 miles).
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center did not issue an alert.
Vanuatu is part of the Pacific “ring of fire.” That’s an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching from Chile in South America through Alaska and down through Vanuatu to Tonga in the South Pacific.
A shallow magnitude 3.5 earthquake rumbled underneath Big Bear City on Thursday morning, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The temblor, which occurred at 11:18 a.m. Pacific time at a depth of 2.5 miles, was reported three miles from Big Bear City, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The epicenter was six miles from the town of Big Bear Lake, 11 miles from Lucerne Valley, 28 miles from San Bernardino and 82 miles from the Los Angeles Civic Center, the USGS reported.
“We just felt a rumble. It kind of shook your balance,” said Elizabeth Marsh, manger of the Big Bear Lakefront Lodge. “It was definitely a noticeable earthquake, but nothing too scary.”
Marsh said it was one of the busiest times of the year for her resort because of the Fourth of July holiday, and although some travelers said they were dizzy and got knocked off their feet by the quake, no injuries were reported.
A woman who answered the phone at the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s station in Big Bear said there had been no immediate reports of injuries or damage following the quake, which she described as a “jolt.”
According to the USGS’ “Did you feel it?” reporting system, the quake was felt as far away as Escondido.
In the last 10 days, there have been two earthquakes magnitude 3.0 and greater centered nearby.
“Being in California, you know, there are earthquakes all the time,” Marsh said. “But it was noticeable.”
NBC’s John Yang reports on the extreme weather in the Midwest and East Coast.
By msnbc.com staff and news services
The heat suffocating the Midwest is expanding east, forecasters said Thursday, as signs of the hot, muggy weather — buckled roads — have literally started to pop up.
“Record breaking heat across the Midwest is expected to spread into the eastern U.S. by the weekend,” the National Weather Service warned — bad news for the 600,000 homes and businesses still without power from Ohio to Virginia after last weekend’s storms.
On top of that, storms overnight caused power outages to 250,000 homes and businesses in Michigan.
In Chicago, temps reached 103 degrees on Thursday before a sudden storm cooled the city with a downpour.
Atlanta reached 100 — the third time so far this year.
More normal temperatures should return next week when the extreme heat is forecast to move west, bringing triple-digit temperatures to parts of Idaho, Utah, Washington and Oregon.
The storms were sandwiched between intense heat over the last two weeks. From Fargo, N.D., to Chicago and Cary, N.C., roads have heated up, drawing moisture underneath to the surface and then creating what’s called a “heave.”
In Wisconsin, the driver of an SUV didn’t see a heave on Highway 29 near Eau Claire and went airborne, WISN-TV reported Tuesday. After getting several feet of air, the car sped out of control into oncoming traffic, and then plowed into a field.
Video camera captures a car leaping over a heat-buckled road near Eau Claire, Wisconsin. NO AUDIO
The driver and passenger were not seriously hurt.
Areas where roads buckled on July 4th included Chicago, where Columbus Drive was shut down, and Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, where crews deployed in the heat after a heave forced the closure of Route 222.
“I’d rather be at home, drinking my beer, eating a burger,” state transportation worker Kevin Palumbo told NBC affiliate WGAL-TV. “We just try to get it done and get it over with.”
But he was also aware of the danger of buckled roads. “It’s a hazard,” he said. “You don’t want to hit that on your motorcycle at 80 miles an hour.”
Travis Long / The News & Observer via AP
Workers wait for asphalt to arrive after removing a section of westbound I-440 that buckled in triple-digit temperatures on June 29 near Cary, N.C.
Buckled roads were just some of the frustrations still facing millions on Thursday.
In Chicago, soaring temperatures forced 17 public schools without air conditioning to cancel summer classes on Thursday, NBCChicago.com reported. Additional closures are possible in the days to come.
The Mid-Atlantic region was also struggling to get back to normal after the deadly storms.
Utility and municipal crews worked through the July 4th holiday to restore power and remove downed tree limbs. Officials blamed the storms for 26 deaths.
More than 2 million customers at one point lost power from the storms that converged on Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., Indiana, Ohio and New Jersey on Friday. They packed winds topping 80 mph in some places, uprooting trees and damaging homes.
Much of the damage to the power grid was blamed on last weekend’s rare “derecho,” a big, powerful and long-lasting wind storm that blew from the Midwest to the Atlantic Ocean.
Pepco said it had restored power to 90 percent of those affected by last week’s storms in D.C. and two Maryland suburbs, beating its own estimate for getting the air conditioning back on. BGE said about 78,000 customers in central Maryland remained without power.
More than 146,000 Virginia homes and businesses remained without power, down from a peak of about 1.2 million after the storms.
In New Jersey, Atlantic City Electric said nearly 30,000 homes and businesses were still without service. That’s down from about 206,000.
Workers in Anchorage, Alaska, are still working to clear snow from last winter’s record snowfall. KTUU’s Ted Land reports.
While the number without power was diminishing Thursday utilities were not moving quickly enough for many of those still in the sweltering dark.
Many expressed frustration with handwritten messages hung from utility poles resembling “Wanted” posters, The Washington Post reported.
Along Route 29 in Silver Spring, Maryland, on Wednesday, a woman hammered a series of signs into non-functioning utility pole reading: “5 Days No Lite.”
“Pepco: very warm humans feeling forgotten,” read another sign, according to the paper.
Maryland issued a heat advisory for the entire state for Thursday, after issuing one for parts of the state for Wednesday.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
GRAND RAPIDS MI
INDIANAPOLIS IN
BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
NORTHERN INDIANA
WILMINGTON OH
NEW YORK NY
DETROIT/PONTIAC MI
WAKEFIELD VA
DES MOINES IA
LA CROSSE WI
QUAD CITIES IA IL
CHICAGO IL
MILWAUKEE/SULLIVAN WI
KANSAS CITY/PLEASANT HILL MO
CLEVELAND OH
WICHITA KS
CHARLESTON WV
PITTSBURGH PA
STATE COLLEGE PA
LOUISVILLE KY
ST LOUIS MO
LINCOLN IL
PADUCAH KY
MOUNT HOLLY NJ
TOPEKA KS
ST LOUIS MO
KANSAS CITY/PLEASANT HILL MO
NEWPORT/MOREHEAD CITY NC
HUNTSVILLE AL
WICHITA KS
JACKSON KY
OMAHA/VALLEY NE
STATE COLLEGE PA
CHARLESTON WV
RALEIGH NC
GREENVILLE-SPARTANBURG SC
MOUNT HOLLY NJ
PITTSBURGH PA
WILMINGTON NC
BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
NEW YORK NY
MORRISTOWN TN
BLACKSBURG VA
BINGHAMTON NY
SPRINGFIELD MO
CLEVELAND OH
NASHVILLE TN
MEMPHIS TN
A series of thunderstorms that raged across parts of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula temporarily dampened record-setting high temperatures that have gripped the state for more than a week.
Across Canada, temperatures on Friday are expected to challenge records with highs predicted to reach 36 degrees in Southern Ontario, and the low 30s in Montreal and parts of Northern Ontario.
Canadian temperatures are expected to cool slightly on Saturday, peaking at 33 in both Southern Ontario and the B.C. Interior and 29 in Montreal.
In Michigan, about 325,000 DTE Energy Co. residential and business customers lost electricity after storms on Tuesday, and 195,000 remained without power Thursday after a new round of rough weather toppled trees and overhead power lines.
St. Louis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Chicago and several other Midwest cities already have set record highs this week or are on the verge of doing so. And with even low temperatures setting heat records, residents are left searching for any relief.
At the height of the Michigan storms, about 97,000 Consumers Energy customers lost power. That number was down to 80,000 early Thursday afternoon, Consumers Energy spokesman Dan Bishop said.
Many communities were removing tree limbs and wires from across streets, roadways and sidewalks. Rainwater flooded low-lying portions of highways, including Interstate 475 in the Flint area.
As the latest batch of cooling rains ended early Thursday afternoon, the heat began to rise. At 2 p.m. the temperature in Grand Rapids was at 37 and Friday’s high in that city was expected to approach 40 degrees.
A high of 39 was forecast for Lansing. A concert scheduled for Friday in East Lansing was cancelled after the National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning. Detroit also was expected to top 37.
Ashley Jackson lives just north of Detroit in Southfield and believes she’ll be able to endure the weather as long as her recently repaired air conditioning holds up. Ms. Jackson’s unit stopped working last weekend, leaving it inoperable for three days. “Inside the house it was 91 degrees [Fahrenheit],” the 23-year-old short-order cook said. “I left – me and my roommate – and went to the mall to get some air. We didn’t go anywhere that didn’t have air.”
At night, it was nearly unbearable. “Nobody was talking to anybody,” Ms. Jackson said. “We mostly slept, but it was hard to sleep because of the heat. I probably got about four hours of sleep each night.”
Despite the muggy conditions, heat-related illnesses and emergencies appeared to be at a minimum. Detroit Receiving Hospital treated only a few heat-related patients in its emergency room, spokesman Alton Gunn said. About a dozen cases went through Butterworth and Blodgett hospitals in Grand Rapids.
Most people complained of being light-headed and fatigued, Spectrum Health spokeswoman Susan Krieger said. Some suffered from dehydration. “We hydrated them. It’s all about the water,” Ms. Krieger said. “It’s the same message. Take the normal precautions and stay out of the heat.”
Communities across the state opened up city buildings and libraries as cooling centers. On Thursday, the Coleman A. Young Center’s lounge area was empty, but that was the exception. “It has been full, but not overpopulated,” said Morae Cochran, the centre’s supervisor.
Ship movements ground to a complete halt both at Shuwaikh and Shuaiba ports following severe sandstorms that swept the country yesterday. According to information available, three ships at berth and three ships at the loading zone at Shuwaikh Port were waiting for improvement in visibility to sail off. Similarly, four ships anchored off Shuaiba Port and four ships moored inside Shuaiba Port are also waiting for improvement in weather conditions. An official at the operations department at Shuwaikh Port, Sulaiman Al- Yahya, said that visibility was limited to one kilometer in the port area while wind speed was 40 miles, forcing the port authorities to halt ship movements until the weather improves. Al-Yahya informed that Shuwaikh Port currently has three ships at the berth while another three ships were in the waiting area. Acting Operations Director at Shuaiba Port Captain Tawfeeq Shihab told KUNA that wind-speed reached 35 knots at port area yesterday causing high waves and disrupting navigation at the port. The visibility was less than 500 m in the area, he said. As a result of the bad weather, four ships had to wait at the anchorage area and will be allowed to enter Shuaiba Port only after the weather improves, Shihab said. At the same time, the other four ships inside the port will be allowed to sail once the weather improves.
Head of the weather forecast department at Civil Aviation Osama Al-Muthan expected considerable improvement in the weather condition and visibility overnight in spite of the continuation of northwestern winds at a speed of 20-45 km per hour. Al-Muthan told KUNA that by sunrise today with the increase in earth’s temperature during the day, sandy weather condition will come back and visibility will drop on Friday and Saturday due to the Northwestern winds. The temperature is expected to drop to 44 – 45 degrees Celsius due to sandstorm that will block direct sunrays. Al-Muthan expects the high pressure to fall by Sunday and the Indian seasonal low pressure to drop. The weather will start to improve and wind speed will subside to around 40 kilometers per hour. As a result, the temperature will rise to 47 degree Celsius at Kuwait International Airport. Kuwait is currently under the impact of Indiaís seasonal low pressure from the East and high pressure from North West. These activities will be accompanied by Northwestern wind carrying sand along with it. Wind-speed is expected to exceed 70 kilometer per hour at Kuwait International Airport and visibility will be limited to only 500 meter. During the weekend, sea will be rough and waves will reach.
Authorities say a wildfire raging near Redding in northern California is threatening dozens of homes and has forced many evacuations. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said early Friday that firefighters were working through the night to control the 1,200-acre blaze. CalFire says evacuations are in effect for some neighborhoods in southwest Redding and the Happy Valley area. Some roads are also closed. The Redding Record Searchlight reports that the blaze had forced hundreds to evacuate. The paper also says 150 homes were threatened. CalFire didn’t provide precise figures. CalFire spokesman Mike Witesman told the paper late Thursday night that five homes were damaged, but he didn’t have further details. He says he doesn’t expect the blaze to grow much larger and says some evacuees might soon be allowed back home. The fire was first spotted about 2 p.m. Thursday and quickly grew.
Denver (Reuters) – Investigators probing the cause of the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history have located the point of ignition but have not concluded how the blaze started, officials said on Thursday.
At its height, the 12-day-old blaze forced the evacuation of some 35,000 people in and around Colorado Springs, the state’s second most populous city, and threatened the campus of the U.S. Air Force Academy before fire crews gained an upper hand late last week. It destroyed more than 300 homes and killed two people.
Since it was first reported on June 23, the blaze has burned more than 14,000 acres of drought-parched timber and brush, mostly in the Pike National Forest about 50 miles south of the Denver metropolitan area. But as of Thursday, ground crews had managed to carve containment lines around 90 percent of the fire’s perimeter, said incident commander Rich Harvey.
Harvey said he anticipates full containment by late in the week as crews work to extinguish flames in a few stubborn areas. “When there’s been no smoke visible and no heat detected for 24 hours, we’ll be comfortable there will be no further growth and we’ll call it 100 percent contained,” Harvey said.
Investigators, led by U.S. Forest Service experts, have identified the spot where the so-called Waldo Canyon fire began. But Lieutenant Jeff Kramer, spokesman for the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, said he was “not at liberty” to reveal the location because the investigation was continuing. “The cause has not yet been determined,” he added.
A task force consisting of wildfire specialists from several agencies is taking part in the investigation, including local police and fire departments, the FBI and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, police in Colorado Springs said in a statement issued on Thursday. The Colorado Springs fire follows a recent string of suspected arson fires in a neighboring county, but officials have said they had no indication that the Waldo Canyon blaze was deliberately set.
“We’re still investigating whether this is suspicious,” Colorado Springs police spokeswoman Barbara Miller said. The blaze initially gained media attention as it erupted near some of Colorado’s best known landmarks, including the famed Pikes Peak mountaintop whose panoramic summit vistas inspired the song “America the Beautiful.”
Stoked by strong, erratic winds and record triple-digit air temperatures, the fire turned deadly last Tuesday as it suddenly roared through containment lines into a residential subdivision that rests in the bluffs of the city’s western fringe. The wall of flames reduced 346 houses to ash, marking the biggest single loss of property ever from a Colorado wildfire, and President Barack Obama paid a visit to the Waldo Canyon fire zone last Friday.
The bodies of an elderly couple, William Everett, 74, and his wife, Barbara, 73, were found in the ruins of one home, raising to six the overall death toll from a state fire season authorities are calling the worst on record. Most of the residents displaced by the fire have since been allowed to return to their homes.
Meanwhile, Colorado Springs Police Chief Peter Carey said an anonymous donor has offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone who looted the homes of evacuees, following dozens of looting reports.
In all, about 60 wildfires are burning around the nation, from Alaska to Utah to Florida, and satellite images show hazy curtains of smoke hanging over huge portions of the eastern two-thirds of the country.
Smoke travels well, said Georg Grell, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo.
The hotter the fire, the higher its smoke can go – and the higher the smoke goes into the atmosphere, the farther it typically travels, Grell told OurAmazingPlanet.
“The winds are much stronger up there, so it gets transported much quicker,” he said. In addition, once smoke gets to certain altitudes, it’s less likely to be washed out of the air by rainstorms, Grell said.
Smoke from extremely hot wildfires can rise 4 to 5 miles (7 to 8 kilometers) into the atmosphere, and can even trigger massive thunderstorms, but it’s likely that the smoke from the recent spate of fires is hanging out about 1 mile (1.5 km) above the ground.
Smoky trails
An animation produced by the weather-forecasting branch of NOAA shows plumes of smoke drifting up over the Great Lakes states and reaching areas of the East Coast by June 29. [Watch the smoke animation]
The prolonged heat across the Midwest has not only set temperature records, it is also expanding and intensifying drought conditions — and relief isn’t on the horizon for most areas, the National Weather Service reported Thursday.
Drought conditions are present in 56 percent of the continental U.S., according to the weekly Drought Monitor.
That’s the most in the 12 years that the data have been compiled, topping the previous record of 55 percent set on Aug. 26, 2003. It’s also up five percentage points from the previous week.
The drought hasn’t been long enough to rank up there with the 1930s Dust Bowl or a bad stretch in the 1950s, David Miskus, a meteorologist at the weather service’s Climate Prediction Center, told msnbc.com.
“We don’t have that here yet,” he said. “This has really only started this year.”
But for a single year it’s still pretty significant, not far behind an extremely dry 1988.
While 1988 saw much drier conditions and an earlier start to the drought than this year, said Brad Rippey, a meteorologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2012 has its own interesting qualities.
“This year the high temperatures have certainly played into this drought,” he told msnbc.com. “There’s a lot more evaporation … and crop demands for water.”
The Drought Monitor noted that the drought is starting to “take a significant toll” on food supplies. “In the primary growing states for corn and soybeans, 22 percent of the crop is in poor or very poor condition, as are 43 percent of the nation’s pastures and rangelands and 24 percent of the sorghum crop.”
“July 4 – 8, 2012, doesn’t look promising in terms of relief,” it added. “Modest improvement is forecast for most areas that have endured the recent heat wave, but most locations from the Plains eastward are still expected to be warmer than normal.”
Rain and cooler temps are forecast for many areas in mid-July but over the summer “drought is likely to develop, persist or intensify” across much of the Ohio and Tennessee valleys, the Corn Belt region, the Mississippi Valley and much of the Great Plains, the weather service said Thursday in its latest Seasonal Drought Outlook.
In Tennessee, the severity of the drought has been reported by county farm agents sending comments to the National Agricultural Statistics Service office in Nashville, the Associated Press reported.
“Crops have really begun to suffer and go backwards this week. Rain is needed yesterday,” wrote agent Richard Buntin in Crockett County.
Crops and pastureland are “burnt to a crispy crunch,” wrote Kim Frady of Bradley County.
“Need rain,” in Loudon County, added John Goddard. “Saw a farmer digging a waterline about 4-5′ deep. Nothing but powder!”
The weather service on Thursday did say there’s a better chance that the El Nino weather system would return by winter.
If it’s a typical El Nino, that would mean better than average rainfall for the southern tier of the U.S., Miskus noted.
“Maybe there’s some hope,” said Rippey, “but that’s way on out in the future. That’s not a short term relief.”
Fourteen people, including a 14-month-old baby, have been rescued after being left stranded due to flash flooding. The group were rescued on the Isle of Mull at about 8pm last night after severe flooding and a landslide blocked a road and washed away two bridges. Police officers and two local boat owners took the 13 adults and baby by boats to the local Benmore estate. The rescued men and women are all visitors to the island who come from England, Germany, Switzerland, New York and Hong Kong. No-one was injured in the incident. The B8035, where the group were stranded in their vehicles, is now closed in both directions with a long diversion in place. The road will be open for an hour tonight to allow the rescued motorists to retrieve their six vehicles and then the road will be closed again. It is expected that the road will remain closed for some time.
Parts of Derbyshire have been hit by flash flooding after heavy rainfall overnight. Breadsall, Beeley and Glutton Bridge are all affected as well as Ockbrook where a primary school was evacuated. The Environment Agency has issued a warning for people to be prepared as more heavy rainfall is expected over the next 24 hours. Markeaton Lane in Derby is blocked after being flooded and there are problems on the A38 near Little Eaton. Jackie Evans, chair of Beeley Parish Council, said: “I’ve never seen the speed of it – that was the frightening thing. “The road was just a complete river. “The house opposite has some pots in front and they were just floating down the drive.” Markeaton Lane in Derby is blocked in both directions between the Kedleston Road junction and the A52 Ashbourne Road junction. Moor Lane in Breadsall is also flooded near its junction with Church Lane and there are reports of considerable surface water at the A515 near Sudbury and the A52 near Brailsford. Derby’s Gay Pride event, planned for Saturday, and a T20 cricket match between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, due to take place later, have been postponed. The average monthly rainfall for the Midlands in July is about 60mm and between 20 and 60mm is predicted to fall within a few hours.
The Environment Agency has issued 124 flood alerts, which warn people to be prepared for possible flooding.
The town of Darwen in Lancashire, which was evacuated last month when rivers burst their banks – is among 35 places in the North East, the North West, the Midlands and the Anglian region of England, that are subject to a flood warning.
At Cayton Bay caravan park in North Yorkshire, Filey lifeboat crew rescued four disabled people and two carers from their caravan.
In other developments:
Fourteen tourists, including a baby, were rescued after flash flooding on the Isle of Mull, on the west coast of Scotland, on Thursday
Some sporting fixtures, including cricket, horse racing and tennis, have been affected
Meanwhile, traffic outside Silverstone was gridlocked as the first practice session for the British Grand Prix took place.
Some visitors were stranded in their cars on the A43 because they could not get into car parks which had been converted into campsites because of flooding.
And festival-goers heading for T in the Park festival, in Balado, Kinross-shire, meanwhile, were warned to come prepared for heavy rain.
The Met Office has issued an amber warning of severe weather urging people to “be prepared”, while the Environment Agency warns flooding could be the worst of the year so far with transport links and homes likely to be “severely affected”.
The BBC Weather Centre said the North West was among parts of northern England, as well as northern and central Wales, the Midlands and East Anglia, to have the most rainfall.
Between 20mm and 40mm of rain is expected to fall in central and northern areas of England, while the worst-hit places could see 60mm of rain, the average monthly fall for July.
There is no flood warning system in Northern Ireland although the Met Office has issued a yellow warning – urging people to be aware – for its south-eastern tip.
The Environment Agency’s Pete Fox told the BBC that five million homes in the UK are deemed to be at risk of flooding.
He said that, as the rain lands, the agency is using its monitoring stations and river gauging stations to predict more specifically where the weather would be worst.
“We don’t want people to worry right now but we want people to take a look at our website to work out if they are at risk of flooding,” he added.
The Environment Agency has opened incident rooms and has teams out checking on flood defences and clearing any blockages to reduce risks as much as possible.
An accelerating Jet Stream causes air to rise upwards through the atmosphere and creates low pressure centres and a greater likelihood of rain, he said.
Over the weekend, further heavy rain is forecast for parts of northern England and central and southern Scotland which will again introduce the risk of localised flooding.
And BBC weatherman Darren Bett said there was “no sign of warm dry weather for a month”.
The National Weather service in has issued a flash flood warning for northern Bernalillo and southern Sandoval counties until 7:30 p.m. Heavy rain is falling at rates just under 2 inches an hour from a slow-moving storm moving drifting northward through metro Albuquerque. Urban flooding and sudden, dangerous flows through arroyos and flood-control channels are expect. The rain came fast and furious in parts of Albuquerque Thursday, turning parking lots and streets into ponds right in the middle of rush hour. In one hour nearly two inches fell in the metro area which can cause problems for a city that slopes down into a river. The North Valley got the worst of the storm and Glenda Gray’s home was in the middle of it. She says she had to put rags at the door to keep water from coming in. She quickly called county firefighters who put up bags and drained the water. “We never would have been able to stop everything if it hadn’t been for the fire department,” Gray said. Other parts of town were hit hard too. People at Isotopes Park waited out the storm in cars. As the clouds rolled by, cars splashed by soaking one of our news cameras. A parking lot on Coors and Montano could have easily been mistaken for a pond. The city’s drainage system got a massive workout in the pounding storm. A spokeswoman for the City of Albuquerque says crews responded to three calls of homes being flooded. The County says they received one call of a flooded home, and that was Gray’s.
GUWAHATI The death toll in the Asom floods on Thursday rose to 100 even as the waters started to recede in most of the 27 affected districts except Dhemaji.
However, the rising water level of the Jiadhal river submerged several villages in the morning. The surging waters have also affected parts of National Highway 52 in the district.
“The waters of Brahmaputra river that flooded the district along with other parts of the state since June 22 have started to recede and people have begun returning to their homes from relief camps,” Dhemaji Deputy Commissioner MS Manivannan said.
“However, the water of Jiadhal has inundated some villages of the district on Thursday. People there have been shifted to higher places,” he said, adding that the administration was extending all possible help to the flood victims.
Meanwhile, 16 people died in a landslide while another 16 are reported missing from various districts across the state.
With 31 deaths, Barpeta district recorded the highest number of human casualties due to floods till Thursday. The State Disaster Management Authority said conditions were improving in almost all the 27 districts except Dhemaji.
Gauhati Raging floodwaters fed by monsoon rains have inundated more than 2,000 villages in northeast India, killing at least 27 people and leaving hundreds of thousands more marooned Friday. The Indian air force was delivering food packages to people huddled on patches of dry land along with cattle and wild elephants. Rescuers were being dropped by helicopter into affected areas to help the stranded. About one million people have been forced to evacuate as the floods from the swollen Brahmaputra River – one of Asia’s largest – swamped 2,084 villages across most of Assam state, officials said. Officials have counted 27 people dead so far, but the toll is expected to be much higher as unconfirmed casualty reports mount. Telephone lines were knocked out and some train services were cancelled after their tracks were swamped by mud. As the floods soaked the Kaziranga game reserve east of Assam’s capital of Gauhati, motorists reported seeing a one-horned rhino fleeing along a busy highway. “We never thought the situation would turn this grim when the monsoon-fed rivers swelled a week ago,” said Nilomoni Sen Deka, an Assam government minister. Residents of Majuli – an 800-square-kilometre island in the middle of the Brahmaputra River – watched helplessly as the swirling, grey waters swallowed 50 villages and swept away their homes. “We are left with only the clothes we are wearing,” said 60-year-old Puniram Hazarika, one of about 75,000 island residents now camping in makeshift shelters of bamboo sticks and plastic tarps on top of a mud embankment. A herd of 70 endangered Asiatic elephants, which usually avoid humans, were grouped together nearby, Majuli island wildlife official Atul Das said. “The jumbos have not caused any harm, but we are keeping a close watch,” he said.
An unidentified disease has killed 60 young children in Cambodia in three months, the World Health Organization said Tuesday as it raced to identify the cause. “The number of deaths reported to WHO is 60 cases and they have all been in young children,” said Dr Nima Asgari, a public health specialist for the UN body in Cambodia, adding that the first casualties were reported in April. The WHO is currently working with the Cambodian Ministry of Health “to identify the cause and the route of spread of this disease”, he said. With the investigation still at an early stage, Asgari said it was difficult to specify the symptoms, which “include high fever and severe chest disease symptoms, plus in some children there were signs of neurological involvement”. There have been 61 reported cases so far, Asgari said, with just one patient surviving. The victims, all aged seven and under, were admitted to hospitals in the capital Phnom Penh and the northwestern tourist hub of Siem Reap. In separate comments the WHO said there were no signs yet of contagion. “To date, there is no report of any staff or any neighbouring patients to the cases at the hospitals becoming sick with similar symptoms,” it said. Asgari confirmed there was “no cluster of the cases yet” but said the high mortality rate in such a short space of time was worrisome. “WHO is always concerned about a disease which causes death in such high numbers of children,” he said. Cambodian health ministry officials were not immediately available for comment.
Biohazard name:
Unidentified fatal disease
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
Symptoms:
The symptoms include high fever and severe chest disease symptoms, plus in some children there were signs of neurological involvement.
A day after Dhanera was declared “cholera-hit”, 25 more persons were hospitalised with diarrheal symptoms in this town of Banaskantha district on Thursday. Health authorities sent back, with medicines and advice, 69 others who suspected they were suffering from the illness. Officials from the epidemiology division of the state’s Health Department said a notification about the disease’s outbreak on Wednesday may have triggered mild panic, leading to the large turnout. The district administration had declared an outbreak in the town and nine surrounding villages after five persons died and 222 persons were hospitalised for diarrheal symptoms in the preceding week. Authorities believe the outbreak may have been caused by an unauthorised connection that diverted water from the main pipeline connecting the Sipu dam, the town’s main water source. Four such connections, or leakages, were detected soon after the outbreak and one of them – a plastic pipe that ran through a gutter – is believed to be the source. Authorities had earlier tested water from the dam and from bores within the water-scarce town but found no contamination there.
Biohazard name:
Cholera
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
Indonesia’s health ministry today announced the death of an 8-year-old girl from an H5N1 avian influenza infection, according to a report from the Jakarta Globe. The girl, from West Java province, got sick on Jun 18 during a trip to Singapore. Six days later her symptoms worsened and she was admitted to a Jakarta hospital with signs of pneumonia. She was transferred two more times and required treatment with a ventilator. A health ministry official told the Globe that she tested positive for the virus on Jun 29 and died on Jul 3. The official said she had often walked past a live-bird market on her way to school, and 6 days before she got sick she had helped carry freshly killed birds home from the market with her father. If the World Health Organization (WHO) confirms the girl’s H5N1 illness and death, she will be listed as Indonesia’s 190th case-patient and its 158th fatality from the disease.
Biohazard name:
A/H5N1
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
Chinese state media say a toxic gas leak caused by chemicals used nine years ago to combat the SARS epidemic has forced more than 800 workers to evacuate from a downtown office building in east China’s Hangzhou city. The gas came from a stockpile of chlorine dioxide powder. It was used as a disinfectant in 2003 during the SARS scare but was never disposed of. White smog filled the 19th floor of the building on Friday morning, causing panic. The fire department as saying no one was injured. It did not say what caused the chemicals to leak.
Unless you live in Seattle, you likely did not know that the National Weather Service just announced that the city endured its third coolest June on record. As much of America swelters through a heat wave, it’s not surprising that the usual suspects are telling everyone that it’s because of “global warming.”
I have a longtime friend, Ron Marr who has a Jack Russell Terrier and in a recent commentary for Missouri Life magazine, he wrote that, “Jack doesn’t believe in global warming in the least; he does not believe the recent atmospheric hellfire results from ozone holes or aerosol cans or giant leprechauns with a big magnifying glass. We share the same views on the topic and have discussed them often. Our considered opinion is that this streak of blazing nonsense stems from the fact that – to put it in scientific terms – it’s summer and the sun is hot.”
On July 3rd Seth Borenstein, a reporter for the Associated Press, a newswire service that has been reporting global warming lies for decades, wrote that “If you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, scientists suggest taking a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks.”
It’s summertime, Seth! It gets hot in the summer!
It did not take long for the high priests of global warming to proclaim the current WEATHER to be CLIMATE. There’s a very big difference. Weather is what is occurring now while climate is measured in terms of centuries. It’s about trends and cycles.
It surely has been a hot summer thus far. Reuters reported that “more than 2,000 temperature records have been matched or broken in the past week as a brutal heat wave baked much of the United States.” The announcement was made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on July 2nd.
Meteorologist Joe Bastardi took another reporter to task for coupling the heat wave with global warming, pointing out that “The US is less than 10% of the globe” while ignoring that “Scandinavia had coldest June on record and that Australia is having a bad winter.”
What we should all know by now is that the Warmists all use trickery to advance their hoax.
The simple fact is that heat waves are nothing new. In 1936 a North American heat wave was the most severe in the modern history of the continent. It occurred in the middle of the Great Depression, killing more than 5,000 Americans and desiccating vast amounts of crops. To put it in perspective, there were no home air conditioning appliances at the time. People depended on fans to circulate the air.
The sun surely is hot, but its heat – solar radiation – has not been sufficient to avoid cyclical ice ages and short term periods of intense cold because the sun itself goes through cycles of increasing and diminishing solar radiation.
There was a “Little Ice Age” that lasted between 1550 and 1850. Temperatures dropped to the point that the Thames River in England froze over and “frost fairs” were held on its surface. It was felt through Europe and parts of North America.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Matt Ridley noted that “Over the past million years, it has been as warm as this or warmer for less than 10% of the time, during 11 brief episodes known as interglacial periods,” adding that “this warm spell is already 11,600 years old, and it must surely, in the normal course of things, come to an end.”
The average length of interglacial periods is 11,500 years.
In the 1970s, prior to the global warming hoax, many scientists were convinced that a new ice age had begun. In January 2012, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Habibullo Abdusamatov, predicted that the next ice age will begin in 2014 and will last at least two centuries. Regarding the timing, he could be right. He could be wrong. One thing is sure. The Earth is overdue another ice age.
My friend, Robert W. Felix, the author of Not by Fire, But by Ice, is an expert on ice ages and magnetic reversals. It is the latter that accompanied mass extinctions such as the dinosaur’s fate and many other species at the end of the Cretaceous period. In ice ages, the Earth’s water doesn’t disappear, it turns to ice. The current growth of the planet’s glaciers is an indicator of what is actually occurring.
Another indicator, of course, is the sun. On January 29, 2012, writing in the Daily Mail, a British newspaper, David Rose noted that “The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.”
“After emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters, and a shortening of the season available for growing food. Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.”
“We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24′…but sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th century.” Oddly, despite the obvious and documented effect of the sun on the planet’s average temperature, there remain scientists who are unconvinced of its essential role. Only a relative few even understand the role of magnetic reversals on the planet’s history.
Actually, the diminishing number of sunspots has been known for a while. In June 2010, Stuart Clark, writing in The New Scientist, observed that “For the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged for nearly a hundred years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise.”
The obvious often catches people by surprise. The last Ice Age came on very swiftly and the next is likely to do so as well. In the meantime, the current heat wave will capture everyone’s attention.
“It’s like the classic magician’s trick — now you see it, now you don’t,” said Carl Melis, a postdoctoral scholar at UC San Diego and lead author of the research.
“Only in this case, we’re talking about enough dust to fill an inner solar system, and it really is gone!”
“It’s as if the rings around Saturn had disappeared,” said co-author Benjamin Zuckerman, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy.
“This is even more shocking because the dusty disc of rocky debris was bigger and much more massive than Saturn’s rings.
The disc around this star, if it were in our solar system, would have extended from the sun halfway out to Earth, near the orbit of Mercury.”
The research on this cosmic vanishing act, which occurred around a star some 450 light years from Earth, in the direction of the constellation Centaurus, appears July 5 in the journal Nature.“A perplexing thing about this discovery is that we don’t have a satisfactory explanation to address what happened around this star,” said Melis, a former UCLA astronomy graduate student.
“The disappearing act appears to be independent of the star itself, as there is no evidence to suggest that the star zapped the dust with some sort of mega-flare or any other violent event.”
Dust today, gone tomorrow. An artist’s conceptualization of the dusty TYC 8241 2652 system as it may have appeared several years ago, when it was emitting large amounts of excess infrared radiation. (Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA artwork by Lynette Cook))Melis describes the star, designated TYC 8241 2652, as a “young analog of our sun” that only a few years ago displayed all of the characteristics of “hosting a solar system in the making,” before transforming completely. Now, very little of the warm, dusty material thought to originate from collisions of rocky planets is apparent.
“Nothing like this has ever been seen in the many hundreds of stars that astronomers have studied for dust rings,” Zuckerman said. “This disappearance is remarkably fast, even on a human time scale, much less an astronomical scale. The dust disappearance at TYC 8241 2652 was so bizarre and so quick, initially I figured that our observations must simply be wrong in some strange way.”
Norm Murray, director of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, who was not part of the research group, said, “The history of astronomy has shown that events that are not predicted and hard to explain can be game-changers.”
The dust had been present around the star since at least 1983 (no one had observed the star in the infrared before then), and it continued to glow brightly in the infrared for 25 years. In 2009, it started to dim. By 2010, the dust emission was gone; the astronomers observed the star twice that year from the Gemini Observatory in Chile, six months apart. An infrared image obtained by the Gemini telescope as recently as May 1 of this year confirmed that the warm dust has now been gone for two-and-a-half years.
Like Earth, warm dust absorbs the energy of sunlight and re-radiates that heat energy as infrared radiation.
Because so much dust had been orbiting around the star, planets very likely are forming there, said Zuckerman, whose research is funded by NASA.
The lack of an existing model for what is going on around this star is forcing astronomers to rethink what happens within young solar systems in the making. The dust likely resulted from a violent collision — but that would not explain where it went. Was it somehow swallowed by the star?
“Although we’ve identified a couple of mechanisms that are potentially viable, none are really compelling,” Melis said. “In one case, gas produced in the impact that released the dust helps to quickly drag the dust particles into the star and thus to their doom. In another possibility, collisions of large rocks left over from an original major impact provide a fresh infusion of dust particles into the disc, which then instigate a runaway process where small grains chip into oblivion both themselves and also larger grains.”
Major dusty regions are known to exist in our own solar system and include the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and another located beyond the orbit of Neptune. Nearly 30 years ago, NASA’s Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) first discovered many similar regions orbiting other stars — but no disappearing act like the one at TYC 8241 2652 has ever been seen during these three decades.
The research is based on multiple sets of observations of TYC 8241 2652 obtained with the Thermal-Region Camera Spectrograph on the Gemini South telescope in Chile, the IRAS, NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite, NASA’s Infrared Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the Herschel Space Telescope of the European Space Agency (ESA), and AKARI (a Japanese/ESA infrared satellite).
“We were lucky to catch this disappearing act,” Zuckerman said. “Such events could be relatively common, without our knowing it.” MessageToEagle.com via University of California – Los Angeles
Police had to launch a desperate late-night rescue operation in China after a section of highway collapsed into a giant sinkhole, trapping a car and killing at least one passenger.
The cavernous hole appeared along a busy stretch of Xiangjiang Road in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province, central China, early this morning. The 30m-square pit swallowed a passing car, and at least one person died at the scene before emergency services could haul anyone to safety.
Chinese authorities did not describe the car which fell into the hole, or identify the victims, but said the vehicle was likely a BMW carrying three people, according to CNN.
The cave-in site was close to the Xiangjiang River, a major tributary of the Yangtze, China’s longest waterway
One rescuer with the local fire brigade described the sinkhole as being so deep, ‘we cannot see the bottom of the pit with the naked eye’. Local police closed the road off as crowds gathered, with investigators trying to establish what caused the road to collapse.
A sinkhole is a natural depression in the Earth’s surface which can be formed gradually or suddenly and occur worldwide.
They can vary in size, from 1 to 600 meters both in depth and diameter and form when the foundation below the surface layer dissolves. This commonly occurs when the rock below is dissolved by ground water. Limestone, carbonate rock, and salt beds are particular vulnerable to erosion. Meanwhile, the top layer of Earth usually stays intact.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Florida, Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania are the states most affected by sinkholes.
While they often occur from natural causes, sinkholes can be man-made and caused by human activity. Groundwater pumping and construction are the most likely culprits.
Last month, residents in Florida, U.S, looked on in horror as a 40ft wide hole opened up in their street. It completely swallowed up the rear of this house in Hudson, Pasco County. The house collapsed into the ground like a toy house with its contents spilling everywhere.
The owner of the home was an elderly woman whose husband died a few years ago. She lived at the property on her own but was fortunately not at the house when the incident happened.
Eleven families were evacuated from a Bay Ridge apartment building after a sinkhole opened up on the sidewalk in front of a 92nd St. building on Thursday, according to authorities.
The residents were evacuated as a precaution, authorities said. The sinkhole developed in the afternoon on the west side of the sidewalk on 92nd Street near Third Avenue.
“It’s deep. It goes down about 50 feet,” said Capt. Richard DiBlasio, commanding officer of the 68th Precinct.
Adding to the concern was the fact that the sinkhole was located next to a sewer underground, according to DiBlasio.
“It’s hitting a sewer,” he said.
The block of 92nd Street between Third Avenue and Ridge Boulevard was closed to vehicular traffic as emergency crews from the city’s Department of Environmental Protection inspected the sinkhole. The area around the sinkhole was roped off with yellow tape to prevent pedestrians from getting too close.
Officials from the city’s Office of Emergency Management were also at the scene.
DEP crews filled the sinkhole with dirt to prevent any further erosion from taking place, News 12 Brooklyn reported.
DiBlasio assigned cops to the corner of 92nd Street and Third Avenue to redirect traffic.
Residents said the sinkhole literally swallowed a tree that stood on the sidewalk and sucked it below ground.
“It was unbelievable. One minute there was a tree there and the next minute there wasn’t,” one resident said as he watched the emergency crew at the scene.
As emergency crews and cops worked, two local eateries had a front row seat to all of the activity. The sinkhole was located a few yards from a Starbucks coffee shop at 9202 Third Ave. On the opposite corner is Paneantico, a café at 9124 Third Ave., which has tables on the sidewalk on both the Third Avenue and the 92nd Street sides of the eatery. Several customers sat at tables on the sidewalk and sipped cappuccinos while they watched the city crews at work.
The residents who had been evacuated were allowed to return to their apartments within a few hours, authorities said.
Around one million birds have died or were culled at 111 poultry farms and 15 farms in Jalisco, Mexico, where the National Health and Quality Agribusiness Service (Senasica) detected in ten such facilities the AH7N3 strain of avian flu. The Senasica said it issued license to import a vaccine from Asia to be distributed at the disease-hit states where the birds are being buried with due prophylaxis (quarantine, cull and vaccination) to contain the spread and get rid of the virus. FAO also issued a call to check the outbreak since the bird flu virus is very aggressive, adding that its presence now enters Mexico in the WHO watch list though Mexican authorities claim the strain is not a threat to human poultry consumption.
Biohazard name:
AH7N3
Biohazard level:
3/4 Hight
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans, but for which vaccines or other treatments exist, such as anthrax, West Nile virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, SARS virus, variola virus (smallpox), tuberculosis, typhus, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, yellow fever, and malaria. Among parasites Plasmodium falciparum, which causes Malaria, and Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes trypanosomiasis, also come under this level.
An outbreak of the H7N3 bird flu virus in western Mexico has infected about 2.5 million chickens and led authorities to destroy or dispose of almost a million birds.
The country’s Agriculture Department said 129 farms in the western state of Jalisco have been inspected.
Flu was confirmed in birds at 24 of the sites and tests continued on most of the rest.
The farms in question have been placed under quarantine, the department said in a statement.
The outbreak has caused increases in the price of chicken and egg products in Mexico.
Thousands of dead, rotting fish are fouling Silver Lake along Rehoboth Beach’s southern border, the victims of high temperatures and algae that consumed too much of the lake’s oxygen. The Fish and Wildlife Division of the state’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control said 1,500 gizzard shad, 2 to 4 inches long, were found floating Wednesday, along with 800 white perch. Overnight, thousands more fish died, with as many as 6,000 gizzard shad and 600 adult white perch succumbing by Thursday, along with blue gills and largemouth bass in smaller numbers. “Increased temperatures lead to warmer water, which holds less dissolved oxygen,” John Clark, DNREC Fisheries administrator, said in a news release. “So seeing more fish kills this summer as the heat continues would come as no surprise.” The dead fish, and the sharp, dank odor that could be sniffed from blocks away, was an unwelcome development in the wealthy neighborhood around the lake, where plenty of vacationers were in town. “Yesterday, it was the little fish. Today, it’s the big fish,” said Mary Iannicelli, walking on a side street near the lake. “We’re just wondering if they’re gonna clean it up.” Sherry Chappelle, who’s lived here for 15 years, said it was the first fish kill she’d seen, although she had heard of others. Silver Lake last had a major fish kill in 2008.
“The fact that it’s so hot can’t have helped,” she said, resting in a tree’s shade as the afternoon temperatures climbed to a recorded 99 degrees. “[The kill] is definitely not surprising, just because the conditions were really good for a fish kill in that lake,” said Chris Bason, executive director at the Delaware Center for Inland Bays. “The lake is surrounded by a lot of developments and there is a lot of storm water runoff that runs into it.” Bason said the runoff offers nutrients that provide food for phytoplankton, microscopic floating algae that produce oxygen during the day, but use oxygen at night.Bacteria in the lake are using oxygen too, and in shallow water bodies, oxygen fluctuates a lot between day and night, he said. Combined with the recent heat driving oxygen levels down, it’s a deadly cocktail. “I’m sure in a portion of that lake there is no oxygen,” Bason said Wednesday. “It confused the fish and killed them.” Clark said water testing by DNREC biologists confirmed fatally low levels of dissolved oxygen in the lake’s surface water. Most of the dead fish accumulated in the lake’s northwest corner. “From what I have seen, it’s not nearly as big as the one that happened three or four years ago,” said Mark Brown, owner of Silver Lake Guest House. “It isn’t driving people away from the lake, yet. It’s mostly small fish from what I’ve seen. I don’t know if it’s going to get worse or not.” Rehoboth Beach City Manager Gregory Ferrese said sea gulls are eating some of the dead fish. Many of the carcasses are in the middle of the lake, about 20 feet from the shoreline. Mayor Sam Cooper said it appeared the job of cleaning up the dead fish would fall to the city. “DNREC’s denying any responsibility,” he said, “so the city’s going to do it, I guess, the best we can, starting tomorrow morning.”
Biohazard name:
Mass. Die-off (fishes)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
03.07.2012
Biological Hazard
China
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, [The area was not defined.]
China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has reported an outbreak of H5N1 in poultry, the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) announced Monday. The disease has killed 1,600 chickens raised by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a unique economic and semi-military government organization of about 2.5 million people. A total of 5,500 XPCC-farmed chickens showed symptoms of suspected avian flu on June 20, according to the MOA. The National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory Monday confirmed the epidemic was H5N1 bird flu after testing samples collected at the farm, the MOA said. Local authorities have sealed off and sterilized the infected area, where a total of 156,439 chickens have been culled and safely disposed of to prevent the disease from spreading, according to the MOA. Bird flu, or avian influenza, is a contagious disease of animal origin caused by viruses that normally infect only birds and, less commonly, pigs. It can be fatal to humans.
Biohazard name:
H5N1 – Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
The map is rare and it is truly remarkable that it survived the Second World War unscathed.
The American continent was “christened” by the cartographer Martin Waldseemüller.
Now, a previously unknown variant of the famous world map from the mapmaker’s workshop has unexpectedly turned up in the collections in the University Library in Munich.
When Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel officially handed over the famous map of the world printed by Martin Waldseemüller (ca. 1470 — 1522) to the Library of Congress In Washington in 2007, she referred to it as “a wonderful token of the particularly close ties of friendship between Germany and America.”
And indeed, the gesture had great symbolic weight, for the chart — then exactly 500 years old — can be seen as America’s birth certificate.
On this map, the New World appears for the first time under the name “America,” chosen to honor the explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1451 — 1512), whom Waldseemüller erroneously regarded as the discoverer of the continent.
The chart, which is registered in “Memory of the World,” UNESCO’s inventory of the world’s documentary heritage, is now on show in the Library of Congress in Washington.The map was formerly held in a private German collection, and was included as Object No. 01301 on the list of specially protected German Cultural Treasures, which prohibits their sale and export.
Before the Library could purchase the map from the previous owner and obtain an export license, the object had first to be delisted.
The application to delist was granted at the direction of the Chancellor’s Office in 2001.
The 1507 world map is a wall map, with an area of three square meters. But the much smaller maps, the so-called globe segments, that Waldseemüller also produced were at least as important for the dissemination of geographical knowledge in his own time.
These depict the world in twelve individual segments, or rather surface wedges, which taper to a point at each end and are printed on a single sheet, like cut-outs on construction paper. When correctly arranged, they form a small globe of about 11 cm in diameter. And in the three rightmost wedges, one sees a huge, boomerang-shaped landmass in the middle of an immense ocean.
The globe places America in the remotest West, seen from Europe and Africa, on the far side of a wide, wide sea.
The surprise find in the stacks at Munich University Library: The segmented world map made by Martin Waldseemüller (ca. 1507). (Credit: Source: Munich University Library)A “packaged tour” of a new world
The wall map was only a part of a carefully designed package put together by the cartographer Waldseemüller and his colleague Matthias Ringmann in their workshop in the monastery of Saint-Dié-des-Vosges — a combination with which they no doubt hoped to revolutionize how the world was perceived. In addition to the large map, the package included an introduction to the principles of geography or “cosmography” (the Cosmographiae Introductio) — and the segmental maps.
Only a handful of the perhaps 100 sets printed from the original woodblocks are known to have survived. The copy now in Washington, which belonged to the princely House of Waldburg-Wolfegg and Waldsee in Germany, is the sole copy of the large world map that has come down to us. A copy of the Cosmographiae Introductio is among the treasures kept in the Munich University Library (MUL).
Four copies of the segmental maps were previously known to researchers. Three of them are now in Minneapolis, Offenburg and in the Bavarian State Library in Munich, respectively. The fourth was sold at auction for the handsome sum of 1 million dollars by Christie’s in 2005. Members of the staff of the University Library have — quite by accident — now discovered a fifth.
“The newly discovered sheet differs in a number of details from the copies that were already known, and can therefore be regarded as unique,” says Sven Kuttner, Curator of the Library’s Department of Early Printed Books. For one thing, the outlines of the upper halves of the lanceolate sections are much less distinctively incised. The position of Calicut on the Malabar Coast, where Vasco da Gama (1469 — 1523) had made landfall in May 1498, is shown on the fourth, not the fifth, segment of the global map. The style of hatching and the forms of certain letters also differ from their counterparts in other copies. Furthermore, according to Kuttner, the watermark impressed in the paper suggests that “this version may have been printed at some time after the first edition of 1507, somewhere in Alsace.”
The time traveler
The “new” Munich copy of the segmented map itself has obviously followed a tortuous course to reach its present haven. And the story of this voyage is at least as fascinating as that of the discovery and exploration of the New World. Its latest chapter began only a few days ago in the Munich University Library. While working on an ongoing revision of the catalogs, a bibliographer came across something quite sensational in an otherwise unremarkable volume that had been rebound in the 19th century. Tucked in between two printed works on geometry from the early 16th century was the unsought map — a double-page spread in roughly A4 format. The three prints obviously date from the same period, but is there a direct connection between the not entirely disparate subjects? The 19th-century librarians, at any rate, had failed to recognize the significance of Waldseemüller’s map, Kuttner remarks. The first copy of the segmental maps to be discovered only turned up in 1871, in the Hauslab-Liechtenstein Library in Vienna. “And the Munich copy was returned to the obscurity of the stacks.”
But it survived the Second World War unscathed, although the University Library itself was devastated by air raids. In November 1942, large portions of the holdings of older books, including the unassuming volume containing the two geometry treatises, had been transferred to a safer rural location. Stefan Kuttner has ascertained that the book was among the contents of deposit box No. 340, which was first stowed away in Burghausen, and later transported to Niederviehbach near Landshut. The box was returned to Munich in 1955, and provisionally stored in the Northeastern Repository at LMU.
Credit: Source: Munich University LibraryRegrettably, according to Kuttner, the origins of this copy of the segmented world map remain mysterious. One of the works on geometry with which it was bound belonged to the Monastery Library in Oberalteich. The contents of that collection, some 1,400 volumes in all, came into the possession of the University Library, then located in Landshut, during the secularization phase after the break-up of the Holy Roman Empire in 1803.
On the other hand, the map could also be directly related to the copy of the Cosmographiae Introductio in the University Library’s own collection. This is a unique early edition with a two-page colored map of the world, sketched in a rather cursory fashion with pen and ink. It was originally part of the collection assembled by the Swiss humanist and polymath Heinrich Loriti Glareanus (1488 — 1563).
The contents of Glarean’s library were acquired by Johann Egolph von Knöringen (1537 — 1575), a later Bishop of Augsburg, when he was still a student at Freiburg University. In 1573, he stipulated in his will that his books, more than ,6000 volumes in all, were to be donated as an endowment to the University Library of Ingolstadt, the forerunner of the Munich University Library.
“Even in our digital age, the originals have lost none of their significance and unique fascination. Treasures like the newly discovered map can only be brought to light by people who work directly with originals,” says Klaus-Rainer Brintzinger, the Director of the University Library, and adds: “We intend to make the map accessible to the public in digital form in time for the Fourth of July — Independence Day in the USA.” MessageToEagle.com. via Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen (LMU)
Their age is estimated to thousands of years and their purpose remains unknown.
These puzzling wheel-shapes, and straight lines, stretch all the way from Syria to Saudi Arabia.
Some call this area the Middle East’s own version of the Nazca Lines.
It is only recently, with help of satellite images that archaeologists have been able to explore this region in more detail.
Since the launch of Google Earth in 2005, archeologists have begun to use the satellite imagery publicly, particularly since its gradual incorporation, beginning in 2007, of high-resolution images. As a result, over some Arab countries-Jordan, Syria and Lebanon particularly-the resolution of available images is now generally high enough to conduct reliable, general archeological surveys.
The Shuway-mas site south of Hayil, Saudi Arabia, which is not even mentioned in the 1998 edition of the Cambridge Illustrated History of Prehistoric Art is the home of one of the four best collections of ancient rock art in the world. Here we find, numerous ancient stone kites, mounds, and tails.
Arabian Peninsula: The dark lines are the remains of stone walls barely visible on the ground.In the Harrat Khaybar region of Saudi Arabia, however, “kites” take on entirely different shapes-most notably the “square pocket” and “barbed arrow”-and the low walls of many of them show ruler-straight lines, raising new questions for archeologists.Some of these low walls of stone-many long known to archeologists inside Saudi Arabia-are newly visible from any computer in the world. The high-resolution image swaths reveal stunningly well-preserved evidence of widespread human activity in the distant past.
Arabian Peninsula: The dark lines are the remains of stone walls barely visible on the ground.
In the Al-Hayit region, keyhole and pendant shapes vary in size from a few meters to dozens of meters, and they are often found arranged along “avenues” that are invisible to builders of modern highways.Who created these structures and for what purpose?In the 1920′s when British Royal Air Force pilots flew over the northern Harrat Harrah, they were struck by the numbers and variety of archeological remains visible in that rugged, thinly populated landscape.In Jordan, there are similar structures visible for the air. The Bedouin say the structures and walls are “the works of the Old Men”.
In the barren desert landscape, hundreds of kilometres from anywhere, there are thousands upon thousands of elaborate stone wheels, measuring up to 70 metres wide and visible only from the sky.
Flt Lt Percy Maitland documented the presence of the mysterious structures in a 1927 article for the archaeological journal Antiquity.They remained largely a secret until the 1970s when Dr David Kennedy, now a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Western Australia, saw them in great numbers while studying old survey photographs from Jordan.
Beginning in the mid-1990s, Dr Kennedy led an aerial photography project aimed at documenting Jordanian archaeological sites.
“These structures are largely unknown,” he said. “Frequently, you can’t see any of these structures from the ground.
Or you can just see a jumble of boulders that don’t make any sense. But you go up a small distance and they are extraordinary.”
Giant stone structures form wheel shapes with spokes often radiating inside. Here a cluster of wheels in the Azraq Oasis. CREDIT: David D. Boyer APAAME_20080925_DDB-0237 A close-up of one of the mysterious circles. Credit: David D. Boyer APAAME_20080925_DDB-0257 This drawing reveal the various shapes these structures can take. Credit: Stafford Smith The stone circles’ age is unknown. They are at least 2,000 years old, but could have been built up to 9,000 years ago.
Compared to the Peruvian desert’s Nazca drawings – which date as far back as the year 400, number in the hundreds and have a maximum breadth of about 270 metres – the Middle East patterns are more numerous, bigger and much older.
“These volcanic lava fields are the last place you’d expect to find these kinds of structures,” Dr Kennedy said. “The landscape is not hospitable. It looks bleak and barren. They’re so unusual.”
At least 3,000 structures have been found in Jordan and Dr Kennedy’s recent research has documented nearly 2,000 in Saudi Arabia.
As seen, there are a huge number, variety and forms of figures in different regions. Unfortunately, there are still many unanswered questions. We do not know why they were built. Neither do we know when they were constructed or by whom…. @ MessageToEagle.com.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
Colombia evacuated people from communities close to the Nevado del Ruiz volcano after an eruption on Saturday that spewed smoke and ash from its crater, bringing back memories of avalanches that in 1985 buried tens of thousands under rocks. President Juan Manuel Santos said on his Twitter account that the area around the Nevado del Ruiz, in the central spine of Colombia’s Andean mountain range, had been put on red alert and people should leave the area. Even as volcanic activity began to subside, emergency services urged 4,800 residents in Caldas and nearby Tolima province to get to safety, according to Carlos Ivan Marquez, who heads the security effort. The volcano is about 110 miles west of the capital Bogota.
From Reddit, this photo of a very hot dog in the heat wave. “No air conditioning in my car , this is my dogs reaction… Priceless.” Don’t worry, the photo poster reassured viewers that “[h]e’s fine we were in the car for 5 mins he’s running around right now like a psycho.”
High temperature records have been falling by the wayside so far this year, and the current heat wave now has more, including all-time records in jeopardy.
Never mind highs near 100 degrees. The current heat wave has temperatures pushing 102, 105 even 108 degrees in portions of the Plains, Midwest, South and East.
UPDATE: All-Time Record Highs Set Saturday
–Columbus, GA set an all time record of 106, breaking the previous all-time record of 105 which was set on Friday. The daily record high was 100 set in 1959.
–Macon, GA tied the all-time record high of 108, which was last set in 1980. The record high for the day was 103 set in 1959.
–Knoxville, TN set an all-time record high of 105, breaking the previous all-time record high of 104 set on July 12th, 1930. The previous record high for the day was 100, set in 1952.
–Tri-cities, TN set an all-time record high of 103 degrees, breaking the previous all-time record of 102 set on June 29, 2012 and July 29, 1952. The previous daily record high was only 95, set in 1959.
–Chattanooga, TN set an all-time record high of 107 degrees, breaking the previous all-time record of 106 set on June 29, 2012 and July 28, 1952. The previous daily record was 103 degrees set in 1952.
–Charlotte, NC tied an all-time record high of 104 degrees, last set on August 10, 2007. The record high for the day was 102 set in 1959.
–Atlanta, GA set an all-time record of 106 degrees, breaking the previous all-time record of 105 set in 1980. The previous daily record was 98 degrees set in 1936, broken by a whopping 8 degrees!
–Columbia, SC tied the all-time record high of 109 which was set on Friday. The record for the day was 103, set in 1959.
–Raleigh, NC tied the all-time record high temperature of 105 which was last set on Friday and set before that on July 23, 1952. The record for the day was 102 set in 1959.
Meteorologist DJ Hoffman pointed out that as of Thursday, June 28, 2012, more than 20,900 record highs have been broken to date this year.
“We have had over 7,700 more record highs this year, compared to last year, despite 2011′s South Central states heat and drought,” Hoffman said.
The temperature pattern this year got a jump start from way back at the tail end of the winter. Multiple days of record highs were set from the central Plains and Rockies to the Great Lakes during March. Chicago had nine days in a row of record highs spanning March 14 to 22.
Indianapolis came within 3 degrees of tying their all-time record high of 107 degrees during Thursday with a high of 104 degrees.
A “sea of heat” covers much of the Central states and the South. This National Weather Service map shows high temperatures from Thursday, June 28, 2012.
Meanwhile, about 130 miles away in the Hoosier State, in Fort Wayne, the temperature tied their all-time record high set during the dust bowl era in 1936 and 1934, as well as during the blistering summer of 1988.
According to Climatologist Jim Rourke, “Other vicious extreme high temperatures Thursday included Russell, Kan., with 110 degrees; St. Louis, Mo., with 108 degrees; Little Rock, Ark., with 107 degrees; Kansas City, Mo., with 106 degrees; Nashville, Tenn., with 105 degrees and Dayton, Ohio, with 102 degrees.”
“All of these locations and many others not only broke or tied daily record highs for the date, but also set June all-time record highs during the current heat wave,” Rourke said.
During the next couple of days, temperatures are forecast to reach 100 degrees or higher once again in the central and southern Plains to the Ohio Valley. However, even areas in the central and southern Appalachians and the coastal plain in the South and mid-Atlantic will do the same.
Columbia, S.C. has broken their all-time record high of 107 degrees set on multiple dates. During Friday afternoon, temperatures reached 109 degrees.
During Friday afternoon, Nashville broke its all-time record high of 107 degrees set in 1952 by reaching 109 degrees.
Atlanta is on pace to reach or exceed its all-time record high of 105 degrees set on July 17, 1980, before the weekend is over.
Charlotte, N.C., tied its all-time record high of 104 degrees set in 1954 and tied in 2007.
Washington, D.C., broke its June record of 102 set in 2011, when the temperature reached 104 degrees Friday afternoon. The all-time record high is 106 degrees set on July 20, 1930.
Temperatures Friday afternoon inched close to the all-time record of 108 degrees at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor with a high of 106 degrees.
According to Long Range Expert Paul Pastelok, “Given the persistence of the large high pressure area producing the heat and dry conditions thus far, this will not be the last of widespread triple-digit readings this summer.”
“While the heat will tend to be intermittent from the northern Plains to the Northeast, indications are that more of this sort of thing can continue from the southern and central Plains to the interior South in the coming weeks,” Pastelok said.
When a temperature has reached or surpassed the highest temperature on “record” for a particular location, it is considered to be an “all-time record high.
In many cases, temperature records have been kept for 120 years or more in major cities, while some temperature records in smaller cities and towns may only be in the books for a few decades.
Current, official temperature readings are taken at height of about 6 feet off the ground with no direct exposure to the sun or reflection from the sun or warm surfaces.
Many temperature and weather observation sites are located at airfields.
Before the arrival of airfields during the early 1900s, most observations were taken in inner cities, and while they were accurate to where they were located, they would give higher readings than say in a countryside or suburban location, where most airfields exist, due to the heat island effect.
The heat wave is also playing interesting tricks with nighttime temperatures.
Near the outer edge of the heat wave, where a breeze stays up at night and the humidity is elevated, temperatures barely dipped below average daytime highs for the date.
According to Senior Meteorologists Rob Miller, “In Pittsburgh, the temperature never fell below 80 degrees last night. If it fails to do so before midnight, it will be the warmest night in the Steel City since July 21, 1930.
In Des Moines, Iowa, the low temperature on Thursday was a mere 81 degrees. According to the National Weather Service, it was only the second time in 75 years in which the low temperature was 81 degrees or higher. The last time this occurred was on July 12, 1966.
Meanwhile, in the middle of building drought areas of Arkansas, near the center of the high pressure area and a pocket of dry air, the atmosphere is behaving like a desert. At North Little Rock Airport, the temperature began Thursday at 63 degrees, then reached 107 degrees the same afternoon.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has declared a state of emergency in Baltimore due the amount of people still without power following a round of severe storms. The mayor signed the declaration because there are still about 90,000 people without power in the city after strong storms swept through the area on Friday night, according to a news release. Declaring the emergency allows the city to put emergency plans in place, and is an important step in allowing the city to apply for reimbursement from the federal and state governments for some expenses associated with storm recovery.
01.07.2012
Extreme Weather
China
MultiProvinces, [Provinces of Zhejiang, Guangxi, Hunan, Fujian, Anhui, Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou ]
Several parts of China have been hit by torrential rains over the last few days, resulting in the evacuation of millions of people and property damage. In east China’s Zhejiang province, heavy rains have forced 17,000 people to relocate and affected the lives of more than 350,000 others since June 22. A 12-year-old girl was killed when her house was buried in a landslide on Saturday in Zhejiang’s Songyang county. Rains have battered central China’s Hunan province since June 21, killing one person, leaving another missing and affecting the lives of 138,000 others. A landslide was triggered in Hunan’s city of Chenzhou, blocking roads and rivers and stranding 130 tourists, the report said. South China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region has been reeling under heavy downpours since June 21. In the hard-hit city of Hezhou, over 10,000 people have been evacuated and economic losses of 200 million yuan ($31.4 million) have been incurred, according to officials. One resident of Hezhou died in hospital after suffering serious injuries during a landslide, while another was crushed to death during a house collapse. More rain and storms are expected to hit Zhejiang, Fujian and Anhui provinces in south China, as well as Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces in the south-west over the next three days, the weather office said.
President Barack Obama issued an emergency declaration for West Virginia on Saturday following violent storms that downed trees and power lines across the state, leaving more than 680,000 without electricity as temperatures in the 90s continued. The emergency declaration authorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide help and coordinate relief efforts. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency early Saturday morning after the storms swept across the state Friday night.
Firefighters battling the 2,000-acre Waldo Canyon fire that erupted west of Colorado Springs Saturday are preparing for the worst Sunday, a perfect storm of hot weather, rugged terrain, and aggressive flames. “Tomorrow could be very explosive,” said Mike Smith, the fire information officer for the U.S. Forest Service, said Saturday after the fire had exploded over 1,000 acres and appeared headed in all directions. Another forest service spokesman, Greg Heule, said he expected the dry winds and scorching Saturday temperatures would keep the Waldo Canyon blaze burning throughout the night. Heule wouldn’t predict flare-ups on Sunday, but suspected that hot, dry conditions would make Sunday another challenging day for firefighting. As the sun set on the billowing smoke Saturday evening, trees continued to torch, bursting into flames that could be seen across Colorado Springs. “We saw what the fire behavior was like. We see what it’s like now—we have trees that are torching off,” Heule said just before 9 p.m. Saturday. “What that indicates to me is that conditions are ripe for aggressive fire behavior. I’m not Mother Nature. I don’t make predictions,” he added.
Erratic winds, steep terrain, tinder-dry trees, and near-record high temperatures have made fighting the Waldo Canyon fire a challenge for the 350 firefighters from across the Pikes Peak region and beyond who raced to battle the blaze after it started just after noon with a towering column of black smoke. The 2,000-acre fire burned with multiple heads as it moved across the hillsides, stretching to the north and northwest, and as well as making an unusual run to the southwest — downhill and against the prevailing winds. The cause of the fire was unknown. Two single engine air tankers, two heavy air tankers, and one massive helicopter flew over the blaze Saturday, under the watchful-eye of one air attack plane, an airborne command center, said Heule. More than 1,000 homes and as many as 2,300 people were evacuated from Colorado Springs and portions of El Paso County, said El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa. An unknown number of people were also evacuated from the Ute Pass area, near Cascade, said El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark. All recreational areas on the hills west of Col.orado Springs were shut down Saturday afternoon, including the Garden of the Gods Park, the Pikes Peak Highway, Waldo Canyon trail, and the Cog Railway, said Sunny Smaldino, spokeswoman for the Colorado Springs Fire Department. Sections of Rampart Range Road, which was initially the only point of access for firefighters trying to reach fire, burned, said Sheriff Maketa.
A Type 1 incident command team, the highest classification for fire-disasters, was requested by local fire officials and was expected to take the lead Sunday morning to take charge on Monday, said Maketa. As the fire burned through dense trees and fallen logs — what firefighters call heavy fuels — it sent up thick columns of jet-black smoke Saturday. There are more of these fuels to burn in the hills, Smith said, and Sunday’s possibility for more near-record highs, between 95 and 100 degrees, could add to the conflagration. Within minutes after the fire was first spotted the white smoke it spewed turned black, bursting into a tall column that could be seen from across the region. Firefighters were quickly amassed from Colorado Springs, Green Mountain Falls, and Woodland Park. Two Forest Service Hotshot crews came down from Lake George, where they were fighting the 1,145-acre Springer fire. An incident command post was set up at a Safeway parking lot on West Colorado Avenue, where the city officials and some residents gathered to glean the latest news. Mandatory evacuations were issued for the 200 homes Cedar Heights neighborhood, an exclusive gated community west of the Garden of the Gods. An additional 850 homes were evacuated in the Garden of the Gods Park and parts of the nearby Mountain Shadows neighborhood. Colorado Springs police were sent to make door-to-door calls to drive those residents in the evacuation zones out of their homes.
The evacuation alerts confused several residents on the Westside Saturday afternoon. Some voluntary evacuations for the northern section of the Mountain Shadows neighborhood were issued and then rescinded. One Manitou Springs woman, who asked not to be named, said she received a reverse 911 call and knock on her door telling her to leave Saturday, although her neighborhood was not evacuated. Despite its fury, the Waldo canyon fire hadn’t damaged structures Saturday. By 9 p.m. Saturday, a command team, consisting of Forest Service officials, the Colorado Springs Fire Department and the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, had not decidedwhether firefighetrs would do battle with the Waldo Canyon fire until dawn. Firefighters are also worried about more blazes igniting in the dry hills and plains. The fire department and sheriff’s office called in off-duty firefighters and deputies to bolster forces in the city and county. Thirty-two deputies were called in to monitor evacuation zones, and 12 off-duty firefighters were brought in to staff three engines in the city. The fire department also called on fire crews from the Cheyenne Mountain, Cimarron, and Stratmoor Hills fire department to help bolster Colorado Springs fire stations exmptied when firefighters deployed to Waldo Canyon. As for what the Waldo Canyon fire will cost the city of Colorado Springs, already under budget constraints, fire Chief Rich Brown said it is too early to tell.
Today
Forest / Wild Fire
USA
State of Montana, [Ash Creek (Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation)]
Authorities in eastern Montana ordered the evacuation of several communities Saturday as the Ash Creek Complex fires consumed another 72 square miles and pushed the number of structures destroyed past 30. The Powder River County Sheriff’s office ordered Wilbur, Whitetail, Beaver Creek and East Fork of Otter Creek residents out after the fire swelled to 244 square miles overnight. Fire spokesman Pat McKelvey said one home and five outbuildings were destroyed overnight but no injuries were reported due to the lightning-caused fire that started Monday. The fire had destroyed at least 26 structures previously. “We did have significant movement to the east,” he said, noting embers were causing spot fires a mile ahead of the main fire that’s burning in timber, juniper, pine, sage and grass. He said officials were looking at Saturday as a chance to possibly strengthen fire lines before Sunday when high winds and lower humidity are predicted. The fire is about 25 percent contained. “We are figuring today will be a lull day, if you can call 90 degree temperatures a lull,” he said. Nearly 450 firefighters are at the blaze with more being called in, McKelvey said, adding that two helicopters are working the fire and fixed-wing retardant bombers are also available.
Firefighters moved quickly to get a handle on a wildfire that has burned 96 acres of dry brush in the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles. Los Angeles County Fire dispatcher Andre Gougis says the fire north of Wrightwood near the San Bernardino County line is 80 percent contained Saturday night. Crews got help from water-dropping aircraft as they worked to keep the flames from moving east into the Pinyon Hills area. Gougis says there has been no damage or injuries. Route 138 near Route 18 was briefly closed in both directions. The fire was reported just before noon. The cause is under investigation.
University of Nevada, Reno, researchers were joined by a Scripps Institution of Oceanography research team, spending many days on Fallen Leaf Lake to gather sonar and side-scan radar data to study earthquake faults and paleoshorelines. The low-tech boat was adorned with high-tech hardware, such as gyroscopes used on rockets, to gather high-resolution images of the lake bottom. Using standing trees they found submerged under 130 feet of water, the team confirmed and reported in their paper, a culmination of a comprehensive high-tech assessment of Fallen Leaf Lake – a small moraine-bound lake at the south end of the Lake Tahoe Basin – that stands of pre-Medieval trees in the lake suggest the region experienced severe drought at least every 650 to 1,150 years during the mid- and late-Holocene period. Credit: Photo by Mike Wolterbeek, University of Nevada, Reno.
The erratic year-to-year swings in precipitation totals in the Reno-Tahoe area conjures up the word “drought” every couple of years, and this year is no exception. The Nevada State Climate Office at the University of Nevada, Reno, in conjunction with the Nevada Drought Response Committee, just announced a Stage 1 drought (moderate) for six counties and a Stage 2 drought (severe) for 11 counties.
Reno, Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada are no strangers to drought, the most famous being the Medieval megadrought lasting from 800 to 1250 A.D. when annual precipitation was less than 60 percent of normal. The Reno-Tahoe region is now about 65 percent of annual normal precipitation for the year, which doesn’t seem like much, but imagine if this were the “norm” each and every year for the next 200 years.
Research by scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno and their partners at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego indicates that there are other instances of such long-lasting, severe droughts in the western United States throughout history.
Their recent paper, a culmination of a comprehensive high-tech assessment of Fallen Leaf Lake – a small moraine-bound lake at the south end of the Lake Tahoe Basin – reports that stands of pre-Medieval trees in the lake suggest the region experienced severe drought at least every 650 to 1,150 years during the mid- and late-Holocene period.
“Using an arsenal of cutting edge sonar tools, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), and a manned submersible, we’ve obtained potentially the most accurate record thus far on the instances of 200-year-long droughts in the Sierra,” Graham Kent, director of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory said.
“The record from Fallen Leaf Lake confirms what was expected and is likely the most accurate record, in terms of precipitation, than obtained previously from a variety of methods throughout the Sierra.”
Kent is part of the University of Nevada, Reno and Scripps research team that traced the megadroughts and dry spells of the region using tree-ring analysis, shoreline records and sediment deposition in Fallen Leaf Lake.
Using side-scan and multibeam sonar technology developed to map underwater earthquake fault lines such as the West Tahoe fault beneath Fallen Leaf Lake, the team also imaged standing trees up to 130 feet beneath the lake surface as well as submerged ancient shoreline structure and development.
The trees matured while the lake level was 130 to 200 feet below its modern elevation and were not deposited by a landslide as was suspected.
The team, led by John Kleppe, University of Nevada, Reno engineering professor emeritus, published a paper on this research and is presenting its findings in seminars and workshops.
“The lake is like a ‘canary in a coal mine’ for the Sierra, telling the story of precipitation very clearly,” Kent said.
“Fallen Leaf Lake elevations change rapidly due to its unique ratio between catchment basin and lake surface of about 8 to 1. With analysis of the standing trees submerged in the lake, sediment cores and our sonar scanning of ancient shorelines, we can more accurately and easily trace the precipitation history of the region.”
Water balance calculations and analysis of tree-ring samples undertaken by Kleppe, Kent and Scripps scientists Danny Brothers and Neal Driscoll, along with Professor Franco Biondi of the University’s College of Science, suggest annual precipitation was less than 60 percent of normal from the late 10th century to the early 13th century.
Their research was documented in a scientific paper, Duration and severity of Medieval drought in the Lake Tahoe Basin, published in the Quaternary Science Reviews in November 2011.
Tree-ring records and submerged paleoshoreline geomorphology suggest a Medieval low-lake level of Fallen Leaf Lake lasted more than 220 years. More than 80 trees were found lying on the lake floor at various elevations above the paleoshoreline.
“Although the ancient cycle of megadroughts seems to occur every 650 to 1150 years and the last one was 750 years ago, it is uncertain when the next megadrought will occur. With climate change upon us, it will be interesting to see how carbon dioxide loading in the atmosphere will affect this cycle,” Kent said.
Professor Paula Noble, in the University’s College of Science’s Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering, is expanding this research to include the fine-scale study of climate change through out the Holocene (about 12,000 years) using recently collected 40-foot-long sediment cores in Fallen Leaf Lake.
Power lines are down across the Midwest and mid-Atlantic after winds sped up to 90 mph during Friday night’s storm. (Photo courtesy of Twitter user @Smoflake88)
For ice cream vendors selling frozen treats and cold water on the beaches near Atlantic City, N.J., it’s a great day for business.
Thousands flocked to the beach Saturday to escape the heat after a super derecho knocked out the power of more than three million people across the Midwest and mid-Atlantic regions.
James Diecidue, who sells ice cream along the beach in Margate City, N.J., said the beaches are extremely crowded. Many of his customers keep asking him if the city has regained power yet.
“A lot of people are buying water and ice cream here because a lot of people still don’t have power at home,” he said.
While those affected by the storm along the coast have the option to cool down with an ocean minutes away, other areas aren’t so lucky.
Authorities in non-coastal regions have had to think of other ways to keep their community cool in this weekend’s scorching temperatures.
Prince George’s County in Maryland opened cooling centers where local residents without power can refuge from the 100-degree weather that plagued their area today.
Scott Peterson, the county’s deputy manager of communications, said they’ve provided information about where to locate cooling centers through social media and online press releases that people can view with their smart phones if they don’t have power.
“We’ve been going through every means necessary to make sure they know we have places they can go to cool down,” Peterson said. “We’re highlighting what’s still open with power in the region like malls and hotels. Everyone’s working together.”
Emergency Management Coordinator Emily Ashley of Chesterfield County, Va., said the town’s local libraries will keep their doors open past normal hours, and though usually closed on Sundays, will also open tomorrow until 6 p.m.
Ashley said dealing with the significant power outages has been difficult because critical buildings that would normally act as a refuge are the ones that are without power.
The Virginia Department of Emergency Management also created a Tumblr blog that lists open cooling centers by county, damage reports and power restoration updates.
According to electric companies, it could be a week before power is restored in some areas, especially major cities like Washington, D.C.
………………………………..
Violent Storms rip through Eastern US leaving 10 dead & 2 Million without power in mist of heat wave
Ireland has been hit by torrential rain as the summer disappears again – with parts of Cork and Belfast flooded.
Emergency services are struggling to cope with the flash floods across the country as homes are left without electricity.
The towns of Douglas, Bandon and Clonakilty in Cork are badly flooded with some areas under three feet of water.
Residents were evacuated from the Ballyvolane area of Cork city while there is no access in or out of Clonakilty.
The Irish Independent reports that up to 15,000 homes in Cork are currently without electricity after the overnight storms which saw 70mm of rain fall in a few hours.
Flooding has also been reported in parts of Sligo and Tipperary and motorists have been warned to take extreme care.
Cork County Council has confirmed that it activated a flood response plan after the torrential rain.
Ireland’s weather service Met Eireann issued a flood alert to more than a dozen county councils with 70mm of rain forecast to fall in parts of Munster, Connacht, south Leinster and the midlands.
Despite warm temperatures, there could be torrential downpours due to heavy thunderstorms according to Met Eireann.
“The worst of the rain is over but it has been the wettest June on record,” said forecaster Evelyn Cusack.
Belfast has also been badly hit by the torrential rain. A police spokeswoman said: “Most of the main arterial routes in east and south Belfast are impassable due to flooding, abandoned cars and debris.”
Gov. Bob McDonnell declared a state of emergency Saturday after a powerful storm killed six people in the state and knocked out power for hundreds of thousands, leaving them without air-conditioning in the middle of a blistering heat wave.
“This is a very dangerous situation for Virginia,” McDonnell said at a news conference at the state’s Emergency Operations Center. He said the threat of more storms, continued extreme heat and the largest non-hurricane power outage in state history — and fifth largest ever — could mean a few more days of misery.
McDonnell urged Virginians to look out for their neighbors, especially elderly people who are more vulnerable to heat-related illnesses.
“Be your neighbor’s keeper,” he said.
The governor’s emergency declaration activated 300 National Guard troops to help the state recover from straight-line winds of up to 80 miles an hour that felled trees and power lines and closed about 250 secondary roads.
Fairfax County police said trees blown down by heavy winds killed one person in a car and a 90-year-old woman sleeping in her bed. In Albemarle County, police said 64-year-old John Porter was killed by a falling tree outside his house and Catherine Ford was killed when she got out of her car, which was blocked by fallen trees, and was hit by another toppled tree.
The Bedford County Sheriff’s Office said an elderly couple died in a fire that appears to have been caused by the storm.
About 769,500 customers of Appalachian Power and Dominion remained without service late Saturday afternoon. That was down from a peak of more than 1.2 million earlier in the day.
In South Hampton Roads, the storm knocked out power and brought down tree limbs, but no major damage was reported, according to police dispatchers in the five cities.
The Newport News Fire Department responded to about 27 calls for service overnight, according to a city news release. Crews responded to four separate calls for trees that fell onto structures and onto boats in distress, the release said.
Nearly 5,200 Dominion Virginia Power customers in Southeastern Virginia, which includes South Hampton Roads and the Peninsula, were out of power as of 7:15 p.m., according to the company’s website.
Wind gusts topped 74 mph at the Franklin Airport in Isle of Wight Co. late Friday night, according to the National Weather Service in Wakefield, Va. In Portsmouth, wind gusts topped 61 mph at early Saturday morning, the service said.
Rodney Blevins of utility giant Dominion said it was unclear how long it will take to get power fully restored but added that Virginians should “anticipate long outages.”
Tracey Phalen of Richmond could relate to that advice. After enduring six days without electricity because of Hurricane Irene last summer, she was bracing for another uncomfortable stretch because of the latest storm-related outage.
“I think it’s going to get bad,” she said as she and her teenage son relaxed under the shade of a coffee-house umbrella. “But I always tend to think there are a lot of people who have it worse.”
She said her family would find someplace cool to get through the day.
“We’ll probably go to a movie theater at the top of the day,” she said.
Dozens of schools, fire stations and community centers were opened across the state as cooling centers, but many Virginians found other ways to avoid the heat.
Brett Shiflett of Richmond said she would be staying with various family members in the area after the storm sent a tree crashing into the apartment above hers, cutting off power and leaving her kitchen a soggy shambles.
“I’m going to be house-hopping for a while,” she said.
The huge tree wiped out the rear portion of the upstairs apartment. A bed with a broken headboard was covered with debris was a tangled mess of bricks and lumber from what used to be a deck.
Had the storm hit later, David Fetchko’s girlfriend might have been sleeping in that bed.
“She probably would have been killed,” said Fetchko, who relayed a message from his girlfriend that she was still too shaken to talk about the ordeal.
Shiflett was home when the tree fell.
“It sounded like an earthquake and like someone upstairs fell really hard,” she said. Then it started raining in her kitchen, which is directly below her neighbor’s demolished bedroom.
“It’s a little traumatizing,” she said.
Others in the city also were cleaning up after the storm and contemplating how they were going to cope with the relentless heat.
“I’m heading to the river to sit in the water with the dog,” Tricia Pearsall said as she swept up fallen tree branches in front of her 170-year-old home downtown. “We’re lucky to have air-conditioning, but I’d rather be in the river.”
Ramel Lloyd was waiting for a friend to come over with a nail gun to reattach four sections of privacy fencing that were flattened at the home he just bought three weeks ago. The storm also ripped off a small section of siding, and a power surge apparently caused a ceiling fan to catch fire.
“Luckily, everyone is safe,” he said. “It was an eventful 12 hours, to say the least.”
Around the corner from Lloyd’s house, a large tree crushed two cars, including Greg Hough’s compact wagon.
“It’s totaled,” Hough said. “The golf clubs are OK though.”
Pilot staffers Jennifer Jiggetts and Sarah Hutchins contributed to this report.
Gauhati Raging floodwaters fed by monsoon rains have inundated more than 2,000 villages in northeast India, killing at least 27 people and leaving hundreds of thousands more marooned Friday. The Indian air force was delivering food packages to people huddled on patches of dry land along with cattle and wild elephants. Rescuers were being dropped by helicopter into affected areas to help the stranded. About one million people have been forced to evacuate as the floods from the swollen Brahmaputra River – one of Asia’s largest – swamped 2,084 villages across most of Assam state, officials said. Officials have counted 27 people dead so far, but the toll is expected to be much higher as unconfirmed casualty reports mount. Telephone lines were knocked out and some train services were cancelled after their tracks were swamped by mud. As the floods soaked the Kaziranga game reserve east of Assam’s capital of Gauhati, motorists reported seeing a one-horned rhino fleeing along a busy highway. “We never thought the situation would turn this grim when the monsoon-fed rivers swelled a week ago,” said Nilomoni Sen Deka, an Assam government minister. Residents of Majuli – an 800-square-kilometre island in the middle of the Brahmaputra River – watched helplessly as the swirling, grey waters swallowed 50 villages and swept away their homes. “We are left with only the clothes we are wearing,” said 60-year-old Puniram Hazarika, one of about 75,000 island residents now camping in makeshift shelters of bamboo sticks and plastic tarps on top of a mud embankment. A herd of 70 endangered Asiatic elephants, which usually avoid humans, were grouped together nearby, Majuli island wildlife official Atul Das said. “The jumbos have not caused any harm, but we are keeping a close watch,” he said.
Five people have lost their lives to dengue in Karntaka since January 2012, but none in Bangalore. The city has reported 45 positive cases of dengue as per the recent report given out by BBMP. In the last 14 days, there have been 13 positive cases reported in the city. There were ten cases reported in the month of May. On Tuesday, Bangalore Mayor D Venkatesh Murthy had a meeting with the health officers of the Palike and instructed them to submit a report everyday on the about the dengue cases reported across the city.
Biohazard name:
Dengue Fever
Biohazard level:
3/4 Hight
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans, but for which vaccines or other treatments exist, such as anthrax, West Nile virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, SARS virus, variola virus (smallpox), tuberculosis, typhus, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, yellow fever, and malaria. Among parasites Plasmodium falciparum, which causes Malaria, and Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes trypanosomiasis, also come under this level.
by Staff Writers
New Haven CT (SPX) “In effect,” Kahan said, “ordinary members of the public credit or dismiss scientific information on disputed issues based on whether the information strengthens or weakens their ties to others who share their values. At least among ordinary members of the public, individuals with higher science comprehension are even better at fitting the evidence to their group commitments.”
Are members of the public divided about climate change because they don’t understand the science behind it? If Americans knew more basic science and were more proficient in technical reasoning, would public consensus match scientific consensus? A study published online in the journal Nature Climate Change suggests that the answer to both questions is no.
Indeed, as members of the public become more science literate and numerate, the study found, individuals belonging to opposing cultural groups become even more divided on the risks that climate change poses.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, the study was conducted by researchers associated with the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School and involved a nationally representative sample of 1500 U.S. adults.
“The aim of the study was to test two hypotheses,” said Dan Kahan, Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology at Yale Law School and a member of the study team.
“The first attributes political controversy over climate change to the public’s limited ability to comprehend science, and the second, to opposing sets of cultural values. The findings supported the second hypothesis and not the first,” he said.
“Cultural cognition” is the term used to describe the process by which individuals’ group values shape their perceptions of societal risks. It refers to the unconscious tendency of people to fit evidence of risk to positions that predominate in groups to which they belong.
The results of the study were consistent with previous studies that show that individuals with more egalitarian values disagree sharply with individuals who have more individualistic ones on the risks associated with nuclear power, gun possession, and the HPV vaccine for school girls.
In this study, researchers measured “science literacy” with test items developed by the National Science Foundation. They also measured their subjects’ “numeracy”-that is, their ability and disposition to understand quantitative information.
“In effect,” Kahan said, “ordinary members of the public credit or dismiss scientific information on disputed issues based on whether the information strengthens or weakens their ties to others who share their values. At least among ordinary members of the public, individuals with higher science comprehension are even better at fitting the evidence to their group commitments.”
Kahan said that the study supports no inferences about the reasoning of scientific experts in climate change.
Researcher Ellen Peters of Ohio State University said that people who are higher in numeracy and science literacy usually make better decisions in complex technical situations, but the study clearly casts doubt on the notion that the more you understand science and math, the better decisions you’ll make in complex and technical situations.
“What this study shows is that people with high science and math comprehension can think their way to conclusions that are better for them as individuals but are not necessarily better for society.”
According to Kahan, the study suggests the need for science communication strategies that reflect a more sophisticated understanding of cultural values.
“More information can help solve the climate change conflict,” Kahan said, “but that information has to do more than communicate the scientific evidence. It also has to create a climate of deliberations in which no group perceives that accepting any piece of evidence is akin to betrayal of their cultural group.”
In addition to Dan Kahan and Ellen Peters, other study researchers were Maggie Wittlin of the Cultural Cognition Project, Paul Slovic of Decision Research, Lisa Larrimore Ouellette of the Cultural Cognition Project, Donald Braman of George Washington University, and Gregory Mandel of Temple University. The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks, Nature Climate Change, DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1547.
For years, scientists have struggled to determine why the sun’s atmosphere is more than 300 times hotter than its surface. But a new study has found a possible answer: giant super-tornadoes on the sun that may be injecting heat into the outer layers of our star.
Visualisation of a close-up region in our advanced 3D numerical simulations of a magnetic tornado in the solar atmosphere. The spiral lines represent the velocity field in the tornado vortex. The images contain the observed swirl signature (top, bluish) and the Sun’s surface (bottom, reddish). Image released June 27, 2012. CREDIT: Wedemeyer-Bohm et al./Image produced with VAPOR
While comparing images from the Swedish Solar Telescope with others taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, an international team of scientists noticed bright points on the sun’s surface and atmosphere that corresponded with swirls in the so-called chromospheres, a region that is sandwiched between the two layers. The finding indicates that the solar tornadoes stretched through all three layers of the sun.
The scientists went on to identify 14 solar super-tornadoes occurring within an hour of each other. By using a three dimensional simulation, the team then found that the swirls could play a role in elevating the sun’s outer layer.
A sun ‘super-tornado’ is born
Unlike tornadoes on Earth, which are powered by differences in temperature and humidity, the twisters on the sun are a combination of hot flowing gas and tangled magnetic field lines, ultimately driven by nuclear reactions in the solar core. [How Sun Tornadoes Work (Infographic)]
At the surface, or photosphere, cooled plasma sinks toward the interior like water running down the bathtub drain, creating vortexes that magnetic field lines are forced to follow. The lines stretch upward into the chromosphere, where they continue to spiral.
But while the hot gas at the surface drives the movement of the magnetic field, in the chromosphere it is the field lines that force the hot gas to spiral, creating the swirls that appear similar to tornadoes on Earth.
“The resulting funnel is narrow at the bottom and widens with height in the atmosphere,” lead scientist Sven Wedemeyer-Böhm, of the University of Oslo in Norway, told SPACE.com by email.
Spinning at thousands of miles per hour, the tornadoes vary in size, with diameters ranging from 930 to 3,500 miles (1,500 to 5,550 kilometers). Some of these giant solar twisters extend all the up in to the lower portion of the sun’s upper atmosphere (called the corona, the researchers said.
“Based on the detected events, we estimate that at least 11,000 swirls are present on the sun at all times,” Wedemeyer-Böhm said.
Towering solar twisters
Although the twisters are enormous by Earth’s scale, they are tiny on the surface of the sun. They were first detected in 2008 by Wedemeyer-Böhm and another researcher, but it wasn’t until images of super-tornadoes were compared with those from the corona and photosphere that scientists realized how high the writhing gas extended — or the influence they could have on the sun’s temperature.
The surface temperature of the sun is 9,980 Fahrenheit (5,526 degrees Celsius or about 5,800 Kelvin), while the corona peaks at 3.5 million Fahrenheit (2 million degrees Celsius or nearly 2 million Kelvin), a fact that seems counterintuitive.
Schematic view of the atmospheric layers of the Sun, the extent of simulated magnetic tornado, and the resulting net energy transport. Image released June 27, 2012. CREDIT: Wedemeyer-B�hm/Parts of the image produced with VAPOR
After observing the sun, the international team created computer models in an attempt to determine how much energy — and thus heat — could be effectively transported by the twisters. They concluded that solar tornadoes could help to explain how the outer layer stays so hot, although Wedemeyer-Böhm notes that it is likely only one of a number of different processes powering the temperature of the sun’s corona.
“The magnetic tornadoes offer a potential, alternative and widespread way to transport energy from the solar surface into the corona,” Wedemeyer-Böhm said.
The tornadoes differ from those spotted earlier this year. Those much larger events were formed by twisting solar prominences, and were likely connected to mass ejected from the sun. The smaller tornadoes are more abundant, and make a more significant contribution to the corona’s temperature.
The research was published in today’s (June 27) issue of the journal Nature.
Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR-Bohol) raised an alarm against gathering and eating shellfish from the tide flats of Tagbilaran City bay following a suspected case of red tide. BFAR-Bohol head Cresencio Pahamutang explained the alarm is based on an algal bloom, which is what caused the red coloration in the waters (red tide) that witnesses observed on the sea below Matig-a Lodge along Burgos Street, Tagbilaran City. Pahamutang said BFAR confirmed the reports based on the latest results from the 10 monitoring stations set up at specific points between Dauis Bridge in Junction Mansasa to Maribojoc Bay. According to Pahamutang, a worker at the Matig-a Lodge reported the unusual discoloration in the waters, prompting the BFAR to investigate by going to their monitoring stations. From their tests, Pahamutang shared that from the usual three cells per liter average yield in the collecting stations, they noticed around 1,475 to 1,365 cells per liter. A total ban and alarm against shellfish gathering and eating was issued when the mirco-organisms monitored reach 10,000 units per liter, he explained. With the noticed unusually high concentration of algal micro-organisms in the Tagbilaran Strait, the BFAR said they have coordinated with the Provincial Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Management Council as well as Poblacion 1 Barangay Chairman Arlene Karaan to advise people to stop harvesting shellfish from the mentioned areas. Pahamutang said these algae, also called dinoflagellates have toxins that are usually absorbed by bottom feeding shellfish, making them unfit for human consumption. For fishes from the area, the BFAR chief said as long as the fish is properly prepared before cooking, it may not be affected as much.
Biohazard name:
Red Tide
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Algal bloom happens when an unusually large concentration of aquatic micro-organisms amass in a coastal area, often causing discoloration. When the algae is present in high concentrations, water can be discolored from murky, to purple to pink or red, thus, its common name the red tide.
Status:
Today
Biological Hazard
Canada
Province of Alberta, [Baptiste Lake, Athabasca County]
A blue-green algae that is toxic to people and animals has been discovered in an Alberta lake. Alberta Health Services issued an advisory Saturday, warning people not to drink the water in Baptiste Lake, 167 kilometres north of Edmonton in Athabasca County. AHS said people and pets should not swim or wade in the lake, and should not consume fish from the lake. Avoid contact with blue-green algae along the shoreline, as well, as animals or humans who drink or have skin contact with contaminated water may experience serious illness. Symptoms of contact with the algae include skin irritation, rash, sore throat, sore red eyes, swollen lips, fever, nausea and vomiting or diarrhea, AHS said.
Biohazard name:
Blue-Green (cyanobacteria) Algae bloom
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
Today
HAZMAT
USA
State of New Jersey, West Deptford [Green Fields Swim Club]
At least four people have been taken to area hospitals sickened by a chlorine release at a Gloucester County swimming pool. Officials say the incident was reported around 3:00pm at the Green Fields Swim Club at 989 Jessup Road in West Deptford, N.J. The injured were transported by ambulances to Underwood and Kennedy Hospitals. There is no word on conditions. he incident is under investigation. And in Philadelphia, five people, including two children hospitalized in a similar incident at a pool in Northeast Philadelphia. The incident was reported around 9:00am in the 8200 block of Bustleton Avenue. Two children and three adults were taken to Hahnemann Hospital. They are listed in stable condition. Officials say initial investigation revealed the incident occurred at a private pool where someone had mixed pool chemicals together causing hazardous material to be released. The investigation continues.
A forensic approach that links changes deep below a volcano to signals at the surface is described by scientists from the University of Bristol in a paper published in Science. The research could ultimately help to predict future volcanic eruptions with greater accuracy.
Using forensic-style chemical analysis, Dr Kate Saunders and colleagues directly linked seismic observations of the deadly 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption to crystal growth within the magma chamber, the large underground pool of liquid rock beneath the volcano.
Over 500 million people live close to volcanoes which may erupt with little or no clear warning, causing widespread devastation, disruption to aviation and even global effects on climate. Many of the world’s volcanoes are monitored for changes such as increases in seismicity or ground deformation.
However, an on-going problem for volcanologists is directly linking observations at the surface to processes occurring underground.
Dr Saunders and colleagues studied zoned crystals, which grow concentrically like tree rings within the magma body. Individual zones have subtly different chemical compositions, reflecting the changes in physical conditions within the magma chamber and thus giving an indication of volcanic processes and the timescales over which they occur.
Chemical analysis of the crystals revealed evidence of pulses of magma into a growing chamber within the volcano. Peaks in crystal growth were found to correlate with increased seismicity and gas emissions in the months prior to the eruption.
Dr Saunders said: “Such a correlation between crystal growth and volcanic seismicity has been long anticipated, but to see such clear evidence of this relationship is remarkable.”
This forensic approach can be applied to other active volcanoes to shed new light upon the nature and timescale of pre-eruptive activity. This will help scientists to evaluate monitoring signals at restless volcanoes and improve forecasting of future eruptions.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
Cartoon of main geological events recorded at Gorst, Wash., from pre-earthquake conditions (a), to a tsunami that deposited material (b), through landslide debris flow (c). The depiction appears in a study from the June 2012 issue of the journal Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
CREDIT: Maria E. Martin Arcos
A new word of caution for Seattleites: The big quake you’ve been waiting for could be even bigger than expected.
The Seattle Fault, a zone of east-west thrust faults under the Puget Sound and Seattle, last ruptured in a magnitude-7.0 to -7.5 earthquake about 1,100 years ago. It’s due for another one, but scientists don’t know when that might happen.
Whenever it does, the quake — and ensuing hazards like landslides or a tsunami — could be larger and affect a wider area than scientists had calculated, according to recent research from the University of Washington.
“Before, it looked like the Seattle Fault had a very narrow zone that was deformed during the last major earthquake, but this evidence shows that the zone of deformation was actually several kilometers wider,” said Maria Martin Arcos, a geologist with the engineering firm AMEC, who completed the research while she was a doctoral student at the University of Washington.
“This also shows that when you think about an earthquake, you also have to think about and plan for these other things, like landslides and tsunamis, that can come along with it,” Arcos told OurAmazingPlanet.
Triple threat
Native American oral legends recount a major earthquake near Seattle around A.D. 900-930, but those are the only human records of the event. To learn more about the prehistoric quake — and what the Seattle Fault might have in store for future ruptures — researchers have had to dig into the geologic record.
Arcos looked for evidence in a coastal marsh near Gorst, Wash. Geophysical models of the fault predicted that the prehistoric quake didn’t deform this area, but Arcos discovered that parts of the marsh had been lifted about 10 feet (3 meters) during the quake.
She found a layer of big cedar trunks, forest peat and seeds and leaves from land plants directly on top of a layer full of clams, mussels and mud. Together, the two layers are evidence that the quake suddenly lifted land in an intertidal zone, turning it into a forested zone.
Also, a sandy layer deposited by a tsunami and a layer of forest turf torn up during a landslide showed that at least two violent events accompanied the major earthquake, Arcos said.
Bigger danger zone
A better understanding of the Seattle Fault’s structure will help researchers forecast which areas might experience intense ground shaking in future quakes, Arcos said.
Her research indicates that a zone 6 to 7 miles (10 to 12 kilometers) wide could be deformed in a future quake with a magnitude up to 7.5. Previous estimates showed the danger zone was only about 4 to 5 miles (7 to 8 km) wide. [Video: What Earthquake 'Magnitude' Means]
“We know where most of the big plate boundary faults are, and we have some ideas as to how they behave. But for these smaller faults, we don’t really know where all of them are or how all of them behave,” Arcos said. “This fault runs right under the city of Seattle, and we’re still finding new things almost every year.”
Arcos’ research is detailed in the June 2012 issue of the journal Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
Follow OurAmazingPlanet for the latest in Earth science and exploration news on Twitter@OAPlanet. We’re also onFacebookand Google+.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A magnitude 6.3 quake struck a remote region of western China, close to the Kazakhstan border, early on Saturday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.
The quake, initially reported as a magnitude 6.5, struck at 5:07 a.m. on Saturday (2107 GMT on Friday), and was centered 94 miles southwest of the town of Shihezi in Xinjiang province.
“It’s a very quiet, remote, mountainous area that is sparsely populated. A the moment we have no report of any casualty or damage but we are watching closely,” USGS Geophysicist Chen Shengzao told Reuters by telephone from Golden, Colorado.
The USGS said the quake was very shallow, only 6.1 miles below the Earth’s surface. Chen said that because of its magnitude and very shallow depth, the quake would have been widely felt.
A 6.3 quake is capable of causing severe damage.
(Reporting by Sandra Maler; Editing by Paul Simao and Todd Eastham)
Today
Earthquake
China
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, [98 km S Kuytun]
A strong earthquake jolted China’s far-western frontier early Saturday, shaking buildings and cutting off electricity in the remote mountainous area and injuring at least 17 people. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake, which hit China’s Xinjiang region, at magnitude-6.3, while China’s Earthquake Networks Center put it at 6.6. The Xinjiang regional government reported no deaths but said 17 people were injured. Most of the victims were tourists. Residents near the epicenter were shaken out of bed in pre-dawn darkness and some households lost electricity. The quake toppled several buildings 300 kilometers (186 miles) to the west in the regional capital, Urumqi, that rescuers had been dispatched to the sparsely populated area to search for casualties. An official from the Xinjiang Earthquake Bureau said the quake was “strongly felt” in Urumqi. The man, who gave only his surname, Jian, said Urumqi residents rushed into the streets when the quake hit but returned home after 6 a.m.
Mt Siple volcano in Antarctica might have become active and produced a steam plume recently detected on satellite imagery. The latest Smithsonian activity report mentions:
“Infrared imagery from the Metop satellite showed a possible rising steam plume from the area of Siple on 20 June. The imagery, as interpreted by Mark Drapes, indicated that the volcano was about -22 degrees Celsius, about 6 degrees warmer that the surrounding landscape, and the base of the plume was about -55 degrees Celsius.
Sources: Mark Drapes, personal communication, European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT)”
LOUISVILLE KY
WILMINGTON NC
LINCOLN IL
KANSAS CITY/PLEASANT HILL MO
GREENVILLE-SPARTANBURG SC
PADUCAH KY
WAKEFIELD VA
WILMINGTON OH
RALEIGH NC
INDIANAPOLIS IN
PEACHTREE CITY GA
NEWPORT/MOREHEAD CITY NC
HUNTSVILLE AL
BLACKSBURG VA
MOUNT HOLLY NJ
ST LOUIS MO
PHOENIX AZ
NEWPORT/MOREHEAD CITY NC
COLUMBIA SC
PITTSBURGH PA
SPRINGFIELD MO
LOUISVILLE KY
WILMINGTON NC
NEW YORK NY
GREENVILLE-SPARTANBURG SC
JACKSON KY
NASHVILLE TN
JACKSON MS
LITTLE ROCK AR
WILMINGTON OH
RALEIGH NC
PEACHTREE CITY GA
HUNTSVILLE AL
BLACKSBURG VA
BIRMINGHAM AL
CHARLESTON WV
MORRISTOWN TN
MOBILE AL
ST LOUIS MO
MEMPHIS TN
STATE COLLEGE PA
TALLAHASSEE FL
The Weather Channel estimated that on Thursday nearly 93 million Americans were in areas under heat advisories and 21 million in areas with excessive heat warnings.
Source : msnbc.com
The heat wave smothering the central U.S. on Friday spread east — and for Washington, D.C., that meant topping out at 104 degrees at Reagan National Airport around 5 p.m. ET.
The old record of 101 degrees stood for 138 years. Washington’s all-time record is 106.
Nashville, Tenn., saw 109 degrees on Friday — smashing its 60-year record by two degrees.
Triple-digit temperatures across the Mid-Atlantic were expected to break records elsewhere as well, the weather service reported earlier.
Record-breaking heat will continue into the weekend and possibly through the July 4th holiday, it added, “and overnight lows will struggle to drop below 70.”
Much of the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast on Friday joined areas in the Plains and Midwest with excessive heat warnings and heat advisories. The Northeast was only slightly cooler.
High humidity could make it feel like 119 degrees in some Carolina coastal areas by Saturday afternoon, the weather service stated.
On Thursday, Norton, Kan., was the hottest spot in the nation, topping out at 118 degrees, according to the National Climatic Data Center. In all, 22 Kansas locations reached 110 or hotter on Thursday.
Over the previous five days, another Kansas town, Hill City, held that hottest spot, reaching 115 degrees on Wednesday.
Kansas City’s current heat wave is suspected as the cause of two deaths, one of them a one-year-old boy.
The Kansas City Health Department announced Thursday that the county medical examiner is investigating the deaths of the child and a 60-year-old man as the first suspected heat-related deaths of the year.
No other [sic] details were available.
The metro area, along with eastern Kansas and all of Missouri, remains under an excessive heat warning expected to continue into next week.
Thursday’s high hit 106 at Charlie Wheeler Downtown Airport and 105 degrees at Kansas City International Airport. The heat index reached as high as 108, according to the National Weather Service.
Temperatures are expected to back off a little for the weekend, but not much. The lowest we can expect will be about 100 on Sunday.
After that, the forecast is more heat, and lots of it.
Bowman said temperatures will stop climbing for just a few days as the mass of hot, dry air that has settled on the central and southern plains region flattens and expands to the east. By Thursday of next week, he said, it should be built all the way back up past 100.
“It looks pretty brutal,” said Chris Bowman, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Pleasant Hill.
“For the next week, it doesn’t look like there’s any real relief.”
These are late summer weather patterns only seen in June once every five years or so, according to weather service.
The unseasonable heat is driving people all over the area to take precautions and seek shelter.
More than 275 people found relief Thursday at cooling stations opened by the Salvation Army and the YMCA of Greater Kansas City.
The Salvation Army’s eight community centers offer a place to cool off and a cold drink, and will remain open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. until the excessive heat warning is lifted. The Independence Crossroads location also offers cots to those who need a place to spend the night, and Salvation Army spokeswoman Amanda Waters said she expected at least 12 people to stay there Thursday night because of the heat.
The YMCA cooling stations will be open from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
The Kansas City Fire Department reported between seven and 10 heat-related medical emergencies by 4 pm. Thursday.
With the weekend forecast, North Kansas City’s centennial festival has changed its schedule and plans to bring in several cooling devices.
“We didn’t anticipate that the temperature would exceed the age of the city,” said Debbie Van Pelt-McEnroe, a spokeswoman for the festival committee.
The carnival will not open until 6 p.m. Friday, but will open at 1 p.m. Saturday. The city plans to provide two misting tents and a mobile, air-conditioned command post with paramedics. The fire station on Howell Street, the North Kansas City Library and the North Kansas City Community Center will be open for festival attendees who need to cool off.
Anyone braving the outdoors Friday or Saturday can expect a heat index between 105 and 110.
Bowman said temperatures will stop climbing for just a few days as the mass of hot, dry air that has settled on the central and southern plains region flattens and expands to the east. By Thursday of next week, he said, it should be built all the way back up.
An ozone alert issued for Kansas City Thursday will continue Friday. The alert, issued by the Mid-America Regional Council, warns of an unhealthy amount of ozone, or smog, in the air at ground level.
A lack of drenching rainfall could continue through much of the summer over Colorado and neighboring areas, adding to wildfire woes.
While there has been some thunderstorm activity of late in the region, not enough rain will fall over a broad enough area to significantly impact tinder-dry conditions.
In many cases the storms have brought and will continue to bring little or no rainfall in the weeks ahead.
The air over the region is much too dry to allow the rain falling at cloud level in the storm to reach the ground.
What happens is that the evaporating rain cools the air, which then races to the ground in the form of strong gusts. In turn, the gusty winds generated nearby from the storms fan the flames of existing fires, while lightning strikes from the storms threaten to start new fires.
According to Paul Pastelok, head of AccuWeather.com’s Long Range Experts, “It appears the zone of high pressure over the region now will last through much of July and could continue through much of August.”
Pastelok pointed out that some moisture will continue and may increase over the Southwest in general in the coming weeks, but it will tend to “go around” rather than through most of Colorado.
Pastelok is referring to the phenomenon known to locals as the monsoon, which brings more humid air up from Mexico, and produces thunderstorm activity.
“It is possible a non-monsoon feature with a more liberal amount of showers and thunderstorms may swing from Texas to New Mexico next week, but only the southern part of Colorado would be grazed,” Pastelok said.
Otherwise, the region will have to wait until the high pressure area breaks down or shifts position and shorter days with lower sun intensity assist with matters.
While temperatures will occasionally throttle back in coming weeks, the overall massive heat pump will remain in place over Colorado through the middle of summer.
Even in areas that manage to get a couple of rainfalls of 0.10 of an inch from one of the spotty thunderstorms the next week or so, long sun-filled days and evaporation rates of 0.25 to 0.50 of an inch per day will rapidly trump rainfall.
Nebraska National Guard crewmembers dump water from a Bambi bucket onto flames of the High Park fire, in Larimer County, Colo., on June 18, 2012. The National Guard/Flickr
The Daily Sentinel
An overflow crowd of at least 200 De Beque residents heard Thursday night they may be evacuated over the coming days to either Parachute or Palisade, all dependent on the mood of a growing wind-whipped wildfire which closed a smoky Interstate 70.
“I’ve never seen fire do some of things that we’ve seen this year,” Mesa County Sheriff Stan Hilkey told the crowd. “It’s scary here.”
Growing more than tenfold from Wednesday, the 10,000-acre Pine Ridge Fire southwest of De Beque blew up Thursday as winds kicked up over the afternoon, spreading in all directions and coming within a stone’s throw of the westbound traffic lanes of I-70.
A 13-mile stretch of the highway from the Powderhorn exit to the De Beque exit was closed.
The Bureau of Land Management said it planned to map the blaze from the air overnight to get an accurate estimate of acreage burned.
While roughly 50 residents southeast of De Beque were evacuated Thursday afternoon and offered shelter at Palisade High School, Hilkey laid out an uncertain scenario for a possible mandatory evacuation of the entire town De Beque over the coming days. The sheriff said authorities were concerned today’s projected weather may push flames toward De Beque.
“If Interstate 70 is still closed, we’ll go down 45 1/2 Road to the De Beque Cutoff, to Highway 65 and to Grand Junction,” Hilkey said, adding evacuees would be directed to Palisade High School.
“If the fire jumps I-70 and reaches 45 1/2 Road, both of which would be closed, we’ll send people to Parachute,” Hilkey added, saying they’ve receive a commitment from Grand Valley High School to assist.
Hilkey said any evacuation notice will include phone calls from 911 dispatchers in Grand Junction, while some 206 such calls went out late Thursday afternoon to residences and business on the south side of De Beque, closer to I-70.
DeBeque, which registered a population of 504 in the 2010 census, also has other means of notifying residents.
“We have a siren and everyone in town can hear it clearly,” a woman yelled at Hilkey from the back of the De Beque Community Center Thursday night.
“We’ll build that into our contingency plan,” the sheriff replied.
Russell Long, division chief with the Upper Colorado River Interagency Fire Management team, said a staff of 100 firefighters and support staff were on the ground, and the number of resources was growing.
With the acceleration of the fire Thursday afternoon, the BLM formally issued a request for a Type 1 overhead management team, Catherine Robertson, Grand Junction BLM Field Office Director, told the crowd Thursday night. Type 1 teams consist of the most skilled federal firefighters.
“This is the same type of team they have on the Front Range right now,” Robertson said. “We’re trying to give you the best resources to work this fire, but we have to be patient.”
Long acknowledged the Pine Ridge blaze was in something of a “competition” for resources with the wildfires charring the Front Range.
Tanker planes were seen throughout Thursday making several passes around the blaze, while officials held out hope that a heavy-duty helicopter capable of dropping 1,500-gallon water bombs on the blaze might be available by Friday.
“We can do bucket drops in the (Colorado) river,” Robertson said. “Part of the reason we have to shut down I-70 is safety.”
Grand Valley Power officials announced late Thursday evening that they may de-energize power lines in the De Beque area should the fire advance toward those lines in order to keep firefighters safe, a move that would leave customers in the area without power for an extended period of time.
The power company said it is working with the incident commander on the fire to monitor it and has dispatched linemen to locations ahead of the fire so that they’re in position to de-energize the lines if it becomes necessary to do so.
In the event lines are de-energized, Grand Valley Power encourages customers to keep refrigerators and freezers closed to minimize the impacts an extended outage could have on food storage. Officials said they will keep customers informed about any action taken with the power lines.
City Editor Mike Wiggins contributed to this report.
Today’s all-time record highs (that I could find, anyway):
Columbia, SC: 109 (nyah-nyah, Augusta … Columbia’s hottest ever is now one hotter than yours)
Nashville, TN: 109
Athens, GA: 109
Paducah, KY: 108 (tie)
Huntsville, AL: 106
Chattanooga, TN: 106 (tie)
Columbus, GA: 105
Greer, SC: 105 (tie)
Raleigh, NC: 105 (tie)
Charlotte, NC: 104 (tie)
Tri-Cities, TN: 102 (tie)
Crossville, TN: 102
Honorable mentions:
Smyrna, TN: 113 (I’ve always thought this thermometer runs a bit hot, but if it is accurate, it ties the Tennessee all-time state record high from Perryville on August 9, 1930)
Columbia, SC (Owens Field): 110 (short period of record, 1 short of the South Carolina state record high)
Bowling Green, KY: 110 (June record high)
Rumor has it that Mount Leconte, TN got to 81 today, the first time they have ever been in the 80s. It will be interesting to see how warm Grandfather Mountain and Mount Mitchell were today. Grandfather Mountain’s warmest is 83 and I believe Mount Mitchell’s is 82.
Today certainly rivals what I used to consider the hottest day ever in the Southeast, August 21, 1983.
I’m looking forward to pouring over the local cooperative reports to see if any state record highs were tied or broken. I think there’s a chance in South Carolina and Tennessee. Someone in Georgia might have gotten close.
Most places in the Southeast will be within a degree or two of what we saw yesterday, some places hotter, others not as hot. So, we’ll take a run at some of these figures again Saturday.
“So this is going on outside my window #chicago #storm,” tweeted user @twobitme this morning.
People dealing with scorching temperatures stretched across the Midwest may get a break from the heat wave, but only at the expense of severe thunderstorms.
The storms slammed Illinois with 60-mph winds and heavy rain during the midday Friday and were racing along at nearly 80 mph across Indiana and Ohio, aiming toward West Virginia and western Pennsylvania Friday evening.
High winds from the storms have had a history of numerous power outages, downed trees and property damage.
The heat combining with the severe weather in the atmosphere could also create large hailstones the size of golf balls and frequent lightning strikes.
The storms will approach quickly. Be sure to seek shelter as soon as you hear thunder.
Gauhati Raging floodwaters fed by monsoon rains have inundated more than 2,000 villages in northeast India, killing at least 27 people and leaving hundreds of thousands more marooned Friday. The Indian air force was delivering food packages to people huddled on patches of dry land along with cattle and wild elephants. Rescuers were being dropped by helicopter into affected areas to help the stranded. About one million people have been forced to evacuate as the floods from the swollen Brahmaputra River – one of Asia’s largest – swamped 2,084 villages across most of Assam state, officials said. Officials have counted 27 people dead so far, but the toll is expected to be much higher as unconfirmed casualty reports mount. Telephone lines were knocked out and some train services were cancelled after their tracks were swamped by mud. As the floods soaked the Kaziranga game reserve east of Assam’s capital of Gauhati, motorists reported seeing a one-horned rhino fleeing along a busy highway. “We never thought the situation would turn this grim when the monsoon-fed rivers swelled a week ago,” said Nilomoni Sen Deka, an Assam government minister. Residents of Majuli – an 800-square-kilometre island in the middle of the Brahmaputra River – watched helplessly as the swirling, grey waters swallowed 50 villages and swept away their homes. “We are left with only the clothes we are wearing,” said 60-year-old Puniram Hazarika, one of about 75,000 island residents now camping in makeshift shelters of bamboo sticks and plastic tarps on top of a mud embankment. A herd of 70 endangered Asiatic elephants, which usually avoid humans, were grouped together nearby, Majuli island wildlife official Atul Das said. “The jumbos have not caused any harm, but we are keeping a close watch,” he said.
TOKYO (Reuters) – Two prominent seismologists said on Tuesday that Japan is ignoring the safety lessons of last year’s Fukushima crisis and warned against restarting two reactors next month.
Japan has approved the restart of the two reactors at the Kansai Electric Power Ohi nuclear plant, northwest of Tokyo, despite mass public opposition.
They will be the first to come back on line after all reactors were shut following a massive earthquake and tsunami last March that caused the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl at Tokyo Electric Power’s Daiichi Fukushima plant.
Seismic modeling by Japan’s nuclear regulator did not properly take into account active fault lines near the Ohi plant, Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a seismologist at Kobe University, told reporters.
“The stress tests and new safety guidelines for restarting nuclear power plants both allow for accidents at plants to occur,” Ishibashi told reporters. “Instead of making standards more strict, they both represent a severe setback in safety standards.”
Experts advising Japan’s nuclear industry had underestimated the seismic threat, Mitsuhisa Watanabe, a tectonic geomorphology professor at Toyo University, said at the same news conference.
“The expertise and neutrality of experts advising Japan’s Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency are highly questionable,” Watanabe said.
After an earthquake in 2007 caused radiation leaks at reactors north of Tokyo, Ishibashi said Japan was at risk of a nuclear disaster following a large earthquake, a warning that proved prescient after Fukushima.
While it is impossible to predict when earthquakes will happen, Ishibashi said on Tuesday the magnitude 9 quake last year made it more likely “devastating” earthquakes would follow.
ScienceDaily (June 28, 2012) — A new study published today in Nature by authors from the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre and the Goethe University Frankfurt suggests that large parts of Africa’s savannas may well be forests by 2100. The study suggests that fertilization by atmospheric carbon dioxide is forcing increases in tree cover throughout Africa. A switch from savanna to forest occurs once a critical threshold of CO2 concentration is exceeded, yet each site has its own critical threshold. The implication is that each savanna will switch at different points in time, thereby reducing the risk that a synchronous shock to the earth system will emanate from savannas.
Tropical grasslands, savannas and forests, areas the authors call the savanna complex, are expected to respond sensitively to climate and atmospheric changes. This is because the main players, grasses and trees, differ fundamentally in their response to temperature, carbon dioxide supply and fire and are in an unrelenting struggle for the dominance of the savanna complex. The outcome of this struggle determines whether vast portions of the globe’s tropical and sub-tropical regions are covered with grasslands, savannas or forests. In the past such shifts in dominance have played out in slow motion, but the current wave of atmospheric changes has accelerated the potential rate of change.
Experimental studies have generally shown that plants do not show a large response to CO2 fertilization. “However, most of these studies were conducted in northern ecosystems or on commercially important species” explains Steven Higgins, lead author of the study from the Biodiodversity and Climate Reseach Centre and Goethe-University. “In fact, only one experimental study has investigated how savanna plants will respond to changing CO2 concentrations and this study showed that savanna trees were essentially CO2 starved under pre-industrial CO2 concentrations, and that their growth really starts taking off at the CO2 concentrations we are currently experiencing.“
The vegetation shifts that the Higgins and Scheiter study projects are an example of what some theorists call catastrophic regime shifts. Such catastrophic regime shifts can be triggered by small changes in the factors that regulate the system. These small changes set up a cascade of events that reinforce each other causing the system to change more and more rapidly. The study demonstrated that the savanna complex showed symptoms of catastrophic regime shifts. “The potential for regime shifts in a vegetation formation that covers such vast areas is what is making earth system scientists turn their attention to savannas” comments Higgins.
Knowing when such regime shifts will occur is critical for anticipating change. This study discovered that locations where the temperature rise associated with climate change occurs rapidly, for example in the center of southern Africa, are projected to switch later to forest as the high rate of temperature increase allows the savanna grasses to remain competitive for longer in the face of rising atmospheric CO2 concentration. This means that even though a single location may experience its catastrophic regime shift, the vegetation change when averaged over a region will be smoother. Such gradual transitions in regional vegetation patterns will reduce the potential for shocks to the earth system. “While this may seem reassuring, we have to bear in mind that these changes are still rapid when viewed on geological time scales”, says Higgins.
The practical implications of the study are far reaching. For example, the study identified a belt that spans northern central Africa where fire suppression would encourage savannas to transition to forests. “So if you wanted to sequester carbon as part of a carbon mitigation action, this is where you should do it” explained Higgins “with the caveat that where this will work is shifting as atmospheric conditions change.” A worrying implication is that the grasslands and open savannas of Africa, areas with unique floras and faunas, are set to be replaced by closed savannas or forests. Hence it appears that atmospheric change represents a major threat to systems that are already threatened by over-grazing, plantation forestry and crop production.
Newly numbered Active Region 11513 unleashed an Impulsive M2.4 Solar Flare yesterday, this blast was followed up with several halo coronal mass ejection’s (CME’s) all of which are not earth directed. Solar activity is now picking up with impulsive C-Class flares while the Xray background increases strongly as this new active region shows sign of growth and magnetic complexity.
Saturn’s hazy Titan is now on the short list of moons that likely harbor a subsurface ocean of water, based on new findings from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.
Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter
As Titan travels around Saturn during its 16-day elliptical orbits, it gets rhythmically squeezed by the gravitational pull of the giant planet — an effect known as tidal flexing (see video below.) If the moon were mostly composed of rock, the flexing would be in the neighborhood of around 3 feet (1 meter.) But based on measurements taken by the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, Titan exhibits much more intense flexing — ten times more, in fact, as much as 30 feet (10 meters) — indicating that it’s not entirely solid at all.
Instead, Cassini scientists estimate that there’s a moon-wide ocean of liquid water beneath the frozen crust of Titan, possibly sandwiched between layers of ice or rock.
“Short of being able to drill on Titan’s surface, the gravity measurements provide the best data we have of Titan’s internal structure.”
– Sami Asmar, Cassini team member at JPL
“Cassini’s detection of large tides on Titan leads to the almost inescapable conclusion that there is a hidden ocean at depth,” said Luciano Iess, the paper’s lead author and a Cassini team member at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. “The search for water is an important goal in solar system exploration, and now we’ve spotted another place where it is abundant.”
Although liquid water is a necessity for the development of life, the presence of it alone does not guarantee that alien organisms are swimming around in a Titanic underground ocean. It’s thought that water must be in contact with rock in order to create the necessary building blocks of life, and as yet it’s not known what situations may exist around Titan’s inner sea. But the presence of such an ocean — possibly containing trace amounts of ammonia – would help explain how methane gets replenished into the moon’s thick atmosphere.
“The presence of a liquid water layer in Titan is important because we want to understand how methane is stored in Titan’s interior and how it may outgas to the surface,” said Jonathan Lunine, a Cassini team member at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. “This is important because everything that is unique about Titan derives from the presence of abundant methane, yet the methane in the atmosphere is unstable and will be destroyed on geologically short timescales.”
disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only
China says it will invest $81 million to build a national network to monitor movement in the Earth’s crust and for other Earth sciences in the next four years.
The program will use more than 3,000 technicians to build a three-dimensional and dynamic “geodetic” network with high precision, the country’s National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation announced Tuesday.
The national geodetic network aims to build 360 Global Positioning System reference stations and a satellite-geodesy control network consisting of 4,500 control points, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
The network will ensure people can get timely geodetic information for any point in the country’s land area, surveying administration Deputy Directory Li Weisen said.
China lags behind developed countries in terms of surveying and mapping technologies.
While the United States’ “geoid” determination network can reach an accuracy of 1 inch, China can only determine geoid at an accuracy of 1 foot in its eastern part and 2 feet in its western region, Xinhua said.
NBC 7 San Diego’s Dagmar Midcap was in Del Mar at the time and described it as a “Sonic ‘rumble’” She tweeted, “according to my contacts at USGS, not seismic but rather sonic.”
Two months ago, when San Diegans heard a similar sound, there was evidence of chaff on weather radar. Chaff is a material sometimes emitted during military exercises.
On Friday, however, Tina Stall with the National Weather Service said there was no visible chaff in the area at the time the noise was reported.
The mysterious sound had both residents and experts scratching their heads. Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientist Kristoffer Walker said he felt it too, and looked into microphones recorded from MCAS Miramar.
Evidence from his research revealed an answer.
“There was indeed an atmospheric tremor, or ‘skyquake,’” Walker said. “The likely cause of these ‘skyquakes’ is routine military activity very far off the coast of San Diego (at least 50 miles away) in zones that are designated military training zones.”
Typically, we don’t hear these “skyquakes.” But when the wind reaches speeds of over 100 miles per hour, the sound can reach parts of San Diego, Walker said.
A spokesperson from Camp Pendleton said Marines are not training with anything unusual. They often train with various military equipment and will be training with tanks both Saturday and Sunday.
On Friday evening, the U.S. Naval Air Forces official Facebook page posted the following message regarding the mysterious boom heard around San Diego:
“San Diego, it looks like the boom that was heard and felt today was likely due to some aircraft associated with the USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) family day cruise. As part of a flight demonstration two F/A-18 aircraft went supersonic about 35 miles off the coast. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. — LT Aaron Kakiel, media officer.”
So, according to the Navy, it appears Friday’s San Diego boom mystery has finally been solved.
AN OUTBREAK of American Foulbrood, a disease affecting colonies of honeybees, has been found in an apiary in Inverness-shire.
The disease was confirmed following laboratory diagnosis by Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture. Other outbreaks of AFB have previously been reported – and dealt with – in this area over the last three years.
The movement of bees and related equipment into or out of the affected apiary is prohibited. As there is no permitted treatment for the disease in the UK, the infected hive will be destroyed. There are no risks to public health from AFB and no implications for the quality and safety of honey.
Bee farmers and beekeepers are being urged to be vigilant for signs of the disease, to maintain good husbandry practices and to notify any suspicion of disease to BeesMailbox@scotland.gsi.gov.uk. In order to assist Scottish Government Bee Inspectors to control this and other diseases, beekeepers are urged to register on BeeBase, the national bee database.
Today
Biological Hazard
USA
State of California, Los Angeles [Huntington Park]
Three people have been sent to the hospital for bee stings after a swarm invaded a park in Huntington Park Friday. According to Sheriff’s officials, there were about 75 people at Miles Park when the bees descended around 3 p.m. Witnesses say the bees started flying out of the trees and attacking people. Three people were hospitalized with about 50 to 75 stings each. They are expected to survive. The park has been closed as bee experts and Sheriff’s officials are on scene to diffuse the swarm.
Biohazard name:
Bees attack
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
Today
HAZMAT
Canada
Province of Manitoba, St. Vital [Victor Mager School]
Twenty children and five adults were taken to hospital Friday afternoon after a chemical was released in a school’s ventilation system in St. Vital. Emergency officials were called to Victor Mager School just before noon. Some of the victims who suffered from the fumes remain in hospital and are being assessed for respiratory damage. Hospital officials said they believe some people may suffer from inhalation of an air conditioning coolant. Hassa Anbabar, who was admitted to the hospital, said she realized something was wrong when she smelled something different in the air “It was a little scary seeing all the people freaked,” said Anbabar. “But it was okay once we knew everyone was going to be okay.” The entire school was cleared, and about 20 students between the ages of 10 and 12 were taken to the hospital in a medical bus along with handful of staff members. Robyn McLeod, who’s daughter was one of the children hospitalized said she was “freaking out” and almost crying. McLeod’s daughter said the smell gave her a stomach ache. After the evacuation, everyone else in the school waited at a nearby high school. School officials are investigating what happened, they said they suspect the problem started on the roof. “It was probably an air conditioning unit on the school where a fuse burned out and caused an electrical short in the unit, and some smoke entered the building,” said Terry Borys, superintendent of Louis Riel School Division. Officials are concerned students and staff may have some respiratory damage, but at this point it does not appear that anyone was seriously injured. A number of those taken to hospital have been sent home, others will have to stay overnight for observation.
Mysterious bubbles are rising up out of an Assumption Parish bayou. Officials are trying to figure what’s causing them.
Take a ride down Bayou Corne, and there are bubbles of all sizes along the waterway.
“We have reported on May 30th a pipeline leak, which started us coming out and investigating a bubbling in Bayou Corne,” said Assumption Parish Homeland Security Director John Boudreaux.
Since then though, pipeline officials have not ruled that out just yet, but said it’s unlikely. So now, investigators are going through the process of elimination.
By coincidence, since the bubbling began, many in Assumption Parish are worried
“Our houses shifting and cracks in our sheet rock and our foundation,” said Jason Hugh.
“My home moved, and my home shook. My home moved, and I’m on cement,” said Debra Charlet.
Officials don’t know yet whether the two are related. Boudreaux has taken samples of the bubbles and sent them off for testing. Those samples are expected back in the next couple of weeks.
Officials are monitoring the bubbles twice a day. As for now, no evacuations have been issued and the waterways remain open.
Bubbling has been noticed in the water in the Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou areas. Parish officials have determined that this bubbling is caused by a release of natural gas and not “swamp gas”.
The origin of the gas is presently unknown. Potential causes could perhaps be a pipeline leak or a potential leak from an adjacent storage cavern. Presently, it has not been established that this gas is a residual gas leak from the Gulf South incident of 2003-2004.
Government officials including the LA Department of Natural Resources, LA State Police, LA Department of Environmental Quality, Assumption Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, and the Assumption Parish Sheriff’s Office are continuously working with local industry to determine the origin of the leak. The immediate task at hand is to isolate the problem so that repair and mitigation can commence to resolve the problem.
Daily readings are being taken and recorded from all known bubbling locations for ignition risk. At present time, no readings have suggested any ignition risk; therefore, all waterways remain open to boat traffic. If readings change, waterways may be closed for a period of time.
If anyone has information on bubbling locations or about a potential origin of the gas, please contact the Assumption Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness at (985) 369-7386.
In the sandy desert grasslands of Namibia in southern Africa, mysterious bare spots known as “fairy circles” will form and then disappear years later for no reason anyone can determine. A new look at these strange patterns doesn’t solve the wistful mystery but at least reveals that the largest of the circles can linger for a lifetime.
Small fairy circles stick around an average of 24 years, while larger ones can exist as long as 75 years, according to research detailed today (June 27) in the journal PLoS ONE. Still, the study sheds little light on why the circles form, persist and then vanish into the landscape after decades.
“The why question is very difficult,” said study researcher Walter Tschinkel, a biologist at Florida State University. “There are a number of hypotheses on the table, and the evidence for none of them is convincing.” [See Photos of Fairy Circles]
Circles of life (and death)
Tschinkel grew interested in fairy circles during a 2005 safari to NamibRand Nature Reserve in southwest Namibia, in the Namib Desert. It was his first experience with the round clearings, tens of thousands of which expose the red sandy soil in the area. A short time after the circles form, a tall ring of grass grows around the border, highlighting the bare area.
Few researchers have studied fairy circles, in part because of their remoteness, 111 miles (180 km) from the nearest village. It’s an arid landscape where springbok, ostriches, leopards and other large animals roam, Tschinkel told LIveScience.
At first glance, Tschinkel assumed the circles marked underground nests of harvester termites. But digs have shown no evidence of termite nests under fairy circles. Other explanations, such as differences in soil nutrients or the death of seedlings by toxic vapors from the ground, have likewise failed to hold up to study.
In fact, little was known even about the life cycle of the circles, Tschinkel said. With the help of the nature reserve’s staff, satellite images and aerial photos, he set out to change that. By comparing satellite images from 2004 and 2008, he found that circles are quite stable, popping up at nearly their full size, or growing quickly to full size once they get started. The smallest are about 6.5 feet (2 meters) in diameter, while the largest can be almost 40 feet (12 m) across. Winds scour the bare areas of soil, turning them into slight depressions. Eventually plants move back in, recolonizing the circles and leaving only slightly indented “ghost circles” behind.
Assuming that the overall number of fairy circles on the landscape is fairly steady, Tschinkel used the satellite photos to look at how quickly the circles go from birth to maturity to revegetation. That yielded rough estimates of the circles’ life spans. Most probably exist for 30 to 60 years, Tschinkel said.
Persisting mystery
Tschinkel was able to bolster these estimates thanks to a fundraising effort by the Namib Rand Nature Reserve, which sells sponsorships to fairy circles. The sponsored circles are marked with a ceramic plate, and their GPS coordinates are recorded. Over the 10 years of the sponsorship program, staff members have checked on the status of the sold circles. Their data yielded similar age ranges for fairy circles as the satellite images did, Tschinkel found.
He also determined that the circles form only on sandy soil with minimal stoniness, and that they don’t form on shifting dunes or alluvial fans, where sands are deposited by water.
Some of Tschinkel’s experiments are still ongoing, but so far, they’ve generated no leads on the circles’ origins. Tschinkel suspects the circles are the product of some form of natural self-organization by plants.
“There are some mathematical models that are based on the idea that plants can withdraw resources toward themselves, which has a positive feedback on plant growth where they’re located, but it has a negative effect on plants at a greater distance,” he said.
Computer models based on this math can generate landscapes that look a bit like the fairy circle fields of Namibia, he said. But even if that hypothesis is on the right track, it doesn’t explain how the plants are creating this pattern, not when hoarding soil nutrients and some other possible factors have already been ruled out.
With few people studying the circles – and no funding for chasing down the mysteries of the landscape of southern Africa – Tschinkel said the fairy circles will likely remain an enigma.
“I’m not too worried that this mystery is going to be solved anytime soon,” he said. And the persistence of the mystery makes it ever more intriguing.
“That’s science, isn’t it?” Tschinkel said. “If you knew the answer ahead of time, it wouldn’t be much fun.”
Around 80,000 customers of Indiana Michigan Power either suffered power outages or remained without electricity, hours after a powerful storm rolled through the Fort Wayne area. According to a news release from I&M, those without power might have to do without for an extended period, as well, with the release stating: “Due to the large area affected by the storm and the severity of damage, those affected by the storm should prepare for the possibility of a prolonged restoration process.” A severe thunderstorm watch continues through 7 p.m. for Allen, Huntington, Whitley, Noble, Wells and Adams counties. I&M would work to assess the damage before sending crews to fix power lines, I&M community relations director Sarah Bodner said, adding that many people should expect to be without power for at least a day. “People should prepare for a prolonged outage,” she said. “Power’s not coming back on tonight.” As vendors were setting up Friday afternoon for the weekly Historic Main Street Farmers Market, their eyes were on the furiously darkening sky. “That’s it,” said one woman setting up as she immediately started to pull down her tent.
Within moments, Main Street was covered in darkness as dirt flew in every direction and trees snapped. A black power line hung over West Main Street just east of the Carole Lombard Bridge. Fort Wayne Police officers were reporting down trees on streets including Clinton Street and Scott Road south of Illinois Road. Carroll east of Johnson and Carroll north of Johnson was also blocked by a down tree. Downtown, people scrambled indoors to get away from flying dust and debris, and powerful gusts tore large plates of sheet metal from the side of the Anthony Wayne Building, which is under renovation. “The wind was pretty much ripping and roaring through downtown,” said Michael Barranda, a lawyer who works in the 1st Source Banking Center at 200 E. Main St. “I looked out my blinds and saw pieces of sheet metal flying off the Anthony Wayne Building two at a time,” he said. “There were a bunch of us huddled together in the office hoping nobody got hurt.” Witnesses said the high winds tore down at least one billboard on Illinois Road and felled countless trees, blocking streets in many Fort Wayne neighborhoods. Traffic was at a near-standstill on Hillegas Road and Spy Run Avenue shortly after the storm ripped through town, other witnesses reported on Twitter.
Two left-hand lanes of Spy Run near Tennessee Avenue were blocked by downed trees earlier this afternoon. Every traffic signal on Hillegas from West Coliseum Boulevard south to West State Boulevard was knocked offline. Interstate 69 was closed at the 99 mile marker just north of the General Motors Fort Wayne Assembly plant on the city’s southwest end but had reopened by about 4:30 p.m. The National Weather Service reported wind speeds of 63 mph with gusts up to 91 mph at 3:05 p.m. The weather-radio transmitter at Fort Wayne International Airport was knocked off the air at about the same time the storm came through. According to weather service precipitation maps, between a third of an inch and half an inch of rain fell during the brief but powerful storm. Temperature dropped from 91 degrees at 2 p.m. to 68 degrees at 4 p.m., according to the weather service. Wind was so powerful that some people said their cars were almost uncontrollable in the wind. In restaurants and stores around the city, people huddled indoors as the storm rolled through. Many of Fort Wayne’s radio stations were knocked off the air by the storm.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
Dangerous? Josh Welch, a seven-year-old boy from Maryland, was suspended from school for two days for shaping a pastry into what his teacher thought looked like a gun
Threat: The school sent home a letter with every student informing parents that: ‘A student used food to make an inappropriate gesture
Travis Long / The News & Observer via AP
MessageToEagle.com – Astronomers report a baffling discovery never seen before: An extraordinary amount of dust around a nearby star has mysteriously disappeared.
MessageToEagle.com – On this newly discovered unique, ancient map. the New World is mentioned for the first time under the name “America.
The surprise find in the stacks at Munich University Library: The segmented world map made by Martin Waldseemüller (ca. 1507). (Credit: Source: Munich University Library)
MessageToEagle.com – Thousands of huge ancient structures made of stone are clearly visible from the air.
Arabian Peninsula: The dark lines are the remains of stone walls barely visible on the ground.
In the Harrat Khaybar region of Saudi Arabia, however, “kites” take on entirely different shapes-most notably the “square pocket” and “barbed arrow”-and the low walls of many of them show ruler-straight lines, raising new questions for archeologists.Some of these low walls of stone-many long known to archeologists inside Saudi Arabia-are newly visible from any computer in the world. The high-resolution image swaths reveal stunningly well-preserved evidence of widespread human activity in the distant past.
In the Al-Hayit region, keyhole and pendant shapes vary in size from a few meters to dozens of meters, and they are often found arranged along “avenues” that are invisible to builders of modern highways.
Who created these structures and for what purpose?
In the 1920′s when British Royal Air Force pilots flew over the northern Harrat Harrah, they were struck by the numbers and variety of archeological remains visible in that rugged, thinly populated landscape.In Jordan, there are similar structures visible for the air. The Bedouin say the structures and walls are “the works of the Old Men”.
Giant stone structures form wheel shapes with spokes often radiating inside. Here a cluster of wheels in the Azraq Oasis. CREDIT: David D. Boyer APAAME_20080925_DDB-0237 
A close-up of one of the mysterious circles. Credit: David D. Boyer APAAME_20080925_DDB-0257 
This drawing reveal the various shapes these structures can take. Credit: Stafford Smith The stone circles’ age is unknown. They are at least 2,000 years old, but could have been built up to 9,000 years ago.
From Reddit, 
Power lines are down across the Midwest and mid-Atlantic after winds sped up to 90 mph during Friday night’s storm. (Photo courtesy of Twitter user @Smoflake88)
Visualisation of a close-up region in our advanced 3D numerical simulations of a magnetic tornado in the solar atmosphere. The spiral lines represent the velocity field in the tornado vortex. The images contain the observed swirl signature (top, bluish) and the Sun’s surface (bottom, reddish). Image released June 27, 2012. CREDIT: Wedemeyer-Bohm et al./Image produced with VAPOR
Schematic view of the atmospheric layers of the Sun, the extent of simulated magnetic tornado, and the resulting net energy transport. Image released June 27, 2012. CREDIT: Wedemeyer-B�hm/Parts of the image produced with VAPOR
The Waldo Canyon fire destroyed a neighborhood in Colorado Springs, Co. Photo via 
Nebraska National Guard crewmembers dump water from a Bambi bucket onto flames of the High Park fire, in Larimer County, Colo., on June 18, 2012.
“So this is going on outside my window #chicago #storm,” tweeted user @twobitme this morning.
