By Michael Isikoff, National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News
U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez this month wrote a $58,500 check to a company owned by a South Florida eye doctor and political fundraiser to reimburse him for two personal flights to the Dominican Republic that the New Jersey Democrat did not report on his Senate financial disclosure form, his office confirmed to NBC News Wednesday night.
The disclosure came as law enforcement sources confirmed that FBI agents searched the West Palm Beach, Florida, offices of the doctor, Salomon Melgen, Tuesday night as part of an investigation that includes agents from the Department of Health and Human Services.
Melgen is a major Democratic political donor and fundraiser who together with family has contributed more than $200,000 to Democratic candidates, including $33,000 to Menendez.
Menendez’s office confirmed that the senator — who this week became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – wrote the check to Melgen from his personal account after aides reviewed his flight schedule in response to a complaint that a New Jersey Republican official filed with the Senate Ethics Committee last November. The complaint alleged that Menendez violated Senate Ethics rules by “repeatedly flying on a free jet to the Dominican Republic and other locations” and that the jet was provided by Melgen.
Dozens of pigs have died in the last few days in 2 populations farms in this province, of a strange disease, that has led to concern among the people who raise pigs. Ruddy Medina who made the complaint said that the farmers of La Hoya and Habanero reported the situation and were requesting the intervention of Ministry of Agriculture authorities. He said that in his opinion, the disease responsible for these deaths is a type of KC2, which is determined as a consequence of the animals having seizures. He said that a farmer from the La Hoya community had 9 pigs, of which overnight 5 deaths occurred and one had [tembladera] of KC2. Medina said that 3 days later, of the 3 remaining pigs, 2 died and the 3rd had to be sold by the pound in a business he had. “The authorities have to take action on the situation, because one can’t leave these poor rural folks to suffer these extreme losses of all they have to survive,” he pointed out. He said that the KC2 disease affected the porcine population of the Dominican Republic during the years 1979 and 1980, when thousands of pigs died in the whole country, which led to an alarm among the population of the country. “One person alone had 9 pigs die, another had 3 die, another 2 and another 4, and another 3 died, in the communities of La Hoya and Habanero in the province of Barahona,” he highlighted.
Biohazard name:
Undiagnosed disease, porcine
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 cholera hit the Espaillat Province in northern Dominican Republic on Sunday, with 35 cases confirmed among more than 100 people treated in public and private hospitals. Health Minister Freddy Lugo ordered in Santiago de los Caballeros to reinforce services, said the affected area’s director, Dr. Domingo Perez. Official reports say the worst situation are registered in Las Amapolas, La Bandada, Guauci Abajo, Paso de Moca, La Ermita, Cuero Duro and other communities at San Victor municipal district and Moca municipality. On Saturday, 32 people were in critical condition in Toribio Besconse hospital, its director Pedro Arroyo said. From the first case detected in November 2010, which came from the border with Haiti through last August, cholera has affected 26,253 people with 408 deaths.
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.
People who had been evacuated from a hospital wait in a rescue center in Mormanno, southern Italy, after an earthquake early on Friday.
By NBC News staff and wire reports
ROME — A hospital was evacuated after a magnitude-5 earthquake struck southern Italy early on Friday, authorities said.
The quake hit at 1:05 a.m. local time (7:05 p.m. ET Thursday) about 3.9 miles underground, north of Cosenza in the Pollino mountains area on the border of the southern regions of Calabria and Basilicata, according to data from the Italian Geophysics Institute (INGV).
At least 14 other tremors followed the initial earthquake, according to INGV’s website.
Italian media reported that an elderly man who lived near the tremor’s epicenter had died of a heart attack.
An Italian police official told Reuters a hospital in the small town of Mormanno had been evacuated as a precautionary measure because some cracks were found in its structure.
No injuries were reported, the official said.
Italian news agencies reported scenes of panic in the hospital and said many inhabitants of Mormanno and surrounding towns had come out in the streets.
Police and firefighters were surveying the area for further damage, officials said.
NBC News’ Claudio Lavanga and Reuters contributed to this report.
ROME – A magnitude 5 earthquake struck north of Cosenza in southern Italy early on Friday, and police said a hospital had been evacuated after cracks were found in its structure, but there were no reports of injuries.
The quake hit at 1:05 a.m. (2305 GMT on Thursday) about 6.3 km (3.9 miles) underground, north of Cosenza in the Pollino mountains area on the border of the southern regions of Calabria and Basilicata, according to data from the Italian Geophysics Institute (INGV). It said on its website that at least 14 other tremors followed the initial earthquake.
An Italian police official told Reuters a hospital in the small town of Mormanno had been evacuated as a precautionary measure because some cracks were found in its structure.
The 84-year-old victim suffered heart failure when the quake struck the province of Cosenza early on Friday and was dead before emergency services could reach him.
No injuries have been reported but several buildings have been damaged. A local hospital was also evacuated and schools closed as a precautionary measure.
According to the US Geological Survey, the quake, with a 5.3 magnitude at a depth of 3.8km, had its epicentre 6km southeast of Mormanno town in the Calabria region.
“Some plaster fell, a crack appeared in the stairway. We came down in a panic to the streets using our mobile phones for light,” Mormanno bed-and-breakfast owner Giuseppina Capalbi told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
Many homes in the town centre suffered damage and police said it would take some hours to evaluate the scale of the problem, as local officials decided to close schools.
“There was a lot of panic, but happily there are no injured,” Mormanno mayor Guglielmo Armentano told Ansa.
“In our historic centre, there are some damaged buildings. As a precaution we have evacuated the hospital.”
More than 2200 tremors had struck the same region along the Pollino massif in recent years, but all but a handful were of a magnitude under 3.
Italy frequently falls victim to earthquakes. Among the most devastating was the 6.3-magnitude quake in the central city of L’Aquila that in 2009 killed 309 people and left tens of thousands homeless.
On Monday, six Italian seismologists and a government official were sentenced to six years in jail for multiple manslaughter for underestimating the risk of that earthquake, in a move viewed by some as a dangerous blow to
New Zealand scientists investigating an active undersea volcano that erupted three months ago have discovered significant changes to the seafloor.
Niwa research ship Tangaroa has mapped the Kermadec volcano that erupted 800km northeast of Tauranga on July 19, producing a pumice raft the size of Canterbury.
The eruption was strong enough to breach the ocean surface from a depth of 1100 metres. It was captured by a Nasa satellite, and a Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion patrol spotted the pumice on their way back home from Samoa.
Niwa’s volcanologist Dr Richard Wysoczanski, who is leading the 23-day expedition, said there had been volcanic activity every year for the past decade, but this was the largest by far.
“It is a substantial eruption. Had it occurred on land in New Zealand, it would have been a bit of a disaster.”
The volcanic caldera, which is like Lake Taupo, known to produce large and violent eruptions, spewed up to 10,000 more material than the Mt Tongariro eruption on August 6, he said.
It was mapped in 2002, showing a 1km-high undersea mountain with a 5km wide, 800-metre deep central crater.
This week, scientists found a new volcanic cone which has formed on the edge of the volcano, towering 240 metres above the crater rim.
They also found one side of the caldera wall is bulging in towards the volcano’s centre, indicating where an eruption may occur in the future or it may lead to an undersea avalanche.
Several cubic kilometres of new material has also been added to the volcano, with large volumes of freshly erupted pumice accumulating on the caldera floor, raising it by up to 10 metres.
“We couldn’t find any biology on the floor and the immediate vicinity has been completely wiped out,” Wysoczanski said.
Fresh volcanic rocks, up to beach ball size, will be brought back to Niwa for analysis.
Tangaroa embarked on the expedition to study the volcanic chain that stretches for 1000km north from Bay of Plenty. It is due back in Wellington on November 1.
LiveScience.com/Janet C. Harvey/Axel Schmitt – Projectile point made from Obsidian Butte obsidian, collected west of Palomar Mountain in northern San Diego County, and attributed to the Luiseño cultural te …more
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Enlarge GalleryIn this Dec. 27, 2010 photo, the barren earth and dead trees reveal the blight of …
Earthquake swarms and a region-wide rotten egg smell recently reminded Southern California residents they live next to an active volcano field, tiny though it may be.
At the time, scientists said the phenomena did not reflect changes in the magma chamber below the Salton Sea. But now, researchers may need to revise estimates of the potential hazard posed by the Salton Buttes — five volcanoes at the lake’s southern tip.
The buttes last erupted between 940 and 0 B.C., not 30,000 years ago, as previously thought, a new study detailed online Oct. 15 in the journal Geology reports. The new age — which makes these some of California’s youngest volcanoes — pushes the volcanic quintuplets into active status. The California Volcano Observatory, launched in February by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), already lists the area as a high threat for future blasts.
“The USGS is starting to monitor all potentially active volcanoes in California, which includes the Salton Buttes,” said study author Axel Schmitt, a geochronologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “With our results, I think this will further enhance the need to look into the system,” Schmitt told OurAmazingPlanet.
Schmitt and his colleagues dated zircon crystals in the hardened lava of the buttes with a relatively new technique, a “helium clock” that starts ticking once the minerals begin cooling at the surface.
Resolving the Obsidian Butte riddle
The revised age solves a long-standing archeological conundrum, said Steve Shackley, emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Artifacts created from one of the five buttes, Obsidian Butte, first appear in Native American villages around 510 B.C. to 640 B.C. The Kumeyaay people, whose territory ranged from the coast to the Coso Mountains, crafted projectiles from Obsidian Butte glass, he said. “The men produced some of the best in the world,” Shackley told OurAmazingPlanet.
However, for decades, researchers thought Obsidian Butte erupted thousands of years earlier. To explain why no one collected the valuable obsidian, archeologists hypothesized that Obsidian Butte was submerged under ancient Lake Cahuilla, the precursor to today’s Salton Sea. But geologists had long proved that Lake Cahuilla was ephemeral, flooding and emptying over and over again, so the explanation was always problematic.
“If this dating method is correct, then the Obsidian Butte material wasn’t even available, and that makes more sense archaeologically,” Shackley said.
Rifting brings rising magma
In fact, that Obsidian Butte rises above the Salton Sea is what first attracted Schmitt’s attention. A 30,000-year-old butte should have been buried by a combination of sediment and subsidence by now, he said. “It had to be very young,” Schmitt said.
The buttes exist because California is tearing apart, forming new oceanic crust as magma wells up from below. The sinking Salton Trough is the landward extension of the Gulf of California, and marks the boundary between the Pacific and North America tectonic plates.
The lava source for the volcanoes is a magma chamberbeneath the Salton Sea, which also heats water for a nearby geothermal plant. Decay of uranium isotopes in zircon crystals show magma built up underneath the volcanoes for thousands of years before the latest eruption, the study shows. [50 Amazing Volcano Facts]
If another eruption occurs at the Salton Buttes, it will likely mimic past breakouts, Schmitt said. The volcanoes are made of sticky, slow-moving rhyolite lava. At Obsidian Butte, the lava cooled so quickly it turned into glass. However, pumice and ash found nearby means past breakouts started with a bang.
Schmitt said he hopes to study the area in more detail to better understand the most recent eruption. “The amounts of magma involved are relatively small and the impacts of an explosive eruption, meaning an ash cloud, would most likely be very local,” he said. “We don’t know very well how far any ash would have been dispersed, and that’s something I would like to follow up on in the research.”
Researching future hazards
The National Science Foundation’s EarthScope project funds an extensive seismic imaging project in the Salton Sea that may soon reveal more information about what’s happening deep underground.
“We’ll be looking with great interest to see what we can tell from the Salton Seismic Imaging Project,” said Joann Stock, a Caltech professor and an expert on the region’s volcanic hazards who was not involved in the new study.
“I think [Schmitt's study] is a great contribution,” she said. “It’s an area where we should be concerned. We know that there’s a lot of hot stuff down there,” she told OurAmazingPlanet.
In August, an earthquake swarm shook the nearby town of Brawley. The USGS attributed the temblors to faults in the Brawley Seismic Zone. In September, a sulfurous stench emanated from the Salton Sea and wafted across the Inland Empire. The odor was tentatively linked to a fish die-off, but could also have been caused by volcanic gases, Stock said.
The Watchers watching the world evolve and transform
New Zealand scientists investigating an active Kermadec undersea volcano Havre discovered significant changes to the seafloor during last eruption on July 19, 2012. The eruption was captured by a Nasa satellite, and a Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion patrol spotted the huge pumice area on their way back home from Samoa (read our earlier report)
Scientists, aboard Niwa research ship – Tangaroa (deepwater research vessel), used multibeam sonar to map the seamount and found evidence of a new volcanic cone, 240 m tall and reaching withing 1,100 m below sea level, built on the side of the large submarine caldera of Havre. Aside from new volcanic cone they also found one side of the caldera wall is bulging in towards the volcano’s centre, indicating where an eruption may occur in the future or it may lead to an undersea avalanche.
Niwa’s volcanologist Dr Richard Wysoczanski, who is leading the 23-day expedition, said there had been volcanic activity every year for the past decade, but this was the largest by far.
“It is a substantial eruption. Had it occurred on land in New Zealand, it would have been a bit of a disaster.”
The volcanic caldera, which is like Lake Taupo, known to produce large and violent eruptions, spewed up to 10,000 more material than the Mt Tongariro eruption on August 6, he said.
A forest fire burned nearly 100 acres near the Sattler Branch community in Clay County. Fire fighters responded to the blaze late Thursday. By Friday afternoon, the flames were contained. Still, the fire gave folks who live nearby quite a scare. “It’s about that time of year you have to start worrying, leaves and everything is dry. There’s a lot of trees around here. It wasn’t as bad this year as it was last year; it was real close last year,” said resident Rebecca Combs. Back then, Combs says a forest fire came so close to her home that fire fighters had to hose it down to keep it from igniting. “All we could really see was the smoke this time. It was on the other side so it didn’t get really close, but it was close enough to make you nervous,” Combs said. Combs’ sister says their ailing father lives in the home. She says getting him out of the house in an emergency would be difficult. “He’s wheelchair bound so that wouldn’t have been something fun to try to do. It would’ve been a hassle. We try to think about going over fire evacuations any way, just in case because of him,” said sister Monica Baker. People we talked to in Clay County say the threat of fire is a constant concern this time of year. They say people need to be more careful.
WASHINGTON – The U.S. military will be moving ships from the Norfolk Naval Station region in Virginia out to sea to get out of the path of Hurricane Sandy.
The Navy says 24 of the larger ships in southeastern Virginia bases, including the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, are preparing to leave and will be moving out over the next day or so. The orders affect ships at Naval Station Norfolk and Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story in the Hamption Roads area.
Other ships will be secured at the base. Military installations along the Eastern Seaboard, including Andrews Air Force Base and Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and Naval Submarine Base New London in Connecticut were also prepared to move ships and aircraft if needed.
City would actually benefit from a direct hit, forecast say
By Eric Holthaus
Reuters
Jean Marie Brennan walks along the jetty at Lighthouse Point Park as Hurricane Sandy passes offshore in Ponce Inlet, Fla. on Friday.
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — As we’ve all heard by now, there is a big storm brewing on the East Coast. Looking at the latest weather models, that may be a bit of an understatement.
The National Weather Service has labelled the hybrid gyre that may result from the merging of Hurricane Sandy and a Midwest snowstorm a “Frankenstorm.” When it hits, the storm could have truly scary implications befitting the Halloween holiday it will coincide with.
In fact, computer models are now showing a storm so intense that it would break 100-plus year weather records for the most intense pressure readings ever recorded throughout nearly all of the Mid-Atlantic region northward into New York City and Long Island.
Every hurricane that has ever hit that area — from last year’s Hurricane Irene, to the “Perfect Storm” of 1991, even the Long Island Express of 1938 — would all rank below this storm should current models of the atmosphere pan out. That’s a stunning conclusion, but one worth pondering, even though the storm’s peak impacts won’t be felt until Tuesday and there’s still time for models to shift.
There’s reason to believe the models may be overdoing it. First off, what’s happening right now doesn’t have a clear precedence in the weather records. Our best available number-crunching simulations of the atmosphere simply weren’t designed for this scenario.
Normally, when hurricanes approach the East Coast from Sandy’s angle, they are pulled safely out to sea by a semi-permanent low-pressure center near Iceland. This time around, that low pressure isn’t there. In fact, it’s been replaced by a high pressure so intense it only occurs approximately 0.2% of the time on average.
The coincidence of that strong of a high pressure “block” being in place just when a hurricane is passing by — in and of itself a very rare occurrence — is just mind bogglingly rare. It’s the kind of stuff that’s important enough to rewrite meteorological textbooks. The result: Instead of heading out to sea Sandy’s full force will be turned back against the grain and directed squarely at the East Coast.
To top it off, an intense early-season snowstorm moving eastward out of the Great Lakes will provide an additional boost of energy to Sandy as it approaches the shore, broadening its windfield, strengthening its rainfall and waves, and increasing its destructive potential. This is truly a Frankenstein scenario — a hybrid of weather badness that is now coming alive.
The Hydrometeorological Prediction Center — the same folks at the National Weather Service that gave Sandy its “Frankenstorm” name — have had to manually adjust their official forecasts to tone down the exceptional scenarios that the weather models are currently showing.
It’s not that they don’t think the worst-case scenario is possible. It’s just that it’s never happened before. As a meteorologist, you have to be very, very careful if you are going to predict a historic scenario.
The storm is still a few days away, so there will be plenty of time to see how new model runs change with the addition of data from future Hurricane Hunter flights before the National Weather Service goes in full bore with an unprecedented forecast. For the time being, those from D.C. to Boston should remain especially vigilant and begin to take preparations to make sure they and their families are safe.
Storm may hit New York the hardest
Because the storm is expected to be so huge, the only reason its exact landfall location matters relates to the direction of the winds. Everyone from D.C. to New England will feel some type of effects, but because hurricanes rotate counter-clockwise, those north of the center will have massive amounts of seawater directly deposited on their shores.
For those south of the center, the storm’s circulation will actually be pushing flooding seas away from shore, lessening potential impacts.
Right now, the most reliable model tracks have clustered in a relatively tight range from Delaware to New York City. Counterintuitively, should the center of the storm make a direct strike on New York City, the city may actually be spared some of the more serious coastal impacts from the storm.
Should the storm continue on its current path (the National Hurricane Center’s most likely landfall is now in southern New Jersey), all bets are off for the five boroughs.
The latter scenario — the one that now appears most likely — would have many feet of ocean water funneled into New York Harbor over a period of up to 36 hours. Unlike Irene, which quickly transited New York City last year as a weakening tropical storm, Sandy may actually be in the process of strengthening when it makes landfall.
The result could prove incredibly damaging for coastal residents and critical infrastructure. Keep in mind that Irene was only inches away from flooding subway tunnels in Lower Manhattan. Storm-surge forecasts for this scenario haven’t been officially released yet, but six to 10 feet in the city is not out of the question in a worst-case scenario.
That result would put about 700,000 people’s homes underwater, according to a Climate Central interactive analysis. Add to that waves of 10 to 20 feet on ocean-facing shores, and an additional foot or so of tidal influence from the full moon, and we could be dealing with quite a mess on our hands.
With National Geographic reporting that sea level rise is already accelerating at three to four times the global rate in the Northeast due to climate change, impacts are expected to be worse than if the same exact storm would have hit several years ago.
Should Sandy veer further north of its current track and make landfall right over the city, storm surge could be dramatically lessened, though the city could receive about double the amount of rainfall — up to a foot or more.
For these reasons, if I were a resident of New York right now, I’d be rooting for a direct hit. If given a choice, I’d take 12 inches of rain over six feet of coastal flooding any day.
Meteorologist Eric Holthaus digs deeper into how weather and climate can affect markets for MarketWatch. He can be reached at wxriskforecaster@gmail.com.
Sandy could be ‘worst case’ superstorm, more powerful than Hurricane Irene; officials will decide Saturday whether to evacuate wide swaths of New York City as ‘Frankenstorm’ approaches
Hurricane Sandy leveled homes in Cuba and Jamaica this week and it has been blamed for more than 20 deaths. The storm is marching north towards the U.S., and could slam New York with lashing rain, powerful winds and even snow.
In the face of a potentially devastating storm, Gov. Cuomo declared a state of emergency Friday and city officials considered evacuating as many as 375,000 New Yorkers.
The MTA was also considering a total shut down of buses and subways if the worst predictions about Hurricane Sandy come true.
The deadly tempest, which killed at least 41 people in the Caribbean, according to The Associated Press, is expected to make landfall late Monday night near Delaware.
Mayor Bloomberg said he’d make a decision about evacuations in low-lying areas in all five boroughs as soon as Saturday.
“We are taking all the steps that we need to take,” Bloomberg said during a hastily called afternoon press conference on Friday.
Franklin Reyes/AP
Hurricane Sandy blasted across eastern Cuba on Thursday as a potent Category 2 storm and headed for the Bahamas en route to the East Coast, forecasters predict.
Gilbert Bellamy/Reuters
Residents watch firefighters fight a blaze in a private home in Kingston October 26, 2012. The fire, which destroyed the home, was started by a faulty generator used to provide electricity in the blackout caused by the passing of Hurricane Sandy, firefighters said.
“But the storm is moving at a rate that we’re still not going to have a good sense of when and where it’s going to hit land.”
MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota said officials would begin the second shutdown of all buses and subways in its history if winds reach 39 mph.
“Our first priority is always safety, and the MTA is taking no chances with the safety of our customers, our employees and our equipment,” Lhota said in a statement. “We are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. Whatever happens, we’ll be ready.”
Parts of the subway that are below sea level are particularly susceptible to flooding.
The MTA halted the subways for the first time in its history during Hurricane Irene last year.
Desmond Boylan/Reuters
People walk on a street littered with debris after Hurricane Sandy hit Santiago de Cuba October 26, 2012.
Carl Juste/The Miami Herald via AP
Locals walk across the flooded streets of La Plaine, Haiti after Hurricane Sandy caused flooding and claimed more than 20 lives across the Caribbean.
Hurricane Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm before reaching the city but dire predictions in the days before it arrived triggered mandatory evacuations of lower Manhattan and other coastal neighborhoods.
With some forecasts predicting that Sandy could deliver an even more powerful punch, the city is again considering those extreme measures.
“The thing that we worry about the most is that people decide not to listen to the order to evacuate and then later on find themselves in harm’s way and then our police and fire departments have to put their lives on the line,” Bloomberg said.
City officials ordered construction crews to halt work as of Saturday evening and warned residents to prepare “go-bags” equipped with water and First Aid kits.
Officials were also deciding whether to cancel school on Monday.
Bryan Smith for New York Daily News
Mayor Michael Bloomberg discusses the city’s preparations ahead of Hurricane Sandy’s possible arrival early next week at City Hall on Friday.
Another major concern is “prolonged power outages,” Bloomberg said, and the city is working closely with ConEd.
“There are probably 20 different forecasts tracts for this storm and any one of them could be right,” Bloomberg said.
City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said the city was asking six hospitals and 41 chronic care facilities, including nursing homes, in the low-lying areas to move patients who could be easily relocated.
nhc.noaa.gov
Hurricane Sandy path as shown by NOAA map.
The city could decide to evacuate the facilities using city buses as it did during Irene.
Cuomo declared a state of emergency for all 62 counties and said at a Long Island event that the state was taking “every precaution possible.”
A state of emergency gives the state more flexibility to help cities and counties. Cuomo also put the National Guard on alert, which makes Guard personnel and equipment available to help.
Julia Xanthos/New York Daily News
Workers from the MTA install plywood over subway grating to prevent flooding expected from Hurricane Sandy near the Staten Island Ferry in lower Manhattan on Friday.
He also said he will call up repair crews and reach out to other states that may have crews available.
The state is also asking for a pre-disaster declaration that would get New York federal aid and assistance, he said.
Carl Juste/The Miami Herald via AP
Residents of Leogane, Haiti find higher ground as the water level continues to rise Friday, Oct. 26, 2012.
Steve Nesius/Reuters
Jean Marie Brennan walks along the jetty at Lighthouse Point Park as Hurricane Sandy passes offshore in Ponce Inlet, Florida on Friday.
“There’s no need to panic,” he said. “We have a lot of time and we’re prepared for any eventuality, but we’d rather err on the side of caution.”
Cuomo canceled plans to campaign in Florida for President Obama so he could stay in New York. He also scrapped a homeland security conference scheduled for Monday in Albany so the 1,000 first responders who planned to attend could prepare for the storm in their home counties.
A host of other events were canceled as the storm loomed, including an exam for specialized high schools admissions scheduled for Sunday.With News Wire Services With News Wire Services
tmoore@nydailynews.com
With a name like “Frankenstorm,” this could get ugly.
Hurricane Sandy, moving north from the Caribbean, was expected to make landfall Monday night near the Delaware coast, then hit two winter weather systems as it moves inland, creating a hybrid monster storm that could bring nearly a foot of rain, high winds and up to 2 feet of snow.
Experts said the storm would be wider and stronger than last year’s Irene, which caused more than $15 billion in damage, and could rival the worst East Coast storm on record.
Officials did not mince words, telling people to be prepared for several days without electricity. Jersey Shore beach towns began issuing voluntary evacuations and protecting boardwalks
Atlantic Beach casinos made contingency plans to close, and officials advised residents of flood-prone areas to stay with family or be ready to leave. Airlines said to expect cancellations and waived change fees for passengers who want to reschedule.
“Be forewarned,” said Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. “Assume that you will be in the midst of flooding conditions, the likes of which you may not have seen at any of the major storms that have occurred over the last 30 years.”
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell declared a state of emergency Friday morning to help mobilize emergency response. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that wherever the storm comes ashore, there will be 10 inches of rain and extreme storm surges. Up to 2 feet of snow should fall on West Virginia, with lighter snow in parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The storm threatened to hit two weeks before Election Day, while several states were heavily involved in campaigning, canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Vice President Joe Biden both canceled weekend campaign events in coastal Virginia Beach, Va., though their events in other parts of the states were going on as planned.
In Rhode Island, politicians asked supporters to take down yard signs for fear they might turn into projectiles in the storm.
With a rare mix of three big merging weather systems over a densely populated region, experts predict at least $1 billion in damage.
STORM TIPS
Residents in the storm’s expected path should have a three days’ supply of water on hand, or one gallon per person per day, enough for drinking, cooking and some bathing, Virginia’s Department of Emergency Management recommends, and to combat extended power outages, residents should purchase battery-powered radios and extra batteries.
And if they meet Tuesday morning around New York or New Jersey, as forecasters predict, they could create a big, wet mess that settles over the nation’s most heavily populated corridor and reaches as far west as Ohio.
Airlines are giving travelers a way out if they want to scrap their plans due to Hurricane Sandy.
All the major airlines are offering waivers to customers who wish to reschedule their flights without incurring the typical fee of up to $150. The offers cover passengers flying in or out of just about any airport from Latin America to New Hampshire. Most waivers for travel in the Northeast are only valid Monday through Wednesday.
The airlines have only canceled a handful of flights so far, nearly all of them in and out of Florida and the Caribbean.
They say there will be hundreds of miles of steady, strong and damaging winds and rain for the entire Eastern region for several days. That could produce a bigger wallop than last year’s damaging Irene, which caused the cancellation of nearly 14,000 flights in a four-day period.
Those hoping to fly in or out of affected areas are asked to check their flight status before heading to the airport. Airlines also promise to update their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds with the latest information. To cancel, passengers should call the airline directly. Some airlines also allow changes to be made on their websites.
Passengers can expect cancellations to increase as the storm moves north over the weekend.
“Airlines and other operators generally stop flying to airports in the potential storm path long before winds reach dangerous levels,” the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
Utilities are lining up out-of-state work crews and canceling employees’ days off to deal with expected power outages. From county disaster chiefs to the federal government, emergency officials are warning the public to be prepared. And President Barack Obama was briefed aboard Air Force One.
“It’s looking like a very serious storm that could be historic,” said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the forecasting service Weather Underground. “Mother Nature is not saying, `Trick or treat.’ It’s just going to give tricks.”
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecaster Jim Cisco, who coined the nickname Frankenstorm, said: “We don’t have many modern precedents for what the models are suggesting.”
Government forecasters said there is a 90 percent chance — up from 60 percent two days earlier — that the East will get pounded.
Coastal areas from Florida to Maine will feel some effects, but the storm is expected to vent the worst of its fury on New Jersey and the New York City area, which could see around 5 inches of rain and gale-force winds close to 40 mph. Eastern Ohio, southwestern Pennsylvania and western Virginia could get snow.
And the storm will take its time leaving. The weather may not start clearing in the mid-Atlantic until the day after Halloween and Nov. 2 in the upper Northeast, Cisco said.
“It’s almost a weeklong, five-day, six-day event,” he said from a NOAA forecast center in College Park, Md. “It’s going to be a widespread, serious storm.”
It is likely to hit during a full moon, when tides are near their highest, increasing the risk of coastal flooding. And because many trees still have their leaves, they are more likely to topple in the event of wind and snow, meaning there could be widespread power outages lasting to Election Day.
Eastern states that saw outages that lasted for days after last year’s freak Halloween snowstorm and Hurricane Irene in late August 2011 are already pressuring power companies to be more ready this time.
Asked if he expected utilities to be more prepared, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick responded: “They’d better be.”
Jersey Central Power & Light, which was criticized for its response to Irene, notified employees to be ready for extended shifts. In Pennsylvania, PPL Corp. spokesman Michael Wood said, “We’re in a much better place this year.”
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday said the city was striking a tone of calm preparedness.
“What we are doing is we are taking the kind of precautions you should expect us to do, and I don’t think anyone should panic,” Bloomberg said. The city has opened an emergency situation room and activated its coastal storm plan.
Some have compared the tempest to the so-called Perfect Storm that struck off the coast of New England in 1991, but that one hit a less populated area. Nor is this one like last year’s Halloween storm, which was merely an early snowfall.
“The Perfect Storm only did $200 million of damage and I’m thinking a billion” this time, Masters said. “Yeah, it will be worse.”
As it spun away from the Bahamas late Friday, Sandy was blamed for more than 43 deaths across the Caribbean. The 18th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season hit the Bahamas after cutting across Cuba, where it tore roofs off homes and damaged fragile coffee and tomato crops. It is expected to move north, just off the Eastern Seaboard.
Norje Pupo, a 66-year-old retiree in Holguin, was helping his son clean up early Thursday after an enormous tree toppled in his garden.
“The hurricane really hit us hard,” he said. “As you can see, we were very affected. The houses are not poorly made here, but some may have been damaged.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
27.10.2012
Tropical Storm
Cuba
MultiProvinces, [Provinces of Santiago de Cuba and Holguin]
The Cuban government said on Thursday night that 11 people died when the storm barreled across the island, most killed by falling trees or in building collapses in Santiago de Cuba province and neighboring Guantanamo province. The Cuban deaths were an unusually high number for the communist island which prides itself on protecting its people from storms by ordering mass evacuations.
TOKYO — Elevated levels of cesium still detected in fish off the Fukushima coast of Japan suggest that radioactive particles from last year’s nuclear disaster have accumulated on the seafloor and could contaminate sea life for decades, according to new research.
A broker inspected octopus from Fukushima at a market in Tokyo in August.
The findings published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science highlight the challenges facing Japan as it seeks to protect its food supply and rebuild the local fisheries industry.
More than 18 months after the nuclear disaster, Japan bans the sale of 36 species of fish caught off Fukushima, rendering the bulk of its fishing boats idle and denying the region one of its mainstay industries.
Some local fishermen are trying to return to work. Since July, a handful of them have resumed small-scale commercial fishing for species, like octopus, that have cleared government radiation tests. Radiation readings in waters off Fukushima and beyond have returned to near-normal levels.
But about 40 percent of fish caught off Fukushima and tested by the government still have too much cesium to be safe to eat under regulatory limits set by the Japanese government last year, said the article’s author, Ken O. Buesseler, a leading marine chemistry expert at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who analyzed test results from the 12 months following the March 2011 disaster.
Because cesium tends not to stay very long in the tissues of saltwater fish — and because high radiation levels have been detected most often in bottom-feeding fish — it is likely that fish are being newly contaminated by cesium on the seabed, Mr. Buesseler wrote in the Science article.
“The fact that many fish are just as contaminated today with cesium 134 and cesium 137 as they were more than one year ago implies that cesium is still being released into the food chain,” Mr. Buesseler wrote. This kind of cesium has a half-life of 30 years, meaning that it falls off by half in radioactive intensity every 30 years. Given that, he said, “sediments would remain contaminated for decades to come.”
Officials at Japan’s Fisheries Agency, which conducted the tests, said Mr. Buesseler’s analysis made sense.
“In the early days of the disaster, as the fallout hit the ocean, we saw high levels of radiation from fish near the surface,” said Koichi Tahara, assistant director of the agency’s resources and research division. “But now it would be reasonable to assume that radioactive substances are settling on the seafloor.”
But that was less of a concern than Mr. Buesseler’s research might suggest, Mr. Tahara said, because the cesium was expected to eventually settle down into the seabed.
Mr. Tahara also stressed that the government would continue its vigorous testing and that fishing bans would remain in place until radiation readings returned to safe levels.
Naohiro Yoshida, an environmental chemistry expert at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, said that while he agreed with much of Mr. Buesseler’s analysis, it was too early to reach a conclusion on how extensive radioactive contamination of Japan’s oceans would be, and how long it would have an impact on marine life in the area.
Further research was needed on ocean currents, sediments and how different species of fish are affected by radioactive contamination, he said.
As much as four-fifths of the radioactive substances released from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are thought to have entered the sea, either blown offshore or released directly into the ocean from water used to cool the site’s reactors in the wake of the accident.
Sea currents quickly dispersed that radioactivity, and seawater readings off the Fukushima shore returned to near-normal levels. But fish caught in the area continue to show elevated readings for radioactive cesium, which is associated with an increased risk of cancer in humans.
Just two months ago, two greenling caught close to the Fukushima shore were found to contain more than 25,000 becquerels a kilogram of cesium, the highest cesium levels found in fish since the disaster and 250 times the government’s safety limit.
The operator of the Fukushima plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said that the site no longer released contaminated water into the ocean, and that radiation levels in waters around the plant had stabilized.
But Yoshikazu Nagai, a spokesman for the company, said he could not rule out undetected leaks into the ocean from its reactors, the basements of which remain flooded with cooling water.
To reduce the chance of water from seeping out of the plant, Tokyo Electric is building a 2,400-foot-long wall between the site’s reactors and the ocean. But Mr. Nagai said the steel-and-concrete wall, which will reach 100 feet underground, would take until mid-2014 to build.
Volunteers to remove radioactive substances from a fishing boat in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, in this photo taken by Kyodo October 24, 2011. (Reuters / Kyodo)
TEPCO, operator of the Fukushima nuclear facility, failed to confirm that radiation leaks at the plant had fully stopped. This came after a US report that irradiated fish are still being caught off the coast of Japan following the 2011 meltdown.
The Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) told journalists Friday they could not confirm that radiation had stopped leaking from the nuclear power plant struck by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. Still, they said that radiation levels in the seawater and seabed soil around the plant were declining.
A recent article in the academic journal Science revealed that 40 percent of bottom-dwelling marine species in the area show cesium-134 and 137 levels that are still higher than normal.
“The numbers aren’t going down. Oceans usually cause the concentrations to decrease if the spigot is turned off,” Ken Buesseler, study author and senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution told the Associated Press. “There has to be somewhere they’re picking up the cesium.”
“Option one is the seafloor is the source of the continued contamination. The other source could be the reactors themselves,” Buesseler added.
Radioactive cesium is a human-made radioactive isotope produced through nuclear fission of the element cesium. It has a half-life of 30 years, making it extremely toxic.
TEPCO confirmed that the radioactive water used to cool the plant’s reactors leaked into the ocean several times, most recently in April.
The plant is struggling to find space to store the tens of thousands of tons of highly contaminated water used to cool the broken reactors and prevent it from a meltdown.
The company managed to collect the water used to cool the spent fuel rods and circulate it back into reactor cores, so the reactors are now being cooled with recycled water. However, groundwater is still seeping through cracks in basement where the reactor and turbine are stored, posing further dangers.
With the groundwater seeping in, the volume of decontaminated water collected and stored at the Fukushima Daiichi plant could triple within three years, TEPCO told the AP.
The accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant was triggered by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011. An enormous tsunami crashed onto the land, resulting in the flash-flooding of four of the plant’s six reactors, shattering the cooling system. This led to a series of oxygen blasts, and a partial meltdown of the reactor core.
The incident was the biggest nuclear disaster in 25 years since the tragedy at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Multiple cases of contamination of air and seawater by radioactive material have been reported. Over 140,000 people were forced to leave an evacuation area 40 kilometers in diameter around the plant. Most of those people are still living in shelters. Full management of the disaster, including dismantling the reactors, is expected to take around 40 years.
Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant is struggling to find space to store tens of thousands of tons of highly contaminated water, it emerged today.
About 200,000 tons of radioactive water used to cool the broken reactors are being stored in hundreds of gigantic tanks built around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.
Operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) has already chopped down trees to make room for more tanks and predicts the volume will more than triple within three years.
“Our land is limited and we could eventually run out of storage space,” said water treatment manager Yuichi Okamura.
Tepco’s tanks are filling up mostly because leaks in reactor facilities are allowing ground water to pour in.
Outside experts say that if contaminated water is released, there will be a lasting impact on the environment.
And they fear that because of the reactor leaks and water flowing from one part of the plant to another, that may already be happening.
Nuclear engineer Masashi Goto said the contaminated water build-up poses a long-term threat.
He said that the radioactive water in the basements may already be getting into the underground water system, where it could reach far beyond the plant, possibly into the ocean or public water supplies.
“You never know where it’s leaking and once it’s out you can’t put it back,” he said.
He added that the Tepco roadmap for dealing with the problem was “wishful thinking.”
“The longer it takes, the more contaminated water they get.”
Another person has died of the Marburg viral disease in the southwestern district of Kabale, bringing the total number of such deaths to seven. Lydia Rusanyuka died Saturday morning at Rushoroza health center three after spending less than a week under medical care inside the isolation center. The deadly virus claimed its seventh victim just a little over a week since its outbreak in the district was first reported by health experts. The medics had settled onto the conclusion after samples from two relatives taken to the Uganda Virus Institute had tested positive. Rusanyuka, the mother of a mortuary attendant who also succumbed to the disease had been tested positive with the virus prior to her death. Her son, Jason Tumukunde also died of the same disease. Doctor Patrick Tusiime, the Kabale District health officer has said the deceased will be buried in Bukora, Kitumba sub-county Kabale district today. Meanwhile, the wife of the late Tumukunde, his sister and their eight-year-old daughter remain in isolation at Rushoroza after testing positive.
by Maria-Jose Vinas for NASA’s Earth Science News
Greenbelt MD (SPX)
September 2012 witnessed two opposite records concerning sea ice. Two weeks after the Arctic Ocean’s ice cap experienced an all-time summertime low for the satellite era (left), Antarctic sea ice reached a record winter maximum extent (right). But sea ice in the Arctic has melted at a much faster rate than it has expanded in the Southern Ocean, as can be seen in this image by comparing the 2012 sea ice levels with the yellow outline, which in the Arctic image represents average sea ice minimum extent from 1979 through 2010 and in the Antarctic image shows the median sea ice extent in September from 1979 to 2000. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio and NASA Earth Observatory/ Jesse Allen. View Arctic larger. View Antarctic larger.
The steady and dramatic decline in the sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean over the last three decades has become a focus of media and public attention. At the opposite end of the Earth, however, something more complex is happening.
A new NASA study shows that from 1978 to 2010 the total extent of sea ice surrounding Antarctica in the Southern Ocean grew by roughly 6,600 square miles every year, an area larger than the state of Connecticut. And previous research by the same authors indicates that this rate of increase has recently accelerated, up from an average rate of almost 4,300 square miles per year from 1978 to 2006.
“There’s been an overall increase in the sea ice cover in the Antarctic, which is the opposite of what is happening in the Arctic,” said lead author Claire Parkinson, a climate scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “However, this growth rate is not nearly as large as the decrease in the Arctic.”
The Earth’s poles have very different geographies. The Arctic Ocean is surrounded by North America, Greenland and Eurasia. These large landmasses trap most of the sea ice, which builds up and retreats with each yearly freeze-and-melt cycle. But a large fraction of the older, thicker Arctic sea ice has disappeared over the last three decades. The shrinking summer ice cover has exposed dark ocean water that absorbs sunlight and warms up, leading to more ice loss.
On the opposite side of the planet, Antarctica is a continent circled by open waters that let sea ice expand during the winter but also offer less shelter during the melt season. Most of the Southern Ocean’s frozen cover grows and retreats every year, leading to little perennial sea ice in Antarctica.
Using passive-microwave data from NASA’s Nimbus 7 satellite and several Department of Defense meteorological satellites, Parkinson and colleague Don Cavalieri showed that sea ice changes were not uniform around Antarctica.
Most of the growth from 1978 to 2010 occurred in the Ross Sea, which gained a little under 5,300 square miles of sea ice per year, with more modest increases in the Weddell Sea and Indian Ocean. At the same time, the region of the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas lost an average of about 3,200 square miles of ice every year.
Parkinson and Cavalieri said that the mixed pattern of ice growth and ice loss around the Southern Ocean could be due to changes in atmospheric circulation. Recent research points at the depleted ozone layer over Antarctica as a possible culprit.
Ozone absorbs solar energy, so a lower concentration of this molecule can lead to a cooling of the stratosphere (the layer between six and 30 miles above the Earth’s surface) over Antarctica. At the same time, the temperate latitudes have been warming, and the differential in temperatures has strengthened the circumpolar winds flowing over the Ross Ice Shelf.
“Winds off the Ross Ice Shelf are getting stronger and stronger, and that causes the sea ice to be pushed off the coast, which generates areas of open water, polynyas,” said Josefino Comiso, a senior scientist at NASA Goddard.
“The larger the coastal polynya, the more ice it produces, because in polynyas the water is in direct contact with the very cold winter atmosphere and rapidly freezes.” As the wind keeps blowing, the ice expands further to the north.
This year’s winter Antarctic sea ice maximum extent, reached two weeks after the Arctic Ocean’s ice cap experienced an all-time summertime low, was a record high for the satellite era of 7.49 million square miles, about 193,000 square miles more than its average maximum extent for the last three decades.
The Antarctic minimum extents, which are reached in the midst of the Antarctic summer, in February, have also slightly increased to 1.33 million square miles in 2012, or around 251,000 square miles more than the average minimum extent since 1979.
The numbers for the southernmost ocean, however, pale in comparison with the rates at which the Arctic has been losing sea ice – the extent of the ice cover of the Arctic Ocean in September 2012 was 1.32 million square miles below the average September extent from 1979 to 2000. The lost ice area is equivalent to roughly two Alaskas.
Parkinson said that the fact that some areas of the Southern Ocean are cooling and producing more sea ice does not disprove a warming climate.
“Climate does not change uniformly: The Earth is very large and the expectation definitely would be that there would be different changes in different regions of the world,” Parkinson said. “That’s true even if overall the system is warming.” Another recent NASA study showed that Antarctic sea ice slightly thinned from 2003 to 2008, but increases in the extent of the ice balanced the loss in thickness and led to an overall volume gain.
The new research, which used laser altimetry data from the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), was the first to estimate sea ice thickness for the entire Southern Ocean from space.
Records of Antarctic sea ice thickness are much patchier than those of the Arctic, due to the logistical challenges of taking regular measurements in the fierce and frigid waters around Antarctica. The field data collection is mostly limited to research icebreakers that generally only travel there during spring and summer – so the sole means to get large-scale thickness measurements is from space.
“We have a good handle of the extent of the Antarctic sea ice, but the thickness has been the missing piece to monitor the sea ice mass balance,” said Thorsten Markus, one of the authors of the study and Project Scientist for ICESat-2, a satellite mission designed to replace the now defunct ICESat. ICESat-2 is scheduled to launch in 2016. “The extent can be greater, but if the sea ice gets thinner, the volume could stay the same.”
A filament of magnetism snaking around the sun’s southeastern limb erupted on Oct 26th. The blast created a “canyon of fire” in the sun’s lower atmosphere. Click on the circle to animate the event:
The glowing walls of the canyon are formed in a process closely related to that of arcade loops, which appear after many solar flares. Stretching more than 250,000 km from end to end, the “canyon” traces the original channel where the filament was suspended by magnetic forces above the stellar surface.
As erupting magnetic filaments often do, this one launched a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. The Solar and Heliospheric Observary recorded the expanding cloud: movie. The CME does not appear to be heading for Earth or any other planet.
The Watchers watching the world evolve and transform
Solar activity was at low levels for the past 24 hours and X-Ray flux plot shown merely C-class threshold. However, a prominence eruption was observed north of Region 1600.
A bright CME was observed in STEREO Ahead COR 2 imagery at 18:24 UTC on October 27. Latest STEREO Ahead COR2 images indicate that this CME may be Earth directed. SIDC reports that a halo or partial-halo CME was detected.
STEREO Behind COR2 image from 21:40 UTC on OCtober 27 and earlier STEREO Ahead COR2 image from 18:54 UTC on October 27
SOHO’s LASCO C2 latest image is recorded at 11:12 UTC on October 26.
SpaceWeather.com reports that filament of magnetism snaking around the sun’s southeastern limb erupted on October 26. The blast created a “canyon of fire” in the sun’s lower atmosphere. This solar filament launched a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space but luckily, it was not Earth-directed. Stretching more than 250,000 km from end to end, the “canyon” traces the original channel where the filament was suspended by magnetic forces above the stellar surface.
GOES X-Ray flux show mostly quit conditions, only 3 C-class flares were observed during the past 24 hours.
All four visible Sunspot regions (1596, 1598, 1599, 1600) are currently stable. Three low-level C-class flares were observed from behind the west limb, likely from old Region 1594. Region 1598 remained the most magnetically complex region on the visible disk and produced a B9 flare at 12:35 UTC on October 27. Region 1596 has shown signs of penumbral decay, mainly in its trailer spots. There are no large coronal holes on the Earthside of the Sun.
There will be a slight chance for an isolated M-Class flare throughout the weekend. NOAA/SWPC forecasters estimated 15 % chances of M-class event. Sunspot 1598 is the one to watch.
These red, orange and green clouds on Saturn represent the tail end of a 2010/11 massive storm.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The storm, first detected in 2010, let out something of a cosmic burp
If on Earth, it would cover North America top to bottom and wrap the globe many times
The storm also led to a drastic change in the ringed planet
(CNN) — NASA says the Cassini spacecraft recorded the aftermath of a massive storm on Saturn that let out an “unprecedented belch of energy.”
Not only was the size of the storm unusual, but what the storm was made of left scientists puzzled.
The source of the cosmic burp, which rapidly changed the atmosphere’s temperature, was ethylene gas, an odorless, colorless gas that has rarely been observed on Saturn, NASA said.
“This temperature spike is so extreme it’s almost unbelievable,” said Brigette Hesman, the study’s lead author who works at Goddard. “To get a temperature change of the same scale on Earth, you’d be going from the depths of winter in Fairbanks, Alaska, to the height of summer in the Mojave Desert,” Hesman said in a statement released by NASA.
Scientists still haven’t figured out from where the ethylene gas came.
By comparison, a storm of similar size on Earth would cover North America from top to bottom and wrap the planet many times, researchers said.
The Cassini spacecraft first detected the disruption on December 5, 2010, and has been following it since, but researchers said the ethylene gas disruption that followed the storm was unexpected.
A storm this size happens once every 30 years, or once every Saturn year, NASA scientists said.
Launched in 1997, the Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
A full report will be published in November’s issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
Amateur astronomers have been keeping a close eye on Comet 168P/Hergenrother since October 1st when it suddenly brightened 500-fold, from 15th to 8th magnitude. At the time, the comet was making its closest approach to the sun (1.4 AU). Some observers speculated that solar heating caused the fragile comet to break apart. On Oct. 26th, a group of astronomers found evidence to support this idea. “Using the Faulkes North (F65) telescope,” writes Ernesto Guido et al., “we detected a fragmentation in Comet 168P.”
“Our images, taken on Oct. 26th, reveal the presence of a secondary nucleus, or fragment, about two arcseconds away from the main central condensation of comet 168P.” This is probably a chunk of rocky ice emerging from the haze of gas and dust that surrounds the main nucleus, still hidden inside. Comets are notoriously fragile, so its no surprise that Comet 168P/Hergenrother is breaking apart in this way.
The only question is, what happens next? Will the comet spit in two, with two heads and two tails, one tracking the fragment and the other tracking the parent? Or is this the prelude to a more complete disintegration? Amateur astronomers are encouraged to monitor developments while the comet remains bright enough to see through backyard telescopes. Here are the comet’s coordinates. For best results, we recommend the Comet Hunter Telescope.
MessageToEagle.com – Based on current models, galaxies grow by consuming other star systems and the so-called galactic cannibalism process is widespread in the universe.
Around the Milky Way galaxy and in the vicinity of our immediate cosmic neighborhood, known as the “Local Group” of galaxies, traces of spiral galaxies swallowing dwarf galaxies have been known to astronomers since 1997.
Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, researchers have recently discovered a band of stars, or stellar stream.
It is the first of its kind found in the southern Galactic sky, a region that has been hard to examine due to a relative lack of deep-sky imaging there. Deeper imaging enables astronomers to detect fainter stars.
Credits: NASA
This stellar stream, named the Triangulum stream, could be the remnant of an ancient star cluster slowly being ingested by the Milky Way, Earth’s home galaxy.
“The Milky Way is constantly gobbling up small galaxies and star clusters,” said Ana Bonaca, a Yale graduate student and lead author of a study forthcoming in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Click on image to enlarge
M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is a perennial favorite of amateur and professional astronomers alike, due to its orientation and relative proximity to us. It is the second nearest spiral galaxy to our Milky Way (after M31, the Andromeda Galaxy) and a prominent member of the “local group” of galaxies. From our Milky Way perspective, M33′s stellar disk appears at moderate inclination, allowing us to see its internal structure clearly, whereas M31 is oriented nearly edge-on. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer imaged M33 as it appears in ultraviolet wavelengths. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The discovery will help astronomers reconstruct how the Milky Way’s mass is distributed, further revealing its dynamic structure.
“The more powerful gravity of our Milky Way pulls these objects apart and their stars then become part of the Milky Way itself.”
Researchers have previously found evidence of the Milky Way eating up dwarf galaxies.Bonaca argues that the newly found stellar stream is the remnant of a star cluster rather than of a larger galaxy, because the stream is very narrow.
“Our discovery is more of a light snack than a big meal for the Milky Way,” says Marla Geha, associate professor of astronomy at Yale and a co-author of the study.
“Studying this digestion process in detail is important because it gives us new insight into how all galaxies form and evolve.”
Galaxies are believed to form hierarchically through the merger of smaller galaxies and still smaller star clusters.
Stellar streams form as they are ripped apart by the gravitational force of galaxies.
This process may be the primary way galaxies such as the Milky Way grow in mass, the researchers say.
A map of stars in the outer region of the Milky Way as traced by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Streams of stars are seen throughout both the Northern (top) and Southern Galactic hemispheres, corresponding to small galaxies and star clusters which are in the process of being ingested by the Milky Way. The newest discovery is designated as the Triangulum Stream. Credits: yale.edu
Triangulum was found by searching a region recently surveyed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), an international collaboration that is mapping the sky through wide-field photometry.
Bonaca, Geha and co-author Nitya Kallivayalil, a Yale postdoctoral fellow, relied specifically on the survey’s Data Release 8, which included information about vast new areas of the southern galactic sky.
The study is available now on the arXiv preprint server.
A loud, unexplained noise set off dozens of calls to the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office Friday morning after residents reported hearing an explosion so loud it shook their homes. YNN’s Meg Rossman reveals the source behind that explosion and why there’s no mystery behind that mystery boom.
NIAGARA COUNTY, N.Y. — It was the mystery boom heard ’round the world – or at least Niagara County that caused the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office to field dozens of calls similar to this exchange from concerned residents:
Dispatch: “Niagara County 911 what’s your emergency?”Caller: “…I heard an explosion and my windows all shook.
Dispatch: “You don’t see any fire or anything?
Caller: “No. No, I don’t.”
No fire and no damage but after several reports just after midnight Friday, Niagara County Undersheriff Michael J. Filicetti said deputies went to investigate.”We actually had several units respond down to the, mostly it was the Newfane area, Town of Somerset, Barker area,” he explained. “They checked around and couldn’t find anything.”
But they were offered plenty of suggestions, everything ranging from a sonic boom to a meteor.
“As of early this morning, we still hadn’t figured out what caused it,” Filicetti said.
According to officials at Columbia University, it’s not out of the question for tremors like Friday’s to be caused by landslides, sonic booms or even a meteor. In this case, however, the source turned out to be a 2.5 magnitude earthquake centered in the Town of Barker.
Dispatch: “Niagara County 9-1-1 what’s the address of your emergency?
Caller: “It’s not actually an emergency. I heard that explosion…”
So how do you explain that mystery boom?”They likely experienced a jolt and that jolt would likely set one’s house in motion and I suspect that’s the noise they heard,” Andrew Whittaker explained.
Whittaker, a structural engineering professor from the University at Buffalo, said it’s a common occurrence with minor earthquakes so close to the surface. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the area sits on a fault line and experiences several very minor quakes every few years, though none of any apocalyptic proportions.
“We have no evidence whatsoever that a large magnitude event is around the corner,” Whittaker said.
The disease causes extensive internal hemorrhages, according to the DNR. White-tailed deer usually develop symptoms seven days after exposure. Between eight and 36 hours after the start of symptoms like rapid pulse and breathing, fever and weakness, the deer lie down and die.
EHD is spread by a gnat called the midge — a species that multiplied well in this summer’s drought. It has been know to exist in Michigan for years, but this year’s outbreak is the worst in history.
“It is way worse than any other outbreak. We have had a few that got over 1,000 or maybe over a thousand a few years back, but this is by far the worst we have seen it,” said DNR Wildlife Biologist John Niewoonder.
The DNR says that the number of deer dead of EHD is actually much higher than the 11,000 or so reported, but admits that there is no telling exactly how many deer have died.
The DNR had hoped that by October, the numbers would be on the decrease because a hard freeze should kill off the midges.
Hunters should still feel free to hunt, the DNR says, and the agency will not put any limitations on deer hunting this year. But after this season concludes, the DNR will consider numbers gathered from deer check stations as they decide how many permits to issue next year.
“Typically these re-evaluations don’t result in big changes because the population just doesn’t change that much from one year to the next. This year may be different because of the disease. Hunters may notice bigger changes for next year than they normally would,” said Niewoonder.
It is important to put the number of dead deer in perspective. While there are more than 11,000 deer dead from EHD, hunters harvested more than 440,000 last year and an average of more than 50,000 die every year in car crashes.
The DNR says it does not anticipate that Michigan’s deer herd is in danger.
Humans cannot contract EHD. It occasionally infects domesticated animals — usually hoof stock, the DNR says — but they rarely get sick.
A total of 3 chipmunks tested positive for the plague in the South Lake Tahoe area. California Department of Public Health tested 38 chipmunks and 3 squirrels for the plague during the this month’s surveillance effort, El Dorado County Department of Environmental Health spokesperson Karen Bender said. The department said the results of the tests are not surprising, but do warrant precaution. The plague is an infectious bacterial disease that is spread by wild rodents and their fleas. People can be infected by close contact with the rodents or their fleas. “Risk of transmission is significantly reduced during the winter months because rodents and their fleas are less active when the weather is cold,” Interim El Dorado County Health Officer, Dr. Robert Hartmann said. Cases of the plague are common in mountain and foothill areas of California, but cases in people are rare. The plague can be treated by antibiotics if detected early. Symptoms of the plague appear within two weeks of exposure and include fever, nausea, weakness and swollen lymph nodes.
Biohazard name:
Yersinia pestis (chipmunks)
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.
MessageToEagle.com – ‘Briz-M’, a Russian rocket recently exploded into some 500 fragments. Most of the debris is now, floating in low Earth orbit.
The good news is that the ISS can avoid a possible collision.
The bad news is that this new space junk cloud has become a threat to future space missions.
The rocket was previously floating inert in space after it failed on a mission to deliver two satellites to its intended orbits in a botched August launch. The rocket engine stalled seven seconds after ignition, leaving some 10 to 15 tons of rocket fuel unused in its tanks. On October 16, Briz-M detonated and shattering into hundreds of fragments.
A proton-M rocket carrying Briz-M.
The debris from the explosion was first noticed by Australian astronomer Robert McNaught. Russia is carefully monitoring the fragments, but there is a risk the number may increase further as the space junk pieces collide with each other and break apart, an industry source told Interfax on Thursday.
The space junk poses no immediate danger, but could threaten future space missions. “We just expanded the list of potential threats with new entries,” the source explained.
The debris is spread across altitudes ranging from 250 to 5,000 kilometers.Both American and Russian space experts believe most of the scrap will continue to orbit the earth.
Air Force Lt. Col. Monica Matoush, a Pentagon spokesperson, said the U.S. military was tracking debris from the Breeze M breakup.
The Defense Department’s joint functional component command for space, known by the acronym JFCC-Space, monitors objects in orbit and issues collision alerts to U.S. government, international and commercial satellite owners.
“The resulting debris field and impact to space objects on orbit are being assessed at this time, however JFCC-Space is currently tracking over 500 pieces of debris,” Matoush said in an email Tuesday. “
We expect that number to fluctuate as work to characterize the debris field continues.”
The explosion of Briz-M has cteared a space debris cloud that can threaten future space missions. Image credit: ESA
“Although some of the pieces have begun to re-enter, most of the debris will remain in orbit for an extended period of time,” US State Department spokesperson Jamie Mannina said in a statement.
The International Space Station orbits Earth at an altitude of about 400 kilometers. The station is not currently on a collision course with any of the fragments, and can be repositioned in the future if any danger arises.
Experts are worried how the debris cloud will affect future space missions.
[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.]
Earthquakes can – of course – damage nuclear power plants. For example, even the operator of Fukushima and the Japanese government now admit that the nuclear cores might have started melting down before the tsuanmi ever hit. More here.
Indeed, American reactors may be even more vulnerable to earthquakes than Fukushima.
But American nuclear “regulators” have allowed numerous nuclear power plants to be built in earthquake zones (represented by black triangles in the following diagram):
Some plants are located in very high earthquake risk zones:
(Note: Ignore the long lines in the diagram … they represent the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, which present a huge danger of flooding nuclear reactors , but not an earthquake risk).
The NRC won’t even begin conducting its earthquake study for Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York until after relicensing is complete in 2013, because the NRC doesn’t consider a big earthquake “a serious risk”
Congressman Markey has said there is a cover up. Specifically, Markey alleges that the head of the NRC told everyone not to write down risks they find from an earthquake greater than 6.0 (the plant was only built to survive a 6.0 earthquake)
We have 4 reactors in California – 2 at San Onofre 2 at San Luis Obisbo – which are vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis
For example, Diablo Canyon is located on numerous earthquake faults, and a state legislator and seismic expert says it could turn into California’s Fukushima:
On July 26th 2011 the California Energy Commission held hearings concerning the state’s nuclear safety. During those hearings, the Chairman of the Commission asked governments experts whether or not they felt the facilities could withstand the maximum credible quake. The response was that they did not know.
Chesapeake Energy has a permit to frack just one mile from the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport. Whether that is cause for alarm, experts can’t say.
***
“Hydraulic fracturing near a nuclear plant is probably not a concern under normal circumstances,” [Richard Hammack, a scientist at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory] said. “If there is a pre-stress fault that you happen to lubricate there (with fracking solution), that is the only thing that might result in something that is (seismically) measurable.”
That’s not very reassuring, given that “lubrication” of faults is the main mechanism by which fracking causes earthquakes. (Indeed, the point is illustrated by the analogous fact that leading Japanese seismologists say that the Fukushima earthquake “lubricated” nearby faults, making a giant earthquake more likely than ever.)
And as Akron Beacon Journal notes, fracking is allowed with 500 feet of nuclear plants:
“We’re not aware of any potential impacts and don’t expect any,” said FirstEnergy spokeswoman Jennifer Young today. “We see no reason to be particularly concerned.”
***
[But] experts can’t say if the proposed well so close to two nuclear power plants is cause for concern.
***
DEP spokesperson John Poister told the Shale Reporter that there are no required setbacks specifically relating to a required distance between such shale wells and nuclear facilities, just a blanket regulation requiring a 500-foot setback from any building to a natural gas well.
REYKJAVIK (Reuters) – Icelandic authorities warned people in the north of the island on Thursday to prepare for a possible big earthquake after the biggest tremors in the area for 20 years.
The north Atlantic island, where almost 320,000 people live, is a hotspot of volcanic and seismic activity as it straddles a fault in the earth’s surface.
The Civil Protection Department said in a statement that recent small quakes in an area under the sea about 20 km (12 miles) off the north of Iceland had prompted it to issue a warning to local people.
It said such shocks, one of which was a magnitude 5.6, often led to stronger quakes. Warnings were issued when there were grounds to expect a natural or manmade event that could threaten health and human safety, it added.
“People are anxious because they don’t know what might happen,” said Amundi Gunnarsson, chief of the fire brigade in Fjallabyggd, one of the small towns in the area, and a member of the Civil Protection Department.
“At the same time, life goes on as usual. People are going to work and children are going to school, but everyone is on alert,” he told Reuters by telephone.
The coastal area in the north is home to several small towns and a population of several thousand people.
The biggest town in the north of Iceland, Akureyri, has a population of about 17,000 people, and lies roughly 100 km south of the seismic activity.
Geologist Benedikt Ofeigsson said houses in Iceland could typically withstand quakes of a magnitude about 7.
“Of course there could be some damage to in walls and concrete in such strong earthquakes, but what is important that houses have stood firm,” he told Reuters.
(Reporting by Robert Robertsson, writing by Patrick Lannin; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Keith Weir)
A magnitude 5 earthquake struck north of Cosenza in southern Italy early on Friday, and police said a hospital had been evacuated after cracks were found in its structure, but there were no reports of injuries. The quake hit at 1:05 a.m. (7.05 p.m. EDT on Thursday) about 6.3 km (3.9 miles) underground, north of Cosenza in the Pollino mountains area on the border of the southern regions of Calabria and Basilicata, according to data from the Italian Geophysics Institute (INGV). It said on its website that at least 14 other tremors followed the initial earthquake. An Italian police official told Reuters a hospital in the small town of Mormanno had been evacuated as a precautionary measure because some cracks were found in its structure. No injuries were reported, the official said. Italian news agencies reported scenes of panic in the hospital and said many inhabitants of Mormanno and surrounding towns had come out in the streets. Police and fire fighters are surveying the area for further damage, officials said.
Today
Earthquake
Iceland
North Atlantic Ocean, [North of the island (under the sea)]
Icelandic authorities warned people in the north of the island yesterday to prepare for a possible earthquake after the biggest tremors in the area for 20 years. The north Atlantic island, where almost 320,000 people live, is a hotspot of volcanic and seismic activity. The Civil Protection Department said in a statement that recent small quakes in an area under the sea about 20km off the north of Iceland had prompted it to issue a warning. It said such shocks, one of which was a magnitude 5.6, often led to stronger quakes
New model says they are connected underground and relieve pressure in each other
By Becky Oskin
OurAmazingPlanet
The past decade of eruptions of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano may have acted as a pressure-relief valve for neighboring Mauna Loa, according to a new model suggesting two of the planet’s biggest volcanoes connect deep underground.
Scientists know each of the two Hawaiian volcanoes has its own plumbing —separate, shallow magma chambers. Such chambers are the source of Kilauea’s rising lava lake, which is threatening to spill over. But 50 miles (80 kilometers) down, in a part of the Earth’s mantle layer called the asthenosphere, Mauna Loa and Kilauea are dynamically coupled, said Helge Gonnermann, a professor at Rice University in Houston, who is the lead author of a new study showing the link.
“It’s like groundwater in an aquifer or oil in an oil reservoir,” Gonnermann told OurAmazingPlanet. “We know that there is melt that extends beneath both volcanoes. Changes in pressure can be transmitted to both volcanoes.”
The Hawaiian Islands are hotspot volcanoes, formed as the Pacific plate moves over a plume of hot magma in the mantle. Pressure changes in the pooled magma in the mantle could rapidly affect both volcanoes, the model indicates.
The model helps explains some intriguing observations: When one volcano inflates, the other starts to bulge about six months later. At times, such as in 2005, both volcanoes inflate at the same, GPS data show
The study suggests that Mauna Loa’s and Kilauea’s opposing pattern — when one is active, the other is quiet — occurs because eruptions at one volcano release pressure in the other.
The model suggests Mauna Loa, which produced its most recent blast in 1984, had accumulated enough magma for another eruption, but its pressure was relieved by Kilauea’s heightened activity.
“The hypothesis coming out of this model is that if we hadn’t seen this increased activity at Kilauea, then we would not have seen this pressure relief,” Gonnermann said.
The summit of Kilauea has recently started inflating, giving the researchers a real-world test. “If Kilauea continues to inflate like it is right now, and if our model holds water, we should also see another period of inflation at Mauna Loa in about half a year,” Gonnermann said.
The scientists also hope to test the model in other hotspot volcanoes, such as those of the Galapagos.
The findings are detailed in the November issue of the journal Nature Geosciences.
The Kuril Island volcano named Alaid, in Russia’s Far East has begun spewing ash with the giant ash cloud rising to an altitude of up to 700 meters.
The Alaid Volcano is the tallest and northernmost volcano in the islands, with a crater which is approximately 1.5-km-wide.
The first signs of activity were recorded on October 7th when thermal anomalies were observed a cloud of steam appeared.
Volcanologists are issuing warnings regarding the likelihood of an eruption of ash emissions which may reach a height of 10-15 kilometers above sea level.
Voice of Russia, Russia 24
25.10.2012 03:12 AM
Australian Antarctic Territory in the Southern Ocean, Heard Island and McDonald Islands
One of Australia’s two active volcanoes seems to be erupting. We say seems because the volcano in question, on Heard Island, is located in the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean, 2000km north of Antarctica and closer to Africa than to Australia. That’s about as close to the middle of nowhere as it is possible to be. Heard Island and its neighbour MacDonald Island are Australian territories and are uninhabited, but each possesses an active volcano. Scientific expeditions venture there infrequently, due to conservation issues and the fact the islands have a wretched climate, are thousands of miles from anywhere nice and can only be accessed or supplied by ship. That means little attention is paid to the islands, with the satellite images such as the one below seldom acquired. But NASA’s Earth Observatory says the image and other analysis detected heat signatures on Heard Island’s 2475m Mawson Peak that suggest recent volcanic activity. “Although not definitive, this natural-color satellite image also suggests an ongoing eruption,” NASA writes. “The dark summit crater (much darker than Mawson’s shaded southwestern face) is at least partially snow-free, and there’s a faint hint of an even darker area—perhaps a lava flow—within. Shortwave infrared data (collected along with the visible imagery) shows hot surfaces within the crater, indicating the presence of lava in, or just beneath, the crater.” The Australian Government’s official Heard and McDonald Island website, which has a nifty .aq domain, reports eruptions on McDonald Island. In 1992. Heard Island’s remote location means any eruptions are unlikely to bother anyone, as the region has no history of colossal, world-shaking, events. Penguins and expeditions that plan to visit the islands are, however, in jeopardy. Two of the latter are scheduled for the near future. In 2013 a solo adventurer plans to sail to the islands and then kayak ashore.
A sudden, unexpected burst of high winds caused a controlled burn in the Croatan National Forest to get out of control and burn 21,000 acres this summer, according to a report on the fire. The U.S. Forest Service released its “Learning Analysis” of the fire that prompted road closures in the forest and affected the region for weeks with heavy smoke. The report shows that the controlled burn that began on June 14 to remove undergrowth and improve habitat for the red cockaded woodpecker in 1,567 acres went well at first. Subsequent burns on June 15 and June 16 also had no issues. However, the report cites a sudden burst of high winds during a 20- to 30-minute window around 2:30 p.m. on June 16 that sent embers across South Little Road outside of the controlled burn area as the reason behind the wildfire. The report shows that maximum winds had been up to only 15 mph, but that the wind suddenly picked up to 23 mph. “The winds that kicked up for that half an hour were what we suspect as contributing to us having a spot fire,” Barry Garten, acting district ranger for the Croatan National Forest, said on Thursday. “We did everything that we possibly could to make sure that everything was in good shape but when the wind comes up like that, a kind of anomaly of a wind that no one saw, it makes it difficult to keep everything in check.”
According to the report, a forest service helicopter spotted the new fire at about 3 p.m. June 16 and estimated its size at 50 to 75 acres. By 6 p.m., it had grown to 235 acres. Forestry officials opted not to fight the fire through the night of June 16, citing safety concerns, according to the report. By the morning of June 17, the fire had spread to 2,800 acres. The report lists that the controlled burn created a “smoke screen” that made detecting the wildfire difficult. The report also mentioned the importance of maintaining communication with the National Weather Service about weather conditions during controlled burns. The report, put together by eight forestry officials that were not directly connected to the fire, mentioned that the preparation, plan and practices established for controlled burns were followed and that officials took appropriate action once the wildfire started.
Colorado authorities said they were hoping to determine Wednesday how many buildings had been burned by a fast-moving wildfire that sprang up Tuesday afternoon. The blaze in south-central Custer County was quickly spread by 50 mph winds. The high winds prevented crews from fighting the fire from the air. Officials said the wildfire was ignited by a house fire in a subdivision south of Wetmore and that it had burned into “broken terrain” of relatively uninhabited areas of Custer and Pueblo counties. More than 300 homes have been evacuated, said Steve Segin of the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center. A separate wildfire in Estes Park has consumed 979 acres and was only partially contained, the National Park Service reported.
Sandy is expected to bring high winds, heavy rain and extreme tides to the eastern US seaboard
Hurricane Sandy has swept north over the Bahamas towards the US, having reportedly killed some 20 people as it tore through Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica.
Schools, offices, airports and bridges had closed across the Bahamas as residents stocked up on supplies.
Forecasters warn the storm could pose a major threat to the US East Coast.
Early on Friday, Sandy had dropped to a category one hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph (150 kph), said the US National Hurricane Center.
It was moving north at about 13 mph centred between Cat Island and Eleuthera in the central Bahamas about 185 miles south-east of Freeport on Grand Bahama Island.
Florida was already being lashed by heavy rain and high winds, with the coastal state being put under a tropical storm warning.
“We’re looking for tropical-storm force winds along the coast and then some very dangerous surf conditions over the next couple of days,” said James Franklin, the NHC’s chief hurricane forecaster.
“So we can’t really emphasise enough to keep people out of the water, the winds are going to be very strong.”
Some US broadcasters were already referring to Sandy as The Halloween Hurricane – or even Frankenstorm, due to the possibility of it blending with a winter storm over the United States – as it was expected to bring coastal flooding and power outages around All Hallow’s Eve – on 31 October.
The storm was expected to head north-west at a slower pace on Friday, getting gradually larger all the while.
Although it is forecast to weaken, the NHC said it would likely remain a hurricane during the next 48 hours.
Guantanamo battered
Earlier on Thursday Sandy had caused a storm surge leading to severe flooding along Cuba’s south-eastern coastline.
Civil emergency authorities revealed 11 people died as the storm lashed the communist island – nine of those in Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second-largest city.
TV footage of the popular tourist destination showed fallen trees, toppled houses and debris-choked streets.
More than 50,000 people had been moved from their homes in the city as a precaution.
Strong winds and rain also battered the US naval base and detention facility at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, confining some workers to their quarters, delaying a hearing and prompting a number of prisoners to be moved to safer accommodation.
Elsewhere, nine deaths were reported in Haiti – where much of the infrastructure remains in a very poor condition following a massive earthquake in 2010.
In Jamaica earlier, more than 1,000 people sought refuge in shelters as Sandy caused widespread power outages, flooded streets and damaged buildings.
One elderly Jamaican was killed when a boulder fell on his house.
A 48-hour curfew was imposed in the island’s major towns to deter the looting that had accompanied previous storms.
Forecasters warned the category one hurricane would grow in size
A man has been crushed to death by boulders as Hurricane Sandy sweeps across Jamaica, moving north to Cuba.
The category one hurricane struck the island on Wednesday, unleashing heavy rains and winds of 125km/h (80mph).
Schools and airports are closed, and a curfew has been imposed in major towns. A police officer was shot and injured by looters in the capital, Kingston.
A hurricane warning has also been issued in Cuba, where Sandy is expected to make its next landfall.
Moving at 22km/h, the hurricane struck Kingston on Wednesday evening and headed north, emerging off the island’s northern coast near the town of Port Antonio.
Sandy has prompted a hurricane watch in the Bahamas, while Florida has been placed on tropical storm watch.
“It’s a big storm and it’s going to grow in size after it leaves Cuba,” said forecaster Michael Brennan from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami.
Officer shot
The NHC predicts that Sandy could dump up to 50cm (inches) of rain across parts of Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and eastern Cuba.
“These rains may produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides, especially in areas of mountainous terrain,” the centre warned in a statement.
More than 1,000 Jamaicans have sought refuge in shelters, with residents reporting widespread power outages, flooded streets and damages to buildings.
An elderly man was crushed to death by stones that fell from a hillside as he tried to get into his house in a rural village, authorities said.
Much of the island’s infrastructure is in a poor state of repair, and a lack of effective planning regulation has resulted in homes being built close to embankments and gullies.
“A part of the roof of my veranda just went like that [and] at least five of my neighbours have lost their entire roofs,” a resident of the coastal city of Iter Boreale told Reuters news agency.
Kingston prepares for the arrival of the hurricane
The country’s sole energy provider, the Jamaica Public Service Company, said 70% of its customers were without electricity.
Authorities have imposed a 48-hour curfew in all major towns. But looters in Kingston ignored the order and wounded a senior officer in a shooting, police said.
In some southern Jamaican towns, crocodiles were caught in rushing floodwaters, which carried them out of mangrove thickets, the Associated Press reports.
One big croc was washed into a family’s front yard in the city of Portmore, according to the news agency.
While Jamaica was ravaged by winds from Hurricane Ivan in 2004, the eye of a hurricane hasn’t crossed the island since Hurricane Gilbert in 1988.
Almost 50 people were killed by that storm, and the then Prime Minister, Edward Seaga, described the hardest hit areas near where Gilbert made landfall as looking “like Hiroshima after the atom bomb”.
Hurricane Sandy, which closed businesses and airports on Jamaica as it moved north in the Caribbean, may strike the U.S. East Coast next week with the potential to cause millions of dollars in damage.
Sandy’s top winds reached 85 miles (137 kilometers) an hour as it moved off the north coast of Jamaica and headed toward Cuba, according to a U.S. National Hurricane Center advisory at 8 p.m. New York time.
“The table is set for some pretty major weather,” said Henry Margusity, an expert senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania. “Is it going to be an epic storm or is going to be just your typical nor’easter? We will have the answers next week.”
Sandy is expected to cross Cuba overnight and the Bahamas tomorrow, according to the hurricane center. The storm may then move parallel to the U.S. East Coast and either be pushed into the Atlantic Ocean or pulled into the coastline.
A computer model based in Europe took the storm up Delaware Bay, while another by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had Sandy curve into Portland, Maine, Margusity said. Both events would take place early next week.
The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency said residents should monitor the storm’s progress.
Weather Patterns
One of the major weather patterns determining where Sandy will end up is the North Atlantic Oscillation, which is currently blocking weather systems moving off the U.S. The system may turn Sandy into the U.S. coast, Margusity said.
A storm on that potential track may do millions in damage from downed trees, power outages and flooding, he said.
Before then, Sandy is forecast to cross eastern Cuba and the Bahamas, where hurricane warnings have been issued, according to the hurricane center.
As much as 20 inches (51 centimeters) of rain may fall on parts of Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, the center said. Three inches are possible in Florida.
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net
ORLANDO BARRIA / EPAA boy plays next to firefighters in a flooded street amidst garbage that was dragged by the heavy rains in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic after Hurricane Sandy hit the country on Oct. 25, 2012. About 8,755 people have been forced to leave their homes due to heavy rains caused by Hurricane Sandy.
(WASHINGTON) — Much of the U.S. East Coast has a good chance of getting blasted by gale-force winds, flooding, heavy rain and maybe even snow early next week by an unusual hybrid of hurricane and winter storm, federal and private forecasters say.
Though still projecting several days ahead of Halloween week, the computer models are spooking meteorologists. Government scientists said Wednesday the storm has a 70 percent chance of smacking the Northeast and mid-Atlantic.
Hurricane Sandy in the Caribbean, an early winter storm in the West, and a blast of arctic air from the North are predicted to collide, sloshing and parking over the country’s most populous coastal corridor starting Sunday. The worst of it should peak early Tuesday, but it will stretch into midweek, forecasters say.
“It’ll be a rough couple days from Hatteras up to Cape Cod,” said forecaster Jim Cisco of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration prediction center in College Park, Md. “We don’t have many modern precedents for what the models are suggesting.”
It is likely to hit during a full moon when tides are near their highest, increasing coastal flooding potential, NOAA forecasts warn. And with some trees still leafy and the potential for snow, power outages could last to Election Day, some meteorologists fear. They say it has all the earmarks of a billion-dollar storm.
Some have compared it to the so-called Perfect Storm that struck off the coast of New England in 1991, but Cisco said that one didn’t hit as populated an area and is not comparable to what the East Coast may be facing. Nor is it like last year’s Halloween storm, which was merely an early snowstorm in the Northeast.
At least 1,250 families evacuated to safer ground as flash flood, triggered by incessant rains, hit the town of Buug, Zamboanga Sibugay, a military officer said here. Two families were also forced to flee their homes due to landslides near the mining village of Lamare, Bayog town in the adjacent province of Zamboanga del Sur Thursday. No one was hurt or injured during the incident as the two families managed to flee before huge chunks of crumbling earth destroyed their houses made of light materials. Capt. Alberto Caber, Spokesman of the Army’s 1st Division, said ground troops and civilian disaster response teams reported that the flood water swelled in the Barangay Poblacion – the town center of Buug and in the nearby village of Bula-an, prompting residents residents to flee to higher ground. “The flood water reached as [high] as five feet, prompting the rescue and evacuation Thursday of the affected residents in the area,” Caber said. He said local disaster officials on the ground reported that the flood was triggered by continuous rains since Wednesday night.
Local weather bureau of Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) said the incessant rain was triggered by the monsoon and enhanced by the tail ends of tropical storm Ofel. Close to 6,250 persons were evacuated by the rescuing police and military troops to the nearby Villa Castor Elementary School. Caber said no casualty was reported while local authorities have yet to assess the damage brought by the flood. Maj. Gen. Ricardo Rainier Cruz III, 1st Army Division chief, directed the military units located in the coastal areas to closely monitor the water level. “As the need arises, [we will] undertake rescue and retrieval operations jointly with the PNP, local officials and civilian volunteers,” Cruz said.
Today
Flash Flood
Turkey
Province of Gaziantep, [Gaziantep-Sanl urfa Highway]
Three people were killed early on Thursday in the province of Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey when a passenger bus was drifted in flood. The passenger bus was among several vehicles which were drifted by flood along the Gaziantep-Sanl urfa Highway after flash floods hit the city, said the report, adding that several people were also missing. Search and rescue teams were dispatched for searching for the missing people since the early hours of the day, said the report. The floods came during the holidays of Eid al-Adha (Feast of Sacrifice), a four-day Islamic holiday. Thousands of people were jamming the roads during the Eid to visit relatives, with authorities calling on drivers to be careful while driving.
Petty traders preparing for Hari Raya Haji shoppers had their business interrupted by flash floods. Lemang stall operators along Jalan Damansara had to wait for the floods to subside after heavy rain at 5pm yesterday before reopening for business. The flash floods also caused a 3km-long jam on the Sprint Highway from Section 16. Muslims are celebrating Hari Raya Haji today amid a forecast of heavy rain by the Meteorology Department.
As such, it is disturbing news that the ground beneath unit 4 is sinking.
Specifically, Unit 4 sunk 36 inches right after the earthquake, and has sunk another 30 inchessince then.
Moreover, Unit 4 is sinking unevenly, and the building may begin tilting.
An international coalition of nuclear scientists and non-profit groups are calling on the U.N. to coordinate a multi-national effort to stabilize the fuel pools. And see this.
Given the precarious situation at Unit 4, it is urgent that the world community pool its scientific resources to come up with a fix.
LOS ANGELES—The operators of the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant say a hydrogen leak is the latest problem to plague the troubled plant, but it was small and presented no risk to workers or the public.Plant operator Southern California Edison said in a statement Monday that the leak was discovered in a non-nuclear part of the facility Sunday and has been reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Orange County Register (http://bit.ly/RSeFa9) reports that hydrogen is used to cool electrical generators at the plant, and a pipe fitting will be replaced because of the leak.
The plant located between Los Angeles and San Diego hasn’t produced power since Jan. 31 because of excessive wear in its reactors, and it’s not clear when, or if, it will return to service.
A contained radioactive water leak detected at EDF’s Flamanville nuclear plant did not cause any damage to the environment or harm any employees, France’s nuclear safety watchdog ASN and EDF said on Thursday. The nuclear safety agency said on its website EDF had detected a leak in a water pipe that feeds the plant’s reactor 1 primary circuit late on Wednesday. It was stopped and did not cause any radioactive contamination. The incident was defined as a grade 1 incident on the international nuclear event scale (INES), where the maximum 7 is the most severe. There were 66 Level 1 incidents in 2011 in France according to the ASN.
Health experts have confirmed an outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus in the western district of Kabale after samples from two relatives taken to the Uganda Virus Institute tested positive. Police Thursday stopped the burial of Boaz Turyahikayo a lecturer at Uganda Christian University and his sister Mildrid Asasira after it emerged that their family had lost four people from a mysterious disease in just a month. The other two are Lillian Banegura their mother and an elder brother Bernard Rutaro who passed away early this month. Dr. Patrick Tusiime the Kabale district health officer said a team from the Ministry of Health and World Health Organization is on its way to oversee the burial of the two victims. The Marburg virus was last reported in Uganda in 2008. It carries symptoms similar to those of Ebola that include fever, vomiting and internal bleeding.
Biohazard name:
Marburg virus disease (MVD)
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.
Measles hasn’t been seen in the Saskatoon Health Region in the past 15 years, but Thursday the region is reporting a case of the disease. Parents of infants should to check their children’s vaccination records, said Julie Kryzanowski, the region’s medical health officer. About one in four children younger than two are not properly covered by the vaccine because their immunizations are not up to date, she said. “We’re at about 76 per cent coverage rate for children under two years with two doses, so public health will be calling parents of children who are behind with their measles vaccine,” Kryzanowski said. “We’ve set up extra drop in clinics in Saskatoon and some of the surrounding communities of our health region starting Saturday and running through next week.” Measles can be quite serious. “If somebody isn’t protected by immunization and they are exposed to a case of measles, over 90 per cent will be infected,” Kryzanowski said. “Whenever we see a single case of measles we are concerned about the risk of an outbreak because measles is so contagious.” While rare, there are cases seen across the country. “Most of the cases of measles that we do see in Canada are sporadic cases and usually attributed to travel internationally or people coming from overseas to Canada and bringing the measles virus with them.” The case here has been linked to a case in Prince Albert reported last month.
Biohazard name:
Measles
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.
In this visualization, the Gulf Stream is seen as the dark red current coming into the Atlantic from the Gulf of Mexico.
By Miguel Llanos, NBC News
A changing Gulf Stream off the East Coast has destabilized frozen methane deposits trapped under nearly 4,000 square miles of seafloor, scientists reported Wednesday. And since methane is even more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas, the researchers said, any large-scale release could have significant climate impacts.
Using seismic records and ocean models, the team estimated that 2.5 gigatonnes of frozen methane hydrate are being destabilized and could separate into methane gas and water.
It is not clear if that is happening yet, but that methane gas would have the potential to rise up through the ocean and into the atmosphere, where it would add to the greenhouse gases warming Earth.
The 2.5 gigatonnes isn’t enough to trigger a sudden climate shift, but the team worries that other areas around the globe might be seeing a similar destabilization.
USGS
Methane hydrate samples
“It is unlikely that the western North Atlantic margin is the only area experiencing changing ocean currents,” they noted. “Our estimate … may therefore represent only a fraction of the methane hydrate currently destabilizing globally.”
The wider destabilization evidence, co-author Ben Phrampus told NBC News, includes data from the Arctic and Alaska’s northern slope in the Beaufort Sea.
And it’s not just under the seafloor that methane has been locked up. Some Arctic land area are seeing permafrost thaw, which could release methane stored there as well.
An expert who was not part of the study said it suggests that methane could become a bigger climate factor than carbon dioxide.
“We may approach a turning point” from a warming driven by man-made carbon dioxide to a warming driven by methane, Jurgen Mienert, the geology department chair at Norway’s University of Tromso, told NBC News.
“The interactions between the warming Arctic Ocean and the potentially huge methane-ice reservoirs beneath the Arctic Ocean floor point towards increasing instability,” he added.
For thousands of years, permafrost has trapped Siberia’s carbon-rich soil, a compost of Ice Age plant and animal remains. But global warming is melting the permafrost and exposing the soil, causing highly flammable methane to seep out. NBC’s Jim Maceda reports.
He also noted, however, that “one of the big unknowns is the magnitude of rapid methane escape from the ocean floor, and how natural filter systems react and affect the future ocean, its environment and the climate.”
Another unknown is what caused the Gulf Stream changes, said Phrampus, an earth sciences PhD candidate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
“Multiple events can play a factor, such as changing sea level or an addition of cold/fresh water from the north,” Phrampus said, adding he was hopeful that the changes might be “reversible under their own influence.”
But, he added, “we need more data to resolve this, and we are currently investigating this process.”
(Source: Assumption Office of Emergency Preparedness)
BAYOU CORNE, LA (WAFB) -
A sharp tremor was recorded by USGS monitors just after 9 p.m. Wednesday at the site of the giant Louisiana sinkhole in Assumption Parish.
The giant sinkhole appeared in August near the Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou areas.
The Assumption Parish Police Jury says the tremor was large enough that the body wave phases could easily be identified. A body wave travels through the interior of the earth.
The preliminary location of the tremor was just SE of Oxy #3 cavern at a depth of 500m. There is no additional information specific to this seismic activity at this time.
The sinkhole is now about four acres in size.
Residents were forced from their homes on August third, two months after the bayous started bubbling. They are still evacuated from their homes.
The Assumption Parish, LA sinkhole continues to grow. The ground opened up on August 3, 2012 and residents were evacuated from their homes. The sinkhole, or slurry, is consuming land and trees.
Today
Unusual geological event
USA
State of Louisiana, [Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou areas, Assumption Parish]
A sharp tremor was recorded by USGS monitors just after 9 p.m. Wednesday at the site of the giant Louisiana sinkhole in Assumption Parish. The giant sinkhole appeared in August near the Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou areas. The Assumption Parish Police Jury says the tremor was large enough that the body wave phases could easily be identified. A body wave travels through the interior of the earth. The preliminary location of the tremor was just SE of Oxy #3 cavern at a depth of 500m. There is no additional information specific to this seismic activity at this time. The sinkhole is now about four acres in size. Residents were forced from their homes on August third, two months after the bayous started bubbling. They are still evacuated from their homes.
Officials say nine people have been slightly hurt in a chemical tank leak that restricted outdoor activities in a Southeast Texas city. Emergency authorities in Texas City lifted the shelter-in-place order shortly after 5 a.m. Thursday in a storage tank spill involving hydrochloric acid. Diane Tracy with New Jersey-based Dallas Group of America Inc. says company officials are investigating Wednesday night’s accident. Tracy says one Dallas Group employee, four workers with a neighboring transportation company and four firefighters were injured. Tracy says all nine victims were treated and released from a hospital. Homeland Security coordinator Bruce Clawson says the victims suffered acid exposure in the leak around 11 p.m. Wednesday. A shelter-in-place order was issued just before midnight Wednesday.
25.10.2012
HAZMAT
USA
State of California, Santa Monica [Lincoln and Ocean Park boulevards]
Fire crews have blocked off the parking lot outside Albertson’s grocery store in Santa Monica while a hazardous materials team investigates a low-level radioactive substance which was found inside a trash bin close by. The material was discovered Wednesday morning near the store on Lincoln and Ocean Park boulevards, according to reports. The store has not been evacuated but the parking lot has been blocked off. “We do have firefighters inside the Albertson’s doing radiation monitoring,” Santa Monica Fire Department Chief Mark Bridges told KNX Newsradio. “They are not getting any radiation readings inside the store, but outside we’re getting above-normal readings.” Bridges also confirmed that “low-level radioactive material”, thought to be medical waste, was found in a trash bin.
Earthquake swarms and a region-wide rotten egg smell recently reminded Southern California residents they live next to an active volcano field, tiny though it may be. At the time, scientists said the phenomena did not reflect changes in the magma chamber below the Salton Sea. But now, researchers may need to revise estimates of the potential hazard posed by the Salton Buttes – five volcanoes at the lake’s southern tip. The buttes last erupted between 940 and 0 B.C., not 30,000 years ago, as previously thought, a new study detailed online Oct. 15 in the journal Geology reports. The new age – which makes these some of California’s youngest volcanoes – pushes the volcanic quintuplets into active status. The California Volcano Observatory, launched in February by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), already lists the area as a high threat for future blasts. “The USGS is starting to monitor all potentially active volcanoes in California, which includes the Salton Buttes,” said study author Axel Schmitt, a geochronologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “With our results, I think this will further enhance the need to look into the system,” Schmitt told OurAmazingPlanet. Schmitt and his colleagues dated zircon crystals in the hardened lava of the buttes with a relatively new technique, a “helium clock” that starts ticking once the minerals begin cooling at the surface.
The National Science Foundation’s EarthScope project funds an extensive seismic imaging project in the Salton Sea that may soon reveal more information about what’s happening deep underground. “We’ll be looking with great interest to see what we can tell from the Salton Seismic Imaging Project,” said Joann Stock, a Caltech professor and an expert on the region’s volcanic hazards who was not involved in the new study. “I think (Schmitt’s study) is a great contribution,” she said. “It’s an area where we should be concerned. We know that there’s a lot of hot stuff down there,” she told OurAmazingPlanet. In August, an earthquake swarm shook the nearby town of Brawley. The USGS attributed the temblors to faults in the Brawley Seismic Zone. In September, a sulfurous stench emanated from the Salton Sea and wafted across the Inland Empire. The odor was tentatively linked to a fish die-off, but could also have been caused by volcanic gases, Stock said.
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J. Scott Applewhite / AP
Mario Tosti / AFP – Getty Images
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MessageToEagle.com – Based on current models, galaxies grow by consuming other star systems and the so-called galactic cannibalism process is widespread in the universe.
MessageToEagle.com – ‘Briz-M’, a Russian rocket recently exploded into some 500 fragments. Most of the debris is now, floating in low Earth orbit.
Sandy is expected to bring high winds, heavy rain and extreme tides to the eastern US seaboard
Kingston prepares for the arrival of the hurricane
NOAA
USGS
