Earthquakes
EMSC Oaxaca, Mexico
Mar 23 23:47 PM
4.7 33.0 MAP
GEOFON Near Coast Of Guerrero, Mexico
Mar 23 23:47 PM
4.6 14.0 MAP
USGS Oaxaca, Mexico
Mar 23 23:47 PM
4.6 10.1 MAP
EMSC Offshore Guerrero, Mexico
Mar 23 23:37 PM
4.6 10.0 MAP
USGS Offshore Guerrero, Mexico
Mar 23 23:37 PM
4.6 10.0 MAP
GEOFON Off Coast Of Guerrero, Mexico
Mar 23 23:37 PM
4.4 10.0 MAP
EMSC South Sandwich Islands Region
Mar 23 21:30 PM
4.8 55.0 MAP
USGS South Sandwich Islands Region
Mar 23 21:30 PM
4.8 54.7 MAP
EMSC Oaxaca, Mexico
Mar 23 17:19 PM
4.4 20.0 MAP
USGS Oaxaca, Mexico
Mar 23 17:19 PM
4.4 20.0 MAP
USGS Oaxaca, Mexico
Mar 23 17:13 PM
4.6 20.5 MAP
EMSC Oaxaca, Mexico
Mar 23 17:13 PM
4.6 20.0 MAP
EMSC Eastern Turkey
Mar 23 15:43 PM
4.4 6.0 MAP
EMSC Vanuatu
Mar 23 15:34 PM
5.0 10.0 MAP
USGS Vanuatu
Mar 23 15:34 PM
4.9 10.0 MAP
USGS Vanuatu
Mar 23 15:04 PM
4.9 49.4 MAP
GEOFON Vanuatu Islands
Mar 23 15:04 PM
4.8 10.0 MAP
EMSC Vanuatu
Mar 23 15:04 PM
5.0 10.0 MAP
GEOFON Tonga Islands
Mar 23 14:35 PM
5.0 133.0 MAP
EMSC Tonga
Mar 23 14:35 PM
4.9 122.0 MAP
USGS Tonga
Mar 23 14:35 PM
4.8 119.5 MAP
EMSC San Juan, Argentina
Mar 23 09:25 AM
4.4 102.0 MAP
USGS San Juan, Argentina
Mar 23 09:25 AM
4.4 101.9 MAP
GEOFON South Australia
Mar 23 09:25 AM
5.3 10.0 MAP
USGS South Australia
Mar 23 09:25 AM
5.6 10.7 MAP
EMSC South Australia
Mar 23 09:25 AM
5.5 2.0 MAP
EMSC Hindu Kush Region, Afghanistan
Mar 23 07:48 AM
USGS Hindu Kush Region, Afghanistan
Mar 23 07:48 AM
4.5 217.5 MAP
USGS Solomon Islands
Mar 23 07:02 AM
4.7 136.9 MAP
EMSC Solomon Islands
Mar 23 07:02 AM
4.8 111.0 MAP
Magnitude-4.9 earthquake jolts islands
No tsunami generated from Saturday morning
HONOLULU
Many people from the Big Island to Oahu felt a magnitude 4.9 earthquake Saturday morning.
The quake struck a little after 10:45 a.m., centered just west of Honomu in East Hawaii, at a depth of 27 miles.
There are no reports of major damage or injuries.
Scientists say the earthquake was too small to generate a tsunami and the weight of the Big Island settling is the likely cause.
Geologists at the Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory say there have been no aftershocks so far, and there’s been no change in the ongoing eruption at Kilauea Volcano.
Earthquake felt in Gozo
A magnitude 3.2 earthquake was registered in Libyan waters at 10.28am yesterday, and felt in Gozo.
According to the University of Malta Seismic Monitoring and Research Unit, its epicentre was 177km southwest of Malta. Other seismic activity was recorded in Crete, on Thursday.
The Italian website Meteoweb.eu, also reported the tremor, although the information it gave was different to that officially issued. It said the earthquake’s epicentre was in Gozo and that it had a magnitude of 2.9 on the Richter Scale.
According to the same website, the tremor was felt in Gozo. No damage was caused.
The last significant seismic activity in Malta, was recorded over the weekend of 23 and 24 April, last year.
A series of five earth tremors, with the first occurring at around midnight, were felt in various localities in Malta and people reported objects moving on the shelves.
The tremors had a magnitude of between 2.5 and 4.0.
The location of yesterday’s earthquake may be viewed on the website http://www.phys.um.edu.mt/seismic, where residents may also fill in the online questionnaire if they felt any shaking.
http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=141674
Tornadoes cause one death, damage in half dozen states
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Tornadoes touched down in a half-dozen states on Friday, killing one woman whose mobile home was flipped by a twister and causing damage to homes and businesses, authorities said.
The 60-year-old woman died in Jefferson County, Illinois, when a suspected tornado flipped her mobile home and blew it across a road into a farm field, said county coroner Eddie Joe Marks.
There was at least one other person injured in the county, located in the southern tip of Illinois.
“A young boy had just stepped into his home when the storm hit. He got away with minor scrapes and bruises but went to the hospital,” Marks said.
The tornadoes appeared to be smaller and touched down only briefly as compared to a deadly tornado outbreak in the region early this month, authorities said.
A few homes sustained damage from a suspected tornado in Fern Creek, Kentucky, a town southeast of Louisville, emergency management official Monica French said.
In Alabama, a suspected tornado damaged three homes and some chicken houses in the town of Troy, emergency management spokeswoman Yasamie August said.
Georgia, Indiana, and Missouri also had tornadoes touch down, with no reports of injuries.
“There have been a lot of tornado reports but they’ve all been brief touchdowns or rope-like tornadoes, not large tornadoes,” said Steve Weiss of the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.
Tornadoes have caused 55 U.S. deaths so far this year, most of them on February 29 and March 2 when swarms of tornadoes wreaked havoc across the Midwest and the South.
Tornadoes were blamed for 550 deaths in the United States last year, the deadliest year in nearly a century, according to the Weather Service.
The storm front bringing rain and severe weather to the nation’s midsection broke a spell of record-breaking, summer-like temperatures.
Among the southern Illinois towns in the severe weather zone that was pelted by hail on Friday was Harrisburg, where seven people were killed when a powerful tornado February 29 flattened part of the town.
(Reporting By Andrew Stern; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Greg McCune)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-weather-tornadoesbre82m17h-20120323,0,6553615.story
Moderate 5.1 earthquake rumbles along the outskirts of Santiago, Chile
by The Extinction Protocol
March 23, 2012 – CHILE – A moderate earthquake of 5.3 magnitude (5.1 USGS) on the Richter scale near Santiago on Saturday morning in the central area of the country, according to the Seismological Service of the University of Chile. The epicenter of the quake, which occurred at 4:28 am was located 43 kilometers northeast of the town of Casablanca, on the border regions of Valparaiso and Santiago, at a depth of 68.9 kilometers. It was in the capital and the fifth region where the earthquake was felt more strongly. According to reports received by the National Bureau of Emegencia (Onemi), the quake reached an intensity of V degrees on the Mercalli scale in Santiago, the Andes, Talagante, Tiltil, Valparaiso, Viña del Mar, Quintero, San Antonio, San Felipe, and German Village. V grades also recorded in Los Vilos, in the Coquimbo Region. In the Region of O’Higgins, meanwhile, the earthquake was felt with a force of IV degrees in Rancagua and III degrees on Christmas, Pichilemu, San Fernando and Santa Cruz. In the El Maule reached II degrees in Curicó and Order. It reached in the Fourth Region II degrees in La Serena. The Onemi received no reports of damage or injured as a result of the earthquake. –El Mostrador (translated)
Storms, Flooding, Landslides
Early storms fuel awareness as spring begins
The Associated Press
PADUCAH, Ky. — Recent destructive storms in Kentucky may help the public be more aware of the potential threat of severe weather as spring begins.
National Weather Service meteorologist Christine Wielgos told The Paducah Sun ( http://bit.ly/FQpaa9) that bad storms make people more aware of risks posed by the weather.
She said she doesn’t believe frequent alerts about possible severe storms desensitize people.
“People are more aware of risks because of some bad storms happening here and in their backyards,” Wielgos said. “The storms’ intensity and frequency are increasing, and people know it.”
McCracken County emergency management director Paul Carter said he thought awareness of storm danger had increased in western Kentucky since a tornado hit in 2011 in nearby Joplin, Mo., and killed 160 people.
“There were lessons learned,” Carter said. “We try to stay off the sirens to avoid complacency. We want to make sure there is an acute threat before we start setting off the sirens around the county. So far, that has been very successful.”
Carter said bad weather is always a possibility – twisters were spotted last week in western McCracken County and there was widespread damage in 2007 when high winds from the remnants of Hurricane Ike blew through the area.
He said when bad weather strikes, people should “use common sense. If there is a possibility of a bad storm, pay attention to all media and rely on warnings.”
Wielgos recommended that residents get weather radios and that will give them warnings for counties to the west. Storms most often move from west to east in the area, she said.
Brad Jackson, a Radio Shack manager at Kentucky Oaks Mall, says weather radios are selling better this year than they before spring last year.
“Any time there’s bad weather, weather radios become the No. 1 purchase,” Jackson said. “Maybe we’re selling more this year compared to last because last spring wasn’t as turbulent. We’re definitely selling more weather-related supplies like batteries, flashlights, car chargers for phones. People want to be safe, and after the ice storm two years ago, maybe more people are taking precautions.”
http://www.kentucky.com/2012/03/24/2124234/early-storms-fuel-awareness-of.html#storylink=cpy
Storms in US kill 31, death toll could rise
HENRYVILLE, Indiana: A string of violent storms from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes scratched away small towns and cut off rural communities as an early season tornado outbreak killed more than 30 people, and the death toll rose as daylight broke on Saturday’s search for survivors.
Massive thunderstorms, predicted by forecasters for days, threw off dozens of tornadoes, hitting the states of Kentucky and Indiana particularly hard. Twisters that crushed entire blocks of homes knocked out cellphones and landlines alike, ripped power lines from broken poles and tossed cars, school buses and tractor-trailers onto roadways made impassable by debris.
Weather that put millions of people at risk Friday killed 31, but both the scale of the devastation and the breadth of the storms made an immediate assessment of the havoc’s full extent all but impossible.
In Kentucky, the National Guard and state police headed out to search wreckage for an unknown number of missing. In Indiana, authorities searched dark county roads connecting rural communities that officials said “are completely gone.”
Susie Renner, 54, said she saw two tornadoes barreling down on the town of Henryville, Kentucky, within minutes of each other. The first was brown from being filled with debris; the second was black.
“I’m a storm chaser,” Renner said, “and I have never been this frightened before.”
Friday’s outbreak came two days after an earlier round of storms killed 13 people in the Midwest and South, and forecasters at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center had said the day would be one of a handful this year that warranted its highest risk level.
By 10 p.m., the weather service had issued 269 tornado warnings. Only 189 warnings were issued in all of February.
A total of 14 people were reported killed in Indiana. Tony Williams, owner of the Chelsea General Store in the town of Chelsea said a child and mother were huddled in a basement when the storm hit and sucked the 4-year-old out her hands. The mother survived, but her 70-year-old grandparents were upstairs; both died.
Two people also died further north in the town of Holton, where it appeared a tornado cut a diagonal swath down the town’s tiny main drag, demolishing a cinderblock gas station in one spot and leaving a tiny white church intact down the road. Officials also confirmed seven other deaths.
The death toll rose to at least 14 in Kentucky. In West Liberty, Stephen Burton heard the twister coming and pulled his 23-year-old daughter to safety, just before the tornado destroyed the second story of the family’s home.
“I just held onto her and I felt like I was getting sand-blasted on my back,” Burton said.
Kentucky State Police in Morehead said three people were dead in West Liberty and at least 75 were injured.
“All of the downtown area was just devastated,” he said. Samu said West Liberty’s hospital was damaged in the storm and some patients were being transferred to area hospitals.
Officials were having difficulty getting into the area to confirm the damage.
“We can’t even get into some of these counties,” said Kentucky Emergency Management spokesman Buddy Rogers. “The power is out, phones are out, roads are blocked and now it’s dark, which complicates things.”
http://arabnews.com/world/article582542.ece
More Storms Slam Louisville Friday Afternoon
A line of storms that moved through the Louisville area brought strong winds that caused damaged to homes and knocked out power to about 12,000 homes and businesses.
A line of storms that moved through the Louisville area brought strong winds that caused damaged to homes and knocked out power to about 12,000 homes and businesses.
The National Weather Service is investigating whether a tornado touched down Friday afternoon south of Louisville
Louisville Gas & Electric reported power out in multiple areas around Jefferson County.
Multiple television stations in Louisville showed damage to homes, including parts of roofs torn away, but officials reported no injuries.
Jefferson County Public Schools spokeswoman said students were delayed being dismissed while tornado warnings were in effect.
Oldham County elementary school students were being held at their schools.
The Shelby County schools released students 15 minutes late. The district said parents could expect students to arrive home 30 to 40 minutes late.
http://www.wbko.com/news/headlines/More_Storms_Slam_Louisville_Friday_Afternoon_144078346.html
Twenty Killed in Ecuador Floods
Heavy rains in Ecuador trigger floods that killed 20 people and forced thousands from homes. (Video: Reuters)
Solar Activity
Solar Flares Likely Knocked Military Satellites Offline
Solar storms earlier this month may have caused military satellites to reboot
By Jason Koebler
Despite being made to withstand radiation emitted from solar flares, a storm caused by the sun earlier this month may have temporarily knocked American military satellites offline, according to General William Shelton, head of the Air Force’s Space Command.
The energy particles associated with two solar storms March 9 and 10 may have caused what are called “single event upsets” on military satellites. “The timing is such that we say this was likely due to [solar radiation],” Shelton told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast Thursday. Although it’s impossible to tell exactly what caused the events—essentially a temporary reboot of satellite instrumentation software—solar storms are known to wreak havoc on satellites.
“We’re very concerned about solar activity,” he said. Military satellites are “hardened [to withstand radiation], but maybe in some cases, not every part is as hard as we would like it to be.”
That’s because building a satellite to withstand solar storms is costly, which is why NASA says commercial satellites are often most vulnerable. Yihua Zheng, head of NASA’s Space Weather Services at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., says each satellite is built to withstand a different level of radiation, and that there’s a “cost-benefit analysis” to radiation hardening during a satellite’s development. Most mission-critical military satellites are built to sustain short bursts of solar radiation. Satellites “can reset and come back online.” But if the solar storm is lengthy, the damage could be severe enough that the satellite’s software won’t be able to reboot.
“Most of the satellites are built for this,” she says. “They should be OK.”
In recent years, the military has become more reliant on satellites operated by the Air Force’s Space Command, Shelton said. “Space capability is integral to everything [the military does],” he said, “from GPS targeting and communications to incoming missile warnings for our troops overseas.”
2MIN News Mar23: US Tremors/Serious Weather, Solar Activity
400 Chernobyls: Solar Flares, Electromagnetic Pulses and Nuclear Armageddon
By Matthew Stein, Truthout | News Analysis
There are nearly 450 nuclear reactors in the world, with hundreds more being planned or under construction. There are 104 of these reactors in the United States and 195 in Europe. Imagine what havoc it would wreak on our civilization and the planet’s ecosystems if we were to suddenly witness not just one or two nuclear meltdowns, but 400 or more! How likely is it that our world might experience an event that could ultimately cause hundreds of reactors to fail and melt down at approximately the same time? I venture to say that, unless we take significant protective measures, this apocalyptic scenario is not only possible, but probable.
Consider the ongoing problems caused by three reactor core meltdowns, explosions and breached containment vessels at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi facility and the subsequent health and environmental issues. Consider the millions of innocent victims who have already died or continue to suffer from horrific radiation-related health problems (“Chernobyl AIDS,” epidemic cancers, chronic fatigue, etcetera) resulting from the Chernobyl reactor explosions, fires and fallout. If just two serious nuclear disasters, spaced 25 years apart, could cause such horrendous environmental catastrophes, it is hard to imagine how we could ever hope to recover from hundreds of similar nuclear incidents occurring simultaneously across the planet. Since more than one-third of all Americans live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant, this is a serious issue that should be given top priority.[1]……
