“The quake was felt here, but it was not strong enough to do any serious damage on the island. We have not received any requests for help,” a duty officer at the Ponta Delgada fire brigade said.
Posted by Jason Samenow on March 28, 2013 at 10:34 pm
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a storm this big before.
(NASA)
The storm shown here stretches west to east from Newfoundland to Portugal. Its southern tail (cold front) extends into the Caribbean and the north side of its comma head touches southern Greenland.
Not only is it big, but it’s also super intense – comparable to many category 3 hurricanes. The storm’s central pressure, as analyzed by the Ocean Prediction Center, is 953 mb. Estimated peak wave heights are around 25-30 feet.
(Ocean Prediction Center)
The storm is forecast to remain more or less stationary over the next few days before substantially weakening and then eventually drifting into western Europe in about a week as a rather ordinary weather system.
Note to Washingtonians: this is the same storm that blanketed the region with 1-4 inches of snow Monday. It’s grown into a monster from humble beginnings. The storm’s giant circulation has drawn down the cold and windy conditions we’ve had since it passed.
Jason Samenow is the Capital Weather Gang’s chief meteorologist and serves as the Washington Post’s Weather Editor. He earned BA and MS degrees in atmospheric science from the University of Virginia and University of Wisconsin-Madison.
There is currently a massive storm churning over the Atlantic that spans the entire ocean basin, stretching all the way from Canada to Europe, and from Greenland to the Caribbean.
It’s the same weather system that brought a massive spring blizzard to much of the United States and Canada earlier this week (on Tuesday (March 26), 44 of 50 states had some snow on the ground), and which has now ballooned in size, according to Jason Samenow, chief meteorologist with the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang.
Robert Oszajca, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service’s Ocean Prediction Center, explained that the storm got this big by merging with several low-pressure systems that were hanging out over the Atlantic Ocean. The merging weather systems gave it more power, which was accentuated by a gradient between warm moisture from the southeast, delivered by the Gulf Stream, and frigid air from the north. This intensified the storm, causing it to spin, elongate and grow in size, Oszajca told OurAmazingPlanet.
Normally, the system would have drifted into Europe several days ago. However, a high-pressure system over Greenland blocked the low-pressure system’s advance, which allowed it to strengthen further, fed by cold air from the north. This created winds (which move from high pressure to low pressure) up to 75 mph (120 km/h), equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane, Oszajca said.
In San Roque (Cádiz), the force of the wind, which the City Hall has described as a “little tornado”, has caused damage in the neighborhood of the San Roque station early this morning. Firefighters and local police have had to remove debris to avoid accidents.
…
17.11.2012
Extreme Weather
Australia
State of New South Wales, [Lismore, Tenterfield, Inverell, Ballina, Casino and Kyogle]
A severe weather warning has been issued for much of northern NSW with 90-kilometres-an-hour winds and marble-sized hailstones recorded on the coast. The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) issued the warning just after 8pm (AEDT) on Saturday for people living in the Northern Rivers, Northern Tablelands and parts of the North West Slopes and Plains. The bureau warned that “severe thunderstorms” were forecast to produce large hailstones and heavy rainfall, leading to flash flooding and damaging winds in the area over several hours. Locations which may be affected include Lismore, Tenterfield, Inverell, Ballina, Casino and Kyogle. At 8pm, gusts reaching 90km/h were recorded in Woodburn near the Queensland coast with marble-sized hail also lashing the region. The wild weather was predicted to move northeast towards Ballina before moving out to sea later on Saturday night.
The National Authority for Civil Protection (ANPC) confirm the occurrence of two phenomena very strong winds, but can not yet characterize these phenomena, which have caused dozens of wounded, some of them severe. The ANPC explained to CM Journal that between 13h00 and 13h30 on Friday strong winds ravaged Silves and Lagoa causing dozens of wounded, some in critical condition. The damages are huge in dozens of vehicles, registering falling trees, shingles flew, fallen walls and damages inside homes. The wind afected a campers field in Silves, near the municipal swimming pools. Some of the caravans had affected people inside who were injured. The coverage of countertops Football Stadium of Silves flew with the wind strength. In Lagoa in several buildings housing the wind broke the windows and destroyed the interior of the houses. Through the streets sees overturned cars, fallen trees, roofs raised, in a scene of destruction. Authorities are still on the ground, to take stock of possible destruction, and therefore not yet possible to come up with a concrete number of injured and the severity of these injuries.
Trees were uprooted, balconies, roof tiles and framework ripped off, windows shattered and vehicles tossed for metres. Many local residents were affected by the freak incident in which the entire neighbourhood was reduced to tatters and people were seriously injured. Panicking parents rushed to a nearby-by school to collect their children who were in class when the tornado hit, and billboards on a nearby roundabout were mangled. The exact extent of the damage and seriousness of the injuries is still being calculated but initial assessments suggest thirteen people were injured, three of whom seriously. The State Secretary for Welfare and Social Security has confirmed that four families, a total of eleven people, six of whom minors, need to be rehomed. Abel Silva, born and raised in Lagoa, saw his ground-floor apartment destroyed in the terrifying incident which last merely minutes.
“It was overwhelming. All of a sudden my windows started shaking, the ground was trembling. I tried to hold the windows but I saw they were going to blow I so I threw myself to the side. The entire house has been destroyed. I’ve never seen anything like this before.” People in a nearby cafe said: “The sky turned pitch black, the wind became so dense you could see it, and it seemed like everything was shaking. The windows were rattling. A metal sheet from a nearby building site was ripped up. We were told to get back and stand away from the windows. The power went out. It was like something from a movie.” GNR police confirmed that there were serious injuries and many families have been left temporarily homeless. Emergency services were drafted in from neighbouring districts to try to bring the pandemonium under control. The National Civil Protection Authority (ANPC) dispatched emergency services to Lagoa and Silves from as far away as Beja, Setatildebal and Avora. Bad weather including strong winds, thunder and lightening tormented the Algarve today on Friday. There was a power shortage in Lagos caused by persistent stormy weather, the village of Ferragudo and city of Albufeira flooded, and damage was caused to several locations across the region.
Residents in Silves told The Portugal News “it looks like a bomb has hit it.” Eyewitness reports said a glass dome that once sat on top of the Town Hall shattered. In Alvor a roof was ripped off a school and a cafe-kiosk in the heart of the village was completely removed from its spot. Around 226 men and women and 68 vehicles were sent to the cities. Information from the ANPC website confirms 13 people were injured as a result of the tornado and no deaths were caused. An emergency rescue helicopter was also dispatched at 2.55pm but later retracted. The Weather Institute (IM) placed the Algarve under orange alert – a warning of moderate to high risk meteorological situation. Heavy downpours accompanied by strong winds and thunder were predicted, but thankfully proved unfounded.
The National Authority for Civil Protection (ANPC) confirm the occurrence of two phenomena very strong winds, but can not yet characterize these phenomena, which have caused dozens of wounded, some of them severe. The ANPC explained to CM Journal that between 13h00 and 13h30 on Friday strong winds ravaged Silves and Lagoa causing dozens of wounded, some in critical condition. The damages are huge in dozens of vehicles, registering falling trees, shingles flew, fallen walls and damages inside homes. The wind afected a campers field in Silves, near the municipal swimming pools. Some of the caravans had affected people inside who were injured. The coverage of countertops Football Stadium of Silves flew with the wind strength. In Lagoa in several buildings housing the wind broke the windows and destroyed the interior of the houses. Through the streets sees overturned cars, fallen trees, roofs raised, in a scene of destruction. Authorities are still on the ground, to take stock of possible destruction, and therefore not yet possible to come up with a concrete number of injured and the severity of these injuries.
Trees were uprooted, balconies, roof tiles and framework ripped off, windows shattered and vehicles tossed for metres. Many local residents were affected by the freak incident in which the entire neighbourhood was reduced to tatters and people were seriously injured. Panicking parents rushed to a nearby-by school to collect their children who were in class when the tornado hit, and billboards on a nearby roundabout were mangled. The exact extent of the damage and seriousness of the injuries is still being calculated but initial assessments suggest thirteen people were injured, three of whom seriously. The State Secretary for Welfare and Social Security has confirmed that four families, a total of eleven people, six of whom minors, need to be rehomed. Abel Silva, born and raised in Lagoa, saw his ground-floor apartment destroyed in the terrifying incident which last merely minutes.”It was overwhelming. All of a sudden my windows started shaking, the ground was trembling. I tried to hold the windows but I saw they were going to blow I so I threw myself to the side. The entire house has been destroyed. I’ve never seen anything like this before.” People in a nearby cafe said: “The sky turned pitch black, the wind became so dense you could see it, and it seemed like everything was shaking. The windows were rattling. A metal sheet from a nearby building site was ripped up. We were told to get back and stand away from the windows. The power went out. It was like something from a movie.” GNR police confirmed that there were serious injuries and many families have been left temporarily homeless. Emergency services were drafted in from neighbouring districts to try to bring the pandemonium under control. The National Civil Protection Authority (ANPC) dispatched emergency services to Lagoa and Silves from as far away as Beja, Setatildebal and Avora. Bad weather including strong winds, thunder and lightening tormented the Algarve today on Friday. There was a power shortage in Lagos caused by persistent stormy weather, the village of Ferragudo and city of Albufeira flooded, and damage was caused to several locations across the region.
Residents in Silves told The Portugal News “it looks like a bomb has hit it.” Eyewitness reports said a glass dome that once sat on top of the Town Hall shattered. In Alvor a roof was ripped off a school and a cafe-kiosk in the heart of the village was completely removed from its spot. Around 226 men and women and 68 vehicles were sent to the cities. Information from the ANPC website confirms 13 people were injured as a result of the tornado and no deaths were caused. An emergency rescue helicopter was also dispatched at 2.55pm but later retracted. The Weather Institute (IM) placed the Algarve under orange alert – a warning of moderate to high risk meteorological situation. Heavy downpours accompanied by strong winds and thunder were predicted, but thankfully proved unfounded.
The eurozone’s overall economy shrank by 0.1 percent compared to the previous three months, the bloc’s statistical office (Eurostat) reported on Thursday (15 November). The 17-nation area had already slipped into recession over the summer, with Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Cyprus and the Netherlands continuing the negative trend.
France rebounded to 0.2 percent growth compared to stagnation and recession in the previous quarters, and so did Finland and Estonia. The tiny Baltic state boasted a 1.7 percent growth rate, the highest in the eurozone.
Germany’s economy meanwhile has slowed from 0.5 percent growth in the first quarter to 0.3 percent in the second and 0.2 in the third, with the country’s central bank warning of stagnation and even recession in the months to come.
Speaking at an economics forum in Berlin on Thursday, German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble made the case for “sustainable growth” – meaning modest growth rates not based on real estate bubbles or consumer credit.
“We must strive to become a stability union, where fiscal rules are respected” Schaeuble said, one day after massive protests and general strikes took place in Portugal, Italy, Spain, Greece and Belgium against what is seen as a German-led austerity drive.
“I have great respect for the demonstrations in these countries,” the German minister said. But he continued to make the case for structural reforms to make an ageing and costly Europe more competitive in relation to China and India.
But the centre-right coalition itself has come under fire from the opposition for allegedly “wasting money on pre-election gifts” and doing the opposite what it is preaching to bailed out countries by passing a controversial subsidy for parents who stay at home to raise their children.
Private indebtedness is meanwhile also going up in Germany, with official figures showing that one in ten Germans is unable to pay their debt – a three-percent increase compared to last year.
Speaking at the same forum, President Joachim Gauck said Germans would be ill-advised to think the worst is over. Despite encouraging growth and employment rates, “we can feel it everywhere, something is deeply wrong,” he said.
Changing rules and regulation to stem financial speculation and abuse is a good thing, Gauck said. “But just as urgent is to check our own inner beliefs, our own motives and attitudes. This process seems to be halted,” he said.
An earthquake in Southern Maine reverberated all the way to the Boston metropolitan area at 7:12 p.m. Tuesday evening.
“Notice how it seemed to kind of ‘roll’ through, shaking momentarily but kind of coming in a wave,” New England Sports Network, based in Boston, reported of feeling the quake.
Registering at a 4.5 magnitude, the temblor was centered 3.7 miles Maine’s Lake Arrowhead, Reuters reported.
There were no reported injuries or damage.
Maine has experienced over 80 earthquakes since 1997, according to the state’s Bureau of Geology. The state’s most serious earthquake was in 1904. It registered as a 5.1 on the Richter scale, and was felt through most of New England and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) – An earthquake that hit southern Maine Tuesday night rattled nearby New England states as far as Connecticut, including the Boston area, but caused no injuries or apparent damage.
The U.S. Geological Survey at first estimated the 7:12 p.m. quake as a 4.6 magnitude, but later downgraded that to 4.0. The epicenter, about 3 miles west of Hollis Center, Maine, is about 3 miles deep. That location is about 20 miles west of Portland.
About 10 miles away in Waterboro, about 20 customers and staff at Waterboro House of Pizza ran outside when they heard a loud bang and the building shook.
“It was loudest bang you ever heard in your life. We actually thought it was an explosion of some type,” said owner Jessica Hill. “The back door and door to the basement blew open.”
In the same town, employees at the Milk Room said towels and other items started falling off shelves.
“I heard a bang, and it felt like the building was just shaking it went on for three seconds and then it started shaking again,” said George Moutsos, an employee.
In nearby Saco, Sue Hadiaris said, “The whole house shook. It felt like a train was coming right through the house. It was very unnerving because you could feel the floor shaking. There was a queasy feeling.”
Afterward, Hadiaris called her 15-year-old niece in Falmouth to make sure she was safe. “She said, `We can cross that off our bucket list. We’ve lived through an earthquake,”‘ Hadiaris said.
Lynette Miller, a spokeswoman for the Maine Emergency Management Agency, said her dogs started barking several seconds before the quake. “It was several seconds of good shaking but nothing falling down,” Miller said from her home in Readfield, about 60 miles north of Portland.
The Seabrook Station nuclear plant, about 63 miles away in New Hampshire, declared an unusual event — the lowest of four emergency classifications, but said it was not affected. The plant has been offline for refueling.
“There has been no impact at all to the plant from the earthquake and our refueling maintenance activities have not been affected,” said Alan Griffith, spokesman for Next EnergyEra Seabrook Station.
Jim Van Dongen, public information officer for the New Hampshire Department of Safety said New Hampshire 911 got about 1,000 calls in the first hour after the quake, but they later dropped off. He said no major damage was reported.
Brief, but noticeable shaking was felt in downtown Boston and the surrounding area.
In Melrose, just north of Boston, Peter Ward said the shaking he felt seemed to last about four seconds. “It felt like a big gust of wind shaking the house. I don’t want to overstate it, but the glass did rattle a little,” he said.
Former Maine resident Victoria Brett, who also has lived in San Francisco, felt the quake in Northampton, Mass.
“At first, it felt like something slowly wiggling the outside walls of the house. Then the table and floor started vibrating. I looked around and the water in the glass flower vase looked like a wave pool. I knew right away it was an earthquake,” she said.
Earthquakes are rare in New England but they’re not unheard of. In 2006 there was a series of earthquakes around Maine’s Acadia National Park, including one with a magnitude of 4.2 that caused boulders to fall from ledges onto Acadia National Park’s loop road. One of the park’s trails was closed for three years because of damage from the quake.
The strongest earthquake recorded in Maine occurred in 1904 in the Eastport area, near the state’s eastern border with Canada, according the Weston Observatory at Boston College. With a magnitude estimated at 5.7 to 5.9, it damaged chimneys and brick walls and could be felt in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
East Coast quakes are rarely strong enough to be felt over a wide area. A quake of magnitude 5.8 on Aug. 23, 2011, was centered in Virginia and felt all along the coast, including in New York City and Boston. Experts say the region’s geology can make the effects felt in an area up to 10 times larger than quakes of similar size on the West Coast.
RENO, Nev. (KRNV & MyNews4.com) — Some rattling and rolling in the area has earthquake experts on alert. In the past week more than 100 small earthquakes have shaken the earth beneath Spanish Springs.
So far they’ve been too small to feel, but quake experts want you to know they’re happening. There’s no reason to panic – but it’s a good reminder to make sure you’re prepared.
“People can consider certain mitigation steps in case these earthquakes increase in intensity and there’s a larger one,” said Ken Smith, associate director of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory.
Smith says most injuries from earthquakes are caused by falling or flying objects – and you don’t want to wait for a big quake to get ready.
“Secure your water heaters. Secure your valuables. Secure your book cases,” Smith said.
It’s not strange for a dozen quakes this size to happen in a week, but there have been at least 115 since October 8, and about 60 of those have been since Thursday.
“These things are totally unpredictable,” Smith said. “It could stop today, or it could keep going at a level of very small events that no one would feel.”
Or they could get stronger. so far they’re small – with the biggest two quakes shaking at magnitude one – but there’s potential for one that really rocks Reno.
“We have faults around here that are capable of magnitude seven type events,” Smith said.
So this week the Great Nevada Shakeout will teach people to drop, cover and hold-on just in case there’s a big quake. It’s Nevada’s largest earthquake drill and it’s this Thursday, October 18 at 10:18 am.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) says an earthquake occurred Wednesday evening in Western Nebraska. About 1330 miles southeast of Rapid City.
The 3.6 magnitude earthquake occurred at 11:21 pm at a depth of about4 miles , 18 miles northwest of Hyannis, Nebraska.
Although not as common as in some other states earthquakes do occur in Nebraska. The strongest occurred on November 15, 1877 with a magnitude of 5.1. Two shocks 45 minutes apart rocked most of Nebraska and portions of surrounding states , including South Dakota.
In this Oct. 15, 2009 file photo, children participate in the “Great California ShakeOut” earthquake drill at the Para Los Ninos Elementary School in Los Angeles. Millions in the United States and several countries are set to participate in an earthquake preparedness drill, dubbed the “Great ShakeOut,” Thursday, Oct. 18, 2012.
LOS ANGELES — Get ready to rumble. Millions in the United States and several countries are set to participate in an earthquake preparedness drill Thursday.
Dubbed the “Great ShakeOut,” homeowners, schoolchildren and office workers across the West and Southeast will practice dropping to the ground, covering their heads and holding on to something sturdy – a technique that experts say minimizes injuries during strong shaking. Residents in British Columbia, Italy, Puerto Rico and Guam also signed up for the exercise.
Organizers estimated some 14 million people, including 9.3 million in California, will participate. Newcomers include Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, where a magnitude-5.8 hit last year that was felt along the East Coast.
Play Video
Northeast Shaken by Quake
In Los Angeles, commuters at Union Station will be asked to duck and take cover. Subways and light-rail trains will slow down so that operators can visually inspect the tracks – a process that’s expected to take 15 minutes. In an actual quake, trains can be stopped. Transportation officials also planned to show the public tips to safely evacuate a train.
Southern California held the first safety drill in 2008 based on a fictional magnitude-7.8 event on the southern San Andreas Fault. The entire state participated the following year and the exercise has since spread around the world.
“It’s not looking at earthquakes as doom and gloom,” said organizer Mark Benthien. “It’s all about what we’re going to do as a community to be prepared so that when there’s an earthquake, we’ll get back on our feet and recover.”
Southern California has not experienced a seismic disaster since the 1994 Northridge quake, which killed 72 people and caused $25 billion in damage to the Los Angeles region.
Listado Terremotos últimos 10 días
List of Earthquakes For The Last 10 days
Terremotos de los últimos 10 días en las Islas Canarias de magnitud igual o superior a 1.5 o sentidos:
List of earthquakes for the last 10 days for the Canary Islands of magnitude equal to or greater than 1.5
La información de terremotos de magnitud inferior se puede obtener en Catálogo y boletines sísmicos. Information for earthquakes of lesser intensity can be obtained at Catálogo y boletines sísmicos.Esta información está sujeta a modificaciones como consecuencia de la continua revisión del análisis sísmico.This information is subject to modification as a consequence of continuous revision and analysis of seismic data.Event Date Time Lat. Long. Depth Mag. Location Info.
Chief of Police in Hvolsvöllur, a representative of the Icelandic Road Administration and geophysicist Magnús Tumi Guðmundsson will discuss at a meeting on Thursday whether the levees to the east of Vík, which lies across the Ring Road near the river Múlakvísl, must be raised to prove effective in case of a volcanic eruption in Katla.
Vík. Photo by Bernhild Vögel.
Geologist Ari Trausti Guðmundsson stated in an article in Morgunblaðið yesterday that it is important to raise the levees judging by the information available on the volume and depth of flooding from Katla, ruv.is reports.
The volcano lies underneath the Mýrdalsjökull icecap and a volcanic eruption is likely to cause a major glacier outburst.
The levees are the responsibility of the Icelandic Road Administration and according to a report conducted by Einar Hafliðason, a representative of the Road Administration, last spring there was no need to raise the levees given the conditions at hand.
The levees are now five meters high and 4,000-5,000 meters long.
Scientists are monitoring the volcano closely due to ongoing seismic activity.
An underwater volcanic eruption was detected Wednesday morning close to Minami-Iwoto island in the Pacific Ocean and an expert speculated that the eruption could form a permanent island. A coast guard vessel spotted a white plume of smoke rising from the sea about three miles north-northeast of the island. It was the first time since July 2005 that volcanic smoke had been detected in the area, which is located about 745 miles south of central Tokyo. According to an announcement by the 3rd Regional Coast Guard Headquarters of the Japan Coast Guard, based in Yokohama, the volcano spewed ash and smoke about 100 meters into the air, and the surrounding sea area changed to a yellowish-green color while other parts became a cloudy gray. According to the Meteorological Agency, the volcano, known as Fukutokuokanoba, has erupted seven times since 1904, when its activities were first recorded. On three occasions, land masses were formed, but all later sank below the waterline. Tokyo Institute of Technology Prof. Kenji Nogami, an expert in geoscience, said: “In the 1986 eruption, a new island appeared after lava accumulated. The island was washed away by waves, but seabed upheaval reduced the water depth to 22 meters in 1999. It’s possible that this (recent) volcanic activity could form a permanent island.”
The highest active volcano in Eurasia, Klyuchevskaya Sopka has started to erupt, officials with the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said. On the night of October 15, there was light seen over the summit of the volcano indicating a blowout of lava in its crater, Vesti.ru reports. Experts believe the release of ash to the height of 6 feet above sea level may start any moment. Lava flows on the slopes of the volcano are also expected. Yellow aviation color code has been assigned to the volcano to warn about the potential danger that the volcanic ash and gases may pose to aircraft engines. Nothing has been said about the possible threat to human settlements. The nearest settlement is 30 kilometers far from Klyuchevskaya Sopka. The last eruption of Klyuchevskaya Sopka took place from September 2009 to December 2010. In June this year, the giant began to wake up again.
disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only
Increasing drought conditions across the planet are part of a “new normal” which oddly presents new business opportunities, a new Bank of America Merrill Lynch report says.
The report comes just after insurer Munich Re’s findings that North America has borne the brunt of weather-related natural catastrophes, with 30,000 deaths and insured losses of $510 billion in the 1980-2011 period.
The ongoing drought is the worst in the United States since at least 1956, with 63 percent of the lower 48 states suffering drought conditions in August, says the BofA Merrill Lynch report, “Global Drought — Opportunities and Risks.”
While conditions are far from those in the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, drought conditions are the new normal, the report said.
Previous reports in a series focused on obesity, energy efficiency and safety and security.
“Food, water and energy security are increasingly bigger issues, and as governments, businesses and other players struggle to adapt to and mitigate drought conditions, there will be an evolving set of opportunities and risks for investors,” the bankers said in their findings.
For investors interested in the fight against drought and in promoting food, water and energy security, the financial group has introduced a screen that identifies liquid stocks exposed to global drought-related themes under the Bloomberg ticker MLEIARID.
The stocks included in the screen are those that it considers to be long-term solution providers in such areas as water, fertilizers, crop science, energy efficiency, second-generation biofuels and renewables.
“The severity of the global drought underscores the long-term challenges for national and global economies,” said Sarbjit Nahal, a co-author of the report.
“Food, water and energy security are increasingly bigger issues, and as governments, businesses and other players struggle to adapt to and mitigate drought conditions, there will be an evolving set of opportunities and risks for investors.”
The Munich Re report also cited conditions in which North American stakeholders could benefit by learning about the weather risks.
The study was prepared in order to support underwriters and Munich Re clients in North America, the world’s largest insurance and reinsurance market.
“The North American continent is exposed to every type of hazardous weather peril — tropical cyclone, thunderstorm, winter storm, tornado, wildfire, drought and flood. One reason for this is that there is no mountain range running east to west that separates hot from cold air,” said the report.
Nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America, it said.
Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research unit head Peter Hoppe called on all concerned to “collaborate and close ranks” to meet the situation.
Peter Roder, Munich Re board member with responsibility for the U.S. market, said, “We should prepare for the weather risk changes that lie ahead, and nowhere more so than in North America.”
Twenty-two houses at Kampung Sungai Burung and Jalan Baru Sungai Korok here were badly damaged during a severe thunderstorm today. In the noon incident, the winds blew away rooftops while falling trees compounded the destruction on the houses. Resident Zulkiflee Mat Yusof, 50, said many of the electrical items in his house were damaged by rain water, fanned by the winds into the house. A Bakso stall operator who only wanted to be identified as Anis, 31, said she was busy serving customers when the thunderstorm struck. “It was so sudden that I had no time to act,” she said, finding her stall and wares completely destroyed in the aftermath. Senior citizen Jamaludin Ahamad, 65, said he and his family were having their lunch in the living room when a tree at the back of the house fell and hit the kitchen roof.
Tropical Cyclone Anais is estimated to have a maximum wind of 115 mph as of early this morning, which is equivalent to a category 3 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean.
The southwestern Indian Ocean is prone to tropical cyclones but what makes Anais so rare is that it is occurring in October, which is early springtime in the southern Hemisphere.
The peak period for tropical events in this part of the world is normally during our winter months of January-March.
Anais is forecast to move southwest in the general direction of Madagascar for the next five days and weaken as it moves into cooler waters and unfavorable winds.
We rarely hear much about the southern Indian Ocean storms as the area has little land and the storms mostly stay at sea.
Occasionally Madagascar or the island nations of Mauritius and Reunion will take a hit, and more rarely a storm will reach mainland Africa.
Forecast responsibility for this region is through the French weather service, Meteo France, located in La Reunion to the east of Madagascar.
The countries in the Indian Ocean simply refer to these storms as Tropical Cyclones, regardless of intensity.
Tropical Cyclone Anais is the same thing as a hurricane in the Atlantic or typhoon in the western Pacific.
However, note that it rotates the opposite direction, clockwise, because it is in the southern Hemisphere.
To illustrate how unusual this event is, Anais is like having a Category 3 hurricane in the Caribbean in April.
Storm surges are considered to be the most dangerous and the most destructive aspect of tropical cyclones. The study shows that globally warm years has been associated with a significantly higher risk of extreme hurricane storm surges like the one that followed Katrina, which hit the New Orleans area in 2005 and caused devastating floods and thousands of deaths. Credit: Credit: LCDR Mark Moran, NOAA Corps, NMAO/AOC.
Are there more tropical cyclones now than in the past? – or is it just something we believe because we now hear more about them through media coverage and are better able detect them with satellites?
New research from the Niels Bohr Institute clearly shows that there is an increasing tendency for cyclones when the climate is warmer, as it has been in recent years. The results are published in the scientific journal PNAS.
How can you examine the frequency of tropical cyclones throughout history when they have not been systematically registered? Today cyclones are monitored from satellites and you can follow their progress and direction very accurately. But it is only the last approx. 40 years that we have been able to do this.
Previously, they used observations from ships and aircraft, but these were not systematic measurements. In order to get a long-term view of the frequency of cyclones, it is necessary to go further back in time and use a uniform reference.
Climate scientist Aslak Grinsted of the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen therefore wanted to find some instruments that have stood and registered measurements continuously over a long period of time.
Correlation between sea levels and cyclones “Tropical cyclones typically form out in the Atlantic Ocean and move towards the U.S. East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico.
“I found that there were monitoring stations along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States where they had recorded the daily tide levels all the way back to 1923.
“I have looked at every time there was a rapid change in sea level and I could see that there was a close correlation between sudden changes in sea level and historical accounts of tropical storms,” explains Aslak Grinsted.
Aslak Grinsted now had a tool to create statistics on the frequency of cyclones that make landfall – all the way back to 1923. He could see that there has been an increasing trend in the number of major storm surges since 1923.
Correlation between cyclones and climate Together with colleagues in China and England, he then looked at the global temperatures over the period to see whether there was a trend for a higher frequency of cyclones in a warmer climate.
The global temperature has increased 0.7 degrees C since 1923, but there are variations. For example, there was a warm period in the 1940s but the temperature has really risen since 1980.
“We simply counted how many extreme cyclones with storm surges there were in warm years compared to cold years and we could see that there was a tendency for more cyclones in warmer years,” says Aslak Grinsted.
But not all cyclones are equally harmful and those with the highest storm surges tend to cause the most damage. Cyclones with a strength like Katrina, which hit the New Orleans area in 2005 and caused devastating floods and thousands of deaths, make landfall every 10-30 years on average.
“We have calculated that extreme hurricane surges like Katrina are twice as likely in warm years than in cold years. So when the global climate becomes 3 degrees warmer in the future, as predictions show, what happens then?,” reflects Aslak Grinsted.
At least eight people were injured as a round of severe storms, including a few tornadoes, swept through the Mississippi Valley and South Wednesday and Wednesday night.
A potent cold front moving across the Lower Mississippi Valley acted as the ignition for the thunderstorms. Enough humid air was in place to support the growth of severe thunderstorms capable of spawning tornadoes. Twisting winds in the atmosphere aided the rotation in thunderstorms, further aiding tornado development.
Strong winds, wind damage or hail was reported across a half dozen states in total, from Illinois to Mississippi.
One particularly damaging tornado tracked across Sharkey County, Miss., shortly before 11:00 p.m. local time, destroying numerous mobile homes and injuring five near the town of Louise, which sustained “heavy” damage according to local law enforcement.
The same tornadic thunderstorm narrowly missed nearby Yazoo City, which was devastated by a pair of tornadoes in 2010.
The towns of Clarendon and West Jericho, Ark., and Shelby, Miss., were also impacted by tornadoes Wednesday evening, according to various reports.
Severe storm reports from Wed., Oct. 17. Strong winds and wind damage incidents are indicated in blue, while tornadoes are plotted in red and hail in green. (SPC)
It is possible that more tornadoes will be confirmed to have touched down across the region as other incidents of wind damage are assessed by the National Weather Service over the next couple of days.
One such incident occurred in Scott County, Miss., where a person was injured when a tree fell onto their mobile home.
Strong thunderstorm winds heavily damaged about a dozen buildings in Bland, Mo., earlier in the day, including the town’s post office, where two people sustained minor injuries.
As of 4:30 a.m. EST Thursday, there were nearly 100 reports of severe weather and damage from the severe weather outbreak. Eighty of the reports alone were wind damage, ranging from downed trees and power lines to partially collapsed structures.
While not as prolific, a few storms produced one-inch diameter hail stones in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee.
The National Weather Service has confirmed that at least four tornadoes were part of the storm system that raked northern and central Mississippi on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. The biggest of the four storms was a twister that traveled 16 miles from Scott into Newton counties east of Jackson. With a half-mile-wide damage path, it was rated EF-3 on the Fujita scale, with peak winds estimated at 140 mph. That storm blew down trees as well as three electrical transmission towers. One person was injured when a tree fell through a roof. Authorities said Thursday that at least seven people were injured when a line of storms pushed across the state.
As severe storms pounded central and eastern Arkansas Wednesday evening, the Monroe County town of Clarendon experienced widespread power outages and heavy damage to some buildings. With most of the town without power for much of the night, several community members drove around town trying to offer help as best they could. Metal awnings from a building were ripped off and tossed across the street, and trees were downed, including one that hit a Clarendon video store just moments after the owner, Denise Davenport, left. Davenport said she left after friends called her and told her the storm was approaching. Shortly afterward, she says she heard the city’s weather sirens sound. Davenport also credits the support from the community for keeping her safe in a dangerous situation.
By John Breneman jbreneman@seacoastonline.com
SEABROOK — An “unusual event” indeed. The 4.0 magnitude earthquake that rumbled across the Seacoast and beyond Tuesday evening triggered normal safety protocols at the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission declared an “unusual event” — NRC-speak for the lowest of its four levels of emergency classifications — at 7:20 p.m. Tuesday. The declaration was prompted by on-site ground motion resulting from an earthquake centered near Hollis, Maine — about 50 miles from the plant.
“There was absolutely no impact to the plant from the earthquake,” said Al Griffith, spokesman for NextEra Energy, the plant’s owner. Griffith said a series of mandated safety checks were conducted at the plant, concluding at 1:49 a.m., some six and a half hours after the tremor.
Citing the “robustness” of the plant’s design, Griffith assured that it is capable of withstanding a far, far greater impact than Tuesday’s quake.
There are seismic monitors on site and Griffith said officials will be conducting “a very thorough examination and analysis of all of our data.”
An NRC resident inspector assigned to Seabrook responded to the site last night to confirm that there were no immediate safety issues at the plant, which is currently shut down for a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage.
“The reactor was fully shut down at the time the earthquake occurred,” said Neil Sheehan, regional public officer for the NRC.
“Following procedures used when there is seismic activity affecting the plant, NextEra personnel conducted initial walkdowns, i.e., visual inspections, and confirmed that all key safety systems were functioning properly and that there was no significant structural damage,” Sheehan said in a statement. “The company will subsequently gather more seismic data and perform more detailed inspections.”
Asked about the need to be vigilant in preparing for and reacting to any seismic activity, particularly in the wake of the March 2011 disaster following an earthquake and tsunami at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, Sheehan said, “What happened at Fukushima served as a vivid reminder” of why the highest safety protocols are put in place and enforced.
Last April, NextEra Energy conducted a tsunami drill Tuesday at the Seabrook Station plant in order to identify strengths and weaknesses of the plant in case of such a disaster.
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.
Eighteen people are confirmed to be suffering from dengue fever in the Portuguese archipelago of Madeira and another 191 probably have the mosquito-borne disease which is also called “breakbone fever” because of the severe pain it can cause. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC.L) which monitors disease in the European Union, said the outbreak was “significant but not entirely unexpected” given that the most efficient carriers of the disease, mosquitoes known as Aedes aegypti, have an established presence in Madeira. “Portuguese public health authorities are implementing control measures to reduce the risk of sustained transmission locally, the export of infected vectors from the island, and to minimise the impact on the affected population,” it said. The ECDC said the risk for tourists visiting Madeira and for residents of the island would “depend on the course of the outbreak in the coming weeks and the effectiveness of the control measures.” It did not recommend any restrictions on travel or tourism to Madeira, but advised people to protect themselves adequately against mosquito bites, particularly during the day which is when dengue-carrying mosquitoes are most active.
Biohazard name:
Dengue Fever
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.
Symptoms:
The disease is a viral infection that can cause a range of symptoms, from mild flu-like illness to more serious illnesses including rashes and bone pain. Severe and potentially deadly forms develop in around 5 percent of patients.
The United Kingdomâs Health Protection Agency reported 18 confirmed cases of dengue fever on the Madeira archipelago in Portugal and 191 probable cases since early October. The reported cases mark the first time that the mosquito-borne viral infection has been reported in Madeira. Health authorities in Madeira are looking into the cases and are implementing prevention and control measures along with a public awareness campaign. âDengue fever cannot be passed from person to person and infection occurs after being bitten by the Aedes mosquito carrying the virus,â Jane Jones, a travel-associated infection expert at the HPA, said. âTo minimize the risk of being bitten it is advisable to wear appropriate clothing to cover up â such as long sleeve tops and trousers, and to use insect repellents.â Dengue can cause multiple clinical symptoms, including a mild flu-like illness. It can also cause more serious symptoms such as rash, bone pain and severe complications. âThere is no specific preventive medicine or vaccination against dengue fever and prevention relies on avoiding mosquito bites particularly around dusk and dawn when the day biting mosquitoes are most active,â Dipti Patel, the joint director of the National Travel Health Network and Center, said. âAnyone who develops a fever or flu-like symptoms within two weeks of returning from a trip to Madeira should seek medical advice from NHS Direct or their GP.â Approximately 2.5 billion people worldwide are at risk of acquiring dengue fever, according to the World Health Organization.
17.10.2012
Epidemic Hazard
Zambia
Central State, [Lukanga Swamps (Kapiri Mposhi district)]
The diarrhoeal disease which broke-out last week and has since claimed over 14 lives of fishermen in Lukanga Swamps in Kapiri Mposhi district has been confirmed to be cholera. Kapiri Mposhi District Medical Officer, Charles Mwinuna confirmed to ZANIS today that according to the second-round of tests conducted on the samples obtained from the patients admitted at Waya clinic in the area, the diarrheal disease was confirmed cholera. Over 20 patients are admitted to Waya clinic after experiencing severe diarrhoea and vomiting. Dr Mwinuna said officers from the District Health Management Team have since been dispatched to Lukanga Swamps and were treating people with cholera symptoms. He also said precautionary measures were being taken to ensure that the disease does not spread to other areas in the district. Dr Mwinuna said the health personnel dispatched to Lukanga Swamps are also conducting further tests and contact tracing of the origin of patients admitted to the clinic and were sensitizing the community on hygiene and providing chlorine to households to reduce the chances of spreading the diarrheal disease. Fourteen people have so far died of the disease which was earlier mistaken to be severe diarrhoea. The diarrhoea and vomiting disease broke out at Kaswende, Waya, Kabosha and Ngwenya fishing camps on Lukanga Swamps. The bodies of the deceased are being buried at a cholera designated graveyard in the area Meanwhile, a traditional leader has appealed to the Ministry of Health to open-up cholera Centres in all fishing camps to treat patients and reduce chances of further spreading the diarrheal disease. Headwoman Agnes Chimbuleni noted that the disease has claimed many lives in the area because of the distances patients had to cover to Waya clinic from the fishing camps for treatment.
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.
Scientists have found support for the controversial idea that global warming is causing more frequent and destructive hurricanes, a subject that has been hotly debated during the past decade.
Data gathered from tide gauges, which monitor the rapid changes to sea levels caused by storm surges, show a significant link between both the frequency and intensity of tropical storms and increases in annual temperatures since the tidal records began in 1923.
The study found that during the 90-year period, when the average global temperature has increased by 0.7C, extreme hurricanes similar to Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005, were nearly twice as likely in warmer years as colder years.
Although scientists were not able to prove that climate change is causing more large hurricanes, they believe the study is consistent with the predictions that global warming and warmer seas could bring about more intense tropical storms.
Hurricanes form when the sea’s surface temperature increases above 26C. However, they result from a chaotic interaction between the difference in sea and air temperatures, humidity and wind, so there is disagreement about how frequent they will become in a warmer world.
Studying the link between global warming and tropical storms has been hampered by the lack of data on hurricanes before the satellite age. Many hurricanes out at sea were missed before the first weather satellites were launched about 40 years ago.
However, a network of tide gauges around the south-east coast of the US has produced a reliable record of the rapid changes to sea level caused by storm surges resulting from tropical cyclones, said Aslak Grinsted of the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University.
“I found that there were monitoring stations along the eastern seaboard of the United States where they had recorded the daily tide levels all the way back to 1923. I have looked at every time there was a rapid change in sea level and I could see there was a close correlation between sudden changes in sea level and historical accounts of tropical storms,” Dr Grinsted said.
Once the correlation between storm surges and tropical storms was established, the researchers analysed global temperature records to compare the number of storm surges in warm years with the number observed in cold years.
“We simply counted how many extreme cyclones with storm surges there were in warm years compared with cold years and we could see that there was a tendency for more cyclones in warmer years,” Dr Grinsted said.
Storms of destruction: devastating weather
Wilma (2005)
The most intense Atlantic hurricane on record started in the Caribbean Sea near Jamaica, moving across the Gulf of Mexico to Cancun where it hit land with devastating consequences.
Katrina (2005)
The most costly hurricane in history caused damages of $85bn. The category-3 storm formed over the Bahamas crossed Florida and the Gulf of Mexico before striking New Orleans.
Gilbert (1988)
The second most intense hurricane observed in the Atlantic. It began to the east of Barbados before hitting Jamaica and the Gulf of Mexico. It raged for nine days, killing 433 people.
Global temperatures directly affect the acidity of the ocean, which in turn changes the acoustical properties of sea water. New research suggests that global warming may give Earth’s oceans the same hi-fi sound qualities they had more than 100 million years ago, during the Age of the Dinosaurs.
The reason for this surprising communication upgrade is that whales vocalize in the low-frequency sound range, typically less than 200 hertz, and the new research predicts that by the year 2100, global warming will acidify saltwater sufficiently to make low-frequency sound near the ocean surface travel significantly farther than it currently does – perhaps twice as far.
Rhode Island acoustician David G. Browning, lead scientist on the research team, will present his findings at the 164th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), held Oct. 22 – 26 in Kansas City, Missouri.
He explains the sea change this way: “We call it the Cretaceous acoustic effect, because ocean acidification forced by global warming appears to be leading us back to the similar ocean acoustic conditions as those that existed 110 million years ago, during the Age of Dinosaurs.”
Their work builds on the recent investigation by other researchers who analyzed historic levels of boron in seafloor sediments to reconstruct ocean acidity for the past 300 million years.
Using boron’s sound absorption traits and impact on low-frequency transmission, Browning and his colleagues were able to predict the soundscape of ancient oceans to conclude that 300 million years ago, during the Paleozoic, the low frequency sound transmission in the ocean was similar to conditions today.
They also found that transmission improved as the ocean became more acidic, reaching its best transmission value around 110 million years ago – allowing low frequency sound to travel twice as far.
“This knowledge is important in many ways,” notes Browning.
“It impacts the design and performance prediction of sonar systems. It affects estimation of low frequency ambient noise levels in the ocean. And it’s something we have to consider to improve our understanding of the sound environment of marine mammals and the effects of human activity on that environment.”
If further work validates this model, future SCUBA divers might hear in the oceans with the same clarity as the dinosaurs.
Scientists have discovered why the ‘broken world’ following the worst extinction of all time lasted so long – it was simply too hot to survive.
The end-Permian mass extinction, which occurred around 250 million years ago in the pre-dinosaur era, wiped out nearly all the world’s species. Typically, a mass extinction is followed by a ‘dead zone’ during which new species are not seen for tens of thousands of years. In this case, the dead zone, during the Early Triassic period which followed, lasted for a perplexingly long period: five million years.
A study jointly led by the University of Leeds and China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), in collaboration with the University of Erlangen-Nurnburg (Germany), shows the cause of this lengthy devastation was a temperature rise to lethal levels in the tropics: around 50-60 degrees C on land, and 40 degrees C at the sea-surface.
Lead author Yadong Sun, who is based in Leeds while completing a joint PhD in geology, says: “Global warming has long been linked to the end-Permian mass extinction, but this study is the first to show extreme temperatures kept life from re-starting in Equatorial latitudes for millions of years.”
It is also the first study to show water temperatures close to the ocean’s surface can reach 40 degrees C – a near-lethal value at which marine life dies and photosynthesis stops. Until now, climate modellers have assumed sea-surface temperatures cannot surpass 30 degrees C. The findings may help us understand future climate change patterns.
The dead zone would have been a strange world – very wet in the tropics but with almost nothing growing. No forests grew, only shrubs and ferns. No fish or marine reptiles were to be found in the tropics, only shellfish, and virtually no land animals existed because their high metabolic rate made it impossible to deal with the extreme temperatures. Only the polar regions provided a refuge from the baking heat.
Before the end-Permian mass extinction the Earth had teemed with plants and animals including primitive reptiles and amphibians, and a wide variety of sea creatures including coral and sea lillies.
This broken world scenario was caused by a breakdown in global carbon cycling. In normal circumstances, plants help regulate temperature by absorbing Co2 and burying it as dead plant matter. Without plants, levels of Co2 can rise unchecked, which causes temperatures to increase.
The study, published [19 October 2012] in the journal Science, is the most detailed temperature record of this study period (252-247 million years ago) to date.
Sun and his colleagues collected data from 15,000 ancient conodonts (tiny teeth of extinct eel-like fishes) extracted from two tonnes of rocks from South China. Conodonts form a skeleton using oxygen.
The isotopes of oxygen in skeletons are temperature controlled, so by studying the ratio of oxygen isotopes in the conodonts he was able to detect temperature levels hundreds of millions of years ago.
Professor Paul Wignall from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, one of the study’s co-authors, said: “Nobody has ever dared say that past climates attained these levels of heat.
Hopefully future global warming won’t get anywhere near temperatures of 250 million years ago, but if it does we have shown that it may take millions of years to recover.”
The study is the latest collaboration in a 20-year research partnership between the University of Leeds and China University of Geosciences in Wuhan. It was funded by the Chinese Science Foundation.
‘Lethally hot temperatures during the early Triassic greenhouse’ by Yadong Sun (University of Leeds and China University of Geosciences), Michael Joachimski (University Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany), Paul B. Wignall (University of Leeds), Chunbo Yan (China University of Geosciences), Yanlong Chen (University of Graz, Austria), Haishui Jiang (China University of Geosciences, Lina Wang (China University of Geosciences) and Xulong Lai (China University of Geosciences) is published in Science on 19 October 2012.
A large solar flare has burst forth from the sun, showcasing the awesome scale in the universe.
A gigantic solar flare, 100,000 miles across, has erupted from the sun, showcasing how truly great the scale of things can be in the universe. In comparison, the Earth only has a diameter of roughly 7926 miles.
An image of the solar flare. Earth would fit more than ten times along the length of the flare.
Solar flares are a massive energy release of the sun, sometimes up to a sixth of the sun’s total energy output, or 160,000,000,000 megatons of TNT, which can be seen as a sudden brightening in the sun and is often followed by a coronal mass ejection (CME), essentially a burst of solar material being flung out into the solar system.
These CMEs usually reach earth about one or two days later, and it is the earth’s interaction with these ionized particles which, together with regular solar winds, are the cause of auroras. If a solar flare is powerful enough though, they may cause damage, disturbing power grids and radio systems. A particularly disastrous solar flare may even permanently disable many electronic components, such as transformers, leading to widespread power outages.
Solar flares affect the entire solar system though; one hazard that would be encountered during a manned missions to Mars for example, would be the radiation emitted from solar winds, which the astronauts would somehow have to shield against during the entire flight.
The Bay Area was buzzing Wednesday night after a bright streak moved across the sky. It was accompanied by a loud boom.
This happened around 7:40 p.m.
Early bets said it was a meteor. The Orionids meteor shower is happening right now, but experts told NBC Bay Area that Wednesday’s streak was not from Orion because the earth is shielding us from those meteors tonight.
Whatever it was, it caught the attention of hundreds, if not thousands of people.
NASA Ames astronomer Peter Jennikens helped us get the photo at the top of this article and below. Jennikens said he will be up all night researching where the meteor may have landed. He will be out early Thursday morning looking for remnants. He’s hoping to get more video from security cameras that might have been rolling when the meteor hit.
Beppy Tobeler told us on our Facebook page that she saw it from Dublin Security Storage. “It was so low and close I thought it was someone setting off fireworks,” Tobeler said. She said it sailed across the sky and broke up in several pieces.
Steve Siegel said he saw it from Sunnyvale. He described it as a super bright streak going north about 30 degrees into the sky. He said it lasted for 7 or 8 seconds.
”I saw one giant, bright as close as a firework ball of light with long tail out visiting my parents in Forestville. One of the coolest things I’ve ever seen nothing at all like a shooting star,” Jessica Collins said on our Facebook page.
People at the Lick Observatory posted two raw clips of the what they said was a meteor breaking up over San Jose. It was taken by a security camera from the top of the observatory.
NASA posted on a science Website earlier this week that said this is the week to watch for the Orionid meteor shower caused by Halley’s Comet.
An article on NASA Science News said that every year in mid-to-late October, the Earth passes through a stream of dusty debris from Comet Halley. It promised sightings in the pre-dawn hours. Wednesday night’s streak was in the evening hours. Also, usually the meteor showers related to Hailey’s Comet are much smaller than what is being described.
NASA said that the highlight of the Orionid meteor shower is coming this weekend
“We expect to see about 25 meteors per hour when the shower peaks on Sunday morning, Oct 21st,” says Bill Cooke, the head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.
An extremely brief reversal of the geomagnetic field, climate variability and a super volcano
41,000 years ago, a complete and rapid reversal of the geomagnetic field occured. Magnetic studies of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences on sediment cores from the Black Sea show that during this period, during the last ice age, a compass at the Black Sea would have pointed to the south instead of north. Moreover, data obtained by the research team formed around GFZ researchers Dr. Norbert Nowaczyk and Prof. Helge Arz, together with additional data from other studies in the North Atlantic, the South Pacific and Hawaii, prove that this polarity reversal was a global event. Their results are published in the latest issue of the scientific journal “Earth and Planetary Science Letters“.
What is remarkable is the speed of the reversal: “The field geometry of reversed polarity, with field lines pointing into the opposite direction when compared to today’s configuration, lasted for only about 440 years, and it was associated with a field strength that was only one quarter of today’s field,” explains Norbert Nowaczyk. “The actual polarity changes lasted only 250 years. In terms of geological time scales, that is very fast.” During this period, the field was even weaker, with only 5% of today’s field strength. As a consequence, the Earth nearly completely lost its protection shield against hard cosmic rays, leading to a significantly increased radiation exposure.
This is documented by peaks of radioactive beryllium (10Be) in ice cores from this time, recovered from the Greenland ice sheet. 10Be as well as radioactive carbon (14C) is caused by the collision of high-energy protons from space with atoms of the atmosphere.
The Laschamp event
The polarity reversal now found with the magnetisation of Black Sea sediments has already been known for 45 years. It was first discovered after the analysis of the magnetisation of several lava flows near the village Laschamp near Clermont-Ferrand in the Massif Central, which differed significantly from today’s direction of the geomagnetic field. Since then, this geomagnetic feature is known as the ‘Laschamp event’. However, the data of the Massif Central represent only some point readings of the geomagnetic field during the last ice age, whereas the new data from the Black Sea give a complete image of geomagnetic field variability at a high temporal resolution.
Abrupt climate changes and a super volcano
Besides giving evidence for a geomagnetic field reversal 41,000 years ago, the geoscientists from Potsdam discovered numerous abrupt climate changes during the last ice age in the analysed cores from the Black Sea, as it was already known from the Greenland ice cores. This ultimately allowed a high precision synchronisation of the two data records from the Black Sea and Greenland. The largest volcanic eruption on the Northern hemisphere in the past 100 000 years, namely the eruption of the super volcano 39400 years ago in the area of today’s Phlegraean Fields near Naples, Italy, is also documented within the studied sediments from the Black Sea. The ashes of this eruption, during which about 350 cubic kilometers of rock and lava were ejected, were distributed over the entire eastern Mediterranean and up to central Russia. These three extreme scenarios, a short and fast reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field, short-term climate variability of the last ice age and the volcanic eruption in Italy, have been investigated for the first time in a single geological archive and placed in precise chronological order.
DEDICATED
~October.15.2012~ You were a wonderful pet. I miss you already.
Information courtesy of NASA, NOAA, the US Library, the Goddard Space Flight Center, the Jet Propulsion Lab, the Environmental Visualization Laboratory, the NASA Earth Observatory, SDO, SOHO, Stereo, ISWA, SSEC, HAARP, and SolarIMG – Your information, images, and videos were essential to this video.
A massive fish kill on the Neuse River Tuesday washed up on the beach by Neuse Harbor. Mitch Blake, Neuse Riverkeeper, viewed the fish kill Tuesday afternoon, saying there were several hundred thousand washed up on the beach and in the river. For 21 days, mostly Atlantic menhaden have been dying over a large portion of the river from New Bern to Hancock Creek, Blake said.
Chuck Beckley/Sun Journal
By Eddie Fitzgerald, Sun Journal Staff
Published: Wednesday, October 17, 2012 at 15:35 PM.
A massive fish kill on the Neuse River that has been ongoing for nearly a month has resulted in thousands of menhaden washed up on beaches near Neuse Harbor.
Mitch Blake, Neuse Riverkeeper, viewed the area Tuesday afternoon, saying there were several hundred thousand dead fish washed up on the beach and in the river.
For 21 days, mostly Atlantic menhaden have been dying over a large portion of the river from New Bern to Hancock Creek, Blake said in an email.
Some of the dead menhaden have ulcers that National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials have identified as Aphanomyces invadans from six samples analyzed in Beaufort. Fish samples were taken from the Neuse River in an impaired region by the Neuse Riverkeeper Foundation at the first sign of menhaden showing problems, Blake said.
“Over the 21-day period fish have been reported dead from New Bern to Hancock Creek and include areas in Slocum, Beard, Goose, Upper Broad, Northwest and Duck Creek,” he said.
Very few other species have been reported dead during the fish kill, except for isolated spots around Bay Point, which also had red drum, striped bass and spot.
“At this time we continue to see large schools of Atlantic menhaden, some floating, some are sinking to the bottom upon death,” Blake said. “An accurate count has not been totaled due to the massive area but just (Tuesday) I counted areas that were over 500 yards in length with approximately 90 dead fish per foot. With numbers like this it could easily go into the millions. In these areas there are dead, decaying, and in some cases just bones to reveal the timeline and magnitude of the kill.”
Joe Freemon, who lives in Neuse Harbor, said that on Tuesday there was a solid belt of dead fish on the beach of the river that bordered his property.
“You could stand there and see lots of others floating on top of the water,” Freemon said. “It’s the biggest (fish kill) I’ve seen and I’ve been on the water here over 50 years. You could smell it a couple of hundred feet away. … It’s a bad situation and unfortunate. ”
Blake said experts have told him the fish kill may continue due to the complexity of the area and lack of funding to run the proper analyzing equipment.
“There have been issues with oxygen, phytoplankton, stratification, nitrogen, pollutants among others, so the exact cause of death in the areas listed, has been complex to say the least,” he said.
Blake said he has been talking to a lot of people in the scientific community about what is causing the fish to die.
“I’m trying to put together a team to analyze it better,” Blake said.
As a nonprofit and staff of three to cover the Neuse Basin, The Neuse Riverkeeper Foundation depends on community support and volunteers.
“I’ve been working diligently to get information to the scientific community, the translation that comes from that is very important to the communities and people along the Neuse,” Blake said. “I think these menhaden stocks are extremely important to the dynamics of the estuary and millions of dead fish adding to the nutrient load creates its own set of concerns. As a community we have to address the impacts we have on the basin and we deserve to know where these impacts are coming from.”
Jill Paxson, environmental senior specialist with the N.C. Division of Water Quality, said for the past three weeks her office has been inundated with calls about menhaden fish kills, and not only in the Neuse River. There has been large kills in the Pamlico Sound also, she said.
Paxson said menhaden have a tough time living in a fresh and salt water estuary like the Neuse River. Some of the tributaries are shallow and the water can cool or warm up fast, causing a strain for the fish, she said.
“It is a very difficult place if you are a fish,” she said.
Paxson said as a precaution people should not go in the water around the fish or let their pets in the water and should wash if they do come in contact with the fish or water.
People usually don’t eat menhaden. They are on the bottom of the food chain and are eaten by larger fish like tuna and sharks, Paxson said.
Eddie Fitzgerald can be reached at 252-635-5675 or at eddie.fitzgerald@newbernsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @staffwriter3.
Today
Biological Hazard
Vietnam
Province of Dien Bien , Noong Luong Commune [Dien Bien District]
Cases of bird flu have been reported in Noong Luong Commune, Dien Bien District in the northern mountainous province of Dien Bien. Director of the provincial Department of Animal Health Cao Thi Tuyet Lan said bird flu outbreaks were discovered last Friday in two households in the commune’s Village 12, with nearly 720 livestock suffering from the disease. Three days later, local authority discovered nearly 400 other livestock infected with the H5N1 virus in Village 15. Since the outbreak, authorities have detected and culled more than 1,000 sick livestock in the commune. The province banned sick livestock from being transported, processed and traded out of the affected area, and closely supervised slaughter and trade in other districts and communes of the province. The provincial People’s Committee also quarantined the affected areas, and counted the number of livestock, especially ducks in Noong Luong Commune and Muong Thanh District, to ensure that a bird flu epidemic does not spread. The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development also gave guidance on carrying out preventive measures such as sterilisation of farms where infected poultry have been reported.
Biohazard name:
H5N1 – Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
Officials closed beaches around Kanaha Beach Park Thursday morning after a shark bit a stand-up paddle board around 7:30 a.m. off of an area known as “Kite Beach,” or Kaa Point. Stand-up paddle boarder David Peterson of Pukalani was not injured, officials said. The 55-year-old paddle board and surfboard shaper said he was standing on his board waiting for waves to come in and “all of a sudden (I get) knocked off my board. I didn’t see anything.” He said the shark had a hold of his board and would not let go of it, so Peterson hit the shark with his paddle as he was in the water. The shark let go but then came between him and the board and with his hands Peterson pushed the shark away and jumped back on his board. Peterson said he suffered some scrapes from getting back onto the damaged board. Otherwise, he wasn’t hurt. The shark is estimated to be 6 to 8 feet long. Staff officials said it is unknown what type of shark was involved. Shark warning signs were to be posted, according to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.
Biohazard name:
Shark attack (non-fatal)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Authorities in Bhaktapur’s Bode have culled more than 1500 chickens following a suspected outbreak of bird flu, health officials said. The outbreak of avian influenza initially killed 500 chickens out of 2000 at the poultry farm of a local Om Khadka. A meeting of health officials is underway at Bhaktapur to confirm whether the reported case is of bird flu.
Biohazard name:
H5N1 – Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
Hundreds of birds have been culled in central Nepal following confirmation of a highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak on a poultry farm. Animal health officials decided to cull all birds and destroy eggs suspected to be infected with a strain of H5N1 virus in Bhaktapur district, 15 km east of the capital Kathmandu. The Directorate of Animal Health killed 780 chickens at the poultry farm following the confirmation and around 150 crates of eggs and six sacks of feeds stored at the farm were also destroyed as part of preventive measures. Samples were sent to an animal health laboratory for examination after a sudden spurt in deaths at the farm. According to officials out of 2,500 chickens at the farm, 1,200 had already died of infection from the virus. “Surveillance will be intensified and veterinary officials deployed to monitor other poultry farms in the area,” said Dr Narayan Prasad Ghimire, a senior veterinary officer at Department of Animal Health. High alert was issued in and around Kathmandu to prevent the spreading of the virus.
A grenade left over from the second World War left 13 people needing hospital treatment in England. The casualties were exposed to toxic fumes after workmen disturbed the stockpile of phosphorous grenades left in the sealed-up cellar of a property in Bamber Bridge near Preston, Lancashire. It is thought one of the grenades, issued to members of the Home Guard during the war, was dislodged and cracked, Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service said. The devices, glass bottles about eight inches long, were intended to release a highly flammable mixture of phosphorus and benzene after being thrown, self-igniting on exposure to air. They were to be used by reservists against Nazi occupiers if Britain had fallen to German invasion, but had lain forgotten for almost 70 years in the sealed-off cellar of a former fire station, now used as a printing firm premises. A further six such devices were found in cellar space which had been bricked up for some years.
Firefighters were first called to reports of a fire at the premises of Sprint Print on Station Road in Bamber Bridge at 12.23pm yesterday. On arrival they established the smoke was in fact chemical fumes from what was thought to be a small container or bottle of acid in the cellar. Two drainage company employees investigating a report from the occupier of damp masonry are thought to have inadvertently dislodged one of the bottles in the stockpile, causing it to leak. They were exposed to the fumes and were injured along with three workers at Sprint Print. Of these five casualties, two suffered chemical burns and three experienced breathing problems. Two paramedics and six hospital staff at the Royal Preston Hospital – where the casualties had been taken – subsequently also complained of breathing difficulties. All 13 casualties responded well to treatment and have been allowed home. The cracked grenade was made safe and removed for disposal by an army disposal team and the rest of the stockpile will be disposed of in a controlled explosion, the fire service said.
Winds gusting up to 52 miles per hour and transformer fires were blamed for power outages Thursday that affected more than 2,000 homes and businesses in Sioux City. Service was restored to many of the homes within a few hours. The first outages were reported at 5:47 a.m. near 15th and Pierce streets. Outages caused by transformer fires were reported at 10:17 a.m. at 4105 Gordon Drive and about 12:30 p.m. at 2116 W. Third St. Officials at MidAmerican Energy Co. aren’t sure what caused the transformer fires but suspect the weather was a factor, company spokeswoman Tina Potthoff said. The company’s transmission system had been trouble-free before the powerful wind gusts arrived, she said. The top of a power pole exploded with a bang at Ultra No Touch Car Wash at 4105 Gordon Drive, said manager Brandon Swift. The flash was so intense, he thought something at the business had been struck by lighting.
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(Reuters) – An unusual swarm of hundreds of mostly small earthquakes has struck Southern California over the last three days and shaken the nerves of quake-hardy residents, but scientists say the cluster is not a sign a larger temblor is imminent.
The earthquakes, the largest of which measured magnitude 5.5, began on Saturday evening and have been centered near the town of Brawley close to the state’s inland Salton Sea, said Jeanne Hardebeck, research seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey.
Scientists were monitoring the earthquake cluster, which continued on Tuesday, to see if it approaches the Imperial Fault, about three miles away. A destructive and deadly earthquake of magnitude 7.0 struck on that fault in 1940, she said.
“We don’t have any reason to believe that the (earthquake) storm is going to trigger on the Imperial Fault, but there’s a minute possibility that it could,” Hardebeck said, adding that the swarm of quakes was not moving closer to that fault.
The Brawley quake cluster, which is caused by hot fluid moving around in the Earth’s crust, is different than a typical earthquake, in which two blocks of earth slip past each other along a tectonic fault line.
After that kind of an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 or above, there is a 5 percent chance a larger quake will follow, Hardebeck said. But she added the same kinds of probability estimates were not possible with earthquake clusters caused by the movement of hot fluid.
“We understand them even less than we understand normal earthquakes,” Hardebeck said, adding that scientists do not know why a cluster of earthquakes will occur at one time rather than another.
The swarm led to jangled nerves in Brawley, a town of about 25,000 residents 170 miles southeast of Los Angeles near the border with Mexico.
“It’s pretty bad. We had to evacuate the hotel just for safety,” Rowena Rapoza, office manager of a local Best Western Hotel, said on Sunday.
There were two earthquakes on Sunday afternoon, one with a 5.5 magnitude and one measuring 5.3, Hardebeck said. Those were the largest quakes in the cluster amid hundreds of others, she said.
In the past, earthquake clusters have gone on for as long as two weeks, Hardebeck said. Before this recent cluster in Brawley, the last swarm of this size to hit the area was in 1981, she said.
Earlier this month, a pair of moderate-sized earthquakes both registering a magnitude 4.5 struck the California town of Yorba Linda within 10 hours of each other, but no damage was reported. Yorba Linda, the birthplace of the late President Richard Nixon, is 145 miles northwest of Brawley.
(Reporting By Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Philip Barbara)
The Gulf of California rift zone is a complex transition zone between the dextral (right-lateral) motion of the San Andreas transform fault system and the northwestward progressing spreading ridge complex of the Gulf of California segment of the Eastern Pacific Rise. The Gulf of California and its onshore extension, the Salton Trough (which includes Mexicali, Imperial, and Coachella Valleys), are located over a series of rifts in the Earth’s crust which are filling with sediment from above, chiefly from the Colorado River, and magmatic material from below. The Cerro Prieto geothermal field in Mexico and the Brawley Seismic zone in the U.S. are located above two of these rifts, and young volcanoes in these locations are evidence of intrusion of magma from below.
The volcanics in this exploration region are less then 5-million year old and associated with northwest folding, block- and thrust- faulting. Dacite is the most common volcanic rock, with a composition that ranges from basalt to rhyolite. The volcanic activity appears to be related to extension associated with the San Andreas fault system. The most recent volcanic activity is dated to 10,000 years ago. The heat source for the Geysers geothermal field is provided by a silicic magama chamber. Clear Lake Volcanic Field, California[1]
Assessment of Moderate- and High-Temperature Geothermal Resources of the United States[2]
(AP)—Aftershocks continue to shake the Southern California desert a day after moderate earthquakes knocked farming town trailer homes off foundations and shattered windows in a swarm that scientists say could last for days. There are no injuries. The largest quake centered near Brawley was at a magnitude-5.5 at 1:57 p.m. Sunday and it was widely felt from San Diego to Arizona. About 90 minutes earlier, a magnitude-5.3 quake shook the region. By dawn Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey website shows there have been dozens of aftershocks in Imperial County, the largest a magniutude-4.9 at 9:41 p.m. Sunday. There was also a 3.0 at 12:32 a.m. Monday. There was cosmetic damage to several 1930s buildings in downtown Brawley and 20 mobile homes were knocked off their foundations and deemed uninhabitable.
Hundreds of earthquakes have rattled Imperial County since Sunday morning as an earthquake swarm continued. But experts say the swarm does not necessarily indicates a larger temblor is on the way. Certainly, the weekend’s quakes were troubling for Imperial County, which is located in one of California’s most earthquake prone regions. More than 400 earthquakes have been detected since Saturday evening, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. One local family felt 15 quakes in 21/2 hours. But for all the ground movement, experts said there is no evidence the earthquake swarms were a precursor to much larger quakes on longer, more dangerous faults. And scientists don’t see any immediate signs of added pressure to the San Andreas fault, which is not far from the location of the earthquake swarm. That makes this weekend’s swarm different than what occurred after the 2010 Easter Sunday quake that shook up the California-Mexico border. The 7.2 quake appeared to have directed tectonic stress northward, toward populated areas in Southern California. Three months after the Mexicali quake, a 5.4 quake that centered south of Palm Springs rattled the region.Scientists said the Easter Sunday quake and its aftershocks triggered movement on at least six faults, including the Elsinore and San Jacinto faults, which run close to heavily populated areas in eastern Los Angeles County and the Inland Empire. For now, there is no evidence that this weekend’s swarm will trigger quakes elsewhere, U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones said. No deaths or serious injuries have been reported from the weekend’s swarm, but the shaking was sharp enough to postpone what was to be the first day of the school year in Brawley. Local officials reported 20 mobile homes shifted from their foundations and cosmetic damage to downtown buildings in this city of 25,000. The swarming of earthquakes has occurred before in this largely agricultural, desert region near the Mexican border. The so-called Brawley seismic zone, about 100 miles east of San Diego, has endured earthquake swarms in the 1930s, ’60s, and ’70s, but was quiet between 1981 to 2000, according to a report on the Southern California Seismic Network. In fact, some swarms in the ’60s and ’70s included “many thousands” of earthquakes, but the largest quakes during those sequences topped out at a magnitude 5.
“Swarms are fairly typical for this region,” U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Elizabeth Cochran said. The last significant swarm occurred in 2005, when the largest quake was a 5.1. After a few days of quakes, the shaking tapered off. Before this weekend’s swarm, in which the top magnitudes were a 5.5 and 5.3 on Sunday, the most powerful swarm to hit the region was in 1981, when the most powerful quake reached 5.8. There are a couple of reasons the Brawley seismic zone is prone to earthquake swarms. The area is at the crossroads between two different types of faults, Cochran said. To the region’s northwest is the more familiar type of fault, where the Pacific Plate grinds past the North American plate, with one plate moving northwest and the other southeast. But south of the border, the two plates are seeking to pull away from each other. (That movement is what created the Gulf of California, which separates Baja California from the rest of Mexico, Cochran said.) Sitting at the crossroads of the different types of faults makes the area particularly volatile, Cochran said. Another reason is the relative thinness of the Earth’s crust in that region, which allows naturally occurring heat from subterranean rock to rise closer to the surface, increasing instability. By Monday, the swarm appeared to be decreasing in frequency, Cochran said, although she didn’t rule out the pace picking up again. Previous earthquake swarms have gone on for days.
An unusual swarm of hundreds of mostly small earthquakes has struck Southern California over the last three days and shaken the nerves of quake-hardy residents, but scientists say the cluster is not a sign a larger temblor is imminent. The earthquakes, the largest of which measured magnitude 5.5, began on Saturday evening and have been centered near the town of Brawley close to the state’s inland Salton Sea, said Jeanne Hardebeck, research seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. Scientists were monitoring the earthquake cluster, which continued on Tuesday, to see if it approaches the Imperial Fault, about three miles away. A destructive and deadly earthquake of magnitude 7.0 struck on that fault in 1940, she said. “We don’t have any reason to believe that the (earthquake) storm is going to trigger on the Imperial Fault, but there’s a minute possibility that it could,” Hardebeck said, adding that the swarm of quakes was not moving closer to that fault.The Brawley quake cluster, which is caused by hot fluid moving around in the Earth’s crust, is different than a typical earthquake, in which two blocks of earth slip past each other along a tectonic fault line. After that kind of an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 or above, there is a 5 percent chance a larger quake will follow, Hardebeck said. But she added the same kinds of probability estimates were not possible with earthquake clusters caused by the movement of hot fluid. “We understand them even less than we understand normal earthquakes,” Hardebeck said, adding that scientists do not know why a cluster of earthquakes will occur at one time rather than another. The swarm led to jangled nerves in Brawley, a town of about 25,000 residents 170 miles southeast of Los Angeles near the border with Mexico. “It’s pretty bad. We had to evacuate the hotel just for safety,” Rowena Rapoza, office manager of a local Best Western Hotel, said on Sunday. There were two earthquakes on Sunday afternoon, one with a 5.5 magnitude and one measuring 5.3, Hardebeck said. Those were the largest quakes in the cluster amid hundreds of others, she said.
In the past, earthquake clusters have gone on for as long as two weeks, Hardebeck said. Before this recent cluster in Brawley, the last swarm of this size to hit the area was in 1981, she said. Earlier this month, a pair of moderate-sized earthquakes both registering a magnitude 4.5 struck the California town of Yorba Linda within 10 hours of each other, but no damage was reported. Yorba Linda, the birthplace of the late President Richard Nixon, is 145 miles northwest of Brawley.
Peruvian geologists have revealed that recent activity at El Misti signal that the volcano is active.
Last Thursday researchers at the Geophysical Institute of Peru (IGP) found that El Misti – located 17km outside the city of Arequipa – had recently recorded the highest amount of seismic activity than in the past five years.
Engineer Orlando Macedo told El Comercio that 224 earthquakes were registered at El Misti – an event known as an earthquake swarm – and which signaled that the volcano was no longer dormant.
El Misti, he said, experienced 143 volcano tectonic earthquakes, which were caused by the fracture of rock inside the volcano, due to sudden changes in pressure and temperature.
Despite the recent increase in activity, the IGP said there were still no conditions for an eruption to occur at El Misti, which last erupted sometime between 1450 and 1470.
For an eruption to happen, Macedo said, El Misti would have to experience continued earthquakes, which “would have to occur after long-term movements of magma, and causing these earthquakes known as tremors, with lava.”
NASA infrared time series of Tropical Storm Isaac shows consolidation Enlarge The AIRS instrument onboard NASA’s Aqua satellite has been monitoring Tropical Storm Isaac for several days. Shown here are AIRS data from Aug. 24 and 25 (top left and right) and Aug. 26 and 27 (bottom left and right). AIRS has been providing infrared data about cloud temperatures, and sea surface temperatures around the storm. Credit: Credit: NASA JPL, Ed Olsen NASA’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument is an infrared “eye” that flies onboard NASA’s Aqua satellite. AIRS has been providing the National Hurricane Center with valuable temperature data on Isaac’s clouds and the surrounding sea surface temperatures, and a time series of data shows that Isaac is consolidating. Ads by Google FLIR® Infrared Cameras – 12 Things To Know Before Buying An Infrared Camera. Read It Now! – FLIR.com/Learn-More The AIRS instrument has been monitoring Tropical Storm Isaac for several days. AIRS data from Aug. 24, 25, 26 and 27 showed Isaac’s movements through the eastern and central Caribbean Sea, across eastern Cuba and into the Gulf of Mexico. On Aug. 24, Isaac’s strongest convection (rising air that forms the thunderstorms that make up a tropical cyclone) appeared all around the center, except in the western quadrant of the storm. On Aug. 25, when Isaac was affecting Haiti, it appeared more disorganized, and the strongest storms extended from southwestern Haiti into the central Caribbean Sea. On Aug. 26, AIRS data showed the area of strong convection had increased and the largest area was over the Florida Keys, with bands of strong thunderstorms extending over southeastern Florida and the Bahamas. On Aug. 27, Isaac’s center of circulation appeared more rounded on AIRS imagery, indicating the circulation center was becoming more organized. Southeasterly wind shear and the larger than average wind radii, and entrance of some dry air had been keeping Isaac from strengthening more quickly today, Aug. 27. That wind shear is the result of an upper-level low pressure area that lies southwest of Tropical Storm Isaac. As that low moves away and the wind shear lessens, Isaac will have more ability to strengthen. Where is Isaac on Aug. 27? NASA infrared time series of Tropical Storm Isaac shows consolidation Enlarge NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Isaac on Aug. 26 at 18:15 UTC (2:15 pm EDT) when it was over Florida and Cuba and the MODIS instrument captured this visible image of the storm. Credit: Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team At 11 a.m. EDT (1200 UTC) on Monday, Aug. 27, Isaac was a strong tropical storm with maximum sustained winds near 65 mph (100 kmh). Isaac is expected to become a hurricane in the next day or two over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. When Isaac reaches maximum sustained winds of 74 mph, it will be classified as a category one hurricane. Isaac’s cloud extent is about 480 miles in diameter, as tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 240 miles (390 km) from the center. Ads by Google Doppler Weather Forecast – Upto-the-Minute Radar Maps Plus Forecasts & Advisories in Your Area – http://www.WeatherBlink.com Tropical Storm Isaac was located about 250 miles (400 km) south of Apalachicola, Fla. and about 310 miles (500 km) southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River. That puts Isaac’s center near latitude 25.7 north and longitude 84.7 west. Isaac is moving toward the west-northwest near 14 mph (22 kmh) and the tropical storm is expected to continue on that track, but slow down before turning to the northwest on Tuesday, Aug. 28. The National Hurricane Center expects Isaac to move over the eastern Gulf of Mexico later today, Aug. 27 and approach the northern Gulf coast in the hurricane warning area on Tuesday, Aug. 28. An animation of satellite observations from Aug. 25-27, 2012, shows Tropical Storm Isaac moving past Cuba and the Florida Keys and into the eastern Gulf of Mexico. This visualization was created by the NASA GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., using observations from NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite. Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project Hurricane Warnings and Watches A Hurricane Warning is in effect from east of Morgan City, Louisiana to Destin, Fla., including metropolitan New Orleans, Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas. A Hurricane Watch is in effect for Intracoastal City to Morgan City, Louisiana. Tropical Storm Warnings and Watches A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the Florida Peninsula from Ocean Reef Southward on the east coast and from Tarpon Springs southward on the west coast; the Florida Keys including the Dry Tortugas and Florida Bay; east of Destin, Fla. to the Suwannee River; and Intracoastal City to Morgan City, Louisiana. A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for east of Sabine Pass to west of Intracoastal City, La. Heavy rainfall, gusty winds, isolated tornadoes and dangerous surf can be expected along Isaac’s path. For updates on local effects, go the National Hurricane Center website (www.nhc.noaa.gov).
Nearly 100,000 homes and businesses lost power after Hurricane Isaac landed in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Louisiana later Tuesday, local media reported. And among the homes and businesses being left without power, near half are in Orleans Parish, the reports said. Utility companies in the southwestern U.S. state on Tuesday morning started bringing in extra crews to help restore power in case strong winds bring down power lines. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu warned residents about the dangers of approaching downed power lines. “These are serious threats, as I have said many times, which can cause fatalities,” Landrieu said. State authorities have mobilized more than 4,100 troops, with 680 of them in Orleans Parish. A further 35,000 troops and almost 100 aircraft are available for mobilization, according to reports on the website of NOLA.com. The troops are assisting with the setting up of evacuation shelters, including a “mega-shelter” with about 2,500 cots in the inland city of Alexandria. Some 300 soldiers will work as bus drivers in Metairie, supporting the state departments of transportation and education. At a press conference on Tuesday, Luisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said the State National Guard posted 23 liaison teams with local governments, adding that 13 communications teams will deployed in the region, along with 921 security vehicles, 531 high-water vehicles, 40 aircraft and 74 boats.
The yellow dots represent the location of all of the oil rigs in the northwest Gulf of Mexico.
Oil companies scrambled out of the path of Tropical Storm Isaac, withdrawing offshore workers and cutting oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico.
By mid-day Sunday, the U.S. government said that daily oil production in the Gulf was down 24 percent and natural gas production was off 8 percent.
Isaac, already carrying winds of more than 60 miles an hour, was expected to cross the Florida Keys by late afternoon. The storm will likely pick up strength from the warm, open waters of the Gulf of Mexico and strike somewhere between New Orleans and the Florida Panhandle between late Tuesday and early Wednesday, the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
Noting that the storm was moving west and threatening to grow more powerful, energy giant BP evacuated all its installations and temporarily halted production in the Gulf Sunday. Earlier, it had pulled workers from its massive Thunder Horse platform in the eastern Gulf.
Royal Dutch Shell is withdrawing all workers and suspending production in the eastern Gulf. It is pulling out all but essential personnel and cutting production in the central Gulf.
Apache Corp., a Houston oil services company, is withdrawing 750 workers and contractors from its installations in the eastern Gulf. It is also cutting production of oil and natural gas. Other energy companies have also been evacuating their platforms and rigs in the Gulf.
Murphy Oil Corp., based in El Dorado, Ark., said Sunday that it is pulling out all workers and suspending operations in the Gulf.
Overall, oil companies pulled workers off 39 (7 percent) of 596 production platforms and eight (11 percent) of 76 Gulf oil rigs, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement reported Sunday.
Former energy trader Stephen Schork, who now edits a report on the oil industry, worries that the storm will be a repeat of Hurricanes Katrina in 2005 and Gustav in 208, damaging Gulf refineries and pipelines and disrupting oil tanker traffic.
But Fadel Gheit, oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., says that the explosion that rocked an oil refinery in Venezuela on Saturday, killing 26 people, will likely have a bigger impact than Isaac. It could drive up gasoline prices and “further erode consumer confidence and derail (the) economic recovery.”
Tropical Storm Isaac, back over warm ocean waters, lashed Cuba with winds and rain as it swept toward the Florida Keys, where it was expected to strike on Sunday as a minor hurricane. The storm left six dead in Haiti, still recovering from a 2010 earthquake, and at least three missing in the Dominican Republic after battering their shared island of Hispaniola on Saturday.
The AIRS instrument onboard NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this infrared image of Typhoon Tembin southwest of Taiwan and Typhoon Bolaven entering the Yellow Sea on Aug. 26. AIRS has been providing infrared data about cloud temperatures, and sea surface temperatures around the storm. The purple areas indicate the highest, coldest cloud top temperatures. Credit: Credit: NASA JPL, Ed Olsen NASA satellites are providing imagery and data on Typhoon Tembin southwest of Taiwan, and Typhoon Bolaven is it barrels northwest through the Yellow Sea. In a stunning image from NASA’s Aqua satellite, Bolaven appears twice as large as Tembin.
NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies onboard the Terra satellite captured a remarkable image of Typhoon Tembin being dwarfed by giant Typhoon Bolaven at 0240 UTC on Aug. 27, 2012. The visible image shows that the island of Taiwan appears to be squeezed between the two typhoons, while the northeastern arm of Typhoon Tembin’s clouds extend over the southern half of Taiwan and sweep over Luzon, the Philippines, where it is better known as Typhoon Igme. Bolaven appears to be twice as large as Typhoon Tembin and has a visible eye. Tembin’s eye appears obscured by high clouds in satellite imagery. Typhoon Bolaven recently passed over Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan as it moves northwestward into the Yellow Sea for a final landfall later this week in North Korea. Clouds from Bolaven’s northeastern quadrant were blanketing Japan’s island of Kyushu, which is the southwestern most island of the four main islands of Japan. The Yellow Sea is an arm of the North Pacific of the East China Sea, and it is situated between China and Korea. On Aug. 26, NASA’s Aqua satellite captured both storms in one infrared image. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured an infrared image of Typhoon Tembin southwest of Taiwan and Typhoon Bolaven entering the Yellow Sea. AIRS has been providing infrared data about cloud temperatures, and sea surface temperatures around the storm. Both storms had large areas of very cold clout top temperatures that exceeded -63F/-52C) indicating strong uplift in each storm. At the time of the image, Bolaven was moving over the Ryukyu Islands. They are a chain of islands owned by Japan that stretch southwest from Kyushu, Japan to Taiwan.
On Aug. 27, infrared imagery from NASA’s Aqua satellite showed that Bolaven maintained tightly-curved banding of thunderstorms that were wrapping into a well-defined and large low-level circulation center. The center of circulation is as large as 550 nautical miles in diameter! NASA sees Typhoon Bolaven dwarf Typhoon Tembin Enlarge NASA’s MODIS instrument that flies onboard the Terra satellite captured this remarkable image of Typhoon Tembin (lower left) being dwarfed by giant Typhoon Bolaven (top right)in the Philippine Sea at 0240 UTC on Aug. 27, 2012. Credit: Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team Typhoon Bolaven in the Yellow Sea On Aug. 27, 2012, Typhoon Bolaven was moving through the Yellow Sea. Its maximum sustained winds were down to 70 knots (80.5 mph/129.6 kmh). Bolaven was located approximately 380 nautical miles (437.3 miles/703.8 km) south-southwest of Seoul, South Korea, near 32.2 North and 125.0 East. The typhoon is moving to the north-northwestward at 16 knots (18.4 mph/29.6 kmh) and creating high seas of 43 feet (13.1 meters). Bolaven is expected to weaken as it moves into cooler waters in the Yellow Sea. It is also expected to run into stronger wind shear. Bolaven is expected to make landfall in southwestern North Korea on Aug. 28. Typhoon Tembin Ready to Move North Typhoon Tembin completed its cyclonic loop south of Taiwan, and is now poised to move northeast and pass Taiwan on its journey behind Bolaven, into the Yellow Sea. On Aug. 27 at 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EDT), Tembin had maximum sustained winds near 65 knots (75 mph/120.4 kmh) making it a minimal typhoon. It was located about 240 nautical (276 miles/444.5 km) miles south-southwest of Taipei, Taiwan near 21.6 North and 120.4 East. It was moving to the east-northeast near 14 knots (16.1 mph/26 kmh). AIRS infrared data showed that Tembin showed an eye covered by central dense overcast, as correlated by the MODIS visible imagery. Tembin is expected to move north past Taiwan over the next couple of days, and track through the Yellow Sea. Tembin’s final resting place will be a landfall in southeastern China, near the North Korea border by the weekend. Provided by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center search and more info website
Today
Flash Flood
Pakistan
Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) , [Sudhanoti district]
At least 18 people, including eight women, are feared dead, while nine others were injured, after a passenger bus was swept away in a flash flood in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) on Tuesday. “Nine bodies have so far been recovered, while nine people have been rescued, from the sharp currents of Nullah Sair in the mountainous Sudhanoti district of AJK”, said the district police chief Sajaad Hussain. “The bus, with at least 27 passengers on board, was on its way from Palandri town to Anjaal Kot town when it was swept away in the seasonal nullah which had overflowed its banks,” said Shoukat Tabassam, a local resident and an eyewitness. Flash floods have become more frequent following a spell of heavy late monsoon rains in the northern areas. “Nine people, including three women and a child, were rescued and rushed to district hospital Palandri,” Tabassam said, adding their condition is stated to be out of danger. The deceased, whose bodies have been recovered, are all residents of Anjaal Kot town. Search for the remaining passengers continued till the filing of this report. The wreckage of the private passenger bus could not be recovered from the nullah till late Tuesday night.
Abuja, : At least 10 people were killed and 20,000 displaced when waters from a dam in Cameroon flooded some parts of the Adamawa state in Nigeria over the weekend.
State Emergency Management Agency official Shadrach Daniel Baruk said the flood was made more intense by heavy rainfall.
”Farmlands numbering thousands of hectares and cattle ranches were also inundated in the region which is mostly rural,” he said, adding that many persons were still missing.
Baruk said more than 40 villages were swept away by the flooding even as some houses were also destroyed.
He said that authorities in Cameroon had warned Nigerians living near Benue River to vacate the place because of the impending flooding but they refused.
Flooding is very common in Nigeria during rainy season and this year four persons were killed after a heavy downpour in Niger state. Another flood in central city of Jos left 68
people dead.
Nigeria has two seasons; dry and rainy.
Last July, torrential rain and flooding that hit Lagos led to more than 20 deaths, even as 2,000 persons were displaced.
Then, heavy downpour in the Island city of 15 million people triggered the overflow of canals with water pouring into residential areas and major roads.
Eleven of the dead were children who drowned in the ensuing flood as the victims could not distinguish between the roads and drainage channels.
Two residents walk among the damaged houses, suspected to be caused by a tornado in Vero Beach, Florida, the United States. The suspected tornado is believed to be caused by Tropical Storm Isaac. (Xinhua/Marcus DiPaola)
A tornado spawned by Hurricane Isaac touched down in the Gainestown area of Clarke County about 50 miles north of Mobile. Clarke County Sheriff Ray Norris said the small tornado touched down Tuesday afternoon. Norris said it did not cause any injuries and deputies could not find any structures that were damaged. He said the tornado knocked down some trees and power poles. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley mentioned the tornado at a news conference when he was talking about some of the early effects of Isaac on Alabama as the storm approached the Gulf coast. The governor also said there had been some flooding along coastal roads in Baldwin and Mobile counties. He said power had been lost on Dauphin Island south of Mobile.
In this photo from Sunday Oct. 23, 2011, tents are seen in Curry Village in Yosemite National Park, Calif. 2 people have died after contracting the rare rodent-borne hantavirus that might have been linked to their stay at this popular lodging area in Yosemite, officials said.
Photo: Ben Margot / AP
Another visitor to Yosemite National Park this summer who contracted the hantavirus while staying in the popular Curry Village has died, park officials said Monday.
That makes three confirmed cases, including two deaths. A fourth case, also reported Monday, is being investigated.
All four visitors stayed in Curry Village, a collection of tents and cabins at the eastern end of Yosemite Valley, over a one-week period in mid-June. Park officials are now contacting everyone who has stayed in the tent cabins since mid-June to warn them about the virus and advise them to seek medical attention if they have any symptoms of infection.
“This is being taken very seriously,” said park spokesman Scott Gediman. “We’ve been able to isolate the cabin area, we’ve done the thorough cleaning, we’re monitoring the area, we’re trapping mice and testing them. We’re making sure the cabins are shored up. We’re being very active, and we have been since the cases came to light.”
Hantavirus is a rare viral infection carried by mice and passed to humans by the rodents’ feces or urine. Most people infected with the virus suffer flu-like symptoms first, including fever, headache and muscle pains, often in the thighs, back and hips. After two to seven days, many patients have severe difficulty breathing and can die.
No cure available
Patients may not develop symptoms until one to six weeks after exposure. There is no cure or virus-specific treatment for hantavirus.
The first victim reported was a 37-year-old Alameda County man who died in late July. The second victim was a woman from Southern California who survived the infection. The third victim is a man who lives in another state and also died in July.
No immediate information was available on the fourth victim, who is expected to survive. Public health officials are waiting for lab tests to confirm that the fourth victim has hantavirus, but given the symptoms it’s likely that patient also contracted the virus in Yosemite, Gediman said.
Difficult to diagnose
Public health officials aren’t expecting to find more cases of hantavirus, but since it’s a rare disease that can be difficult to diagnose, it’s possible other victims may still be found, Gediman said. The two newest cases were reported to California public health officials only last weekend, although both victims had been symptomatic for weeks.
All four of the victims stayed in Curry Village’s “signature tent cabins” over a one-week period in mid-June. Curry Village has 408 tent cabins with wood frames and canvas sides; 91 of those cabins are higher-end, with more insulation and other amenities.
Gediman said contractors are currently making improvements to all of the signature cabins, including replacing the insulation and checking carefully for areas where mice could get into the structures.
“They’re doing everything they can to eliminate areas where mice can get into the cabins,” Gediman said. “This was never because the cabins were dirty, it was never because we didn’t take care of them. This is just because approximately 20 percent of all deer mice are infected with hantavirus. And they’re here in Yosemite Valley.”
Spread by deer mice
Hantavirus is spread primarily via deer mice, which generally live at higher elevations and, in California, are most common in the eastern Sierra. Lab tests taken after the first two victims fell ill confirmed that the hantavirus was present in fecal matter from mice trapped near Curry Village.
These four cases are the first ever to be reported from Yosemite Valley, although the national park has had two cases in past years, both in visitors to the higher-elevation Tuolumne Meadows.
There have been about 60 cases of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome reported in California since the virus was identified in the United States in 1993. About a third of those patients died.
Hantavirus
How it’s caught: Mice carry the viral infection and pass it to humans through their feces or urine.
Effects on patients: People infected with the virus may suffer flu-like symptoms, including fever, headache and muscle pains, often in the thighs, back and hips. After two to seven days, many patients have severe difficulty breathing. Death is possible.
To learn more: Anyone with questions about hantavirus at Yosemite National Park can call (209) 372-0822.
Cuba says a cholera outbreak on the island has run its course with more than 10 days since the last confirmed case of the infectious disease. A notice from the Health Ministry gives a final toll of 417 people sickened and three dead. It blames heavy rains and high temperatures this year for raising the risk of diarrheic diseases. The notice says the outbreak originated in contaminated water systems in the eastern city of Manzanillo, Granma province. Cases elsewhere in Granma, Santiago de Cuba and Havana were detected in people who had traveled from Manzanillo. The Health Ministryâs bulletin says ââthe outbreak is over,ââ but authorities remain vigilant.
On August 26, 2012, the extent of Arctic water covered by sea ice fell below 4.17 million square kilometers (1.61 million square miles), the record minimum set in 2007. Arctic sea ice stood at 4.10 million square kilometers (1.58 million square miles), the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA reported on August 27.
This image was made from observations collected by the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) on the satellites of the U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. Sea ice appears in shades of white and light blue, with white indicating the greatest concentrations of ice. Open ocean water is blue, and land is gray. The yellow outline shows the median minimum ice extent for 1979-2000—in other words, areas that were at least 15 percent ice-covered in at least half the years between 1979 and 2000—on August 26.
In April 2012, Arctic sea ice reached a near-average extent, but periods of intense ice loss in June and August 2012 helped push Arctic sea ice below the previous record from 2007. In 2007, high pressure over the Beaufort Sea and low pressure over northeastern Eurasia pulled in warm winds, which melted the ice and pushed it away from the Siberian and Alaskan coastlines. Although these pressure patterns also occurred in 2012, they were much less persistent. Nonetheless sea ice melt rates still reached up to 150,000 square kilometers (57,900 square miles) per day in 2012, more that twice the long-term rate.
By early July, Arctic sea ice melting was three weeks ahead of schedule, but then slowed somewhat. Ice loss rates picked up again in early August, “probably the highest in the record for that period,” according to NSIDC staff scientist Walt Meier. Because the old record has been passed in August 2012—and Arctic sea ice generally reaches its lowest annual extent in September—it is likely that the amount of ice cover may continue to shrink. NSIDC provides an overview of melt rates in its Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis blog.
Arctic sea ice reached previous record lows in 2002, 2005, and 2007. (The 2007 record low was previously recorded as 4.13 million square kilometers, or 1.59 million square miles. Slightly different processing and quality-control procedures used by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center led to revised estimates of sea ice extent.) Over the past decade, sea ice extent in the Arctic has been well below the 1979–2000 average.
The loss of so much sea ice means that when ice reforms over the winter, it is “first-year ice,” which is much thinner than sea ice that has persisted over multiple years. Joey Comiso, senior research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, explained that the loss of this multiyear ice contributed to record low ice extent in 2012. Another possible factor at work in the summer of 2012, Comiso suggested, may have been a strong summer cyclone, which broke up ice in the Central Arctic and dispersed it into warmer waters.
NSIDC director Mark Serreze differed with Comiso somewhat on the role of the storm. “The ice was already so thin it was ready to go,” said Serreze. “2012 likely would have set a new record without the storm.”
Once sea ice loss gets underway, it can become a self-reinforcing process. Because there is less light-colored ice to reflect the Sun’s energy back into space, more energy is absorbed by darker ocean water.
The new record low for sea ice in 2012 fits into a larger pattern of a changing Arctic. Regarding the rapid loss of Arctic sea ice, Serreze remarks, “What is perhaps most surprising is that we are no longer surprised.”
A meteorite the size of a golf ball exploded over South Wales last night, according to reports. At around 11.10pm, people across the UK reported seeing a bright light travelling across the skies which allegedly exploded near Cwmbran. Police said they were not aware of the incident, but dozens of Twitter users and people on meteor forum Meteorite News said the bright light stayed within view for between three and eight seconds as it travelled. Nathan Jones from St Athan, writing on Meteorite News, said: “After about eight seconds I lost line of sight due to houses. “I saw an object, I can’t specify what, with a heat trail behind. It was orange and white and very bright, and also seemed very close, not that I could see. “Never seen something so amazing in my life. It looked like it was skimming through the atmosphere due to the curved path it was taking.” Hannah Sabido said it looked like a “bright white ball with a long bright tail and possibly a green hue”. She said: “It became more orange towards the North East, giving off orange sparks before bursting out. “There was no sound distinguishable above background. It began brighter than the moon. It was first noticed as a very bright glowing light behind cloud, ravelling very fast.” T Doran, of New Brighton, Wirral, Merseyside, wrote: “We were on the beach walking towards the sea wall, facing the South East and it travelled from right to left across the sky. “It just appeared in the sky, then the view was obscured by the sea wall. “It was silent, a large orange and white globe with a long straight green tail.”
Wildlife authorities say a strong earthquake in the Pacific Ocean late Sunday destroyed more than 45,000 endangered sea turtle eggs on the coast of El Salvador. The director of the turtle conservation program for the El Salvador Zoological Foundation says the 7.4-magnitude undersea quake sent at least three waves at least 30 feet high up the beach and destroyed thousands of nests and just-hatched turtles. It also washed up on about 150 people collecting eggs in order to protect them in special pens hundreds of feet up the beach. The waves injured three. Program director Emilio Leon said that in the last year and a half the foundation has successfully hatched and released 700,000 turtles from four species at risk of extinction.
Biohazard name:
Mass. Die-off (sea turtle)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Hundreds of rats have died in the water-logged Walled City over the past few days. Not willing to take a chance, the district administration has sent the dead mice to a lab in Bangalore for testing. Nobody is willing to mention the plague word, yet, but residents fear the death of rodents is an ominous sign. Dr BR Meena, director of public health department, says his field unit is monitoring the situation on daily basis. “We have sent samples of the dead rodents for an autopsy to the animal husbandry department,” he said. “Samples have also been dispatched to a testing laboratory in Bangalore for interpreting the situation,” he said. Officials are wary of pronouncing a health scare due to the dead mice, but are on their toes after residents brought to their notice carcasses of pigs and stray dogs also floating in the rainwater that has flowed into the man-made lake. Local ward commissioner Kailash Mahawat says he has written to the Jaipur Municipal Corporation on the issue, but help has not yet arrived. “I have informed the CEO Loknath Soni on fears of plague in the area due to mass death of rats, but the JMC has not taken any initiative to clean up the lake or remove the bodies from it,” Mahawat adds. Talkatora Lake has around 1500 to 2000 people living around it. Water level in the lake is now eight feet high after recent spell of heavy rains. But, the lake has become a curse for the locals. “The dried-up lake was better on hindsight. Now we are worrying over the health risk it poses to our families,” Ramdas Agrawal, a sixty-year-old resident of Talkatora colony told us. “The odour coming of the dead animals floating in water is making our lives a hell; My wife lives in constant terror of our children falling to some water-borne disease,” says Rakesh Meena, another resident. Health director, BR Meena refuses a plague in the making, but admits the lake is breeding ground for seasonal diseases, particularly malaria and dengue. He says, “We are taking measures to ensure the dirty water in lake does not lead to spread of diseases in the area.”
Biohazard name:
Mass. Die-off (rats)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
confirmed
28.08.2012
Biological Hazard
Australia
State of Western Australia, [ Quobba Station, north of Carnarvon]
A man has been attacked by a shark off Western Australia’s Gascoyne coast on Tuesday afternoon. The attack occurred while he was surfing at Red Bluff near Quobba Station, 70 kilometres north of Carnarvon. The break is about 1,000 kilometres north of Perth. The 34-year-old man received serious injuries but was conscious when he was brought ashore. The Department of Fisheries says the shark bit the surfer on the abdomen and as he tried to fend it off he was then mauled on the arm. Rebecca Caldwell’s children were in the water when they noticed the man was injured, but she says they did not see the shark. “The water was full of blood,” she said. “He was conscious the whole way back though he was OK, he was good. “He’s in good spirits, as well as he could be.” Carnarvon Shire chief executive Maurice Battilana says the beach has since been closed. He has said it is in a remote area that is very popular with tourists. “Extremely popular surfing and camping spot and we’re probably in the peak season, very popular surfing spot,” he said. Police and the St John Ambulance were sent to the location and the man has been taken to Carnarvon Hospital. The Royal Flying Doctor Service is flying its crew from Meekatharra to Carnarvon and they will then fly the man to Perth for treatment. The RFDS says the man has serious injuries to his right arm and is in a stable condition. There have been five fatal shark attacks in less than a year off WA’s coast.
Biohazard name:
Shark attack (Non-Fatal)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Bolivian police on Tuesday confiscated two tons of uranium that was being stored at a building in central La Paz located near the U.S. and Spanish embassies. Four people, all of them Bolivian nationals, were arrested while they were transferring the uranium from one vehicle to another, Deputy Interior Minister Jorge Perez said. The radioactive material was in sacks of jute and nylon, he said. Since Bolivia does not produce uranium, Perez said, authorities assume the consignment originated in either of two neighboring countries that do: Brazil or Chile. The commander of the elite police unit that carried out the operation, Col. Eddy Torrez, said the seizure was the fruit of a six-week investigation. Police pounced when they learned the people in possession of the uranium planned to meet Tuesday with a potential buyer, the colonel said. Perez said one of the people arrested is an engineer who told police he was holding the uranium for other people, but provided no information on the owners of the cache.
Photo taken on Aug. 27, 2012, shows a storage tank on fire at the Amuay refinery in Punto Fijo, Venezuela. According to the local press, after two days of Paraguana Refining Complex’s blast, the fire remains confined in two storage tanks. The Paraguana Refining Complex’s blast at Amuay refinery caused the death of at least 48 people and left dozens injured on Saturday. (Xinhua/AVN)
CARACAS, (Xinhua) — Fire from an explosion at Venezuela’s Amuay refinery over the weekend, which has left 48 deaths, spread to a third fuel tank Monday, local media reported.
“We must announce that a third tank… is on fire,” said Oil and Mining Minister Rafael Ramirez, who is also head of the state-run Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) oil company, which operates the country’s biggest Amuay refinery in Falcon state. Full story
CARACAS, (Xinhua) — The number of people killed in a blast over the weekend at Venezuela’s Amuay oil refiner has climbed to 48, an official source said on Monday.
Stella Lugo, governor of northwestern Falcon state, where the blast occurred, told local Union Radio station that the number of fatalities rose from 41 to 48 over the past few hours.
Seven people badly burnt by the explosion are in stable condition and receiving treatment at a hospital in neighboring Zulia state, she said, dismissing earlier rumors that they died.
CARACAS, (Xinhua) — The number of people killed in a blast over the weekend at Venezuela’s Amuay oil refiner has climbed to 48, an official source said on Monday.
Stella Lugo, governor of northwestern Falcon state, where the blast occurred, told local Union Radio station that the number of fatalities rose from 41 to 48 over the past few hours.
Seven people badly burnt by the explosion are in stable condition and receiving treatment at a hospital in neighboring Zulia state, she said, dismissing earlier rumors that they died.
“We have been serious, transparent and honest in releasing the figures, we don’t release figures we have not confirmed,” Lugo said. State officials were monitoring the progress of the injured at clinics and hospitals, said Lugo, adding they would be transported to Zulia if needed.
A total of 33 families have been evacuated from their homes in the immediate vicinity of the refinery and relocated at Falcon’s Punto Fijo Naval Base as a preventive measure, since fires continued to rage Monday.
State inspectors have assessed the damage to some 520 homes so far, and found some to be totally destroyed, while others sustained only minor damages, said Lugo.
Medical reports said some of the victims suffered burns to 90 percent of their bodies, as well as multiple other injuries.
The explosion is one of the worst industrial disasters in Venezuela’s history and one of the worst to have occurred in recent years worldwide. It leveled 209 nearby homes and 11 businesses, and caused the largest number of fatalities at a National Guard post.
The Amuay refinery, 350 km from the capital Caracas, is part of the Paraguana Refinery Complex, which is the second largest oil refinery in the world and capable of producing 955,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
Venezuela is South America’s biggest oil producer and the world ‘s fifth biggest oil exporter.
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An earthquake that struck rural Indonesia left at least four people dead, authorities said Sunday. At least seven others were injured, according to the National Disaster Management Agency. The 6.6-magnitude hit Saturday near the city of Palu on the island of Sulawesi, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Three of the hardest-hit districts are still unreachable because landslides triggered by the quake are blocking the roads. Heavy equipment and bulldozers are helping clear the roads. Disaster, health and social welfare officials, including the Red Cross, are headed to the area to provide emergency assistance, trucks and ambulances.
Areas in Ecuador’s Quito region have been evacuated as the Tungurahua volcano continues to erupt. Authotiries have been forced onto making plans to evacuate residents of Ecuador’s Banos region as the Tungurahua volcano continues to erupt. Local cities and farms have been covered in volanic ash as the massive eruptions shoe no signs of abating.
Thousands of people were told to leave their homes Sunday as a growing wildfire burning out of control in thick forest threatened rural communities in far Northern California. The fire that started Saturday has destroyed seven homes and consumed nearly 19 square miles near the towns of Manton, Shingletown and Viola, fire spokesman Daniel Berlant said. About 3,000 homes spread out across a rural area along the border of Tehama and Shasta counties were threatened as the fire continued to expand, he said. “A good majority are immediately threatened, and a good number are in the path of the fire,” Berlant said Sunday. “We will be battling it hard today to protect as many of those homes as possible.”The fire’s cause had not been determined, but officials said it started after a series of lightning strikes in the area. Nearly 1,000 firefighters were battling the flames. No part of the blaze was contained Sunday evening, and fire activity had picked up, Berlant said. John Cluff, 42, told the Redding Record Searchlight that he was forced to flee his home before the evacuations were issued. He went back for his dog about 3:30 p.m. “The fire basically chased me out of the property,” he said. “All I could see was black smoke and flames.” The Shasta County Sheriff’s Department has declared a State of Emergency for the county, with evacuations expected to continue through Sunday. The agency also was closing some local roads. The Red Cross set up an evacuation center in Redding, about 35 miles to the west of the blaze. The fire, burning in a rugged area of thick forests about 170 miles north of Sacramento, is one of handful of new fires in Northern California.
Today
Forest / Wild Fire
Australia
State of New South Wales, [Clarence Valley region]
A Bushfire Emergency has been declared in the Clarence Valley, on the New South Wales north coast. The Rural Fire Service (RFS) says crews in the Clarence have battled about 20 fires per day over the weekend. It says the key problem was hazard reduction burns on private land running out of control. The Bushfire Emergency or Section 44 declaration means the area can now access fire fighting equipment and personnel from across the state, with the state government covering the cost. RFS spokesman Brian Daly says dangerous conditions are forecast to ease off this week. “The last two days have been horrendous, with winds up around 50 to 60 kilometres an hour, from the northwest or north nor west,” he said. “They were just terrible conditions for fires.” Mr Daly says there are bushfires along the north coast near Casino, Coffs, Kempsey and Taree but the worst problems are in the Clarence. “We’re getting upwards of 20 ignitions a day, some of them are growing significantly and are still burning in remote areas,” he said. “Others our crews are getting onto and extinguishing quite quickly. “At the moment we’ve got about 18 fires listed as either going or contained and that’s just Clarence Valley.”
Authorities say Hurricane Gordon has passed Portugal’s mid-Atlantic Azores Islands without causing major damage and is losing strength. The head of the Azores Civil Protection Service, Pedro Carvalho, says there were no reports of significant damage as Gordon passed by Santa Maria and Sao Miguel, two of the archipelago’s nine islands, Sunday night. He told public broadcaster Radiotelevisao Portuguesa on Monday that emergency services responded to some calls about localized flooding amid torrential rain. Nobody was reported hurt. Authorities had warned locals to take precautions ahead of the arrival of the hurricane, which formed Saturday.
Satellite imagery hints that Tropical Depression 7 may be reborn Enlarge On Aug. 17, 2012, NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite captured visible images of Tropical Depression 7′s remnants at 9:45 am EDT. Showers and thunderstorm activity has increased over the Bay of Campeche. Credit: Credit: NASA GOES Project Satellite imagery on August 17 is showing signs of re-organization in the remnants of Tropical Depression 7 (TD7). TD7 has moved into the warm waters of the Bay of Campeche where it is regaining strength and appears much more organized. Ads by Google Emergency Water Filter – Energy-Free Ceramic Water Purifier Use Raw Lake, River, and Rain Water – http://www.aquarain.com NASA’s GOES Project created a visible image of the remnants of Tropical Depression 7 from August 17 at 9:45 a.m. EDT (1345 UTC) from NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite. The image showed several areas of stronger thunderstorms. The stronger thunderstorms appear brighter white in the imagery and are located around the center and to the northeast of the center of circulation. NASA’s GOES Project is located at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The Bay of Campeche is located on the western side of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, and is part of the southwestern Gulf of Mexico. The Bay is surrounded on three sides by the Mexican states of Campeche, Veracruz and Tabasco. Shower and thunderstorm activity picked up during the morning hours (Eastern Daylight Time) on August 17 in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico and Bay of Campeche. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) noted “surface observations and radar data indicate that the circulation has also become a little better defined and environmental conditions appear conducive for development.” The remnants of TD7 are moving to the west-northwestward to northwestward at around 10 mph. The NHC stated that a tropical depression could re-form before the low pressure area makes another landfall in Mexico over the weekend. So the remnants have a 70 percent chance of becoming a tropical depression again. A tropical storm watch or warning could be needed for part of the Gulf coast of Mexico. Provided by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center search and more info website
Courtesy Photo | Derek DennisWaterspouts formed over Lake Michigan near Holland on July 27. Similar phenomena were spotted on Saturday morning off South Haven.
UPDATE: The National Weather Service is now reporting nine waterspouts from two separate storms were witnessed on Lake Michigan.
SOUTH HAVEN, MI — Waterspouts have been spotted over Lake Michigan today and forecasters say it’s possible more could spawn tonight and Sunday night.
The National Weather Service said three of the tornado-like vortices were reported to them shortly before noon on Saturday, by people who were out on a fishing boat in Lake Michigan this morning.
The spouts were spotted about 24 miles west of the South Haven lighthouse.
The storms that caused them were small, 15-minute “pop-ups,” said William Moreno, a meteorologist in the NWS office in Grand Rapids.
Conditions were right this morning for the waterspouts, Moreno said, with a land breeze converging over lake water warmed by the summer heat.
The water in that part of the lake, the widest part of Lake Michigan, is about 72 degrees, he said. Winds in spout areas often reach 40 to 60 mph. Boaters or swimmers are advised to seek shelter when they are spotted.
Scattered storms have been moving over the central Lower Peninsula on Saturday. Clusters have moved east from Muskegon through Montcalm and Isabella counties, said Moreno.
The outflow boundary from the storm cluster has been darkening skies over southern Kent County and the Grand Rapids area, and that could produce a storm in the next few hours, he said.
Tonight and Sunday night, the air over Wisconsin and Michigan will cool again, said Moreno, and the situation that produced the spouts could be repeated,
National Weather Service offices in Milwaukee, Gaylord and Chicago are forecasting waterspouts on Sunday, he said.
“Tomorrow is better because we have a cold front coming south. The convection will be deeper and that will encourage more in the way of waterspouts.”
Strong thunderstorms dumping as much as 4 inches of rain have flooded streets, trapped drivers and collapsed buildings in Dallas. The storms rolled over the city on Saturday night. National Weather Service meteorologist Jesse Moore says some areas got as much as 4 inches of rain. Authorities have not confirmed any deaths related to the storms, but people told WFAA-TV they saw a man fall into a creek and get swept away about 7 p.m. The Dallas Morning News says two building collapses have been reported, including a partial cave-in at the Urban Inter-Tribal Center of Texas. Dallas Fire-Rescue rescued one driver trapped in high water near the city’s downtown, and several were stranded in flooded streets near Baylor University Medical Center.
Today
Landslide
India
State of Himachal Pradesh, [Kullu-Manali-Rohtang highway]
Several parts of Himachal Pradesh experienced heavy rainfall during the past 24 hours, triggering landslides at various places and disrupting vehicular traffic in the state. The Kullu-Manali-Rohtang highway was blocked for several hours due to landslides while hundreds of tourists remained stranded in the tribal Kaza area as landslides blocked the roads linking the valley from other parts of the state. However, all the roads in the tribal areas and also the national highways were opened later. “The traffic which was suspended since last night due to landslides was cleared this afternoon,” Rakesh Kumar, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Kaza said. Meanwhile, traffic on the Chandigarh-Manali highway, which remained suspended for several hours due to a massive landslide near Mandi town, was resumed this evening after clearing the debris from the road. “The highway was closed due to massive landslides triggered by incessant rain in the region for the past two days,” a police official said. The local MeT office has warned of heavy to very heavy rains in many parts of Himachal during the next 48 hours resulting in a sharp rise in levels of major rivers and their tributaries. The tourist towns of Shimla, Narkanda, Kufri, Kalpa, Kasauli, Chamba, Dharamsala, Palampur and Manali may receive rains in the next few days, the MeT office added. Mandi was the wettest in the region with 86 mm of rains while Sujanpur Tira had 80 mm of rains, followed by Malraun and Nehri 73 mm, Kahu 69 mm, Sihunta 59 mm, Sundernagar 52 mm, Shahpur 49 mm, Ramshar 34 mm, Gaggal Airport 33 mm, Thana Plaun Ghumarwin 28 mm and Dharamsala, Hamirpur and Berthin 22 mm each.
A magnetic filament snaking over the sun’s northeastern limb erupted on August 18th (01:02 UT), producing a significant M5.5-class solar flare. Click to view a movie of the eruption recorded by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory:
A coronal mass ejection (CME) flew away from the blast site, but the cloud is not heading for Earth. This eruption was not geoeffective.
The magnetic filament reformed, post-eruption, and appears to be connected to an active sunspot group on the farside of the sun. Although the sunspot is hidden behind the limb, the Solar Dynamics Observatory can see the sunspot’s towering magnetic canopy flashing and hurling plasma over the edge of the sun. Click on the image to set the scene in motion:
A great way to see the hidden sunspot is using NASA’s 3D Sun app, which shows our star as a 3-dimensional globe that you can spin and inspect from any angle. Data for the app come from a fleet of three spacecraft (SDO + STEREO) that surround the sun. Download the app and look around the globe for a hot spot labeled ‘farside AR.’ (AR=”active region”)
Soon, the sun’s rotation will turn the sunspot from the farside to the Earthside of the sun. A significant uptick in geoeffective solar activity is possible in the days ahead.
It has been a while since sky watchers around the Arctic Circle have enjoyed the Northern Lights. Auroras are hard to see through the glare of the midnight sun. As summer comes to an end, however, aurora season is beginning again. On August 16th, B.Art Braafhart spotted a splash of green over Salla in the Finnish Lapland:
“Finally, after three nights hunting for ‘the green lights,’ I made the first catch of the new season,” says Braafhart. “The nice temperature (+12C) was accompanied by zooming mosquitos around midnight. The apparition was brief, the colors thin and light, but after an absence of 4 months exciting again!”
The Northern Lights above Lake Superior. Photographer unknown.
Recent X-class solar flares have ignited the polar lights.
An electrically active magnetotail (or plasma tail) extends for millions of kilometers from Earth. Charged particles from the Sun, otherwise known as the solar wind, together with ions generated by the Earth, gather in a plasma sheet inside the magnetotail. Earth’s magnetic field causes these particles to spiral around the poles as well as to bounce between them. Some ions circle the Earth in two bands at low latitudes. Electrons move in one direction and protons in the opposite direction.
Solar ions flowing down into the polar cusps excite atmospheric molecules. Red light is emitted from oxygen molecules at high altitudes, while green light shines from oxygen in the lower atmosphere. Auroral blue comes from nitrogen.
Electromagnetic disturbances accompany bright aurorae because electric charge flows parallel to the auroral formation. Since electricity must move in a circuit, the electric currents travel into the aurorae from space and then back out to space, magnetically guided along the auroral arcs.
As mentioned in a previous Picture of the day, a magnetometer launched in 1973 by the U.S. Navy onboard the Triad satellite found two electric current sheets above Earth’s ionosphere charged with more than a million amperes. One plasma sheet descended from the aurora’s morning side and the other ascended from the evening side.
Kristian Birkeland’s research at the beginning of the twentieth century predicted the connection between Earth and space, so the plasma sheets are known as “Birkeland currents.” Birkeland’s polar electric currents are linked with electric currents moving within the geomagnetic field into and away from the Arctic and Antarctic regions.
On March 7, 2012 the Sun unleashed the second largest solar flare recorded in this active cycle. The X5.4 flare released a gigantic coronal mass ejection that headed for Earth at hundreds of kilometers per second. A geomagnetic storm occurred on March 8, increasing the auroral brightness and extending its visibility as far south as the Great Lakes.
As mentioned in past articles, auroral brightness and frequency tend to increase when CMEs meet Earth’s magnetic field, so logic would assume that the solar discharges are a flow of ionic particles. Heliophysicists tend to refer to those ions as a “wind” that “rain downs” on Earth. However, the fact that they follow the polar magnetic field establishes their electrical nature.
Solar flares are sometimes observed to leave the Sun with rapid acceleration. One CME burst was clocked at a velocity greater than 70,000 kilometers per second. A confirmation of the Electric Universe theory in that measurement was that material continued to accelerate as it left the Sun. Shock waves and “acoustic wave guides” could not have been responsible, otherwise the blast would have decelerated as it rushed toward Earth. Since the opposite effect was seen, an electric field phenomenon must have been at work and not kinetic effects.
Stephen Smith
Editor’s note: Title taken from The Iliad of Homer by Alexander Pope (1688-1744).
The Government Model Residential School, Peerumade, was closed on Monday after over 60 students were admitted to various hospitals since Sunday, due to alleged food poisoning. The condition of none of the students was serious, reports reaching here said. The authorities at the Peerumade taluk hospital said that students started to arrive at the hospital with complaints of vomiting, head ache and fever symptoms by evening on Sunday. When the number of casualties increased by Monday, the hospital authorities referred those having severe symptoms to the Kottayam Medical College Hospital. 14 students were admitted there, 29 at the Institute of Child Health and Hospital for Children, Kottayam, 22 at the observation unit of the Taluk hospital, Kanjirappally and two at the Taluk hospital, Peerumade. Of them, 32 are male. The Tamil medium residential school accommodates students from standard V to Plus-I after it was upgraded this academic year. Students of Scheduled Caste and general category from Vandiperiyar, Kumily and Munnar are admitted at the school.
A team of physicians led by District Medical Officer P.J.Aloxious checked all the students at the school after opening a temporary medical unit at the school office. The preliminary inquiry shows that students showed symptoms of vomiting and giddiness after having evening food on Sunday at the hostel. An official of the medical team which visited the school said that stale food served could have been the cause and added that food samples had been collected and sent for analytical tests at the Regional Analytical Laboratory, Kakkanad. He said that water samples were also collected in addition to the samples of milk served to the students. District Collector T.Bhaskaran who visited the hostel and the hospitals told The Hindu that an inquiry has been ordered and if anyone was found guilty, action will be taken. He said that health officials have been directed to visit government residential schools in the district on a routine basis and ensure that quality food is served to the students in other hostels also. He said that a meeting of the peoples representatives, parents and teachers will be convened at the school on August 22 to address the problems being faced by it. The school has been closed till September 3. By noon, parents of the students started reaching the school to accompany their wards home. About 250 students are accommodated at various classes in the school which cater exclusively for Tamil medium students.
Biohazard name:
Mass. Food Poisoning
Biohazard level:
1/4 Low
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses including Bacillus subtilis, canine hepatitis, Escherichia coli, varicella (chicken pox), as well as some cell cultures and non-infectious bacteria. At this level precautions against the biohazardous materials in question are minimal, most likely involving gloves and some sort of facial protection. Usually, contaminated materials are left in open (but separately indicated) waste receptacles. Decontamination procedures for this level are similar in most respects to modern precautions against everyday viruses (i.e.: washing one’s hands with anti-bacterial soap, washing all exposed surfaces of the lab with disinfectants, etc). In a lab environment, all materials used for cell and/or bacteria cultures are decontaminated via autoclave.
More than 800 people were evacuated when a main water supply pipe burst on Monday in Mamelodi, east of Pretoria, Tshwane emergency services said. Spokesman Johan Pieterse said the Phomolong informal settlement was flooded when the pipe burst at around 1am on Monday. “We are still busy on the scene with a search and rescue mission as some of the people were missing family members.” He said one person was taken to hospital in a critical condition while five others sustained minor injuries. “The Hans Strijdom drive have been closed from the Hinterland Avenue to the Pretoria Avenue. Traffic will be affected as the road will only be opened much later on Monday.” Motorists were advised to take alternative routes. Pieterse said they would soon know which suburbs have been affected with water supply.
[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.]
Nearly 1,000 earthquakes recorded in Arizona over 3 years Enlarge Nearly 60 USArray stations were installed in Arizona from 2006 to 2009 as part of the EarthScope project. Station 118A, seen in this photo, recorded ground motion north of Wilcox in southeastern Arizona from April 6, 2007 to Jan. 21, 2009. Credit: Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (funded by NSF EarthScope) Arizona State University researchers use EarthScope data to build the first comprehensive earthquake catalog for Arizona. Ads by Google Emergency Mgmt. Degree – Earn an emergency management degree online at AMU. Enroll now. – http://www.AMU.APUS.edu/EmergencyMgmt Earthquakes are among the most destructive and common of geologic phenomena. Several million earthquakes are estimated to occur worldwide each year (the vast majority are too small to feel, but their motions can be measured by arrays of seismometers). Historically, most of Arizona has experienced low levels of recorded seismicity, with infrequent moderate and large earthquakes in the state. Comprehensive analyses of seismicity within Arizona have not been previously possible due to a lack of seismic stations in most regions, contributing to the perception that widespread earthquakes in Arizona are rare. Debunking that myth, a new study published by Arizona State University researchers found nearly 1,000 earthquakes rattling the state over a three-year period. Jeffrey Lockridge, a graduate student in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration and the project’s lead researcher, used new seismic data collected as part of the EarthScope project to develop methods to detect and locate small-magnitude earthquakes across the entire state of Arizona. EarthScope’s USArray Transportable Array was deployed within Arizona from April 2006 to March 2009 and provided the first opportunity to examine seismicity on a statewide scale. Its increased sensitivity allowed Lockridge to find almost 1,000 earthquakes during the three-year period, including many in regions of Arizona that were previously thought to be seismically inactive. “It is significant that we found events in areas where none had been detected before, but not necessarily surprising given the fact that many parts of the state had never been sampled by seismometers prior to the deployment of the EarthScope USArray,” says Lockridge. “I expected to find some earthquakes outside of north-central Arizona, where the most and largest events had previously been recorded, just not quite so many in other areas of the state.” Ads by Google ITT Tech – Official Site – Convenient Schedules, Over 130 Locations. Browse New Programs. – http://www.ITT-Tech.edu One-thousand earthquakes over three years may sound alarmingly high, but the large number of earthquakes detected in the study is a direct result of the improved volume and quality of seismic data provided by EarthScope. Ninety-one percent of the earthquakes Lockridge detected in Arizona were “microquakes” with a magnitude of 2.0 or smaller, which are not usually felt by humans. Detecting small-magnitude earthquakes is not only important because some regions experiencing small earthquakes may produce larger earthquakes, but also because geologists use small magnitude earthquakes to map otherwise hidden faults beneath the surface. Historically, the largest earthquakes and the majority of seismicity recorded within Arizona have been located in an area of north–central Arizona. More recently, a pair of magnitude 4.9 and 5.3 earthquakes occurred in the Cataract Creek area outside of Flagstaff. Earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 or larger also have occurred in other areas of the state, including a magnitude 4.2 earthquake in December 2003 in eastern Arizona and a magnitude 4.9 earthquake near Chino Valley in 1976. “The wealth of data provided by the EarthScope project is an unprecedented opportunity to detect and locate small-magnitude earthquakes in regions where seismic monitoring (i.e. seismic stations) has historically been sparse,” explains Lockridge. “Our study is the first to use EarthScope data to build a regional catalog that detects all earthquakes magnitude 1.2 or larger.” His results appear in a paper titled, “Seismicity within Arizona during the Deployment of the EarthScope USArray Transportable Array,” published in the August 2012 issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. Ramon Arrowsmith and Matt Fouch, professors in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, are Lockridge’s dissertation advisors and coauthors on the paper. Fouch is also a geophysicist at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington, DC. “The most surprising result was the degree to which the EarthScope data were able to improve upon existing catalogs generated by regional and national networks. From April 2007 through November 2008, other networks detected only 80 earthquakes within the state, yet over that same time we found 884 earthquakes, or 11 times as many, which is really quite staggering,” says Lockridge. “It’s one of countless examples of how powerful the EarthScope project is and how much it is improving our ability to study Earth.” Lockridge is also lead author on a study that focuses on a cluster of earthquakes located east of Phoenix, near Theodore Roosevelt Lake. The results from this study will be published in Seismological Research Letters later this year. In his current studies as doctoral student, Lockridge is using the same methods used for Arizona to develop a comprehensive earthquake catalog for the Great Basin region in Nevada and western Utah. Provided by Arizona State University search and more info website
Possibly volcanic SO2 plumes over Costa Rica on 11 Aug (NOAA)
Activity has decreased at White Island. Ash emissions have been lower than in the previous days. Gas measurements showed that all volcanic gases were at levels lower than the previous measurement on August 1.
Tongariro volcano has stayed calm with and GNS scientists think that the most likely scenario is that the 6 Aug eruption was a single event and will not be followed by new eruptions in the near to medium future.
A “new” volcano just entered the watch list:
Out in the Pacific, a pilot observed an ash cloud rising from Tofua volcano to 3,000 ft (ca. 1 km) in the Tonga Islands at 04:42 GMT, VAAC Wellington reports.
El Hierro volcano: A total of 5 earthquakes (between M1.3-2.4) at 10-19 km depth has occurred today so far. This is the highest number in many days.
Activity remains weak at Popocatépetl in Mexico. About 1 weak eruption per hour has been observed during the past day by CENAPRED. SO2 emissions remain high (which is typical for Popo during phases of activity).
An elevated SO2 plume was visible above Costa Rica’s Central valley on NOAA’s SO2 monitoring images. It could have been caused by stronger degassing activity of the volcanoes Poas or Turrialba, both of which have been showing increased activity in 2011-12, but seem to have calmed down in the past months. Another SO2 signal is visible about 100 km east of Rincon de la Vieja and could have originated there. The Costa Rican volcano observatory doesn’t mention any unusual activity.
Santiaguito / Santa Maria (Guatemala): An explosion at 05:49 local tie ejected an 800 m high ash plume and caused ash fall at Finca la Florida and around San Marcos Palajunoj. Only few and weak rock avalanches were reported since yesterday.
For Fuego volcano, INSIVUMEH reports 8 weak explosions during the past day, generating ash columns of 200-500 m height.
The lava flow in direction of Taniluya canyon has further advances and is now 300 m long and generates constant rock avalanches. Avalanches, too, have been observed towards the “Ash” (Ceniza) canyon.
In Colombia, sporadic gas and ash emissions continue to occur at Galeras and tremor signals are sometimes visible on the seismograms. Nevado del Ruiz (Colombia): Steam and ash emissions continue at Nevado del Ruiz at fluctuating intensity. This morning a fresh ash deposit was found at the volcano observatory.
The seimic recordings show tremor and a seismic swarm with 30 quakes since 22:27 local time last night, located NE of the Arenas crater between 3-5 km, in the same area as the previous swarm on 12 August.
Reventador volcano in Ecuador ejects a 1.5 km high steam plume, but IG mentions no explosions or ash. Tungurahua volcano continues to emit a steam plume with small amounts of ash, and has occasional small to moderate explosions accompanied by gunshot sounds heard around the volcano.
Jumping to the far north, there is little new activity to be reported from volcanoes in Kamchatka, the Kuriles, Aleutians and in Alaska. It is rather surprising that this normally very area has stayed quite calm over the past week.
Midway on its 800-kilometer (500-mile) voyage from Auckland to Raoul Island, New Zealand, the HMNZS Canterbury received an intriguing report: a maritime patrol aircraft had spotted a vast area of open ocean covered with floating pumice. Soon after, the ship was sailing through a mass of buoyant volcanic rocks. Up to two feet thick, the pumice raft was about half a nautical mile (1 kilometer) wide, and “extended sideways as far as the eye could see,” wrote Rebecca Priestley, a science writer aboard the ship. Although the lightweight, gas-filled pumice posed no threat to the Canterbury, enough got stuck in the water filters to provide samples for analysis.
Though the pumice was spread over a vast area of the South Pacific, the origin was a mystery to the crew of the ship. An undersea volcano several hundred kilometers to the north of the pumice—Monowai—had erupted on August 3, but an airline pilot reported seeing pumice as early as August 1. Two data sources provided clues to pinpoint the volcano: earthquake records and satellite imagery. After reports of the pumice rafts surfaced, scientists from Tahiti and New Zealand’s GNS Science connected the eruption with a cluster of earthquakes in the Kermadec Islands on July 17 and 18.
Working independently of GNS, volcanologist Erik Klemetti and NASA visualizer Robert Simmon examined a month’s worth of satellite imagery from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). They discovered the first signs of the eruption—ash-stained water, gray pumice, and a volcanic plume—in imagery from 9:50 a.m. and 2:10 p.m. (local time) on July 19, 2012. (Although the Kermadec Islands are east of the International Date Line, they follow New Zealand time.)
Hidden by clouds in the morning image (above, top), the site of the eruption is clearly visible in the afternoon image (lower). Klemetti matched the satellite imagery with ocean floor bathymetry to identify Havre Seamount as the likely source. The eruption was strong enough to breach the ocean surface from a depth of 1,100 meters (3,600 feet).
Alain Bernard of the Laboratoire de Volcanologie, Université Libre de Bruxelles analyzed nighttime imagery from MODIS and found heat from the eruption at 10:50 p.m. on July 18, 2012, the earliest evidence of the Havre Seamount eruption reaching the ocean surface.
By July 21, the eruption appeared to have waned, leaving behind the dense rafts of pumice. Winds and currents spread the pumice into a series of twisted filaments, spread over an area about 450 by 250 kilometers (280 by 160 miles) as of August 13.
A severe storm swept through Calgary and area this afternoon, bringing hail, torrential downpours and wind gusts reaching more than 100 kilometres per hour that left broken windows and fallen trees in its wake. The worst of the storm has passed Calgary, says CBC meteorologist Danielle Savoni. “At this point it’s starting to change over into just the rain and some embedded thunderstorms, but those embedded thunderstorms are nowhere near as severe as what we’ve seen.” Some window washers got caught on a platform on the 22nd floor on an office building on 5th Avenue S.W. Tara Sukut was in her office a floor below. “You could hear the window washers outside yelling, get us off here, get us out of here,” says Sukut. “And a couple minutes later we just heard glass smashing. And you could see it was banging on the window down on our floor. They broke the windows to get inside the building.” The Calgary Fire Department’s high-angle rescue unit was called in to help the three window washers. Sukut’s interview with the CBC’s Elizabeth Snaddon can be heard in the player below.
NEW: National Guard activated in Washington, will provide air support
An Idaho firefighter is killed battling a blaze; two others are hurt in Oregon and California
In all, 62 fires are burning
Are wildfires blazing near you? Send in your photos and videos to CNN iReport, but please stay safe.
(CNN) — Whipped by high winds, wildfires in central Washington state have scorched 28,000 acres and destroyed at least 60 buildings, officials said Tuesday.
Gov. Chris Gregoire declared Kittitas and Yakima counties to be in states of emergency, according to a written statement from her office. The Washington National Guard will provide air support to the Department of Natural Resources, which is in charge of statewide firefighting efforts.
The fire raging near Cle Elum is one of several Western fires burning this week.
Colorado paid the price earlier this summer. Now, new wildfires are burning through sagebrush, grass and beetle-killed lodgepole pines in California, Oregon, Nevada, Washington and Idaho.
In all, 62 fires, including 16 new large fires, were burning as of Tuesday, the U.S. Forest Service reported. They have destroyed dozens of homes and are threatening many more.
Tearful wildfire victim: ‘Nothing left’
Wildfires destroy homes in Oklahoma
Washington’s Taylor Bridge Fire began as a brush fire Monday afternoon. By Tuesday afternoon more than 20,000 acres, or 31 square miles, were burned.
Authorities have already evacuated between 900 people near the Taylor Bridge Fire, the governor’s office said. There was no report of any injuries.
“The fire behavior I would classify as extreme,” Rex Reed, the incident commander, earlier Tuesday. “Extreme fire conditions. We expect a very busy day. Very rapid rates of spread. There are multiple heads on this fire.”
He said authorities were working to activate National Guard troops to assist in the operation in Kittitas County.
In Idaho, a blaze has killed a 20-year-old firefighter. Two other firefighters have been injured in Oregon and California.
Anne Veseth died Sunday while fighting the Steep Canyon Fire near Orofino, said Phil Sammon of the Forest Service. He said the death was accidental but could not confirm how it happened.
On Tuesday, the fire danger spiked with searing temperatures and single-digit humidity across Western states. In some places, winds were gusting up to 40 miles per hour.
More than 750 firefighters and support personnel were working in Oregon and Nevada to corral the 418,235-acre Holloway Fire, the largest of the Western wildfires ignited by a lightning strike on August 5.
“We saw huge fire whorls all night,” said Fred Kaninski, fire behavior analyst for the Holloway Fire. “It was burning like daytime.”
On Monday, firefighters battled flames that measured 2 to 8 feet high. On occasion, they reported seeing 15-foot flames.
The northeast flank of the fire burned into Oregon Canyon, where a firefighter suffered burns to the leg and forearm and minor smoke inhalation, the Bureau of Land Management said.
The injured firefighter was rushed by helicopter to a hospital in Winnemucca, Nevada, and was released Sunday night. She is being sent to a burn center in Salt Lake City for further evaluation, the bureau said.
In California, a pair of fires north of San Francisco in Lake County burned 7,000 acres and were 30% contained Tuesday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Two buildings were destroyed and one was damaged, CNN affiliate KGO reported. An additional 480 homes are threatened, and a firefighter was injured while battling the flames, said Julie Hutchinson of the state’s forestry and fire department. She did not have information on the status of the injured firefighter.
Meteorologists predict the dry heat will last into next week — not good news for firefighters. Any thunderstorms that pop up could present more bad news than good, since lightning strikes could spark more flames.
However, rain doused the killer Waldo Canyon Fire that blazed out of control through parts of Colorado for many weeks this summer. On Tuesday, Colorado was not on the national map for large fires.
acquired August 13, 2012 download large image (3 MB, JPEG, 4800×3800)
acquired August 13, 2012 download large image (3 MB, JPEG, 4800×3800)
acquired August 13, 2012 download GeoTIFF file (33 MB, TIFF)
acquired August 13, 2012 download Google Earth file (KMZ)
Wildfires raged across Colorado earlier this summer. Now California, Idaho, Nevada, and Oregon are feeling the heat. On August 14, 2012, numerous fires blazed across the four western states, burning through everything from sagebrush to grass to beetle-killed lodgepole pine forests.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of the fires on Aug 11, 2012. Red outlines indicate hot spots where MODIS detected unusually warm surface temperatures associated with fires.
Three large fires burned through coniferous forests in northern California: the Reading fire in Lassen Volcanic National Park, the Chips fire in Plumas National Forest, and the Fort Complex fire in Klamath National Forest. The largest of the three (Chips) had consumed 57 square miles (148 square kilometers) and was 12 percent contained by August 14. The Reading fire had consumed 37 square miles and was 15 percent contained, whereas the Fort Complex Fire had burned 3 square miles and was 10 percent contained. All three were ignited by lightning. In Oregon, lightning also sparked the Barry Point fire, which had burned 68 square miles.
In northern Nevada, the Holloway, Hansen, and Willow fires burned through grass, brush, and sagebrush. The Holloway fire was the largest and had burned 676 square miles by August 14. The Willow and Hanson fires had burned 67 square miles and 20 square miles respectively. All three were ignited by lightning on August 5.
In Idaho, the Halstead fire burned through stands of beetle-killed lodgepole pines in Salmon-Challis National Forest. It had consumed 81 square miles. To the south, the Trinity Ridge fire had burned about 58 square miles. Lightning ignited the Halstead fire on July 27, whereas human activity started the Trinity Ridge fire.
According to statistics compiled by the National Interagency Fire Center, a total of 9,400 square miles had burned in the United States through August 14. That was above the ten-year average for that date, which was 7,750 square miles.
A fast-moving wildfire stoked by triple-digit temperatures burned 3,000 acres Tuesday in the foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains, creeping perilously close to tinder-dry areas of the San Bernardino National Forest, officials said. At least four structures, including one home, were destroyed by the blaze, which spread rapidly through dry brush and grasslands in a sparsely populated area south of Hemet and east of Temecula. The fire, just 5% contained as of Tuesday evening, was spreading rapidly through the rocky hills and desert scrub, and was within a mile of forest lands west of Anza, where drought has heightened fire danger all summer. “Of course we’re concerned,” said John Miller, spokesman for the San Bernardino National Forest. “This year our big concern is the fact that rainfall and that includes snow for our forest was somewhere between 50% to 70% of normal.” Mandatory evacuations were ordered in the sparsely populated area near Aguanga, and more than 30 homes have been evacuated, according to Jody Hagemann of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Two firefighters suffered minor injuries and were taken to a hospital, according to radio dispatch reports. One man who lived in a trailer was seriously burned and taken by helicopter to a local hospital. Authorities said the man, whose home was in a remote area, apparently had not received a notice to evacuate.South of the Riverside County fire, fast-moving blazes, some started by lightning strikes from heat-born thunderstorms, have burned more than 2,300 acres in northeast San Diego County, leading to evacuations in the rural communities of Ranchita and the San Felipe area off California 78. The four San Diego County fires are being fought by more than 500 firefighters, along with air tankers and water-dropping helicopters. No structures have yet been reported damaged. “We have very dry vegetation, brush and grass and things like that. Now we have multiple days of very high temperatures,” said Chief Julie Hutchinson, spokeswoman for the state fire agency. “It’s like lighting your fireplace with a blowtorch.” The fire in Riverside County was reported just before 1 p.m. in the community of Aguanga. More than 210 firefighters were working to extinguish the blaze, and six water-carrying helicopters and six water-tender aircraft as well as a DC-10 were assisting, state fire officials said. Crews from the Sierra Nevada mountains areas are being dispatched to assist firefighters. “That’s one thing that’s unique about California. We have a state fire agency, and we’re able to move resources up and down the state,” said Hutchinson, adding that crews from the U.S. Forest Service, local departments and the California National Guard are playing a role in the statewide firefighting efforts. Although flames are more than 14 miles away from Idyllwild, residents and fire officials in the artsy mountain community have been nervously watching television news reports.
Crews are monitoring a fire in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest that has charred an estimated 1,200 acres. The so-called Queen Fire was reported Monday night and forest officials say its cause is under investigation. The blaze is burning about 2 miles northeast of Superior in rocky, inaccessible terrain and crews are attacking the flames by air. Officials say the fire is burning grass and brush. There was immediate timetable Tuesday for containment of the blaze. Meanwhile, the forest is temporarily closing several areas because of the Mistake Peak fire 11 miles east of Basin. That fire began Aug. 8 and is 10% contained after burning about 3,400 acres by Tuesday. Tonto officials chose to temporarily close areas of the forest to protect the public and crews fighting the fire.
A second tropical storm in as many weeks battered the northern Philippines after making landfall Wednesday, killing at least two people, as forecasters warned that the still-reeling capital could see more flooding. Meanwhile, President Benigno Aquino III scrambled to avert another crisis when hundreds of state weather agency employees protested over their pay and warned that forecasting services could deteriorate. Tropical Storm Kai-Tak slammed ashore in northeastern Isabela province with maximum winds of 100 kilometers (60 miles) per hour and higher gusts. It is expected to traverse northern farming provinces and exit along Luzon Island’s western seaboard possibly as a powerful typhoon heading toward southern China in the direction of Hong Kong. The head of the disaster-relief agency, Benito Ramos, reported two deaths, including a man who drowned while swimming in Ilocos Norte province. He said some roads were flooded knee-deep, and government forecasters warned of intense rains that may drench the sprawling capital, Manila, which is still reeling from last week’s monsoon deluge. On Tuesday, an alarmed Aquino rushed to assure the protesting weather agency employees that steps were being taken to resume payment of the cash benefits that had been suspended in March. “I just reminded that since the weather is bad and we have a weather disturbance, we should not add to the worries of those who were hit by the floods,” Aquino told reporters after a hasty meeting with the restive employees.Forecasters and other employees of the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration wore black arm bands and hoisted streamers urging the government to resume hazard pay and other allowances. While the workers did not plan any work stoppage, protest leader Ramon Agustin said some hard-up employees had failed to report for work due to lack of money. “The only reason why we remain strong in performing our tasks is our pure love for the country, but this will eventually weaken,” Agustin said in a news conference at the weather agency, which buzzed with activity as forecasters tracked the second storm. The archipelago located in the tropical far western Pacific serves like a welcome mat for about 20 tropical storms and typhoons that develop in the open ocean and blow toward Asia every year. Heavy rain from those storms and the annual monsoon often cause flooding and landslides and leave a trail of death and destruction. Relentless rains for nearly two weeks culminated in last week’s two-day deluge that submerged Manila and outlying farming provinces, killing nearly 100 people and displacing more than 400,000. Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said payment of the hazard pay and other cash benefits had been suspended to correct past irregularities, but added the workers would get back the benefits soon. Agustin said the employees have lost an average of 10,000 pesos ($238) monthly since the benefits were suspended by officials in March.
The tornado then went back into the bay as a waterspout before briefly turning into a tornado for a second time as it came onshore at Barker’s Island, where it finally dissipated around 11:20 a.m. CDT.
The tornado was rated an EF-0 on the enhanced fujita scale, with winds from 65 to 85 mph. No damage was reported.
Nonetheless, the tornado is the first confirmed on record to touchdown in Duluth.
Thursday’s waterspout in Duluth, Minnesota is the city’s first tornado on record. (August 9, 2012)
Photo credit:
(NWS)
According to Carol Christenson, Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the NWS, there hasn’t been a tornado in our city limits in recorded history, Northland NewsCenter reports.
“There was one outside of city limits back in 1986,” Christenson said.
The NWS says it appears the waterspout turned tornado developed near an inflection point along the leading edge of a strong surge of northeast winds and or small scale frontal boundary, which were enhanced by the very warm Lake Superior water temperatures.
A state of emergency has been declared by the James Smith Cree Nation following continued high rainfall and flooding. Local officials are calling for increased assistance from the federal and provincial governments. The drinking water of nine homes has been contaminated due to the high water levels and some roads have flooded over, says a news release issued Tuesday by James Smith. The continued rainfall is adding to the problems caused by last year’s flooding, said the release. “The high rains are destroying what’s left of our roads and water systems, and this is creating dangerous health conditions for our people, especially very young children and our elders,” said James Smith Chief Wally Burns. “We’ve been trying to get assistance since the 2011 flood, but have so far received minimal support.” Last month officials with the provincial disaster assistance program met with band leadership. The program provided $110,000 to repair damage from previous years of flooding, but the band estimates $3.2 million is needed. James Smith is located about 180 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon.
View GalleryMysterious Louisiana Sinkhole Raises Concerns of Explosions and Radiation (ABC News)
A nearly 400-foot deep sinkhole in Louisiana has swallowed all of the trees in its area and enacted a mandatory evacuation order for about 150 residences for fear of potential radiation and explosions.
The 400-square-foot gaping hole is in Assumption Parish, La., about 50 miles south of Baton Rouge.
The sinkhole sits in the middle of a heavily wooded space where it has consumed all of the soaring cypress trees that had been there. Flyover photos show some of the treetops still visible through the mud.
Authorities enacted a mandatory evacuation for between 100 and150 homes in the area, but most people have chosen to stay, according to the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Preparedness. If any of the dangers seem to become more imminent, the order will be escalated to a forced evacuation.
While officials are not certain what caused the massive sinkhole, they believe it may be have ben caused by a nearby salt cavern owned by the Texas Brine Company.
After being used for nearly 30 years, the cavern was plugged in 2011 and officials believe the integrity of the cavern may have somehow been compromised, leading to the sinkhole.
On Thursday, Louisiana’s Department of Natural Resources required that Texas Brine drill a well to investigate the salt cavern as soon as possible, obtain samples from the cavern and provide daily reports on their findings. It could take up to 10 days to set up the drilling process, even with an expedited process.
“We have to arrange for the driller. We have to pick a location. We have to be very careful to not be in a point that’s too close to the sinkhole because of the weight of the rig,” Texas Brine Company spokesman Sonny Cranch told ABCNews.com today. “We don’t want to aggravate the situation.”
The sinkhole is on the outside edge of the salt dome where this particular brine well is located.
“There are some indications that it very well may have been connected, but there’s just indications,” Cranch said. “There’s nothing concrete that has connected the sinkhole to the cavern.”
There was bubbling in the water and the sinkhole is near areas where there has been exploration for oil and gas in the past, which would make the presence of low levels of naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) possible.
The state’s Department of Environmental Quality said water samples from the sinkhole showed oil and diesel on its surface, but initial readings did not detect radiation.
In the days after the sinkhole opened up on Aug. 3, nearby Highway 70 was closed down because officials discovered that the sinkhole caused a 36-inch natural gas pipeline to bend and feared the possibility of an explosion, according to ABC News’ Baton Rouge affiliate WBRZ.
“That’s why the mandatory evacuation is going to stay on, because there is a risk for explosion,” John Boudreaux of from Assumption Parish Emergency Preparedness said at a meeting with residents on Tuesday, WBRZ reported.
“We are determined to do everything we can to find the answer,” president of Texas Brine Mark Cartwright told the residents.
Some community members were visibly frustrated with the situation and lack of answers.
“You can give us a straight answer because that’s all we want,” one woman said at the meeting. “We want to know when we can come home and be safe. Because you all go home after a days work. You’re safe, but we’re not.”
Gov. Bobby Jindal issued a declaration of emergency allowing the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security to assist in the efforts if necessary.
“This is extremely serious and it’s been going on for too long to still be at this point,” Kim Torres, spokeswoman for the Office of Emergency Preparedness, told ABCNews.com today. “The people are very aware of how serious this is.”
Prairie Island nuclear plant shut down Unit 1 after operators declared its two backup diesel generators inoperable Tuesday. Staff determined during routine testing that both generators had exhaust leaks, Xcel Energy media relations spokeswoman Mary Sandok confirmed. That deemed them inoperable, and the plant filed an incident report of the safe shutdown with the Nuclear Regulatory Plant. Prairie Island has other backup protection, including diesel generators and turbine-driven and portable pumps, the company said in the statement issued at 2:30 p.m. There was no radiation leak or danger to the public. Prairie Island Tribal Council President Johnny Johnson called the loss of both generators “not acceptable.” “A failure of the back-up diesel generators can affect all other safety features that rely on the electricity that they generate,” he said. The plant has had more than 30 reported incidents of failing equipment, security breaches, human performance problems and operating errors in recent years, he said. The emergency diesel generators did not fail, Sandok said. Plant workers test equipment regularly, and during this week’s test they determined both generators had defects. “When it comes to important equipment, the nuclear industry has no tolerance for any imperfections, so operators shut the unit down to repair the generators,” she said. As of 7 p.m. Tuesday, one diesel was operable and the other one was repaired and awaiting testing. “Despite these assurances, today’s unplanned shutdown – and the unusual white steam clouds released throughout the day during the reactor shutdown – are ominous reminders of the fact that the 40-year-old Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant operating a half-mile from our homes relies on aging technology,” Johnson said. An unrelated outage also occurred Tuesday at the Monticello plant to repair a gasket on a pipe flange. The plant had been operating at 10 percent power since the weekend as workers investigated leakage to a collection point inside the plant’s containment structure.
MessageToEagle.com – Gamma-ray photons seen emanating from the center of the Milky Way galaxy could be evidence of dark matter.
Dark-matter particles are annihilating each other in space, according to UC Irvine astrophysicists, who found more gamma-ray photons coming from the Milky Way galactic center than they had expected, based on previous scientific models.
Kevork Abazajian, assistant professor, and Manoj Kaplinghat, associate professor, of the Department of Physics & Astronomy analyzed data collected between August 2008 and June 2012 from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbiting Earth.
The gamma-rays Fermi detectsare billions of times more energetic, from 20 million to more than 300 billion electron volts.These gamma-ray photons are so energetic, they cannot be guided by the mirrors and lenses found in ordinary telescopes.
Instead Fermi uses a sensor that is more like a Geiger counter than a telescope.
If we could wear Fermi’s gamma ray “glasses,” we’d witness powerful bullets of energy – individual gamma rays – from cosmic phenomena such as supermassive black holes and hypernova explosions.
According to Abazajian, “this is the first time this new source has been observed with such high statistical significance, and the most striking part is how the shape, spectrum and rate of the observed gamma rays are very consistent with the leading theories for dark matter.”
In this illustration, one photon (purple) carries a million times the energy of another (yellow). Some theorists predict travel delays for higher-energy photons, which interact more strongly with the proposed frothy nature of space-time. Yet Fermi data on two photons from a gamma-ray burst fail to show this effect, eliminating some approaches to a new theory of gravity. The animation link below shows the delay scientists had expected to observe. Credit: NASA/Sonoma State University/Aurore Simonnet
“Future observations of regions with less astrophysical emission, such as dwarf galaxies, will be able to conclusively determine if this is actually from the dark matter.”
Nonluminous and not directly detectable, dark matter is thought to account for 85 percent of the universe’s mass. Its existence can only be inferred from its gravitational effects on other, visible matter. The UCI researchers’ findings could support its presumed presence at the center of galaxies.
The prevailing hypothesis is that dark matter is composed of weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. When two WIMPs meet, they annihilate each other to produce more familiar particles – including gamma rays.
Although the data interpretation seems to be consistent with dark-matter theory, the gamma rays could be coming from a source other than WIMP destruction, Kaplinghat noted.
“The signal we see is also consistent with photons emitted by pulsars,” he said, “or from high-energy particles interacting with gas in the galactic center.”
UC Irvine astrophysicists submitted their research to the American Physical Society journal Physical Review D.
Casey Council will not install warning signs after a man reported being stung by a box jellyfish at Tooradin. Devon Meadows’ Tony Jenner said he was swimming when stung by a jellyfish with “six-foot long” tentacles. “It felt like I got bitten by two or three bees,” Mr Jenner said. “I came home and put vinegar on it and I didn’t feel too bad then but through the night I could feel my throat getting tight and it was hard to breathe.” In April, Cr Geoff Ablett called for an investigation into the “life-threatening situation” and whether warning signs should be posted to notify swimmers of the risks. However, in her report to councillors last week, community safety manager Caroline Bell said the incident was isolated and signs were not required. Joanna Browne, of Museums Victoria, said there was a species of box jellyfish in Victoria, but it was smaller and less harmful than those in the tropics.
Biohazard name:
Jellyfish Invasion (Box)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Nine people have died from a West Nile virus outbreak that infected 175 people in Dallas County, Texas, prompting officials to declare a state of emergency. The emergency was declared on Friday by Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, the county’s director of homeland security and emergency management. “This declaration will expand our avenues DisasterNew assistance in our ongoing battle with West Nile virus,” Jenkins said. “While we are busy doing everything we can to keep residents well informed and as protected as possible, we need your help.” Jenkins also said that planes would be spraying insecticide over areas most effected by the virus, which is spread by mosquitoes. He assured citizens that the insecticide is safe and that the planes will be precise in their spraying. Tarrant County has also received 146 reported cases of West Nile in the last few weeks. The county has not declared a state of emergency, though. Houston officials are warning residents of an increased threat of the virus. “Houston can definitely expect an increase in West Nile disease,” said Kristy Murray, an infectious disease specialist at the Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine, DisasterNews reports. “From mid-August through September is the big season here.”
Biohazard name:
West Nile virus outbreak
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.
A baby was killed and 14 other people were injured when a Long Island house was reduced to rubble in an explosion Tuesday morning. Six people, including the 18-month-old boy, were inside the Brentwood home when it exploded shortly before noon, said John Meehan, deputy chief of the Suffolk County Police. The five surviving adults were transported to local hospitals, three with serious injuries, he said. Five police officers responding to the scene suffered respiratory problems, one firefighter suffered chest pains and another firefighter suffered a sprained ankle, Meehan said, while a neighbor and a pedestrian were also injured. Authorities have declined to identify any victims and are not saying how many were residents of the home. Investigators are trying to determine if gas caused the explosion, said Robert Kuehn, an inspector for the Brentwood Fire Department. The house was not heated by natural gas, but there were two, 200-pound propane tanks on the property, Meehan said. The explosion leveled the home on Prospect Avenue, leaving no walls standing and covering the small yard in debris. On Tuesday afternoon, firefighters were digging through piles of lumber and sheetrock where the house stood on the wooded suburban street. Clothing was strewn in nearby trees, and adjacent houses sustained broken windows and other damage, authorities said. Neighbors described hearing a loud noise and then walking outside to see only clouds of dust and piles of debris where the house stood moments earlier. “The mother of the baby that came out, she was bloody, crying,” said Anthony Acevedo, 16 year old, who lives across the street. “She kept screaming, ‘My baby’s in there, my baby’s in there.’ They finally got the baby out, but the baby wasn’t moving.”
acquired July 15, 2012 download large image (400 KB, JPEG, 1440×960)
acquired July 7, 1994 download large image (688 KB, JPEG, 1000×1016)
Weather satellites frequently document dust palls blowing westward from Africa’s Sahara Desert across the tropical Atlantic Ocean. Astronauts see these Saharan dust masses as widespread atmospheric haze. The dust can be transported right across the Atlantic Ocean, taking about a week to reach North America (in northern hemisphere summer) or South America (in northern hemisphere winter). This puts the Caribbean Sea on the receiving end of many of these events.
In the top image, the margin of hazy air reaches the island of Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic) and the Turks and Caicos Islands, though the eastern tip of Cuba (foreground) remains clear. This image—taken by astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) in July 2012—attracted the interest of scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center because the margin between dust haze and clear atmosphere lies in almost the same location as it appeared in another astronaut image in July 1994. When astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia captured the lower image (rotated from the 2012 view), few scientists had considered the possibility of trans-Atlantic dust transport.
The Columbia image also shows the brilliant blues of the shallow banks surrounding the Caicos Island in the Bahamas. The mountainous spine of Haiti lies further away, partly obscured by dust. Closer to the foreground—about 26 degrees north latitude—the skies are clear.
The dust in the images is almost 8,000 kilometers from its likely source in northern Mali, although data from sensors such as the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer and Ozone Monitoring Instrument have suggested that some dust traveling across the Atlantic may originate even further east in Chad or Sudan. Once airborne, Saharan dust has been known to travel west all the way into the Pacific Ocean, crossing Mexico at the narrow Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
We now know that African dust reaches the western hemisphere every month of the year, though not necessarily in as visible a form as in these images. Researchers have linked Saharan dust to coral disease, allergies in humans, and harmful algal blooms (“red tides”). There is also evidence that some of this African dust serves as a source of airborne nutrients for Amazon rainforest vegetation.
Astronaut photograph ISS032-E-8976 was acquired on July 15, 2012, with a Nikon D3S digital camera using a 28 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 32 crew. Astronaut photograph STS065-75-47 was acquired on July 7, 1994, with a Hasselblad Camera using a 100 mm lens and Kodak Lumiere film. Both images have been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by M. Justin Wilkinson, Jacobs/ESCG at NASA-JSC.
Ice retreated rapidly in the Parry Channel—part of the famous and elusive Northwest Passage—between mid-July and early August 2012.
These images, acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, show significant changes over two weeks. The top image shows Parry Channel on July 17, 2012, when ice filled the channel. The bottom image shows the same region on August 3, when some ice was still clinging to the shores of Victoria and Melville Islands but open water otherwise dominated the region.
The Canadian Ice Service reported that ice cover in Parry Channel began to fall below the 1981–2010 median after July 16, 2012, and the loss accelerated over the following two weeks. On July 23, the percentage of ice cover in the channel was roughly 67 percent, compared to the median of 80 percent. On July 30, ice cover was roughly 33 percent, compared a median of 79 percent.
These photo-like images show widespread open water in early August, though patches of ice linger south of Melville Island. Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center cautioned, however, that while the Parry Channel appeared almost entirely free of ice, it was not necessarily open for navigational purposes. Sea ice can be thin enough to avoid detection by satellite sensors such as MODIS yet still thick enough to impede ships.
Whether or not ships can easily pass, recent studies have suggested that certain organisms have begun to take advantage of the open water. The Northwest Passage opened in 2007, a year when there was record-low sea ice in the Arctic. A 2007 study on Neodenticula seminae—a type of plankton historically found in the Pacific Ocean—concluded that the species had turned up in the North Atlantic. The research suggested that the plankton’s route included the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. A 2012 study on bowhead whales, which tracked individuals with satellite transmitters, indicated that Pacific and Atlantic populations had begun to overlap in the Northwest Passage in August 2010.
Attempts to identify a shortcut between Europe and Asia across the Arctic date back to the late fifteenth century, just several years after Columbus journeyed to the Americas. For centuries, attempts to find the route were stymied by unfamiliar geography and unforgiving ice. The Northwest Passage was first successfully navigated by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen between 1903 and 1906. He used the southern route through the Northwest Passage; Parry Channel is part of the northern or “preferred” route.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Jesse Allen, using data from the Land Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE). Caption by Michon Scott, with information from Walt Meier, National Snow and Ice Data Center.
[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.]
Tsunami Information Bulletin in Off W Coast Of Northern Sumatra, Indian Ocean
000
WEIO23 PHEB 250034
TIBIOX
TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 001
PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS
ISSUED AT 0034Z 25 JUL 2012
THIS BULLETIN IS FOR ALL AREAS OF THE INDIAN OCEAN.
... TSUNAMI INFORMATION BULLETIN ...
THIS MESSAGE IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY.
THIS BULLETIN IS ISSUED AS ADVICE TO GOVERNMENT AGENCIES. ONLY
NATIONAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO MAKE
DECISIONS REGARDING THE OFFICIAL STATE OF ALERT IN THEIR AREA AND
ANY ACTIONS TO BE TAKEN IN RESPONSE.
AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS
ORIGIN TIME - 0028Z 25 JUL 2012
COORDINATES - 2.5 NORTH 95.8 EAST
LOCATION - OFF W COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA
MAGNITUDE - 6.6
EVALUATION
A DESTRUCTIVE WIDESPREAD TSUNAMI THREAT DOES NOT EXIST BASED ON
HISTORICAL EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI DATA.
HOWEVER - THERE IS A VERY SMALL POSSIBILITY OF A LOCAL TSUNAMI
THAT COULD AFFECT COASTS LOCATED USUALLY NO MORE THAN A HUNDRED
KILOMETERS FROM THE EARTHQUAKE EPICENTER. AUTHORITIES IN THE
REGION NEAR THE EPICENTER SHOULD BE MADE AWARE OF THIS
POSSIBILITY.
THIS WILL BE THE ONLY BULLETIN ISSUED BY THE PACIFIC TSUNAMI
WARNING CENTER FOR THIS EVENT UNLESS ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
BECOMES AVAILABLE.
THE JAPAN METEOROLOGICAL AGENCY MAY ISSUE ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
FOR THIS EVENT. IN THE CASE OF CONFLICTING INFORMATION...THE
MORE CONSERVATIVE INFORMATION SHOULD BE USED FOR SAFETY.
(Reuters) – A strong earthquake with a magnitude of 6.6 struck off northern Sumatra in Indonesia on Wednesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, but authorities said there was little chance of a tsunami.
The quake was felt by residents on the island of Simeulue off Sumatra’s northwest coast but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
“The quake has no tsunami potential,” said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency. “Some people ran away from their houses. We don’t have any house damage.”
The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no threat of a widespread, destructive tsunami after the quake, about 330 km (205 miles) southeast of Indonesia’s Banda Aceh. It said there was a “very small possibility” of a local tsunami. (Reporting by Olivia Rondonuwu; Writing by Paul Tait; Editing by Michael Perry)
Tongariro volcano is showing signs of a possible awakening. On 13 July 2012, an increase in small (<M2.5) earthquakes was detected. The quakes were clustered at depths of 2-7 km under the area between Emerald crater and Te Mari crater. More than 20 earthquakes were recorded until 20 July, when the seismic activity peaked and prompted GeoNet to raise the alert level from 0 to 1. Compared to a background average of 2 quakes per year, the swarm is significant and could indicate magma movements. Seismic activity dropped on 21 July with only 1 quake since then, but preliminary measurements show an increase in volcanic gas emission. NZ Scientist started to increase their monitoring at the volcano.
By Spyros KouvoussisThe new seismic-detecting mechanism that observes the activity of the volcano in Santorini, Caldera, was finally placed at the bottom of the sea. The scientific community now says it will be ready to warn authorities in case there is any alarming activity. The new mechanism is the cutting edge of technology of its kind.
The procedure to place the mechanism at the bottom of the sea took ten days and the team of scientists of the project hailed from Greece, France and Spain. The mechanism is placed in the north part of Caldera, where the deepest spot is 389m. The mechanism was set up with the use of two special ships owned by the Greek Center of Sea Research. The mechanism is equipped with instruments that can assess the structure of the bottom of the sea and measure its temperature. That way scientists can have a better look at the volcano’s activity.
Dimitris Sakellariou, the head of the program, said that the first signs show that the volcano has very limited activity. He also pointed out that although the program should have started a long time ago, there is a high risk that due to the economic crisis its survival will be an issue.
The number of people taken to hospitals by ambulance due to heatstroke in the week through Sunday more than doubled from the preceding week to 5,467, preliminary data showed Tuesday. The figure, up from 2,622 in the week to July 15, hit the highest for a single week this summer, according to the data released by the Fire and Disaster Management Agency. Deaths caused by heatstroke increased to 13 from five in the preceding week. Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture had the most victims, with ambulances called for 388 people each. They were followed by 382 in Aichi Prefecture and 372 in Osaka Prefecture. People aged 65 or older accounted for 45.9 percent of the total. Since the agency started this year’s survey on May 28, 11,116 people were taken to hospitals as of Sunday. Twenty-three people have died. The rise in heatstroke cases reflects the smothering heat wave, with temperatures of 35 degrees or higher observed in many places for the four days from July 16, agency officials said. In Tatebayashi, Gunma Prefecture, the mercury shot up to 37.6 on July 16 and to 39.2 the following day, according to the Meteorological Agency.
Weather authorities issued heat wave advisories nationwide on Tuesday in response to a heat wave that has been gripping South Korea, with the capital city experiencing its second straight “tropical night” this week. The so-called tropical night phenomenon is defined by nighttime lows staying above 25 C, with nighttime being from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m. It often happens when monsoon season ends, which falls in July in general for the country. Overnight lows across the nation soared well above the threshold on Monday, with the eastern coastal city of Gangneung recording the highest temperature at 28.7 C followed by the southern city of Pohang at 27.1 C. The temperature overnight in Seoul also reached 25.8 C to mark its second consecutive tropical night, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration. The scorching heat led the weather authorities to issue the country’s first heat wave warnings in the southeastern city of Daegu and its surrounding areas in North Gyeongsang Province, set to take effect from 11 a.m. The daytime highs in the region are forecast to soar above 35 C, according to the KMA. The agency also extended the heat wave advisories from the southern regions to the central part of the country including Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi areas starting at 11 a.m., with the daytime high in Seoul being expected to climb to 32 C. Heat wave advisories are issued when the mercury goes over 33 C for at least two days, and heat wave warnings are issued when it soars up to 35 C for at least two consecutive days. The heat wave on the Korean Peninsula is forecast to be unabated until at least the end of July due to the influence of a hot and humid North Pacific high temperature system, the weather agency said.
The City of Beloit endured trees blocking roads, fires and thousands of people without power after a series of storms rocked their city on Tuesday morning. “We had a lot of trees down, wires down. We had about 7,000 people without power,” Beloit Fire Chief Brad Liggett told Newsradio 620 WTMJ’s Jon Byman. “We at one time had about 35 calls for response for wires down and trees on fire, trees across the roadway, patients that require oxygen who were without power.” Roads were closed, especially in residential neighborhoods on the west side. Chief Liggett explained that he was hoping for roads closed by fallen trees to be re-opened within 24 hours after crews saw the trunks up to remove them. “It’s a pretty severe storm. The last time I remember a storm like this was in August of 2003,” said Liggett. Alliant Energy said about 12,000 customers had lost power due to the storms in that area.
About 50 residents have been evacuated due to a brush fire in central Ontario’s cottage country. Muskoka Lakes Mayor Alice Murphy says four township fire stations have responded to the blaze on Huckleberry Rock in Milford Bay. The Ministry of Natural Resources is assisting with a water bomber. Murphy says there’s no information yet on the cause of the brush fire, and motorists are being turned away from entering Milford Bay. Murphy says those with no need to travel Highway 118 west in the Milford Bay area should stay away. The response is being co-ordinated by the Muskoka Lakes fire department, the provincial police and the natural resources ministry.
24.07.2012
Forest / Wild Fire
Canada
Province of Manitoba, [Red Sucker Lake First Nation, Wasagamack First Nation, St. Theresa Point First Nation and Garden Hill First Nation]
More than 800 people from four northern Manitoba First Nations have been flown to Winnipeg and Brandon due to forest fires near their home communities. Officials said people deemed the most vulnerable, such as those with asthma and other breathing conditions, were flown out first, while others may follow if the fire situation gets worse. “We didn’t have anybody who was acutely distressed from smoke inhalation but we did have folks with runny eyes, coughing, sore throats, which is a normal effect from being involved with the forest fires,” said Janice Lowe from the Brandon Regional Health Authority. The Manitoba Association of Native Firefighters is looking after the evacuations and asked both Brandon and Winnipeg to host the evacuees, due to the large number. “This is the largest evacuation that we’ve handled in recent times,” said Brian Kayes from the City of Brandon. On Monday, the province said 77 forest fires are burning in Manitoba. As of July 20, more than 360 firefighters were battling the blazes, with 12 water bombers and 31 helicopters being used. Fires are currently burning in northeastern and western, central and eastern parts of Manitoba, said officials. The largest numbers of fires are currently burning in the northeastern part of Manitoba. Officials from the Manitoba Association of Native Firefighters said people had to leave Red Sucker Lake First Nation, Wasagamack First Nation, St. Theresa Point First Nation and Garden Hill First Nation. They said it’s tough to determine how long people could be out of their homes, due to the unpredictable nature of forest fires. They said, however, people should be prepared to be out of their homes for approximately three to seven days. Community members said homes are not currently at risk of burning. Some evacuees, however, said leaving was still difficult. “Some people don’t want to go because they don’t want to leave their homes,” said Eric Wood from Garden Hill Public Health.
25.07.2012
Forest / Wild Fire
Croatia
Primorsko-Goranska Region, [Near to Selce and Moscenicka Draga]
A firefighter has died and 1,500 tourists have been evacuated after forest fires fanned by strong winds broke out on Croatia’s Adriatic coast. “The situation is very difficult … we are doing everything possible to protect people’s lives and property,” Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said, as the fires continued to blaze out of control on Monday in the increasingly popular tourist area. “Everything is ready for (further) evacuations,” said the minister, who visited the coastal resort of Selce, close to the northern port of Rijeka, where some 150 firefighters were battling the blaze. A firefighter died while battling another blaze that broke out near Moscenicka Draga on the Istria peninsula, fire service official Slavko Gaus said. That fire was brought under control later in the day. The inferno broke out in the morning in the hinterland of Rijeka, some 180km southwest of Zagreb, and spread towards Selce. Strong winds of more than 100km an hour made tackling the fires very difficult as water-bombing planes could not be used, the authorities said. In Selce some 1,500 tourists from two campsites, mostly Slovenians and Austrians, were evacuated while a number of other tourists left a nearby hotel, officials said. Part of the Adriatic coastal highway was closed, police said. The resort was cut off from electricity and phone lines were down, Nova television reported, showing footage of people in Selce covering their faces with scarves to protect themselves from the thick smoke and ashes. The roofs of several houses also caught fire.
Wildfires have forced the evacuation of dozens of villagers from their homes in Madeira on Thursday, with the Portuguese authorities sending teams from the mainland to help overwhelmed local firefighters. Portugal had suffered from a severe drought this year before being hit by temperatures of up to 40C this week, which has triggered forest blazes on the mainland too. More than 300 firefighters were struggling on Thursday to put out wildfires near Tavira, a popular holiday destination in the Algarve region near the Spanish border. Authorities in Madeira have used planes and helicopters to combat the flames, including an aircraft sent by Spain’s civil defence. Portugal sent a military transport plane with 83 firefighters to Madeira, where the flames briefly threatened the outskirts of Funchal, the archipelago’s capital, on Wednesday night. The Portuguese interior minister, Miguel Macedo, is also in Madeira to co-ordinate the efforts. While Funchal was mostly out of danger on Thursday, television footage from the archipelago’s smaller island of Porto Santo showed houses catching fire and firefighters telling residents of Camacha to abandon the area. “The changing wind is strongly compromising the effort to put out the flames, and we only have five firemen there and one truck,” the local fire brigade chief, Afonso Nobrega, told the Lusa news agency. SIC television showed a local man shouting for help to get three women out of a building whose door was on fire. Enveloped in heavy smoke, local residents sprayed water on the outside of their homes while others fled. There have been no reports of deaths of serious injuries. This year’s drought, coupled with scorching weather, poses a threat that fires will escalate during the hottest period in late July and August.
Authorities issued evacuation orders for villages in southwestern Greece on Wednesday where wildfires, aided by strong winds and soaring temperatures, have ravaged large areas. The blaze, burning mostly pine forest, sent smoke over the city of Patras, a port with some 220,000 inhabitants, where regional authorities have declared an emergency. Nine planes and one helicopter were involved in the firefighting effort at Argyra, some 15 kilometres (9 miles) east of Patras. Apostolos Katsifaras, regional governor for western Greece, said evacuation orders had been issued for villages in the rugged fire stricken area — likely to involve several hundred residents. “The conditions are very tough. We are using everything we have against the fire,” Katsifaras said. The state of emergency allows authorities to use additional resources, including Greece’s military.
25.07.2012
Drought
USA
State of Washington, [Counties of Adams, Benton, Chelan, Douglas, Ferry, Franklin, Garfield, Grant, Jefferson, Kitsap, Kittitas, Klickitat, Okanogan, Pend Oreille, Walla Walla and Yakim]
Gov. Chris Gregoire on Monday proclaimed a state of emergency for 16 Washington counties hit by a series of recent storms. Most of the counties are in the eastern half of the state. One death in northeast Washington’s Ferry County is considered storm-related, the governor said. A series of storms that started July 13 have caused power outages, fuel shortages and road closures that threaten some at-risk populations, Gregoire said. High winds, severe thunderstorms and extreme rainfall have damaged homes, businesses and public buildings. The proclamation directs state agencies to “do everything reasonably possible” to help affected communities recover. After a fierce thunder and rain storm last Friday, Ferry County and the Colville Tribes asked for state assistance. The small community of Keller on the Colville Reservation was pummeled by the storm, with downed trees blocking roads, crushing power lines and damaging houses. KHQ-TV reports the Keller Community Center has been functioning as the town’s hub.
“Everyone comes here. This is the place to be,” said volunteer Corrie Johnson. The community center has been offering meals and shelter to those who need it. Winds in northeast Washington hit 66 mph during Friday’s storm, National Weather Service meteorologist John Livingston told the Spokesman-Review. Forest Service officials in the Republic Ranger District said the storm winds toppled numerous trees, blocking trails and roads. “It was horrendous, chaotic,” Christine Bonney, the Republic Police Department’s administrative assistant, told the newspaper. “There were fields of trees lying flat, like the wind ironed them down.” In the Okanogan County community of Omak in north-central Washington, crews were still cleaning up Monday after rain from Friday’s storm flooded about five blocks of downtown streets. At one point, water was knee-deep in the downtown area, the Wenatchee World reported. Several highways in the county were closed temporarily due to downed trees and rain-caused mudslides, Sheriff Frank Rogers said. Grant County also saw pounding hail and isolated flooding.
Counties included in the proclamation include: Adams, Benton, Chelan, Douglas, Ferry, Franklin, Garfield, Grant, Jefferson, Kitsap, Kittitas, Klickitat, Okanogan, Pend Oreille, Walla Walla and Yakima.
Fifty people were injured and trees ripped from the ground as Typhoon Vicente lashed Hong Kong, packing winds in excess of 140 kilometres per hour. Authorities raised the typhoon warning to the most severe level of 10 for the first time since 1999 just after midnight, as Typhoon Vicente roared to within 100km of Hong Kong but it was eventually downgraded to eight. “In the past few hours, Vicente intensified rapidly into a severe typhoon and moved in a more northerly direction, edging closer to Hong Kong,” the Hong Kong Observatory said in a statement following the 10 warning. More than 200 trees fell and pieces of buildings were seen crashing into downtown streets as commuters made their way home from work on Monday evening. Ferry, bus and train services were suspended or ran at reduced capacity, the port was closed and 15 passenger flights to the regional aviation hub were cancelled. More than 210 flights were delayed. The Hong Kong stock exchange delayed the opening of trading on Tuesday until authorities gave the all-clear that it was safe to go to work.
School classes and hospital outpatient clinics were suspended until further notice. Flooding was reported in two areas. Fifteen people were hospitalised out of 50 who sought medical treatment, officials said. Almost 250 people sought refuge in storm shelters. Local media reported that more than 100 commuters stayed in the Tai Wai underground train station overnight, unable to get home after services were suspended. The 10 warning was downgraded to eight early on Tuesday morning as the storm passed to the west and weakened over the southern Chinese coast, but authorities warned residents to remain vigilant. “Although Vicente is moving gradually away from Hong Kong and started to weaken, gale force winds are still prevailing over parts of the territory with occasional storm force winds offshore and on high ground and frequent heavy squally showers,” the Observatory said. “Members of the public are advised not to relax their precautions.”
Tropical cyclone warning raised to its highest level, grounding flights and disrupting businesses across financial hub.
Storm surges and sea wave warnings have been heightened, with winds of up to 100 kph expected [AFP]
A severe typhoon has hit Hong Kong, disrupting business across the financial hub, with offices and the stock market to remain closed for at least part of the morning after the city raised its highest typhoon warning overnight.
Typhoon Vicente battered Hong Kong with gale-force winds and torrential rain, grounding flights and shutting port operations on Tuesday.
Authorities raised the No. 10 tropical cyclone signal for several hours overnight, making this one of the strongest
typhoons to hit the city in the past decade.
Al Jazeera’s Stephanie Scawen, reporting from Hong Kong, said “heavy rain is coming through” the financial hub, and is expected to last “probably for a few days”.
Highest warning level
Financial markets, schools, businesses and non-essential government services close when a No. 8 signal or above is
hoisted, posing a disruption to business in the capitalist hub and former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
By 8am local time (00:00 GMT), the typhoon was veering away from the city and weakening, although the No. 8 signal is expected to remain in force until at least 10am (02:00 GMT), the Hong Kong Observatory said, which would force a closure of the stock market for the morning.
Hong Kong Observatory raised the No. 10 signal early on Tuesday as typhoon Vicente swept closer to Hong Kong [Reuters]
The market will be closed for the day if the No. 8 signal remains in place until noon (04:00 GMT), after it dropped three per cent on Monday.
Separately, China’s National Meteorological Centre issued an orange alert for Typhoon Vicente, the second highest warning level in China’s four-tier typhoon warning system, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Strengthening gale-force winds overturned trees, churned up huge waves in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour and sent debris
flying, injuring some 30 people as Vicente hit the city and the western reaches of China’s Guangdong province.
Fifteen flights were cancelled and more than 200 delayed late on Monday, aviation authorities said, although Hong Kong’s
main carrier Cathay Pacific said it planned to resume some flights.
The Hong Kong Observatory raised the No. 10 signal early on Tuesday as typhoon Vicente swept much closer to Hong Kong than initially thought, making this the first time the highest typhoon signal had been raised since 1999.
More than 30,000 Chinese fishing boats were alerted to return to harbour, with 10,560 fishermen taking shelter ashore
in Guangdong, Chinese state media reported. Storm surges and sea wave warnings were heightened, with winds of up to 100 kph expected.
National Weather Service meteorologist Charlotte Dewey said the storm was moving northwest and was first spotted between Eloy and Tucson.
The haboob covered cities in the metropolitan Phoenix area such as Scottsdale, Gilbert, Mesa, Apache Junction, Santan Valley, Chandler, Casa Grande and downtown Phoenix.
There were no official estimates of its size, but Dewey says spotters estimated it was around 2,000 feet tall. She says there were also reports of 35 mph wind gusts in the area, and a report of a 50 mph gust at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.
Above are photos of the event from The Associated Press and our iWitness Weather contributors.
More than 40 workers at a nuclear power station in northern India have been exposed to tritium radiation in two separate leaks in the past five weeks. The first accident occurred on June 23 when 38 people were exposed during maintenance work on a coolant channel at the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station in Rawatbhata, senior plant manager Vinod Kumar said. Two of them received radiation doses equivalent to the annual permissible limit, he said, but all those involved have returned to work. In a second incident last Thursday, another four maintenance workers at the plant were exposed to tritium radiation while they were repairing a faulty seal on a pipe. India is on a nuclear power drive, with a host of plants based on Russian, Japanese, American and French technology under consideration or construction.
The country’s growing economy is currently heavily dependent on coal, getting less than 3% of its energy from its existing atomic plants, and the government hopes to raise the figure to 25% by 2050. But environmental watchdogs have expressed concerns about safety in India, where small-scale industrial accidents due to negligence or poor maintenance are commonplace and regulatory bodies are often under-staffed and under-funded. The director of the Rajasthan power station, C.P. Jamb, confirmed the second accident to AFP but said the radiation was within permissible limits and posed no health threat. “The workers were exposed to radiation from 10 to 25 per cent of the annual limit,” Jamb said. “Such minor leakages keep on happening but they cause no harm.” C.D. Rajput, director of the unit where the leak happened, also said the radiation exposure “was well under the limits and all the workers are working normally”. No explanation was immediately available as to why the first incident at the plant took a month to emerge.
The security situation in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) province of North Kivu has been deteriorating for months because of armed conflict between various renegade soldier groups. The fighting has resulted in the displacement of approximately 250,000 people from the area fleeing the violence in search of safety. Health concerns have also risen in violence-ridden areas of the eastern DRC. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) Global Alert and Response (GAR) issued Monday, the DRC has reported a sharp increase in the number of cholera cases in the armed conflict area of North Kivu. For the three weeks spanning June 11 to July 1, 368 new cases of cholera were reported. Because of the lack of security in the area, there is a concern those stricken with cholera will have difficulty in accessing the health-care facilities and could increase the number of severe and fatal cases. The WHO also reports the fear of the cholera spilling over the borders into neighboring countries Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda. Médecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and its partners blame the outbreak on a lack of potable drinking water.
Patients are being treated with infusions and antibiotics as appropriate, at treatment centres. Interventions to control the epidemic that are being carried out include education and communication; management of cases; increased surveillance; hygiene and sanitation; and provision of safe drinking water.WHO is working to support national authorities in response to the cholera outbreak and the broader humanitarian emergency resulting from conflict and population displacement. Cholera is an acute bacterial intestinal disease characterized by sudden onset, profuse watery stools (given the appearance as rice water stools because of flecks of mucus in water) due to a very potent enterotoxin. The enterotoxin leads to an extreme loss of fluid and electrolytes in the production of diarrhea. It has been noted that an untreated patient can lose his bodyweight in fluids in hours resulting in shock and death. It is caused by the bacterium, Vibrio cholerae. Serogroups O1 and O139 are the types associated with the epidemiological characteristics of cholera (outbreaks). The bacteria are acquired through ingestion of contaminated water or food through a number of mechanisms. Water is usually contaminated by the feces of infected individuals.
Drinking water can be contaminated at the source, during transport or during storage at home.Food can be contaminated by soiled hands, during preparation or while eating. Beverages and ice prepared with contaminated water and fruits and vegetables washed with this water are other examples. Some outbreaks are linked to raw or undercooked seafood. The incubation for cholera can be from a few hours to 5 days. As long as the stools are positive, the person is infective. Some patients may become carriers of the organism which can last for months. Cholera is diagnosed by growing the bacteria in culture. Treatment consists of replacement of fluids lost, intravenous replacement in severe cases. Doxycycline or tetracycline antibiotic therapy can shorten the course of severe disease. According to Wikipedia, North Kivu is a province bordering Lake Kivu in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Its capital is Goma. North Kivu borders the provinces of Orientale to the north and northwest, Maniema to the southwest, and South Kivu to the south. To the east, it borders the countries of Uganda and Rwanda.
Biohazard name:
Cholera Outbreak
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.
MessageToEagle.com – TW Hydrae is a star between 5-10 million years old, and only 176 light-years away, in the direction of the constellation of Hydrae (the Water Snake), is in the final stage of formation.
It’s surrounded by a disc of dust and gas that may condense to form a complete set of planets. TW Hydrae has passed out of its infancy but is not yet mature.
Astronomers are trying to understand the processes at work in stars at this stage in their lives because, for example, during this period planets might be developing from disks around the stars.
The nature of the star’s corona, the very hot (over a million degrees centigrade) extended gaseous outer atmosphere, is one such process. TW Hydrae provides a valuable example for two reasons:
It is relatively close by and therefore bright, and it is rotating with its pole pointed nearly directly towards Earth, enabling scientists to view the star’s polar region nearly face on.
Like other young stars of its size and age, TW Hydrae emits strong X-rays and lines of ionized hydrogen. These are thought to result from shocks generated as material flows onto the stellar surface, and from magnetically heated gas in the corona.
Like other young stars of its size and age, TW Hydrae emits strong X-rays and astronomers investigate why, and how might they effect the star’s proto-planetary disk?
TW Hydrae
The star system TW Hydrae, shown here in an artist’s conception, possesses a protoplanetary disk holding vast numbers of pebble-sized rocky chunks. Those pebbles eventually should grow to become full-sized planets. Credit: Bill Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)
Several mechanisms have been proposed, including coronal magnetic field activity similar to that on the sun, accretion onto the stellar surface that might also contribute to winds and flares, and shocks from jets that develop.
Each mechanism has associated with it hot gas with characteristic temperatures and densities.
A schematic diagram of the surface of TW Hydrae, illustrating where strong X-ray emission might arise. Accreting material can produce winds and shocks at the stellar photosphere; some parameters are specified. Credit: N. Brickhouse, et al, 2010
Recently, SAO astronomers Andrea Dupree, Nancy Brickhouse, Steve Cranmer, Juan Luna, and Evan Schneider, along with colleagues, also observed TW Hya with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, with complementary and simultaneous measurements from a suite of other telescopes.
They continuously monitored the star over about seventeen days, during which time they observed both periodic and flaring events on the star.
Click on image to enlargeAn artist’s conception of an icy, planet-forming disk around the young star TW Hydrae. Astronomers have used the Herschel Space Observatory to detect copious amounts of water ice in this source. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Their results show that the star has both a hot solar-like corona and an accretion shock at relatively high densities and small volumes.
Interestingly, the shocked gas heats a larger volume of the stellar atmosphere up to 2 million degrees, much hotter than the 10,000 degree hot spots previously known from optical and ultraviolet spectra.
The new results are able to explain many of the earlier puzzles associated with X-ray emission, help to identify how winds can be produced in these stars, and suggest that the magnetic processes at work in this star are by no means unique but may be ubiquitous in other young stars of similar mass.
The scientists, in a astronomical first, were able to track an accretion flare spectroscopically, providing direct information on how the excitation of the gas evolves during these events.
The team successfully modeled the emission as arising in a sequence: A shock develops from accreting material and then flows down into a turbulent region, heating the star’s photosphere. This ultimately leads to coronal heating and the development of stellar winds.
A Great White shark attacked an adult female sea lion near East Beach in Santa Barbara Tuesday morning. The Harbor Patrol and officials with the Marine Mammal Center responded to the scene and confirmed the shark attack. Peter Howorth, Director of the Marine Mammal Center, tells KEY News they are hoping the animal comes back to land so they can catch it and treat the injury. Howorth says he saw the tooth marks pattern and the diameter is from a Great White. The wound appears infected which means the attack did not occur today and may or may have not happened at East Beach. He says the wound is a few days old. The Parks Department’s policy is to post signs for 72 hours at eight locations along city beaches advising of the attack. Swimmers are told to enter the ocean at their own risk at this time. If more shark sightings occur the signs will be posted for a longer period of time.
Biohazard name:
Great White Shark spotted
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Angry bees swarmed two people in Indio, Calif. this morning, sending them to the hospital with almost 200 stings in all. Dr. Wesley Burks, who chairs the University of North Carolina’s pediatrics department and has a 30-year career that involves working with skin allergies, said an attack like that is rare. If fact, he’s never seen one firsthand. “Generally, you see somebody stung once or maybe five to ten times, but not 80 or 100,” Burks said. “I’ve talked to people that have seen them…but it’s less than a handful.” A gardener in Indio, whose name was not released, was trimming a palm tree just before 7 a.m. local time, when he apparently irritated the bees and prompted them to swarm around him, said Matt Kotz, a Riverside County firefighter, in an interview with ABCNews.com. The homeowner, an elderly woman, came out to help, but the bees attacked her as well. When Kotz and the other firefighters arrived, the bees were still attacking the victims on the ground, Kotz said. He said he watched as another crew sprayed the bees with water to fight them off.
The bees stung the woman more than 100 times, and they stung the homeowner more than 80 times, according to the Riverside County Fire Department. Burks said a large number of stings like this can often lead to anaphylactic shock – even if the patient is not allergic to bee stings. Each sting releases proteins into the victim’s body, causing swelling and eventually resulting in a histamine reaction – as if the body were reacting to an allergy. Sometimes, that swelling can even affect the victim’s ability to breath, Burks said. Burks said bee stings generally affect people the same way, regardless of age, but conditions like hypertension and diabetes can make it harder to respond and recover. No firefighters were injured because they wore gloves and bee hoods in addition to their helmets, Kotz said. Although firefighters are trained to kill bees with the same foam they use to put out fire, Kotz said the bees were left alone after the attack. “We didn’t want to kill the swarm,” Kotz said. “Obviously bees do good to the environment…and they weren’t actively stinging.” He said the bees were on private property and posed no risk once the attack ended. The fire department left it up to the homeowner to decide whether to remove them.
Biohazard name:
Bees attack
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Beachgoers looking for a day of sun and sand were shocked when they found scores of dead fish scattered over a Florida shore. Two-miles of Ormond Beach were covered with thousands of whiting, spot and sea trout carcases, shrivelling up in the heat. Officials believe the fish were the result of by-catch, extraneous marine life caught unintentionally by commercial fishing boats which is usually discarded. The thousands of fish began to wash ashore around 2 p.m. on Sunday, according to News13. ‘It was packed and we were swimming and swimming,’ said resident Monique Marella. Then the fish came and you sure couldn’t be the water. Everyone just left.’ Determined visitors walked for miles in either direction to escape the dead creatures, but they filled the water and the beach on either end. A Volusia County Beach Patrol captain said that several shrimp boats had been spotted near the shore and they were the likely culprits of the casualties. Lt Tammy Maris said that the incident was not unusual and that no public services would be deployed to clean up the mess. Sunbathers struggled to understand the biblical scene. ‘There’s just so many of them,’ Kevin Soravilla, visiting from New Jersey, said to the News-Journal. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’ Lt Maris said that the tide or the hunger of local seagulls would clear up the beach eventually. But not everyone was bothered by the seafood and the smell. ‘I’m here faithfully every day. This is my relaxation,’ Janet Menzel said. ‘They don’t bother me. I can share the beach.’
Biohazard name:
Mass. Die-off (fishes)
Biohazard level:
1/4 Low
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses including Bacillus subtilis, canine hepatitis, Escherichia coli, varicella (chicken pox), as well as some cell cultures and non-infectious bacteria. At this level precautions against the biohazardous materials in question are minimal, most likely involving gloves and some sort of facial protection. Usually, contaminated materials are left in open (but separately indicated) waste receptacles. Decontamination procedures for this level are similar in most respects to modern precautions against everyday viruses (i.e.: washing one’s hands with anti-bacterial soap, washing all exposed surfaces of the lab with disinfectants, etc). In a lab environment, all materials used for cell and/or bacteria cultures are decontaminated via autoclave.
EMS crews are at the scene of a possible shark bite in Ocean Isle Beach. Dispatch officials said a 911 call came in around 11:45 a.m. on Tuesday for a shark attack in the 100 block of West First Street. Ocean Isle Beach Police Department officials said first responders are at the scene, but information is not available yet. Few details are known at this time.
Biohazard name:
Shark attack (Non-Fatal)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
A food poisoning outbreak from turkey served at the Denver Rescue Mission has sent more than 50 people to the hospital for treatment. Officials said the sickness hit people who ate a turkey dinner consisting of meat that had been donated at the shelter. The Denver Rescue Mission said its taking the matter very seriously. Denver Fire Department spokesman Lt. Phil Champagne told CBS Denver that one of the main concerns is patients who have not sought help. “It certainly is a case-by-case approach with the patients, depending on their particular health, but it could really have dire consequences for patients who aren’t very healthy and who could succumb very quickly by something like this that dehydrates them very quickly,” he said. “We’re concerned that a lot of these people hide — they hide in plain sight, but they are out there in Denver,” said Champagne. “If anyone knows someone (who is sick) don’t hesitate to call 911 and we’ll call and we’ll go out there and take care of these patients.” Crews are searching downtown Denver looking for people who may have been sickened and treating some on the spot who refuse to be transported to the hospital or have less severe cases of food poisoning. Officals say up to 350 people were eating at the shelter.
Biohazard name:
Mass. Food Poisoning
Biohazard level:
1/4 Low
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses including Bacillus subtilis, canine hepatitis, Escherichia coli, varicella (chicken pox), as well as some cell cultures and non-infectious bacteria. At this level precautions against the biohazardous materials in question are minimal, most likely involving gloves and some sort of facial protection. Usually, contaminated materials are left in open (but separately indicated) waste receptacles. Decontamination procedures for this level are similar in most respects to modern precautions against everyday viruses (i.e.: washing one’s hands with anti-bacterial soap, washing all exposed surfaces of the lab with disinfectants, etc). In a lab environment, all materials used for cell and/or bacteria cultures are decontaminated via autoclave.
Residents on Lake Memphremagog (Mem-fre-MAY-gog) are asked to be on the lookout for toxic blue-green algae. The algae was spotted on the Canadian side of the lake earlier this month. Algae blooms can irritate the skin and make people sick if ingested. They also can be lethal to pets. The Memphremagog Conservation Inc. says an algae bloom was spotted on the western edge of the lake. The organization says those who saw it said it was spread across a wide area on the lake and into depths of the water. The Caledonian Record ( ) reports that the bloom likely occurred because of hot weather and rain that pushed high levels of runoff containing phorsphorus into the lake’s tributaries.
Biohazard name:
Blue-Green Algae bloom (cyanobacteria)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
24.07.2012
Biological Hazard
USA
State of Kansas, [Chisholm Creek Park Lake North in Sedgwick County]
The KDHE has issued a toxic algae warning for Chisholm Creek Park Lake North in Sedgwick County. The lake is located off of N. Woodlawn near the K-96 bypass. It’s one of 13 warnings and advisories issued in Kansas. An advisory discourages contact, but a warning means the public should have no contact with the water. It is unsafe to touch. “It will bloom and go through a rapid period of growth. One of the byproducts of this algae- as it dies and goes through it’s life cycle, it releases toxins into the water,” says KDHE Director Tom Langer. Blue green algae can cause allergic-type reactions such as intestinal problems, respiratory problems, or skin irritations.
Biohazard name:
Blue-Green Algae bloom (cyanobacteria)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Firefighters have evacuated some homes in Laconia, N.H., after responding to a situation at an electronics company involving hazardous materials. Firefighters were called to ABC Fabricators after 5 a.m. Tuesday. It was not immediately clear what the problem was. A man who identified himself as the manager said there was a minor chemical spill involving nitric acid, but that it was being treated and cleaned. He said it was under control.
The company makes circuit boards.
Storms rushed through the Chicago area Tuesday morning, leaving at least 183,000 Commonwealth Edison customers without power. Strong to severe thunderstorms moved from the northwest after 6 a.m., bringing heavy rain and damaging winds in excess of 60 mph across a good portion of the metro area. One woman who lives in Chinatown said her house shook in the forceful wind, and on the 2500 block of South Hillock on Chicago’s Southwest Side, a tree toppled onto a home. The Chicago Fire Department confirmed no injuries were reported from the fallen tree. Tree damage and flooding were reported across the area. The 4900 block of North Lawndale Avenue in Chicago was reportedly blocked by fallen trees and branches covered cars. A severe storm warning was in effect until 6:30 a.m. as storm moved through Lake, DuPage, DeKalb, Kane and Kendall counties. A severe thunderstorm watch expired in the Chicago area and Northwest Indiana at 9 a.m. The National Weather Service reported it tracked a line of thunderstorms capable of winds in excess of 70 mph just before 6 a.m. extending from Kildeer to St. Charles. Cloudy skies will replace showers through the afternoon with high temperatures in the mid- to upper-80s. But this isn’t the last of the rain aimed at the area. NBC Chicago meteorologist Andy Avalos is tracking a slight risk for isolated, possible strong to severe thunderstorms for the rest of the day. Mild but muggy conditions return Tuesday night along with another chance of scattered, possibly severe storms Wednesday morning. After clouds break early, near-record heat moves back in as afternoon highs could range from 95 to 100 degrees with heat index readings jumping to 100-108. Yet another chance of storms threatens throughout Thursday, a welcomed sight for Illinois famers and gardeners alike. High temperatures become more comfortable in the mid-80s as a cold front begins to move through.
AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File
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A large solar flare has burst forth from the sun, showcasing the awesome scale in the universe.
Two residents walk among the damaged houses, suspected to be caused by a tornado in Vero Beach, Florida, the 
Courtesy Photo | Derek DennisWaterspouts formed over Lake Michigan near Holland on July 27. Similar phenomena were spotted on Saturday morning off South Haven.
Tearful wildfire victim: ‘Nothing left’
Wildfires destroy homes in Oklahoma
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MessageToEagle.com – Gamma-ray photons seen emanating from the center of the Milky Way galaxy could be evidence of dark matter.
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MessageToEagle.com – TW Hydrae is a star between 5-10 million years old, and only 176 light-years away, in the direction of the constellation of Hydrae (the Water Snake), is in the final stage of formation.
A schematic diagram of the surface of TW Hydrae, illustrating where strong X-ray emission might arise. Accreting material can produce winds and shocks at the stellar photosphere; some parameters are specified. Credit: N. Brickhouse, et al, 2010
MessageToEagle.com – There are a number of ama
