Second largest earthquake to hit Canada since 1949
Canadian Press
Map locates a violent earthquake measuring 7.7 which jolted British Columbia’s north-central coast Saturday night, frightening residents and forcing many to temporarily leave their homes for higher ground ahead of a possible tsunami.
Photograph by: Sean Vokey , Canadian Press
VANCOUVER — The Haida Gwaii region continues to feel the aftershocks of a violent earthquake measuring 7.7 that jolted British Columbia’s north-central coast Saturday night, frightening residents and forcing many to temporarily leave their homes for higher ground ahead of a possible tsunami.
The largest, a 6.4 magnitude tremor, struck Sunday afternoon, 136 kilometers south of Masset. There have been over 40 aftershocks in the area.
Tsunami warnings were issued for the North Coast Saturday, the Haida Gwaii islands, parts of the central B.C. coast, the coast of Alaska and as far away as Hawaii.
Early Sunday morning the warnings were downgraded to advisory status, meaning evacuations were no longer necessary, and they were cancelled altogether a few hours later.
Residents near the centre of the quake said the violent jolting lasted for up to a minute, but no injuries or major damage had been reported.
Carsten Ginsburg, who lives in the small community of Bella Coola southeast of Prince Rupert, said the quake lasted about 40 seconds.
“It shook everything. The electricity went out, the power lines were swinging all over the place and stuff was falling off the shelves.”
Brent Ward, an earth scientist at Simon Fraser University, said the earthquake was the second largest to hit the country since 1949, when another earthquake was recorded in the same area with a magnitude of 8.1.
“It’s an earthquake in an area that gets a lot of earthquakes,” he said. “It’s a tectonically active area.”
Ward said the area is known as the Queen Charlotte fault, where the earth’s plates slide horizontally across each other in a strike-slip action, similar to what happens along California’s San Andreas fault.
“Stresses build up because of that movement, and every so often we get the release of that stress in the form of an earthquake.”
Ward said he wasn’t surprised the tsunami warning was shortlived because the strike-slip movement along the fault doesn’t generally trigger tsunamis.
“To trigger a tsunami you need to have a vertical movement of the sea floor, and it’s that vertical movement that displaces water and triggers the tsunami,” he said. “Because it’s sliding across each other, you’re not generally moving the water.”
In fact, hours after the earthquake, Dennis Sinnott, who works at the Institute of Ocean Sciences, said the largest wave hit Langara Island, a northern Haida Gwaii island, and measured just 69 centimetres.
The quake also set off emergency sirens across the Pacific on the islands of Hawaii, but even as people were moving to higher ground, the warning was called off.
In Alaska, the wave surge was just 10 centimetres, much smaller than officials had been forecasting.
Kelli Kryzanowski, manager of strategic initiatives Emergency Management B.C., said the initial earthquake occurred at 8:04 p.m. inland on Haida Gwaii and was initially recorded at a magnitude of 7.1 but was quickly upgraded to a magnitude of 7.7.
Kryzanowski said small waves generated by the quake, measured at 28 centimetres and 44 centimetres, also hit the northern tip of Vancouver Island.
“What we’re seeing at this time are relatively small sea-level fluctuations,” she said.
B.C. Justice Minister Shirley Bond said there appeared to be little damage from the quake.
“We’re certainly grateful at this point,” said Bond, who spoke to reporters during a late night conference call. “We’re very grateful for that, but we’ll wait until we can actually see the impact.”
After the quake, Ginsburg said he ran home as quickly as he could to see if there was a tsunami warning.
“Which of course there was,” he added.
Ginsburg owns the Float House Inn on the public wharf in Bella Coola and had about six customers celebrating a birthday party.
They all evacuated to about 35 metres above sea level.
“I’m assuming that it’s OK,” he said laughing. “I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”
Bella Coola resident Barb Cornish, 60, said she considers herself a very calm person.
“But I found it quite unnerving,” she told The Canadian Press.
Cornish lives in a log house and had been told that it’s one of the safest places to be in the event of an earthquake.
But she said it sure didn’t feel safe Saturday night.
“The log house swayed and creaked and my light over my kitchen table was swaying, some chimes went off. I stood up and I could feel the undulations under my feet, to the point where I almost got nauseated.”
Geoff Ray said he has felt a lot of earthquakes, but this was the most powerful quake he’s ever experienced in the 37 years he’s lived on Haida Gwaii.
Ray operates the Breezeway Accommodations bed and breakfast in Queen Charlotte City and said the beams of his building were “visibly shaking quite a lot, there were things falling off shelves.”
“(It was) an exciting experience, there’s no doubt about that.”
Lenore Lawrence, a resident of Queen Charlotte City, said the quake was “definitely scary,” adding she wondered if “this could be the big one.”
She thought the shaking lasted more than a minute.
While several things fell off her mantle and broke, she said damage in her home was minimal.
Residents rushed out of their homes in Tofino when the tsunami sirens sounded, but they were allowed to return about two hours after the quake.
Yvette Drews, a resident of Tofino, said she ran out of her home with her two children and mother in-law and drove to a local school when she heard the community’s tsunami sirens go off.
They were told by police that they could return home.
But while on the way home, Drews said she heard the tsunami sirens go off again.
“Well that just freaked me out, hearing the siren and the voice,” she said.
The quake shook Vancouver Island, the Haida Gwaii area, Prince Rupert, Quesnel and Houston, and was even felt in Metro Vancouver and Alaska.
“It’s a good wake-up call for everyone to make sure they have an earthquake kit and a plan if an earthquake like this hits an area that they live,” said Ward.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — A magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off the west coast of Canada, but there were no reports of major damage. Residents in parts of British Columbia were evacuated, but the province appeared to escape the biggest quake in Canada since 1949 largely unscathed.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the powerful temblor hit the Queen Charlotte Islands just after 8 p.m. local time Saturday at a depth of about 3 miles (5 kilometers) and was centered 96 miles (155 kilometers) south of Masset, British Columbia. It was felt across a wide area in British Columbia, both on its Pacific islands and on the mainland.
“It looks like the damage and the risk are at a very low level,” said Shirley Bond, British Columbia’s minister responsible for emergency management said. “We’re certainly grateful.”
The National Weather Service issued a tsunami warning for coastal areas of British Columbia, southern Alaska and Hawaii, but later canceled it for the first two and downgraded it to an advisory for Hawaii.
Gerard Fryer, a senior geologist with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, said the first waves hitting shore in Hawaii were smaller than expected.
Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie said early Sunday that the Aloha State was lucky to avoid more severe surges after the powerful earthquake struck off the coast of Canada. Abercrombie said beaches and harbors are still closed statewide.
“We’re very, very grateful that we can go home tonight counting our blessings,” Abercrombie said.
The weather service also canceled a tsunami advisory for Oregon, leaving northern California as the only spot in North America still under a tsunami advisory.
Dennis Sinnott of the Canadian Institute of Ocean Science said a 69-centimeter (27 inch) wave was recorded off Langara Island on the northeast tip of Haida Gwaii, formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands. The islands are home to about 5,000 people, many of them members of the Haida aboriginal group. Another 55 centimeter (21 inch) wave hit Winter Harbour on the northeast coast of Vancouver Island.
“It appears to be settling down,” he said. “It does not mean we won’t get another small wave coming through.”
Canada’s largest earthquake since 1700 was an 8.1 magnitude quake on August 22, 1949 off the coast of British Columbia, according to the Canadian government’s Natural Resources website. It occurred on the Queen Charlotte Fault in what the department called Canada’s equivalent of the San Andreas Fault — the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates that runs underwater along the west coast of the Haida Gwaii.
In 1970 a 7.4 magnitude quake struck south of the Haida Gwaii.
The USGS said the temblor shook the waters around British Columbia and was followed by a 5.8 magnitude aftershock after several minutes. Several other aftershocks were reported.
The quake struck 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Sandspit, British Columbia, on the Haida Gwaii archipelago. People in coastal areas were advised to move to higher ground.
Urs Thomas, operator of the Golden Spruce hotel in Port Clements said there was no warning before everything began moving inside and outside the hotel. He said it lasted about three minutes.
“It was a pretty good shock,” Thomas, 59, said. “I looked at my boat outside. It was rocking. Everything was moving. My truck was moving.”
After the initial jolt, Thomas began to check the hotel.
“The fixtures and everything were still swinging,” he said. “I had some picture frames coming down.”
Lenore Lawrence, a resident of Queen Charlotte City on the Haida Gwaii, said the quake was “definitely scary,” adding she wondered if “this could be the big one.” She said the shaking lasted more than a minute. While several things fell off her mantle and broke, she said damage in her home was minimal.
Many on the B.C. mainland said the same.
“I was sitting at my desk on my computer and everything just started to move. It was maybe 20 seconds,” said Joan Girbav, manager of Pacific Inn in Prince Rupert, British Columbia. “It’s very scary. I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never felt that.”
Residents rushed out of their homes in Tofino, British Columbia on Vancouver Island when the tsunami sirens sounded, but they were allowed to return about two hours after the quake.
In Hawaii, the tsunami warning spurred residents to stock up on essentials at gas stations and grocery stores and sent tourists in beachside hotels to higher floors in their buildings. Bus service into Waikiki was cut off an hour before the first waves, and police in downtown Honolulu shut down a Halloween block party. In Kauai, three schools used as evacuation centers quickly filled to capacity.
Fryer said the largest wave in the first 45 minutes of the tsunami was measured in Maui at more than 5 feet (1.5 meters), about 2 feet (60 centimeters) higher than normal sea levels. No major damage was reported.
In Alaska, the wave or surge was recorded at 4 inches (10 centimeters), much smaller than forecast, said Jeremy Zidek, a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. The quake was felt in Craig and other southeast Alaska communities, but Zidek said there were no immediate reports of damage.
Cars are seen on Ala Wai Blvd. in Honolulu’s Waikiki in Hawaii on Saturday before the arrival of the first tsunami waves.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: the largest wave was about 2.5 feet above ambient sea level
NEW: Tsunami advisory lifted
Hawaii evacuations are lifted
The tsunami was caused by a magnitude 7.7 earthquake in western Canada
(CNN) — A tsunami warning for Hawaii, triggered by a powerful earthquake in Canada, proved nothing more than a pre-Halloween scare for thousands of people this weekend.
“The tourists are doing their best Chicken Little impressions,” one CNN iReporter in West Maui, Hawaii, wrote early Sunday.
Sirens announced the tsunami warning across Hawaii on Saturday night, as thousands of revelers packed streets in Honolulu for the annual Hallowbaloo festival and many others in costumes headed to Halloween parties.
Restaurants, clubs and the festival immediately shut down and the parties turned into bumper-to-bumper traffic jams as residents headed to higher ground.
Visions of the devastating quake and tsunami that killed thousands in Japan in March 2011 fueled the fright, but the waves proved to be smaller and less powerful than feared.
While the warning said waves could surge between 3 and 6 feet, the largest wave, measured in Kahului on the island of Maui, was about 2.5 feet above ambient sea level, according to Gerard Fryer, senior geophysicist at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.
The evacuation orders for coastal residents and the tsunami warning were canceled by 1 a.m. in Hawaii (7 a.m. ET) and a tsunami advisory was put in its place. That advisory was lifted three hours later.
Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle said early Sunday that people who had evacuated could return to their homes. CNN affiliate Hawaii News Now reported that was also the case for coastal residents in various parts of the state.
Earlier, local television showed images of bumper-to-bumper traffic on roads leading from the coast to higher ground. About 80,000 people live in evacuation zones on the island of Oahu, where Honolulu is located.
Even Hawaiians accustomed to tsunami warnings spared no effort in bracing for the worst.
Honolulu resident Victoria Shioi filled her bathtub with water, set her refrigerator to the coldest setting and gathered candles in case of water or power outages.
“Also backed up my computer and put the external (hard drive) in the waterproof safe,” Shioi said.
The tsunami was spawned by a sizable earthquake in western British Columbia, prompting a local tsunami warning.
“A (magnitude) 7.7 is a big, hefty earthquake — not something you can ignore,” Fryer said. “It definitely would have done some damage if it had been under a city.”
Instead, the quake struck about 139 kilometers (86 miles) south of Masset on British Columbia’s Queen Charlotte Islands. No major damage was reported.
The Alaska Tsunami Warning Center issued a warning for western British Columbia from Vancouver to the southern panhandle of Alaska.
Canadians as far away as Prince Rupert, on mainland British Columbia, felt the quake.
Tanya Simonds said she felt as if her house was “sliding back and forth on mud,” but didn’t see any damage from the tremor.
Shawn Martin was at a movie theater when the quake struck.
“It just felt like the seats were moving. It felt like someone was kicking your seat,” he said.
Martin said more than hundred cars headed toward a popular intersection in the city known for its higher ground.
Thousands of miles across the Pacific, residents in Hawaii did the same.
CNN’s Joe Sutton, Jake Carpenter, Chandler Friedman and Maggie Schneider contributed to this report.
MANILA, Philippines – Eight earthquakes, many of which occurred within an hour of each other, were recorded east of Burgos town in Surigao del Norte on Sunday, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said.
A 4.1-magnitude tremor which has a depth of 21 kilometers was felt in the eastern part of Burgos at 6:20 a.m.
At 9:43 a.m., a 4.8-magnitue quake was recorded 137 km east of Burgos at a 62-km depth.
The third earthquake, felt at 9:53 a.m., measured 5.3 and rattled the eastern part of Burgos.
At 10:35 a.m., a 4.5-magnitude quake hit Burgos for the fourth time. It was plotted 118 km east of Burgos with a depth of 71 km.
The fifth tremor, measured 5.5 and located 113 km east of Burgos with a depth of 85 km, occurred at 10:43 a.m.
At 11:04 a.m., a 4.9-magnitude shake was recorded 117 km east of Burgos with a depth of 125 km.
A small earthquake measuring 3.5 magnitude struck at 11:37 a.m. It was located 116 km east of the town with a depth of 62 km.
The eighth earthquake happened at 2:15 p.m. and it measured 4.2-magnitude. It was located 57 km of Burgos and has a depth of 7 km.
Eugene Tanner/AP Visitors and Oahu residents watch the ocean water surge in and out of the Ala Wai Harbor carrying various debris during a tsunami Saturday in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Petti Fong and Graham Slaughter
Staff Reporters
VANCOUVER—The second largest earthquake in Canadian history was still rattling nerves Sunday, with aftershocks off the northern coast of British Columbia.
On Saturday night, a massive 7.7 magnitude earthquake hit about 30 kilometres north of Sandspit, B.C., in the Haida Gwaii islands shortly after 8 p.m. local time, sending tremors north through the island chain and south as far as Metro Vancouver.
It was the largest earthquake to be felt in Canada since an 8.1-magnitude quake in the same region back in 1949.
A surprisingly strong 6.4-magnitude aftershock in the same area shook residents again Sunday afternoon around 2 p.m.
Earthquake expert Brent Ward from Simon Fraser University said he expects aftershocks for days ahead, but generally in the 4- to 5-magnitude range.
“We don’t really understand how to predict earthquakes enough to know if something like this could be an indicator of a larger earthquake in the same vicinity occurring in the future,” Ward said Sunday. “If we get another earthquake that’s greater than 7.7, it wouldn’t be an aftershock, it would be a new earthquake.”
Saturday’s massive quake also caused a sleepless night for a whole section of western North America, watching and waiting for a tsunami warning to pass.
Based on historical records, earthquakes in the area of Saturday evening’s rumblings don’t generally trigger tsunamis, Ward said. But he added that evacuations are a worth the effort because tsunami waves can sweep through coastal communities with devastating consequences.
Neil Goodwin, a fishing lodge manager from Sandspit, was in his living room Saturday night when the rumbling started.
“It was the kind of shaking that if you weren’t holding onto something, you’d be on the floor,” he said. “It wasn’t very violent for probably the first 10 seconds, and then it really amped up.”
As the power cut out, Goodwin, 35, used the flashlight on his cellphone to find his two dogs and escape his house. He didn’t have time to assess the damage or find his cat.
Goodwin drove to one of two hills designated as safety point in tsunami drills, where he stood with his neighbours and watched the waves grow in size and strength.
“Within 10 minutes, pretty much 90 per cent of everyone in town was in one of the two points,” he said.
In Queen Charlotte, Canadian Coast Guard Malcolm Dunderdale spent a sleepless night in the dark after the power cut out within seconds of the shaking, which he said lasted about 30 to 45 seconds.
After gathering his cellphone, mobile radios and general tsunami kits, plus blankets and pillows, Dunderdale said, there was nothing to do but wait.
The first tsunami reached the West Coast at Langara Island, part of Haida Gwaii, at 9:16 p.m., about an hour and a half after the earthquake struck. But the waves caused no damage.
The earthquake also triggered tsunami warnings in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii. The last of the tsunami advisories were lifted Sunday morning.
The biggest waves — about 1.5 metres high — appeared to hit Maui, the Associated Press reported. There were no immediate reports of damage, though one person died in a fatal crash near a road that was closed because of the threat near Oahu’s north shore.
While the East Coast is bracing for the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy, southern California is contending with a pair of small earthquakes which struck Sunday.
NBC reported that the tremors measured 3.9 on the Richter scale.
Buildings shook in downtown Los Angeles, but no damages or injuries were reported. UPI reported that the first quake hit at 12:47 a.m., beginning from a depth of 11 miles. Its epicenter was 66 miles north of San Diego.
The next one occurred at 8:24 a.m., with the epicenter five miles east of Santa Clarita, 24 miles north of Los Angeles.
California was struck by a 3.5 magnitude earthquake a week earlier. It occurred at 1:40 p.m. near the city of Blue Lake, which is over 200 miles east of Sacramento.
Sunday’s quake occurred three hours after a 7.7 magnitude tremor hit the west coast of Canada, which led to a brief tsunami warning in Hawaii.
The Los Angeles Times reported that no warnings were issued for California at that time.
An earthquake that registered 3.9 on the Richter Scale hit eastern Arkansas Monday morning, and was felt by several Memphis-area residents as well.
According to the US Geological Survey website, the tremor hit around 7:39 a.m.
The epicenter was about 6 miles from Parkin, Ark., and about 30 miles from Memphis.
Several Memphis residents were chattering almost immediately on social media about the several seconds of tremors that shook Midtown.
“About 8 minutes ago, felt about 8-10 seconds of tremors in midtown,” tweeted @JeffGinMEM around 7:50 a.m. Monday.
Former Jackson resident Jada Love posted on her Facebook, “Did anyone else in Midtown Memphis feel earthquake tremors…?”
Tiffany Renee Daniel responded, “I’m in Southaven and I swear I just felt something too I was just sitting here trying to explain it away.”
Love lives in a fourth-story apartment and said she could hear a low rumbling and felt her couch shake. She said her parents, who are in the Bartlett/Arlington area, did not feel anything.
But Kevin Thompson did at his home in the Rivercrest neighborhood in north Bartlett.
“My wife and I had been awake and talking for a while. We felt an initial boom-rumble, and then the bed was shaking a little. We concluded that it was the kids pounding on the floor upstairs, but we thought it was weird because we had never felt the bed shake like that before,” he said. “A few minutes later, we saw that some of our friends on Facebook talking about the earthquake. That’s when the shaking started to make more sense.”
That experience was similar to what was reported by many residents of the Memphis area.
“A little after 7:30 this morning I felt my house shake and heard a rumbling noise! I thought it was my imagination! Felt better when I heard it really was an earthquake,” said Stacey Alpert of Cordova.
Kevin O’Brien lives just south of Olive Branch. When he felt the tremors Monday morning, at first he thought his cat was somehow shaking the couch.
“It seemed a bit too strong a shake for our smallish cat and my suspicion quickly shifted to earthquake when I saw the Halloween decoration hanging from the dinette light fixture swinging,” he said. “Still, I looked outdoors to confirm that the cat had not snuck into the house.”
VIJAYAWADA: Panic spread across several villages in five districts in the state due to mild tremors on Monday. People ran out of their houses when the earth shook for a few seconds. Though no casualties were reported from any of the districts, there was panic in many places in Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam, Nalgonda, and Khammam.
There were reports of tremors even at Hayathnagar in Rangareddy district around the same time. The earth quake monitoring centre at Vijayawada termed the incident as ‘very minor’ and said there was nothing to worry about. “It’s common to experience such tremors when the rocky layers of earth make adjustments within themselves,” said RDO S Venkata Rao.
The earthquake swarm in the Tjörnes Fracture Zone north off Iceland continues into its 10th day. After a decline in intensity during 25-28 Oct, the frequency of quakes has again picked up. There are often more than 100 quakes a day including some above magnitude 3. The Icelandic Met Office maintains a warning for a possible larger quake in the area.
Access to one of Costa Rica’s most popular national parks remains open to tourists.
Experts from the National Seismological Network are keeping the volcano under surveillance. Courtesy of RSN
The Poas Volcano early Sunday awoke residents of the province of Alajuela with a strong rumble.
At about 1 a.m., the volcano’s crater ejected mud and ash more than 500 meters into the air. Ashes traveled hundreds of meters around the national park, rangers reported.
Although the volcano is frequently active, this kind of strong explosion has not been recorded since 2006. Experts said the activity was normal, but they will continue monitoring the volcano.
Poás Volcano National Park will remain open to tourists while experts determine if there is any risk to visitors.
http://www.euronews.com/ “C’est l’hiver avant l’heure;” or ‘it is winter before it should be’, was one local person’s reaction to heavy snow falls which have hit eastern parts of France.
The cold snap brought power cuts with up to 50,000 households in the Isere region in the Alps deprived of electricity.
Authorities have issued an “Orange” warning, the second highest alert, and rescue services have been fully mobilised.
Up to 50 centimetres of snow fell in some parts making driving hazardous. An icy wind and fresh falls of snow on top of the ice only added to the dangerous conditions.
Many drivers were forced to abandon their cars while emergency services were called to clear trees from roads felled in the high winds, with gusts blowing up to 130 kilometres per hour recorded in one area.
Parts of the south of France were the worst hit by the high winds where on the riviera two people have been reported missing.
A search has been mounted for a 12-year-old boy on the island of Porquerolles. Emergency services say his bike has been found. A 26-year-old windsurfer is also missing.
In the port of Marseille the ferry Napoleon Bonaparte was damaged when strong winds broke the ship’s moorings.
The hull smashed against the dock flooding two of its watertight compartments.
Beijing — China’s central and eastern regions will experience temperature drops in coming days, while the southern parts will receive moderate to heavy rain, the national meteorological watchdog forecast Sunday.
Strong wind will make temperatures in northeastern regions fall by six to ten degrees Celsius on Sunday. A blast of cold air is forecast to sweep across the central and eastern parts from Monday, the National Meteorological Center said on its website.
The center also forecast that fog will shroud parts of Hubei, Jiangsu and Anhui provinces on Sunday morning, reducing visibility to less than 1,000 meters.
Over the next three days, parts of South China will see moderate to heavy rain, and some regions may experience torrential rain, the center said.
Son-Tinh, the 23rd tropical storm of the year, strengthened to a super-typhoon on Saturday night and was located 260 km southeast of Vietnam’s Thanh Hoa at 5 a.m. Sunday.
Son-Tinh is expected to move northwestward at a speed of 10 to 15 km per hour and make landfall in Vietnam’s northern coastal regions on Sunday night, the center said.
Meteorologists predict heavy snowfall throughout the country and have issued a nationwide class 1 warning.
“There may be large quantities of snow,” explained Lisa Frost of the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, SMHI.
“As it’s the first snow and it’s quite early in the season, we’re issuing the warning – especially as some people haven’t changed to their winter tyres yet.”
Throughout Monday, the Dalarna and Värmland counties have been slammed by a lengthy snow storm, which has left 10 cm (4 inches) of snow. SMHI forecast a further 10 cm before Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) is already fighting the blizzards.
The season’s lowest temperature was recorded on Sunday night with Nattavaara in far northern Sweden hitting -22.1C (-6F).
Winter appeared overnight in many parts of Germany on Saturday with unseasonal heavy snow fall and subzero temperatures hitting central and southern areas.
Meteorologists say this is the first time for decades that snow has fallen on low lying areas in October. More flurries are expected over the weekend.
As much as 17cm of snow fell overnight in Thuringen forest in central Germany – a suspected record for this time of year.
Heavy snow also fell on Bavaria, Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and Saarland, with further flurries expected on Saturday in Leipzig, Dresden and Munich, according to the DWD.
“This happens maybe once every 30 or 40 years,” meteorologist Christoph Hartmann of the German weather service (DWD) told Die Welt newspaper on Saturday, referring to the unusual snowfall in October.
The severe drop in temperature – by 20 degrees within a week – also occurs “very, very seldom,” he added.
With winter’s first onslaught, fallen trees blocked train lines between Leipzig and Munich, causing delays and diversions to the ICE high speed rail network.
A further 10-15 cm of snow is expected overnight in the Alps and in the Ore Mountains in Saxony, where DWD said temperatures could fall as low as minus ten.
Only twice before since records began has there been snow in October in all the nine provinces of Austria, on the 31 October 1941 as well as in the night of 23 and 24 October 2003.
Austrian weather expert Alexander Orlik from the central weather institute ZAMG said: “It is true the snow is very early this year and that is an indication that it will be a long hard winter, but not proof.”
The early snow caught many drivers unaware who had not yet changed over to winter tyres – causing problems on the roads. The legal deadline to have winter tyres is 1 November in Austria.
In Carinthia parts of the region were left without electricity as the snow fell as a result of heavy snow meaning trees toppled onto the lines .
Parts of West Virginia were digging out from up to three feet of snow dumped in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, a deluge that cut power to hundreds of thousands of residents and shut down main highways.
The thick blanket of snow at higher elevations across the ridges of the Appalachian Mountains, including in parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania, also brought concerns that rivers and creeks in low-lying areas could flood later in the week as the snow melts, with temperatures expected to reach 60 degrees. Falling trees and storm-related traffic accidents claimed the lives of three people in Maryland, three in Pennsylvania and one in West Virginia, state officials said Tuesday.
Close to 300,000 West Virginia residents were without power Tuesday afternoon, as high winds and heavy snow snapped branches and downed power lines, and officials expected the number to rise. Outages at several utilities had left some areas without access to water, and officials were sending out trucks to deliver bottled water.
“West Virginia continues to be hard hit,” said Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, a Democrat. “Right now, my main focus is on life safety, power restoration and critical infrastructure.…We are doing everything we can to help the folks in need.”
More than 30 of West Virginia’s 55 counties had snow, with the heaviest snowfall at higher elevations, said Liz Sommerville, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Charleston, W.Va. Bowden, above 3,000 feet, recorded 24 inches by early Tuesday, compared with 16 inches in Beckley, elevation 2,300 feet, and 9 inches in the capital of Charleston, elevation 980 feet.
“Trees are coming down. I got a feeling that a lot of weaker structures are going to come down,” said Gary Berti, of Davis, W.Va., where 30 inches of snow had fallen by Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Berti, 54 years old, said all the stores along the main street of Davis were closed Tuesday and only pickup trucks with four-wheel drive were braving secondary roads. Restaurants without power were making food for rescue workers using gas stoves, he said: “They’re cooking everything they’ve got because they know they’re going to lose it.”
Snow was expected to keep falling on mountainous areas through Wednesday, and blizzard warnings remained in effect in more than a dozen counties Tuesday. At lower elevations, snow was expected to turn to rain by Tuesday night.
The West Virginia Department of Transportation reported accidents on three major highways in the state and said fallen trees and power lines were complicating efforts to clear roads. The agency urged residents to stay home. Marshall University canceled classes at various campuses around the state, and West Virginia State University closed for the day.
Western Maryland recorded two feet of snow, and blizzard warnings remained in effect Tuesday. While eastern areas of the state endured some flooding, officials were bracing for worse, said Ed McDonough, a spokesman for the Maryland Emergency Management Agency. More than 300,000 people in the state were without power Tuesday, with many outages in the Baltimore area. About 50 people were evacuated late Monday from the town of Crisfield, which sits on the Chesapeake Bay, after floodwaters spilled into homes.
In Pennsylvania, 1.25 million residents remained without power Tuesday. Gov. Tom Corbett warned that the central part of the state could see minor flooding, but far less than what storms last year brought to the region. The highest point in the state, Mount Davis, received 9 inches of snow, with several more inches expected. There is “nothing of major significance at this point in time that we have great concern about,” Gov. Corbett said at a midday news briefing.
Pennsylvania officials planned to have a shelter open in West Chester, Pa., to house 1,300 people from New Jersey, and another in East Stroudsburg, Pa., to aid 500 people displaced in New York. In addition, Pennsylvania officials were providing 35 ambulances and a large vehicle to transport people, as well as providing a rescue team requested by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to New Jersey.
—Jennifer Corbett Dooren contributed to this article.
Strong winds swept ash from the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century into the atmosphere Tuesday, creating a haze over Alaska’s Kodiak Island and prompting the National Weather Service to issue flight warnings for the area. Powerful northwest winds funneled through the mountains at the Katmai Bay, sending ash around 4,000 feet into the sky southeast toward Kodiak. Brian Hagenbuch, general meteorologist at the National Weather Service Anchorage office, was the first to spot the ash. “When the sun came up yesterday, I noticed it looked foggy on the Larson Bay camera,” one of many cameras set up by the FAA to monitor weather conditions. But as the sun continued to rise, he noted the fog looked smoggy and brown. Around 10 a.m., Hagenbuch checked the visible satellite and found a “milky, dome-shaped plume.” He then double-checked on infra-red equipment that is used specifically to spot ash even through cloud cover, which verified his findings. Having confirmed his suspicions, Hagenbuch put together a “Significant Meterological Event” warning, called a SIGMET, to alert pilots of the hazardous conditions in the area. Hagenbuch says that very strong winds “from time to time” will stir up the ash from Novarupta. The Novarupta volcanic eruption of June 6, 1912, occurred in what is now the Katmai National Park and Preserve. For three days, the volcano spewed 100 times more material than the Mount St. Helens eruption, shooting plumes 20 miles into the air and burying the valley downwind in over 500 feet of ash and volcanic rock. Four years later, when botanist Robert Griggs visited the valley, steam still poured from vents across the valley, prompting the crew to name it The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Hagenbuch will update, and possibly cancel, the SIGMET on the National Weather Service’s website Wednesday. Hagenbuch notes that there is “much less” ash in the air than Tuesday.
Washington – One crew member has died and the captain is missing in high seas and raging winds after the Canadian-built replica of HMS Bounty was abandoned and sank Monday morning.
U.S. Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopters rescued 14 others from life rafts in a dramatic dawn rescue about 150 kilometres off Cape Hatteras, N.C.
As the crew abandoned the sinking ship, struggling to get into life rafts before dawn, three were tossed into the sea by waves sweeping over the stricken vessel. “One of those managed to get to a raft, but not the other two,” U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Lieutenant-Commander Jamie Frederick told The Globe and Mail at 13:30 pm.
The dead crew member, 42-year-old Claudene Christian, was found unresponsive in the water on Monday evening. The Coast Guard said she was taken to a hospital in Elizabeth City, where she was later pronounced dead.
Rescuers continued to search for the missing captain of HMS Bounty, 63-year-old Robin Walbridge.
The Coast Guard says Captain Walbridge and Ms. Christian were able to put on survival suits designed to keep them afloat and protect them from chilly waters for 15 hours.
Helicopters were used in the search and two Coast Guard cutters have also gone out to sea to help search.
“We’re throwing all the assets we have out there so that we can keep searching for these folks,” Cdmr Frederick said.
Huge crop losses in southern Haiti raise famine worries
Flooding raises specter of cholera
Crop losses in Cuba, Jamaica as well
Port-au-Prince – As Hurricane Sandy barreled toward the U.S. East Coast on Monday, the full extent of the storm’s havoc on Haiti was just beginning to emerge.
Extensive damage to crops throughout the southern third of the country, as well as the high potential for a spike in cases of cholera and other water-borne diseases, could mean Haiti will see the deadliest effects of Sandy in the coming days and weeks.
Haiti reported the highest death toll in the Caribbean, as swollen rivers and landslides claimed at least 52 lives, according to the country’s Civil Protection office. More than three days of constant rain left roads and bridges heavily damaged, cutting off access to several towns and a key border crossing with the Dominican Republic.
“The economy took a huge hit,” Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe told Reuters. He also said Sandy’s impact was devastating, “even by international standards,” adding that Haiti was planning an appeal for emergency aid.
“Most of the agricultural crops that were left from Hurricane Isaac were destroyed during Sandy,” he said, “so food security will be an issue.”
Sandy also destroyed banana crops in eastern Jamaica as well as decimating the coffee crop in eastern Cuba.
But the widespread loss of crops and supplies in the south, both for commercial growers and subsistence farmers, is what has Haitian authorities and aid organizations had worried about most.
The past several months have seen a series of nationwide protests and general strikes over the rising cost of living. Even before Hurricane Sandy hit, residents complained that food prices were too high.
A rise in food prices in Haiti triggered violent demonstrations and political instability in April 2008. Jean Debalio Jean-Jacques, the Ministry of Agriculture’s director for the southern department, said he worried that the massive crop loss “could aggravate the situation.”
“The storm took everything away,” said Jean-Jacques. “Everything the peasants had in reserve – corn, tubers – all of it was devastated. Some people had already prepared their fields for winter crops and those were devastated.”
In Abricots on Haiti’s southwestern tip, the community was still recovering from the effects of 2010′s Hurricane Tomas and a recent dry spell when Sandy hit.
“We’ll have famine in the coming days,” said Abricots Mayor Kechner Toussaint. “It’s an agricultural disaster.”
The main staples of the local diet, bananas and breadfruit, were ripped out by winds and ruined by heavy rains.
In the southwestern Grand Anse department, a boat that regularly comes from Port-au-Prince to deliver supplies and pick up produce to sell in the capital had not come in more than a week because of the storm. The cost of basic things, like fuel, had already jumped.
In Camp-Perrin, a mountainous region in the southwest peninsula where Sandy’s first fatality was recorded after a woman tried to cross a swollen river, coffee planters lamented the loss of a harvest they were weeks away from collecting.
“Coffee is the bank account of the peasants,” said Maurice Jean-Louis, a planter and head of a coffee growers’ cooperative in Camp-Perrin. Rain flooded many storage areas as well, soaking coffee beans that were set aside for export. He called the damage “incalculable.”
Cholera in the Capital
In the capital, Port-au-Prince, Sandy destroyed concrete homes and tent camps alike, where 370,000 victims of the 2010 earthquake are still living. Haitian authorities said 18,000 families were left homeless in the disaster.
Aid organizations began reporting a sharp rise in suspected cholera cases in several departments, with at least 86 new cases alone coming from Port-au-Prince’s earthquake survivor camps, according to Dr. Juan Carlos Gustavo Alonso of the Pan American Health Organization. Many communities are still cut off and only accessible by helicopter, he said, so the broader rise in cholera was “still too early to tell.”
Since October 2010, a cholera outbreak has sickened almost 600,000 people and killed more than 7,400 in Haiti.
Both the Haitian state and international aid organizations distributed food, water and other items to affected camps and communities throughout the weekend, including personal distributions by President Michel Martelly.
“These stocks are running dangerously low,” said George Ngwa, spokesman for OCHA, a humanitarian coordinating body in Haiti. “After Tropical Storm Isaac in August, these stocks have not been replenished. What we’re doing is scraping the bottom.”
Boats sit in the Beilun River, which separates China and Vietnam, on Tuesday, October 30. Tropical Storm Son-Tinh was moving northeast along the northern Vietnamese coast on Monday after tearing the roofs off hundreds of houses and breaching flood defenses overnight, the state-run Vietnam News Agency reported.
A Chinese soldier hands over a Vietnamese baby he rescued from the flood to his mother at a waterlogged market near the China-Vietnam on Monday.
A man stands on a flooded road in Sanya, China, on Sunday, October 28.
An uprooted tree crushes a car in China on Sunday.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
More than a thousand rescue workers have been deployed in Vietnam
Helicopters are on standby to search for an oil rig adrift from its towboats
Tropical Storm Son-Tinh had already killed at least 27 people in the Philippines
Hong Kong (CNN) — As Hurricane Sandy lashes the East Coast of the United States with wind and rain, Southeast Asia is dealing with the trail of death and damage from a powerful storm that has killed at least 30 people in the region over the past few days.
Tropical Storm Son-Tinh was moving northeast along the northern Vietnamese coast on Monday after tearing the roofs off hundreds of houses and breaching flood defenses overnight, the state-run Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reported.
Son-Tinh was at typhoon level when it thumped into northern Vietnam late Sunday with winds as strong as 133 kilometers per hour (83 mph). It left three people dead and two injured, according to an initial estimate from the Office of the National Search and Rescue Committee reported by (VNA).
More than a 1,300 rescue workers and soldiers have been deployed to work with local authorities on search and rescue efforts in the aftermath of the storm, VNA said.
Helicopters were on standby for a search and rescue mission for an oil rig with 35 people on board that became disconnected from its towboats miles out at sea amid strong waves generated by the storm, according to VNA.
And five people were missing Sunday after winds from Son-Tinh sank an engineering vessel near a cargo terminal in Sanya, a city on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, China’s state-run news agency Xinhua reported.
Son-Tinh is expected to gradually weaken over the course of Monday, regional weather agencies said. At least 260,000 people in Vietnam had been relocated to safer areas as it approached Sunday.
The storm had already killed 27 people when it swept across the central Philippines during the second half of last week, causing flash floods and landslides, according to the Philippine National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council. Nine people remain missing, the council said Monday.
East Asia is buffeted for several months a year by heavy storms that roll in from the western Pacific Ocean. In August, a big typhoon, named Bolaven, killed more than 60 people on the Korean peninsula.
The mammoth and merciless storm made landfall near Atlantic City around 8 p.m., with maximum sustained winds of about 80 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center said. That was shortly after the center had reclassified the storm as a post-tropical cyclone, a scientific renaming that had no bearing on the powerful winds, driving rains and life-threatening storm surge expected to accompany its push onto land.
The storm had unexpectedly picked up speed as it roared over the Atlantic Ocean on a slate-gray day and went on to paralyze life for millions of people in more than a half-dozen states, with extensive evacuations that turned shorefront neighborhoods into ghost towns. Even the superintendent of the Statue of Liberty left to ride out the storm at his mother’s house in New Jersey; he said the statue itself was “high and dry,” but his house in the shadow of the torch was not.
The wind-driven rain lashed sea walls and protective barriers in places like Atlantic City, where the Boardwalk was damaged as water forced its way inland. Foam was spitting, and the sand gave in to the waves along the beach at Sandy Hook, N.J., at the entrance to New York Harbor. Water was thigh-high on the streets in Sea Bright, N.J., a three-mile sand-sliver of a town where the ocean joined the Shrewsbury River.
“It’s the worst I’ve seen,” said David Arnold, watching the storm from his longtime home in Long Branch, N.J. “The ocean is in the road, there are trees down everywhere. I’ve never seen it this bad.”
In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s office said late Monday night that at least five deaths in the state were attributable to the storm. At least three of those involved falling trees. About 7 p.m., a tree fell on a house in Queens, killing a 30-year-old man, the city police said. About the same time, two boys, ages 11 and 13, were killed in North Salem in Westchester County, when a tree fell on the house they were in, according to the State Police.
In Morris County, N.J., a man and a woman were killed when a tree fell on their car Monday evening, The Associated Press reported.
In Manhattan, NYU Langone Medical Center’s backup power system failed Monday evening, forcing the evacuation of patients to other facilities.
In a Queens beach community, nearly 200 firefighters were battling a huge blaze early on Tuesday morning that tore through more than 50 tightly-packed homes in an area where heavy flooding slowed responders.
Earlier, a construction crane atop one of the tallest buildings in the city came loose and dangled 80 stories over West 57th Street, across the street from Carnegie Hall.
Soon power was going out and water was rushing in. Waves topped the sea wall in the financial district in Manhattan, sending cars floating downstream. West Street, along the western edge of Lower Manhattan, looked like a river. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, known officially as the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel in memory of a former governor, flooded “from end to end,” the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said, hours after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York ordered it closed to traffic.Officials said water also seeped into seven subway tunnels under the East River.
Joseph J. Lhota, the transit authority chairman, called the storm the most devastating disaster in the 108-year history of the subway system.
“We could be fishing out our windows tomorrow,” said Garnett Wilcher, a barber who lives in the Hammells Houses, a block from the ocean in the Rockaways in Queens. Still, he said he felt safe at home. Pointing to neighboring apartment houses in the city-run housing project, he said, “We got these buildings for jetties.”
Hurricane-force winds extended up to 175 miles from the center of the storm; tropical-storm-force winds spread out 485 miles from the center. Forecasters said tropical-storm-force winds could stretch all the way north to Canada and all the way west to the Great Lakes. Snow was expected in some states.
Businesses and schools were closed; roads, bridges and tunnels were closed; and more than 13,000 airline flights were canceled. Even the Erie Canal was shut down.
Subways were shut down from Boston to Washington, as were Amtrak and the commuter rail lines. About 1,000 flights were canceled at each of the three major airports in the New York City area. Philadelphia International Airport had 1,200 canceled flights, according to FlightAware, a data provider in Houston. And late Monday night, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said cabs had been instructed to get off New York City roads.
A replica of the H.M.S. Bounty, a tall ship built for the 1962 movie “Mutiny on the Bounty” starring Marlon Brando and used in the recent “Pirates of the Caribbean” series, sank off the North Carolina coast. The Coast Guard said the 180-foot three-masted ship went down near the Outer Banks after being battered by 18-foot-high seas and thrashed by 40-m.p.h. winds. The body of one crew member, Claudene Christian, 42, was recovered. Another crew member remained missing.
Delaware banned cars and trucks from state roadways for other than “essential personnel.”
“The most important thing right now is for people to use common sense,” Gov. Jack Markell said. “We didn’t want people out on the road going to work and not being able to get home again.”
By early evening, the storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes, stores and office buildings. Consolidated Edison said that as of 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, 634,000 customers in New York City and Westchester County were without power. Con Edison, fearing damage to its electrical equipment, shut down power pre-emptively in sections of Lower Manhattan on Monday evening, and then, at 8:30 p.m., an unplanned failure, probably caused by flooding in substations, knocked out power to most of Manhattan below Midtown, about 250,000 customers. Later, an explosion at a Con Ed substation on East 14th Street knocked out power to another 250,000 customers.
In New Jersey, more than two million customers were without power as of 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, and in Connecticut nearly 500,000.
President Obama, who returned to the White House and met with top advisers, said Monday that the storm would disrupt the rhythms of daily life in the states it hit. “Transportation is going to be tied up for a long time,” he said, adding that besides flooding, there would probably be widespread power failures. He said utility companies had lined up crews to begin making repairs. But he cautioned that it could be slow going.
“The fact is, a lot of these emergency crews are not going to get into position to start restoring power until some of these winds die down,” the president said. He added, “That may take several days.”
Forecasters attributed the power of the storm to a convergence of weather systems. As the hurricane swirled north in the Atlantic and then pivoted toward land, a wintry storm was heading toward it from the west, and cold air was blowing south from the Arctic. The hurricane left more than 60 people dead in the Caribbean before it began crawling toward the Northeast.
“The days ahead are going to be very difficult, Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland said. “There will be people who die and are killed in this storm,” he said.
Alex Sosnowski, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather, said potentially damaging winds would continue on Tuesday from Illinois to the Carolinas — and as far north as Maine — as the storm barreled toward the eastern Great Lakes.
Mr. Cuomo, who ordered many of the most heavily used bridges and tunnels in New York City closed, warned that the surge from Hurricane Sandy could go two feet higher than that associated with Tropical Storm Irene last year. The PATH system, buses and the Staten Island Ferry system were also suspended.
Mr. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has said he expected to restore at least some service about 12 hours after the storm ended. But possible flooding within the subway system could prevent a full-scale reopening.
The storm headed toward land with weather that was episodic: a strong gust of wind one minute, then mist. More wind. Thin sheets of rain dancing down the street. Then, for a moment, nothing. The sky lightened. Then another blast of rain. Then more wind.
The day brought a giddiness to schoolchildren who had the day off and to grown-ups who were fascinated by the rough, rising water. Some went surfing, discounting the danger. Felquin Piedra, 38, rode his Jet Ski from Queens to Lower Manhattan.
“I love the waves,” Mr. Piedra yelled from New York Harbor. “The water is warm. I’ve jumped in several times.”
But even when landfall was still hours away, there was no holding back the advance guard of the storm — fast-moving bands of rain and punishing winds.
It added up to devastation. Driving through places like Pompton Plains, N.J., late Monday afternoon was like an X-Games contest for drivers. They had to do tree-limb slaloms on side streets and gunned their engines anxiously as they passed wind funnels of leaves swirling on highways.
On City Island, off the Bronx mainland, Cheryl Brinker sprayed “Sandy Stay Away” on her boarded-up art studio, expanding a collage she started during Tropical Storm Irene last year. But by midafternoon, nearby Ditmars Street was under as much as five feet of water and Steve Van Wickler said the water had cracked the cement in his cellar. “It’s like a little river running in my basement,” he said. “There are cracks and leaks everywhere.”
In some places, caravans of power-company trucks traveled largely empty roads; Public Service Electric and Gas said that 600 line workers and 526 tree workers had arrived from across the country, but could not start the repairs and cleanup until the wind had subsided, perhaps not until Wednesday.
They will see a landscape that, in many places, was remade by the storm. In Montauk, at the end of Long Island, a 50-seat restaurant broke in half. Half of the building floated away and broke into pieces on the beach.
The 110-foot-tall lighthouse at Montauk Point — the oldest in the state, opened in 1796 — shuddered in the storm despite walls that are six feet thick at the base. The lighthouse keeper, Marge Winski, said she had never felt anything like that in 26 years on the job.
“I went up in tower and it was vibrating, it was shaking,” she said. “I got out of it real quick. I’ve been here through hurricanes, and nor’easters, but nothing this bad.”
With at least 50 people dead, transit crippled in New York City and millions of people along the U.S. East Coast struggling without electricity, communities face a daunting challenge of repairing the damage wrought by superstorm Sandy.
In New York, where 18 people were killed, Mayor Michael Bloomberg surveyed the destruction in the hardest-hit neighbourhoods Tuesday. He said he saw homes so utterly destroyed only “chimneys and foundations” were left.
But despite the daunting challenge of recovery efforts, Bloomberg said “New Yorkers are resilient.”
About a third of New York’s fleet of taxis were operating Tuesday, bus service was partially restored, and the New York Stock Exchange was expected to reopen Wednesday.
U.S. President Barack Obama declared New York and Long Island a “major” disaster area.
The declaration means federal funding is now available to residents of the hardest-hit areas, who awoke to a tragic aftermath of the deadly storm that slammed ashore in New Jersey on Monday evening.
New York had seen a four-metre surge of seawater crash ashore overnight, inundating the city’s tunnels and electrical systems and causing massive damage to the city’s famed subway. The storm left New York with no running trains, a vacated business district and entire neighbourhoods under water.
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority said the subway system, which remains closed, had suffered the worst damage in its 108-year history.
As of midday Tuesday, Sandy’s sustained winds were already diminishing from the 130 km/h it was packing at landfall near Atlantic City, N.J. on Monday evening.
But forecasters warn the storm system will continue to affect a region stretching from the U.S. eastern seaboard north to Canada, and as far west as Wisconsin and Illinois, as it churns across Pennsylvania before veering into western New York state sometime Wednesday.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie gave a bleak update at a morning news conference Tuesday, saying seaside rail lines were washed away, and there was no safe place on the state’s barrier islands for him as large parts of the coast are still under water.
“We are in the midst of urban search and rescue. Our teams are moving as fast as they can,” Christie said. “The devastation on the Jersey Shore is some of the worst we’ve ever seen. The cost of the storm is incalculable at this point.”
The effects aren’t contained to America’s largest city. More than 7.4 million homes and businesses in an area that stretches from the Carolinas in the south to Ohio in the northeast are without power Tuesday. Tens of thousands were also without electricity in southern parts of Ontario and Quebec too, as Sandy carries its combination of rain and wind northwards.
In Canada, a Toronto woman was killed Monday evening after she was struck by a falling sign blown down in the powerful storm’s high winds.
Most of the Sandy-related wind warnings issued by Environment Canada have been called off however, except for the Sarnia region, areas along the St. Lawrence River in Quebec and Inverness County in Nova Scotia.
The storm was officially downgraded from hurricane status, but it came ashore packing a lot of energy due to its unusually low barometric pressure. Combined with a cold-weather system from the north, and the high tide of the full moon, the storm is forecast to continue wreaking havoc across a 1,300-kilometre region that’s home to 50 million people through Wednesday.
Forecasters are even warning as much as one metre of snow could fall in some states, some of which has already fallen in West Virginia and other higher ground inland.
Notable effects of post-tropical storm Sandy:
U.S. death toll so far is 50, including 18 people in New York, and numerous others killed in a total of seven states.
In Canada, one woman is dead after she was struck by debris from a wind-blown sign in the west-end of Toronto Monday evening.
Sandy had already been blamed for 69 deaths when it tore through the Caribbean.
Concerns during the peak of the storm prompted shutdowns at two nuclear plants in New York and New Jersey, as well as an alert at America’s oldest nuclear plant at Barneget Bay, N.J.
200 patients, including those on respirators and babies in intensive care, evacuated after New York University’s Tisch Hospital lost power.
Winds toppled a construction crane atop a 74-storey luxury high-rise in midtown Manhattan, forcing the evacuation of nearby buildings.
Fire destroyed at least 50 homes in the Breezy Point section of Queens.
Four unoccupied row houses in Baltimore collapsed in the storm.
Wind gusts of more than 100 km/h prompted the closure of the port in Portland, Maine.
Flooding in areas from Virginia to Atlantic City, where the storm washed away a 15-metre section of the famous boardwalk. New York City’s now-flooded subway remains shut.
The Holland Tunnel connecting New York to New Jersey is closed, as is a tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan. The Brooklyn Bridge, the George Washington Bridge, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is also barricaded due to high winds.
More than 12,000 commercial flights are cancelled, with more expected. New York’s LaGuardia, Newark Liberty and Kennedy airports are all closed.
One crew member of the Canadian-built HMS Bounty sunk in storm-battered seas off North Carolina was found and later pronounced dead. 14 others rescued alive, but the captain is still missing.
An estimated 360,000 residents of 30 Connecticut communities were under mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders.
While it could take days to determine the extent of the storm damage, early estimates peg the potential price tag anywhere between $10 billion and $20 billion, which could make it one of the costliest storms in U.S. history.
Ahead of Sandy making landfall Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama declared states of emergency in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
“Please listen to what your state and local officials are saying,” Obama said from the White House. “When they tell you to evacuate, you need to evacuate. Don’t delay, don’t pause, don’t question the instructions that are being given, because this is a powerful storm.”
On the U.S. presidential election front, both Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney suspended campaigning Monday, with just a week left before voting day.
The Hindu Onlookers gather to get a glimpse of ‘Pratibha Cauvery’ that ran aground near Elliots Beach on Wednesday. Photo: V. Ganesan
The Hindu Cyclone ‘Nilam’ hits the Mamallapuram beach, in Chennai on Wednesday. Photo: B. Jothi Ramalingam
A bird’s eye view of Marina beach in Chennai on Wednesday. Nilam evoked fears of large-scale destruction among the people in coastal districts in north Tamil Nadu. Photo: PTI
The Hindu An aerial view of the cyclone Nilam ravaged Marina on Wednesday evening. Schools, colleges and other educational establishments have announced holiday for the third day on Thursday. Photo: S.R. Raghunathan
The Hindu A man takes cover from gusty winds at Anna Salai in Chennai on Wednesday. Photo: M. Vedhan
India Meteorological Department Image shows Cyclone Nilam as captured by Kalpana-1 satellite on Wednesday.
Storm makes landfall near Mamallapuram; rain claims four lives in Tamil Nadu
Cyclonic storm Nilam, which threatened to hit the Chennai coast, spared the city, but made landfall near Mamallapuram, about 60 km south of Chennai, on Wednesday evening.
Four persons were reported to have died during the day in different parts of the State, but a Revenue department official clarified that Kancheepuram district, where the storm crossed the coast between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m., did not report even a single death.
Nilam evoked fears of large-scale destruction among the people in coastal districts in north Tamil Nadu.
The exact details about the landfall would be known on Thursday after an assessment by the Meteorological Department, according to Y.E.A. Raj, Deputy Director General of Meteorology.
Though many areas in the northern belt received heavy rainfall on Tuesday night, the intensity was not much during the day when Nilam made the last leg of its journey. According to a bulletin issued on the basis of observations at 8-30 a.m., the storm lay centred about 260 km south southeast of Chennai, and by 6 p.m, it made landfall.
At the time of crossing the coast, Chennai recorded the maximum wind speed of 75 km per hour and Kalpakkam 65 km per hour. Hereafter, it was expected to weaken rapidly after making northwestward movement.
A holiday has been declared for schools and colleges in all coastal districts, including Chennai, on Thursday.
Today
Tropical Storm
India
MultiStates, [States of Tamin Nadu and Andhra Pradesh]
A tropical storm slammed into southern India, bringing heavy rain and a storm surge flooding low-lying areas and displacing more than 100,000 people. Just before the storm made landfall Wednesday, an oil tanker with 37 crew ran aground off Chennai. One of its lifeboats capsized in the choppy waters, and one crewmember drowned, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. Coast guard officers were searching for the lifeboat’s six other occupants. Andhra Pradesh state said two people died there when their homes collapsed due to heavy rain Wednesday night in Nellore and Chittoor districts, and PTI reported another death in Tamil Nadu state, a 46-year old man who slipped into the rough sea from a pier and drowned. Sri Lanka reported two deaths earlier from the cyclone. The storm from the Bay of Bengal had maximum winds of 75 kilometers (45 miles) per hour after landfall but was weakening. A storm surge of up to 1.5 meters (5 feet) was expected to flood low-lying coastal areas, the India Meteorological Department said. Heavy to very heavy rain was forecast for Thursday, and fishermen were asked to stay at shore. State authorities turned 282 schools into relief centers in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu. The city’s port halted cargo operations, officials said. Twenty-three ships were moved to safer areas. About 150,000 people were moved to shelters in Nellore, district official B. Sridhar said.
In Sri Lanka, thousands have been displaced due to heavy rain and strong winds. The nation’s Disaster Management Center said 4,627 people were displaced by flooding and 56 fled because of a landslide threat in the island’s central region. One woman died Tuesday after a tree branch fell on her, while another person was killed in flooding, the agency said. Floods also damaged about 1,000 houses, it said.
Winds from hurricane Sandy have seriously damaged a building in Manhattan as the centre of the storm heads towards land. Part of the facade of a four story building in the West Village collapsed at about 6.30pm, leaving rooms open to the elements but no one injured. Elsewhere parts of midtown Manhattan were evacuated when a crane on top of a skyscraper partially collapsed. The Fire Department of New York initially reported a “multi-dwelling building collapse” on Twitter, although pictures quickly emerged showing that the front wall of the top two floors of the building was missing, rather than the entire structure collapsing. Images showed a fire truck at the scene, with a writer from the Huffington Post reporting that firefighters had to enter the building to help people out. The fire department later said that no one had been hurt. “There are no injuries or people trapped at 92 8th Ave building collapse, which involved the facade of the structure,” it said in a tweet. “Firefighters went in and rescued the residents. Some residents said same thing happened to same building 20 years ago,” said Meg Robertson, a reporter at HuffPost Live. She posted several pictures of the scene on her Twitter account. The building, 92 8th Avenue, is located between 14th and 15th streets in Manhattan. The main threat to buildings in New York City had been expected to come from flooding, with a mandatory evacuation order in place in many places along Manhattan’s coastline. Earlier a crane on top of the One 57 building, which is under construction on west 57th street further north in Manhattan, appeared to come loose from its bearings in high winds. Pictures showed the crane hanging upside down from the top of the building, which is set to be luxury flats. Police and the fire department evacuated all buildings north and south of 57th street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues, CNN reported. The Le Parker Meridien hotel on West 56th Street was also evacuated, according to reports, with guests being transferred to a different hotel. In New York bridges across the East River have been closed, including the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges, with people warned to stay inside.
Today
Landslide
Canada
Province of British Columbia, Langley [7700 block of 264th Street]
City workers in Langley, B.C., are cleaning up after two mudslides stuck on Wednesday morning, forcing the evacuation of one home and the closure of 264th Street between 72nd and 84th avenues. Just after 5 a.m. PT, mud rushed down the side of a steep slope and crossed a rural stretch of the 7700 block of 264th Street, moving a cement barrier. The slide also covered the side of a home below the road. No one was injured and there was only minor damage to the house. About 100 metres of 264th Street has been closed for much of the morning. It’s not clear when the road might reopen. While officials were cleaning up the first slide, officials confirmed they were responding to reports of a second landslide in the municipality, this time at 252A Street and 72nd Avenue. The second slide was much smaller and did not affect any roads or homes, city officials said. City officials say small mudslides on the hills into Glen Valley are common this time of year. A rainfall warning is in effect in the area with between 10 and 20 millimetres expected to fall throughout the day.
LONGVIEW, Wash. (AP) — Oregon State University researchers have found traces of radioactive cesium from last year’s Japanese nuclear reactor disaster in West Coast albacore tuna.
The amount is far too small to harm people who eat the fish, the scientists said.
Scientists from the university and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration collected and tested fish caught off the West Coast before and after the March 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami that caused a nuclear reactor to release radioactive material, the Longview Daily News (http://bit.ly/QIcdV8) reported.
The team’s findings are in line with work by researchers in California, who announced in May that they had found traces of radioactive cesium in bluefin tuna caught off the southern coast.
“We’re still processing new fish, but so far the radiation we’re detecting is far below the level of concern for human safety,” said Delvan Neville, a graduate researcher with OSU’s Radiation Health Physics program and a co-investigator on the project.
Albacore tuna is a $41 million business in the Pacific Northwest, and fishermen from the region caught about 10,000 tons last year, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Washington fishermen accounted for about 53 percent of the haul, and the remainder came through Oregon docks.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration and NOAA have jointly stated they have “high confidence” in the safety of U.S. seafood products because the radiation levels are so low.
The OSU team said its findings could reveal information about where Pacific albacore tuna travel and how the ocean’s ecosystem can be linked to events thousands of miles away.
Oct 26 (Reuters) - U.S. electric companies from Maine to
Florida are preparing for heavy wind, rain and flooding that
could take down power lines and could close some East Coast
nuclear plants early next week when Hurricane Sandy comes
ashore.
There are more than a dozen nuclear plants near Hurricane
Sandy's path in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut, providing power to
millions of customers in the region.
The following lists the nuclear reactors and utilities in
Sandy's potential path.
Plant State Size Company
(MW)
Brunswick North Carolina 1,858 Duke
Surry Virginia 1,638 Dominion
North Anna Virginia 1,863 Dominion
Calvert Cliffs Maryland 1,705 Constellation
Salem New Jersey 2,332 PSEG
Hope Creek New Jersey 1,161 PSEG
Peach Bottom Pennsylvania 2,244 Exelon
Limerick Pennsylvania 2,264 Exelon
Three Mile Island Pennsylvania 805 Exelon
Susquehanna Pennsylavnia 2,450 PPL
Oyster Creek New Jersey 615 Exelon
Indian Point New York 2,063 Entergy
Millstone Connecticut 2,102 Dominion
Pilgrim Massachusetts 685 Entergy
Seabrook New Hampshire 1,247 NextEra
Vermont Yankee Vermont 620 Entergy
(Reporting By Scott DiSavino; Editing by Bob Burgdorfer)
Nuclear reactors in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast are being monitored for potential impacts by Hurricane Sandy, a Category 1 storm that may strike anywhere from Delaware to southern New England.
“Because of the size of it, we could see an impact to coastal and inland plants,” Neil Sheehan, a spokesman based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said by phone. “We will station inspectors at the sites if we know they could be directly impacted.”
Men walk amid the destruction caused by hurricane Sandy east of Havana in Mayari, Cuba. Source: AFP/Getty Images
The NRC met earlier today to discuss the necessary precautions to take for the storm, Sheehan said. Plants must begin to shut if wind speeds exceed certain limits, he said.
As of 2 p.m. New York time, Sandy had winds of 75 miles (121 kilometers) per hour, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. It was about 430 miles south-southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, moving north at 7 mph.
The current Hurricane Center track calls for the system to come ashore just south of Delaware Bay on Oct. 30.
Contingency Plans
Nuclear plants in the projected path of the hurricane include North Anna and Surry in Virginia, Calvert Cliffs in Maryland, Hope Creek and Salem in New Jersey, Indian Point in New York and Millstone in Connecticut. The NRC is considering enhancing inspector coverage of these reactors, Sheehan said in an e-mail today.
Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. (PEG) must shut all units at the Salem and Hope Creek plants two hours before the onset of hurricane-force winds greater than 74 mph, according to Sheehan. An “unusual event” would be declared if the winds are sustained for greater than 15 minutes or if the water level reaches 99.5 feet or higher, he said. Such an event is the lowest of four level of emergency used by the commission.
Salem Unit 2 is currently shut for refueling, while Unit 1 was operating at 83 percent of capacity today during maintenance on the circulating water system. Hope Creek ran at full power. The three units have a combined capacity of 3,365 megawatts.
“We are in phase one of our severe-weather plan,” Joe Delmar, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail responding to questions. “This includes inspecting, removing and securing outside areas for potential missiles, objects that could go airborne, and staging of emergency equipment and supplies.”
Millstone Reactor
Nuclear generation in the Northeastern region dropped 1.1 percent to 18,016 megawatts, with seven plants shut, an NRC report today showed.
Dominion Resources Inc.’s Millstone plant is monitoring Sandy’s progress and preparing to adjust staff as it comes closer, according to Ken Holt, a plant spokesman based in Richmond, Virginia. The plant must shut if winds reach 90 mph.
“We would shut down in advance of the storm if they were expected to be 90 miles per hour at the site,” Holt said by phone today. “Floods and high winds are a threat because they can knock off off-site power and we’d then need to activate emergency generators for power to put the plant to safe conditions.”
Today
Nuclear Event
USA
State of Minnesota, Red Wing [Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant]
Xcel Energy Inc. says its Prairie Island nuclear plant near Red Wing declared an “unusual event” after some security equipment failed. The Minneapolis-based utility says the event happened around 2:15 p.m. Wednesday and was declared over just before 6 p.m. Xcel says there was no release of radioactive material and that there is no danger to the public or plant employees. Plant officials made the declaration after some security equipment temporarily failed. The equipment has been restored, and plant officials are investigating the cause. The plant maintained security during the event. Xcel says it notified federal, state and local officials. The declaration is the lowest of four emergency classifications. Prairie Island’s Unit 2 continues to operate at full power. Unit 1 remains offline has part of a scheduled refueling outage.
The death toll of the deadly Marburg hemorrhagic fever in Uganda has risen to eight and nine other people have tested positive of the highly infectious diseases, a top ministry of health official said. Christine Ondoa, Minister of Health told reporters on Monday that the latest patient died on October 27 at an isolation ward at Rushoroza Health Centre, in the western Ugandan district of Kabale, the epicenter of the outbreak. The disease broke out on October 4 in Kabale. Five people have tested positive of the highly infectious viral hemorrhagic fever in Kabale, two others in the capital Kampala and another two in the western district of Ibanda. “To date, the death toll of both the probable and confirmed cases stands at eight. Since the onset of the outbreak, we have collected a total of 45 samples of which nine were confirmed positive,” said Ondoa. She said the ministry has established temporary isolation facilities in Kabale, Mbarara, Ibanda and Kampala to accommodate the suspected and confirmed cases. “We have assembled a team of experts to work in the newly established isolation facilities and they are expected in these districts today. We also plan to undertake infection control procedures in these facilities as safety measures for the workers and the admitted patients,” said Ondoa. A total of seven student nurses who attended to a Marburg patient at Ibanda Hospital and died on October 24 at Mbarara Regional Hospital have been quarantined. The ministry is also monitoring a total 436 people who had contact with the patients. “Those being monitored got into contact with either the dead or confirmed cases. The team continues to monitor them on a daily basis for possible signs and symptoms of this highly infectious disease until they have completed 21 days without showing any signs and symptoms,”Ondoa said.
Officials at San Quentin State Prison say the prison is on a medical lockdown after at least two inmates became sick with chickenpox. Prison spokesman Lt. Sam Robinson says the prison has been locked down since last Friday, with only employees being allowed to enter and leave the facility. He could not say when the lockdown would be lifted. Robinson says the last time there was a medical lockdown at the prison was in March of last year when at least four inmates became sick with chickenpox. The Centers for Disease Control describes chickenpox as a “very contagious disease” that spreads easily from infected people to others who have never had chickenpox or have never received the chickenpox vaccine. San Quentin, located north of San Francisco, is the oldest prison in California. It houses about 3,800 inmates.
Biohazard name:
Chicken Pox
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 previously unknown disease which has claimed more than 30 lives in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region this month has been identified as yellow fever, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. Preparations for a mass vaccination campaign are now underway. The outbreak was first detected early this month when a number of people in the central and southern regions of Darfur became ill and eventually died. Sudanese media said the victims suffered from a number of symptoms, including diarrhea, vomiting, and bleeding from both the mouth and nose. Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO), on Tuesday said it had been informed by Sudan’s Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) that the outbreak is being caused by yellow fever. Since the first week of October, a total of 84 suspected cases, including 32 deaths, have been reported in the districts of Azoom, Kass, Mershing, Nertiti, Nyala, Wadi Salih and Zalingei. “FMoH said that the immediate priority is to control the vector, reinforcing the disease surveillance system and raising public awareness on the prevention and control of this disease,” Jasarevic said. “Preparations for a mass vaccination campaign are underway to vaccinate the at risk population in Darfur.”According to Darfur radio station Dabanga, however, at least 37 people are believed to have died as a result of the disease while 125 others have been infected. The radio station quoted a resident as saying that local authorities were slow to react and did not immediately take necessary action to contain the outbreak. “FMoH, WHO, as well as health partners are working on ground to ensure timely containment of the outbreak,” Jasarevic added. There is no cure for yellow fever, which is an acute viral haemorrhagic disease transmitted by infected mosquitoes. Treatment is aimed at reducing the symptoms for the comfort of patients, and measures often taken include supportive care to treat dehydration and fever and blood transfusion if needed. “It is a preventable disease with symptoms and severity varying from case to case,” Jasarevic explained. “Protective measures like the use of bed nets, insect repellent and long clothing are considered the best methods to contain an outbreak. Vaccination is the single most important measure for preventing yellow fever.”
Biohazard name:
Yellow 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.
A magnetic piece of rock stirred up controversy last week, but scientists confirmed, and reconfirmed, that the mysterious object in Novato residents Lisa and Kurt Webberâs backyard was a meteorite. And to prove it, a second was discovered just miles from the Webbersâ home. Webber gave the meteorite to her neighbor Glenn Rivera as a birthday gift. He helped her analyze the chunk before calling scientists. The meteorite broke off from the meteor shower that blazed over the night sky at approximately 7:44 p.m. on Oct. 17. It also happened to be Riveraâs birthday. âAs a result, Glenn was asked by the scientific team to ride in the airship Eureka from Moffett Field on Friday,â said Leigh Blair, Riveraâs mother. âThey flew over Novato and all the way up to Lake Berryessa, following the calculated trajectory of the meteor, looking for signs of larger meteorites on the ground.â Peter Jenniskens, the meteor scientist at the Seti Institute, a nonprofit scientific and education organization that has projects sponsored by NASA and other foundations and research groups, at first dismissed the first rock because the surface appeared strange and weathered, unlike most meteorites. But everything changed when a second rock showed small specks of what seemed to be metal, when observed under a microscope. Brien Cook, a meteorite hunter and Sacramento resident, found the second rock in the Novato area, but too dismissed it as a meteorite until the two chunks were compared. After cutting it open and looking inside, he knew he had found an extraterrestrial treasure. Cook is offering one chip of his meteorite on eBay. It weighs 6.6 grams, and objects like it regularly sell for approximately $100 a gram, he said. Lisa Webber, a University of California San Francisco nurse, found the meteorite in her backyard on Oct. 20. She returned the piece to Jenniskens, and he will send samples of both rocks to a noted meteorite expert Professor Alan E. Rubin of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UCLA.
Two men were transported to the hospital Wednesday afternoon after a bees’ nest was disturbed when one of the men, an unidentified DirectTV employee, was working on a home in the 40000 block of W. Magnolia Road. “It was terrible,” Phoebe Lechuga, one of the home’s five residents, said. “They were flying everywhere.” Lechuga’s 33-year-old son, Resugio Furwilder, was also transported to the hospital. Furwilder went outside to help the DirectTV worker and was stung himself, Lechuga said. Her daughter, Vanessa Lechuga, 27, was also stung but was not taken to the hospital. Lechuga said at first the worker thought there were only a few bees and didn’t come inside after the first stings.
Biohazard name:
Bees Attack (Non-Fatal)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
New Jersey environmental officials say 336,000 gallons of diesel fuel spilled after a storage tank was lifted and ruptured from the surge from superstorm Sandy. The Coast Guard says all the spilled oil is believed to be contained by booms put in the water. Officials said today the spill happened Monday night at the Motiva oil tank facility in Woodbridge. Coast Guard spokesman Les Tippets says a secondary tank caught most of the oil and that the liquid that escaped moved into the Arthur Kill, the waterway separating New Jersey from New York’s Staten Island. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Larry Ragonese says the company reported the spill and hired contractors to clean it up.
Three people from North Laurel, Maryland have been taken to the hospital Tuesday morning with carbon monoxide poisoning, caused by a generator running inside their house. Authorities reported that Howard County Fire crews and paramedics found a man and two women inside the home in Brevard Street after responding to a 911 call which was made by one of the women. The victims suffered elevated levels of carbon monoxide. According to a spokesman from the Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue Services, the three were transported to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. The two females have been released on Tuesday morning but the male, who was in critical condition, remained in the hospital for further treatment. The spokesman confirmed that all three patients underwent therapy in the hyperbaric chamber at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center. The male patient is scheduled to receive another hyperbaric therapy. Police said the firefighters discovered a generator operating at the bottom of the stairs on the ground level of the residence. It was placed in a doorway leading to the garage, but the garage door was closed, restricting ventilation. Firefighters later confirmed that the amount of carbon monoxide inside the house was 30 times more than the normal level.
01.11.2012
HAZMAT
USA
State of Kentucky, Louisville [Near the Dixie Highway]
Emergency officials have evacuated a few dozen homes near a derailed train in southern Jefferson County over concerns of hazardous material leaks. The Paducah & Louisville Railway train derailed just after 6 a.m. EDT Monday near Dixie Highway. Emergency officials are asking residents within a 2 ½-mile radius of the scene to stay inside their homes until they are told they can leave. Beuchel Fire assistant chief Rick Harrison says the train has a “small leak” of butadiene, which is a chemical used in the manufacturing of rubber. No other leaks have been found. Tom Garrett, president of P&L Railway, says the train was on its way to Louisville from Paducah with a total of 57 cars. He says company officials have not yet been able to get to the scene because of safety concerns. Garrett says the two crew members on the train were not hurt. Officials say eight of the 40 cars on the train were off the track.
[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.]
People who had been evacuated from a hospital wait in a rescue center in Mormanno, southern Italy, after an earthquake early on Friday.
By NBC News staff and wire reports
ROME — A hospital was evacuated after a magnitude-5 earthquake struck southern Italy early on Friday, authorities said.
The quake hit at 1:05 a.m. local time (7:05 p.m. ET Thursday) about 3.9 miles underground, north of Cosenza in the Pollino mountains area on the border of the southern regions of Calabria and Basilicata, according to data from the Italian Geophysics Institute (INGV).
At least 14 other tremors followed the initial earthquake, according to INGV’s website.
Italian media reported that an elderly man who lived near the tremor’s epicenter had died of a heart attack.
An Italian police official told Reuters a hospital in the small town of Mormanno had been evacuated as a precautionary measure because some cracks were found in its structure.
No injuries were reported, the official said.
Italian news agencies reported scenes of panic in the hospital and said many inhabitants of Mormanno and surrounding towns had come out in the streets.
Police and firefighters were surveying the area for further damage, officials said.
NBC News’ Claudio Lavanga and Reuters contributed to this report.
ROME – A magnitude 5 earthquake struck north of Cosenza in southern Italy early on Friday, and police said a hospital had been evacuated after cracks were found in its structure, but there were no reports of injuries.
The quake hit at 1:05 a.m. (2305 GMT on Thursday) about 6.3 km (3.9 miles) underground, north of Cosenza in the Pollino mountains area on the border of the southern regions of Calabria and Basilicata, according to data from the Italian Geophysics Institute (INGV). It said on its website that at least 14 other tremors followed the initial earthquake.
An Italian police official told Reuters a hospital in the small town of Mormanno had been evacuated as a precautionary measure because some cracks were found in its structure.
The 84-year-old victim suffered heart failure when the quake struck the province of Cosenza early on Friday and was dead before emergency services could reach him.
No injuries have been reported but several buildings have been damaged. A local hospital was also evacuated and schools closed as a precautionary measure.
According to the US Geological Survey, the quake, with a 5.3 magnitude at a depth of 3.8km, had its epicentre 6km southeast of Mormanno town in the Calabria region.
“Some plaster fell, a crack appeared in the stairway. We came down in a panic to the streets using our mobile phones for light,” Mormanno bed-and-breakfast owner Giuseppina Capalbi told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
Many homes in the town centre suffered damage and police said it would take some hours to evaluate the scale of the problem, as local officials decided to close schools.
“There was a lot of panic, but happily there are no injured,” Mormanno mayor Guglielmo Armentano told Ansa.
“In our historic centre, there are some damaged buildings. As a precaution we have evacuated the hospital.”
More than 2200 tremors had struck the same region along the Pollino massif in recent years, but all but a handful were of a magnitude under 3.
Italy frequently falls victim to earthquakes. Among the most devastating was the 6.3-magnitude quake in the central city of L’Aquila that in 2009 killed 309 people and left tens of thousands homeless.
On Monday, six Italian seismologists and a government official were sentenced to six years in jail for multiple manslaughter for underestimating the risk of that earthquake, in a move viewed by some as a dangerous blow to
New Zealand scientists investigating an active undersea volcano that erupted three months ago have discovered significant changes to the seafloor.
Niwa research ship Tangaroa has mapped the Kermadec volcano that erupted 800km northeast of Tauranga on July 19, producing a pumice raft the size of Canterbury.
The eruption was strong enough to breach the ocean surface from a depth of 1100 metres. It was captured by a Nasa satellite, and a Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion patrol spotted the pumice on their way back home from Samoa.
Niwa’s volcanologist Dr Richard Wysoczanski, who is leading the 23-day expedition, said there had been volcanic activity every year for the past decade, but this was the largest by far.
“It is a substantial eruption. Had it occurred on land in New Zealand, it would have been a bit of a disaster.”
The volcanic caldera, which is like Lake Taupo, known to produce large and violent eruptions, spewed up to 10,000 more material than the Mt Tongariro eruption on August 6, he said.
It was mapped in 2002, showing a 1km-high undersea mountain with a 5km wide, 800-metre deep central crater.
This week, scientists found a new volcanic cone which has formed on the edge of the volcano, towering 240 metres above the crater rim.
They also found one side of the caldera wall is bulging in towards the volcano’s centre, indicating where an eruption may occur in the future or it may lead to an undersea avalanche.
Several cubic kilometres of new material has also been added to the volcano, with large volumes of freshly erupted pumice accumulating on the caldera floor, raising it by up to 10 metres.
“We couldn’t find any biology on the floor and the immediate vicinity has been completely wiped out,” Wysoczanski said.
Fresh volcanic rocks, up to beach ball size, will be brought back to Niwa for analysis.
Tangaroa embarked on the expedition to study the volcanic chain that stretches for 1000km north from Bay of Plenty. It is due back in Wellington on November 1.
LiveScience.com/Janet C. Harvey/Axel Schmitt – Projectile point made from Obsidian Butte obsidian, collected west of Palomar Mountain in northern San Diego County, and attributed to the Luiseño cultural te …more
Related Content
Enlarge GalleryIn this Dec. 27, 2010 photo, the barren earth and dead trees reveal the blight of …
Earthquake swarms and a region-wide rotten egg smell recently reminded Southern California residents they live next to an active volcano field, tiny though it may be.
At the time, scientists said the phenomena did not reflect changes in the magma chamber below the Salton Sea. But now, researchers may need to revise estimates of the potential hazard posed by the Salton Buttes — five volcanoes at the lake’s southern tip.
The buttes last erupted between 940 and 0 B.C., not 30,000 years ago, as previously thought, a new study detailed online Oct. 15 in the journal Geology reports. The new age — which makes these some of California’s youngest volcanoes — pushes the volcanic quintuplets into active status. The California Volcano Observatory, launched in February by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), already lists the area as a high threat for future blasts.
“The USGS is starting to monitor all potentially active volcanoes in California, which includes the Salton Buttes,” said study author Axel Schmitt, a geochronologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “With our results, I think this will further enhance the need to look into the system,” Schmitt told OurAmazingPlanet.
Schmitt and his colleagues dated zircon crystals in the hardened lava of the buttes with a relatively new technique, a “helium clock” that starts ticking once the minerals begin cooling at the surface.
Resolving the Obsidian Butte riddle
The revised age solves a long-standing archeological conundrum, said Steve Shackley, emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Artifacts created from one of the five buttes, Obsidian Butte, first appear in Native American villages around 510 B.C. to 640 B.C. The Kumeyaay people, whose territory ranged from the coast to the Coso Mountains, crafted projectiles from Obsidian Butte glass, he said. “The men produced some of the best in the world,” Shackley told OurAmazingPlanet.
However, for decades, researchers thought Obsidian Butte erupted thousands of years earlier. To explain why no one collected the valuable obsidian, archeologists hypothesized that Obsidian Butte was submerged under ancient Lake Cahuilla, the precursor to today’s Salton Sea. But geologists had long proved that Lake Cahuilla was ephemeral, flooding and emptying over and over again, so the explanation was always problematic.
“If this dating method is correct, then the Obsidian Butte material wasn’t even available, and that makes more sense archaeologically,” Shackley said.
Rifting brings rising magma
In fact, that Obsidian Butte rises above the Salton Sea is what first attracted Schmitt’s attention. A 30,000-year-old butte should have been buried by a combination of sediment and subsidence by now, he said. “It had to be very young,” Schmitt said.
The buttes exist because California is tearing apart, forming new oceanic crust as magma wells up from below. The sinking Salton Trough is the landward extension of the Gulf of California, and marks the boundary between the Pacific and North America tectonic plates.
The lava source for the volcanoes is a magma chamberbeneath the Salton Sea, which also heats water for a nearby geothermal plant. Decay of uranium isotopes in zircon crystals show magma built up underneath the volcanoes for thousands of years before the latest eruption, the study shows. [50 Amazing Volcano Facts]
If another eruption occurs at the Salton Buttes, it will likely mimic past breakouts, Schmitt said. The volcanoes are made of sticky, slow-moving rhyolite lava. At Obsidian Butte, the lava cooled so quickly it turned into glass. However, pumice and ash found nearby means past breakouts started with a bang.
Schmitt said he hopes to study the area in more detail to better understand the most recent eruption. “The amounts of magma involved are relatively small and the impacts of an explosive eruption, meaning an ash cloud, would most likely be very local,” he said. “We don’t know very well how far any ash would have been dispersed, and that’s something I would like to follow up on in the research.”
Researching future hazards
The National Science Foundation’s EarthScope project funds an extensive seismic imaging project in the Salton Sea that may soon reveal more information about what’s happening deep underground.
“We’ll be looking with great interest to see what we can tell from the Salton Seismic Imaging Project,” said Joann Stock, a Caltech professor and an expert on the region’s volcanic hazards who was not involved in the new study.
“I think [Schmitt's study] is a great contribution,” she said. “It’s an area where we should be concerned. We know that there’s a lot of hot stuff down there,” she told OurAmazingPlanet.
In August, an earthquake swarm shook the nearby town of Brawley. The USGS attributed the temblors to faults in the Brawley Seismic Zone. In September, a sulfurous stench emanated from the Salton Sea and wafted across the Inland Empire. The odor was tentatively linked to a fish die-off, but could also have been caused by volcanic gases, Stock said.
The Watchers watching the world evolve and transform
New Zealand scientists investigating an active Kermadec undersea volcano Havre discovered significant changes to the seafloor during last eruption on July 19, 2012. The eruption was captured by a Nasa satellite, and a Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion patrol spotted the huge pumice area on their way back home from Samoa (read our earlier report)
Scientists, aboard Niwa research ship – Tangaroa (deepwater research vessel), used multibeam sonar to map the seamount and found evidence of a new volcanic cone, 240 m tall and reaching withing 1,100 m below sea level, built on the side of the large submarine caldera of Havre. Aside from new volcanic cone they also found one side of the caldera wall is bulging in towards the volcano’s centre, indicating where an eruption may occur in the future or it may lead to an undersea avalanche.
Niwa’s volcanologist Dr Richard Wysoczanski, who is leading the 23-day expedition, said there had been volcanic activity every year for the past decade, but this was the largest by far.
“It is a substantial eruption. Had it occurred on land in New Zealand, it would have been a bit of a disaster.”
The volcanic caldera, which is like Lake Taupo, known to produce large and violent eruptions, spewed up to 10,000 more material than the Mt Tongariro eruption on August 6, he said.
A forest fire burned nearly 100 acres near the Sattler Branch community in Clay County. Fire fighters responded to the blaze late Thursday. By Friday afternoon, the flames were contained. Still, the fire gave folks who live nearby quite a scare. “It’s about that time of year you have to start worrying, leaves and everything is dry. There’s a lot of trees around here. It wasn’t as bad this year as it was last year; it was real close last year,” said resident Rebecca Combs. Back then, Combs says a forest fire came so close to her home that fire fighters had to hose it down to keep it from igniting. “All we could really see was the smoke this time. It was on the other side so it didn’t get really close, but it was close enough to make you nervous,” Combs said. Combs’ sister says their ailing father lives in the home. She says getting him out of the house in an emergency would be difficult. “He’s wheelchair bound so that wouldn’t have been something fun to try to do. It would’ve been a hassle. We try to think about going over fire evacuations any way, just in case because of him,” said sister Monica Baker. People we talked to in Clay County say the threat of fire is a constant concern this time of year. They say people need to be more careful.
WASHINGTON – The U.S. military will be moving ships from the Norfolk Naval Station region in Virginia out to sea to get out of the path of Hurricane Sandy.
The Navy says 24 of the larger ships in southeastern Virginia bases, including the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, are preparing to leave and will be moving out over the next day or so. The orders affect ships at Naval Station Norfolk and Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story in the Hamption Roads area.
Other ships will be secured at the base. Military installations along the Eastern Seaboard, including Andrews Air Force Base and Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and Naval Submarine Base New London in Connecticut were also prepared to move ships and aircraft if needed.
City would actually benefit from a direct hit, forecast say
By Eric Holthaus
Reuters
Jean Marie Brennan walks along the jetty at Lighthouse Point Park as Hurricane Sandy passes offshore in Ponce Inlet, Fla. on Friday.
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — As we’ve all heard by now, there is a big storm brewing on the East Coast. Looking at the latest weather models, that may be a bit of an understatement.
The National Weather Service has labelled the hybrid gyre that may result from the merging of Hurricane Sandy and a Midwest snowstorm a “Frankenstorm.” When it hits, the storm could have truly scary implications befitting the Halloween holiday it will coincide with.
In fact, computer models are now showing a storm so intense that it would break 100-plus year weather records for the most intense pressure readings ever recorded throughout nearly all of the Mid-Atlantic region northward into New York City and Long Island.
Every hurricane that has ever hit that area — from last year’s Hurricane Irene, to the “Perfect Storm” of 1991, even the Long Island Express of 1938 — would all rank below this storm should current models of the atmosphere pan out. That’s a stunning conclusion, but one worth pondering, even though the storm’s peak impacts won’t be felt until Tuesday and there’s still time for models to shift.
There’s reason to believe the models may be overdoing it. First off, what’s happening right now doesn’t have a clear precedence in the weather records. Our best available number-crunching simulations of the atmosphere simply weren’t designed for this scenario.
Normally, when hurricanes approach the East Coast from Sandy’s angle, they are pulled safely out to sea by a semi-permanent low-pressure center near Iceland. This time around, that low pressure isn’t there. In fact, it’s been replaced by a high pressure so intense it only occurs approximately 0.2% of the time on average.
The coincidence of that strong of a high pressure “block” being in place just when a hurricane is passing by — in and of itself a very rare occurrence — is just mind bogglingly rare. It’s the kind of stuff that’s important enough to rewrite meteorological textbooks. The result: Instead of heading out to sea Sandy’s full force will be turned back against the grain and directed squarely at the East Coast.
To top it off, an intense early-season snowstorm moving eastward out of the Great Lakes will provide an additional boost of energy to Sandy as it approaches the shore, broadening its windfield, strengthening its rainfall and waves, and increasing its destructive potential. This is truly a Frankenstein scenario — a hybrid of weather badness that is now coming alive.
The Hydrometeorological Prediction Center — the same folks at the National Weather Service that gave Sandy its “Frankenstorm” name — have had to manually adjust their official forecasts to tone down the exceptional scenarios that the weather models are currently showing.
It’s not that they don’t think the worst-case scenario is possible. It’s just that it’s never happened before. As a meteorologist, you have to be very, very careful if you are going to predict a historic scenario.
The storm is still a few days away, so there will be plenty of time to see how new model runs change with the addition of data from future Hurricane Hunter flights before the National Weather Service goes in full bore with an unprecedented forecast. For the time being, those from D.C. to Boston should remain especially vigilant and begin to take preparations to make sure they and their families are safe.
Storm may hit New York the hardest
Because the storm is expected to be so huge, the only reason its exact landfall location matters relates to the direction of the winds. Everyone from D.C. to New England will feel some type of effects, but because hurricanes rotate counter-clockwise, those north of the center will have massive amounts of seawater directly deposited on their shores.
For those south of the center, the storm’s circulation will actually be pushing flooding seas away from shore, lessening potential impacts.
Right now, the most reliable model tracks have clustered in a relatively tight range from Delaware to New York City. Counterintuitively, should the center of the storm make a direct strike on New York City, the city may actually be spared some of the more serious coastal impacts from the storm.
Should the storm continue on its current path (the National Hurricane Center’s most likely landfall is now in southern New Jersey), all bets are off for the five boroughs.
The latter scenario — the one that now appears most likely — would have many feet of ocean water funneled into New York Harbor over a period of up to 36 hours. Unlike Irene, which quickly transited New York City last year as a weakening tropical storm, Sandy may actually be in the process of strengthening when it makes landfall.
The result could prove incredibly damaging for coastal residents and critical infrastructure. Keep in mind that Irene was only inches away from flooding subway tunnels in Lower Manhattan. Storm-surge forecasts for this scenario haven’t been officially released yet, but six to 10 feet in the city is not out of the question in a worst-case scenario.
That result would put about 700,000 people’s homes underwater, according to a Climate Central interactive analysis. Add to that waves of 10 to 20 feet on ocean-facing shores, and an additional foot or so of tidal influence from the full moon, and we could be dealing with quite a mess on our hands.
With National Geographic reporting that sea level rise is already accelerating at three to four times the global rate in the Northeast due to climate change, impacts are expected to be worse than if the same exact storm would have hit several years ago.
Should Sandy veer further north of its current track and make landfall right over the city, storm surge could be dramatically lessened, though the city could receive about double the amount of rainfall — up to a foot or more.
For these reasons, if I were a resident of New York right now, I’d be rooting for a direct hit. If given a choice, I’d take 12 inches of rain over six feet of coastal flooding any day.
Meteorologist Eric Holthaus digs deeper into how weather and climate can affect markets for MarketWatch. He can be reached at wxriskforecaster@gmail.com.
Sandy could be ‘worst case’ superstorm, more powerful than Hurricane Irene; officials will decide Saturday whether to evacuate wide swaths of New York City as ‘Frankenstorm’ approaches
Hurricane Sandy leveled homes in Cuba and Jamaica this week and it has been blamed for more than 20 deaths. The storm is marching north towards the U.S., and could slam New York with lashing rain, powerful winds and even snow.
In the face of a potentially devastating storm, Gov. Cuomo declared a state of emergency Friday and city officials considered evacuating as many as 375,000 New Yorkers.
The MTA was also considering a total shut down of buses and subways if the worst predictions about Hurricane Sandy come true.
The deadly tempest, which killed at least 41 people in the Caribbean, according to The Associated Press, is expected to make landfall late Monday night near Delaware.
Mayor Bloomberg said he’d make a decision about evacuations in low-lying areas in all five boroughs as soon as Saturday.
“We are taking all the steps that we need to take,” Bloomberg said during a hastily called afternoon press conference on Friday.
Franklin Reyes/AP
Hurricane Sandy blasted across eastern Cuba on Thursday as a potent Category 2 storm and headed for the Bahamas en route to the East Coast, forecasters predict.
Gilbert Bellamy/Reuters
Residents watch firefighters fight a blaze in a private home in Kingston October 26, 2012. The fire, which destroyed the home, was started by a faulty generator used to provide electricity in the blackout caused by the passing of Hurricane Sandy, firefighters said.
“But the storm is moving at a rate that we’re still not going to have a good sense of when and where it’s going to hit land.”
MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota said officials would begin the second shutdown of all buses and subways in its history if winds reach 39 mph.
“Our first priority is always safety, and the MTA is taking no chances with the safety of our customers, our employees and our equipment,” Lhota said in a statement. “We are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. Whatever happens, we’ll be ready.”
Parts of the subway that are below sea level are particularly susceptible to flooding.
The MTA halted the subways for the first time in its history during Hurricane Irene last year.
Desmond Boylan/Reuters
People walk on a street littered with debris after Hurricane Sandy hit Santiago de Cuba October 26, 2012.
Carl Juste/The Miami Herald via AP
Locals walk across the flooded streets of La Plaine, Haiti after Hurricane Sandy caused flooding and claimed more than 20 lives across the Caribbean.
Hurricane Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm before reaching the city but dire predictions in the days before it arrived triggered mandatory evacuations of lower Manhattan and other coastal neighborhoods.
With some forecasts predicting that Sandy could deliver an even more powerful punch, the city is again considering those extreme measures.
“The thing that we worry about the most is that people decide not to listen to the order to evacuate and then later on find themselves in harm’s way and then our police and fire departments have to put their lives on the line,” Bloomberg said.
City officials ordered construction crews to halt work as of Saturday evening and warned residents to prepare “go-bags” equipped with water and First Aid kits.
Officials were also deciding whether to cancel school on Monday.
Bryan Smith for New York Daily News
Mayor Michael Bloomberg discusses the city’s preparations ahead of Hurricane Sandy’s possible arrival early next week at City Hall on Friday.
Another major concern is “prolonged power outages,” Bloomberg said, and the city is working closely with ConEd.
“There are probably 20 different forecasts tracts for this storm and any one of them could be right,” Bloomberg said.
City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said the city was asking six hospitals and 41 chronic care facilities, including nursing homes, in the low-lying areas to move patients who could be easily relocated.
nhc.noaa.gov
Hurricane Sandy path as shown by NOAA map.
The city could decide to evacuate the facilities using city buses as it did during Irene.
Cuomo declared a state of emergency for all 62 counties and said at a Long Island event that the state was taking “every precaution possible.”
A state of emergency gives the state more flexibility to help cities and counties. Cuomo also put the National Guard on alert, which makes Guard personnel and equipment available to help.
Julia Xanthos/New York Daily News
Workers from the MTA install plywood over subway grating to prevent flooding expected from Hurricane Sandy near the Staten Island Ferry in lower Manhattan on Friday.
He also said he will call up repair crews and reach out to other states that may have crews available.
The state is also asking for a pre-disaster declaration that would get New York federal aid and assistance, he said.
Carl Juste/The Miami Herald via AP
Residents of Leogane, Haiti find higher ground as the water level continues to rise Friday, Oct. 26, 2012.
Steve Nesius/Reuters
Jean Marie Brennan walks along the jetty at Lighthouse Point Park as Hurricane Sandy passes offshore in Ponce Inlet, Florida on Friday.
“There’s no need to panic,” he said. “We have a lot of time and we’re prepared for any eventuality, but we’d rather err on the side of caution.”
Cuomo canceled plans to campaign in Florida for President Obama so he could stay in New York. He also scrapped a homeland security conference scheduled for Monday in Albany so the 1,000 first responders who planned to attend could prepare for the storm in their home counties.
A host of other events were canceled as the storm loomed, including an exam for specialized high schools admissions scheduled for Sunday.With News Wire Services With News Wire Services
tmoore@nydailynews.com
With a name like “Frankenstorm,” this could get ugly.
Hurricane Sandy, moving north from the Caribbean, was expected to make landfall Monday night near the Delaware coast, then hit two winter weather systems as it moves inland, creating a hybrid monster storm that could bring nearly a foot of rain, high winds and up to 2 feet of snow.
Experts said the storm would be wider and stronger than last year’s Irene, which caused more than $15 billion in damage, and could rival the worst East Coast storm on record.
Officials did not mince words, telling people to be prepared for several days without electricity. Jersey Shore beach towns began issuing voluntary evacuations and protecting boardwalks
Atlantic Beach casinos made contingency plans to close, and officials advised residents of flood-prone areas to stay with family or be ready to leave. Airlines said to expect cancellations and waived change fees for passengers who want to reschedule.
“Be forewarned,” said Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. “Assume that you will be in the midst of flooding conditions, the likes of which you may not have seen at any of the major storms that have occurred over the last 30 years.”
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell declared a state of emergency Friday morning to help mobilize emergency response. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that wherever the storm comes ashore, there will be 10 inches of rain and extreme storm surges. Up to 2 feet of snow should fall on West Virginia, with lighter snow in parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The storm threatened to hit two weeks before Election Day, while several states were heavily involved in campaigning, canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Vice President Joe Biden both canceled weekend campaign events in coastal Virginia Beach, Va., though their events in other parts of the states were going on as planned.
In Rhode Island, politicians asked supporters to take down yard signs for fear they might turn into projectiles in the storm.
With a rare mix of three big merging weather systems over a densely populated region, experts predict at least $1 billion in damage.
STORM TIPS
Residents in the storm’s expected path should have a three days’ supply of water on hand, or one gallon per person per day, enough for drinking, cooking and some bathing, Virginia’s Department of Emergency Management recommends, and to combat extended power outages, residents should purchase battery-powered radios and extra batteries.
And if they meet Tuesday morning around New York or New Jersey, as forecasters predict, they could create a big, wet mess that settles over the nation’s most heavily populated corridor and reaches as far west as Ohio.
Airlines are giving travelers a way out if they want to scrap their plans due to Hurricane Sandy.
All the major airlines are offering waivers to customers who wish to reschedule their flights without incurring the typical fee of up to $150. The offers cover passengers flying in or out of just about any airport from Latin America to New Hampshire. Most waivers for travel in the Northeast are only valid Monday through Wednesday.
The airlines have only canceled a handful of flights so far, nearly all of them in and out of Florida and the Caribbean.
They say there will be hundreds of miles of steady, strong and damaging winds and rain for the entire Eastern region for several days. That could produce a bigger wallop than last year’s damaging Irene, which caused the cancellation of nearly 14,000 flights in a four-day period.
Those hoping to fly in or out of affected areas are asked to check their flight status before heading to the airport. Airlines also promise to update their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds with the latest information. To cancel, passengers should call the airline directly. Some airlines also allow changes to be made on their websites.
Passengers can expect cancellations to increase as the storm moves north over the weekend.
“Airlines and other operators generally stop flying to airports in the potential storm path long before winds reach dangerous levels,” the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
Utilities are lining up out-of-state work crews and canceling employees’ days off to deal with expected power outages. From county disaster chiefs to the federal government, emergency officials are warning the public to be prepared. And President Barack Obama was briefed aboard Air Force One.
“It’s looking like a very serious storm that could be historic,” said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the forecasting service Weather Underground. “Mother Nature is not saying, `Trick or treat.’ It’s just going to give tricks.”
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecaster Jim Cisco, who coined the nickname Frankenstorm, said: “We don’t have many modern precedents for what the models are suggesting.”
Government forecasters said there is a 90 percent chance — up from 60 percent two days earlier — that the East will get pounded.
Coastal areas from Florida to Maine will feel some effects, but the storm is expected to vent the worst of its fury on New Jersey and the New York City area, which could see around 5 inches of rain and gale-force winds close to 40 mph. Eastern Ohio, southwestern Pennsylvania and western Virginia could get snow.
And the storm will take its time leaving. The weather may not start clearing in the mid-Atlantic until the day after Halloween and Nov. 2 in the upper Northeast, Cisco said.
“It’s almost a weeklong, five-day, six-day event,” he said from a NOAA forecast center in College Park, Md. “It’s going to be a widespread, serious storm.”
It is likely to hit during a full moon, when tides are near their highest, increasing the risk of coastal flooding. And because many trees still have their leaves, they are more likely to topple in the event of wind and snow, meaning there could be widespread power outages lasting to Election Day.
Eastern states that saw outages that lasted for days after last year’s freak Halloween snowstorm and Hurricane Irene in late August 2011 are already pressuring power companies to be more ready this time.
Asked if he expected utilities to be more prepared, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick responded: “They’d better be.”
Jersey Central Power & Light, which was criticized for its response to Irene, notified employees to be ready for extended shifts. In Pennsylvania, PPL Corp. spokesman Michael Wood said, “We’re in a much better place this year.”
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday said the city was striking a tone of calm preparedness.
“What we are doing is we are taking the kind of precautions you should expect us to do, and I don’t think anyone should panic,” Bloomberg said. The city has opened an emergency situation room and activated its coastal storm plan.
Some have compared the tempest to the so-called Perfect Storm that struck off the coast of New England in 1991, but that one hit a less populated area. Nor is this one like last year’s Halloween storm, which was merely an early snowfall.
“The Perfect Storm only did $200 million of damage and I’m thinking a billion” this time, Masters said. “Yeah, it will be worse.”
As it spun away from the Bahamas late Friday, Sandy was blamed for more than 43 deaths across the Caribbean. The 18th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season hit the Bahamas after cutting across Cuba, where it tore roofs off homes and damaged fragile coffee and tomato crops. It is expected to move north, just off the Eastern Seaboard.
Norje Pupo, a 66-year-old retiree in Holguin, was helping his son clean up early Thursday after an enormous tree toppled in his garden.
“The hurricane really hit us hard,” he said. “As you can see, we were very affected. The houses are not poorly made here, but some may have been damaged.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
27.10.2012
Tropical Storm
Cuba
MultiProvinces, [Provinces of Santiago de Cuba and Holguin]
The Cuban government said on Thursday night that 11 people died when the storm barreled across the island, most killed by falling trees or in building collapses in Santiago de Cuba province and neighboring Guantanamo province. The Cuban deaths were an unusually high number for the communist island which prides itself on protecting its people from storms by ordering mass evacuations.
TOKYO — Elevated levels of cesium still detected in fish off the Fukushima coast of Japan suggest that radioactive particles from last year’s nuclear disaster have accumulated on the seafloor and could contaminate sea life for decades, according to new research.
A broker inspected octopus from Fukushima at a market in Tokyo in August.
The findings published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science highlight the challenges facing Japan as it seeks to protect its food supply and rebuild the local fisheries industry.
More than 18 months after the nuclear disaster, Japan bans the sale of 36 species of fish caught off Fukushima, rendering the bulk of its fishing boats idle and denying the region one of its mainstay industries.
Some local fishermen are trying to return to work. Since July, a handful of them have resumed small-scale commercial fishing for species, like octopus, that have cleared government radiation tests. Radiation readings in waters off Fukushima and beyond have returned to near-normal levels.
But about 40 percent of fish caught off Fukushima and tested by the government still have too much cesium to be safe to eat under regulatory limits set by the Japanese government last year, said the article’s author, Ken O. Buesseler, a leading marine chemistry expert at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who analyzed test results from the 12 months following the March 2011 disaster.
Because cesium tends not to stay very long in the tissues of saltwater fish — and because high radiation levels have been detected most often in bottom-feeding fish — it is likely that fish are being newly contaminated by cesium on the seabed, Mr. Buesseler wrote in the Science article.
“The fact that many fish are just as contaminated today with cesium 134 and cesium 137 as they were more than one year ago implies that cesium is still being released into the food chain,” Mr. Buesseler wrote. This kind of cesium has a half-life of 30 years, meaning that it falls off by half in radioactive intensity every 30 years. Given that, he said, “sediments would remain contaminated for decades to come.”
Officials at Japan’s Fisheries Agency, which conducted the tests, said Mr. Buesseler’s analysis made sense.
“In the early days of the disaster, as the fallout hit the ocean, we saw high levels of radiation from fish near the surface,” said Koichi Tahara, assistant director of the agency’s resources and research division. “But now it would be reasonable to assume that radioactive substances are settling on the seafloor.”
But that was less of a concern than Mr. Buesseler’s research might suggest, Mr. Tahara said, because the cesium was expected to eventually settle down into the seabed.
Mr. Tahara also stressed that the government would continue its vigorous testing and that fishing bans would remain in place until radiation readings returned to safe levels.
Naohiro Yoshida, an environmental chemistry expert at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, said that while he agreed with much of Mr. Buesseler’s analysis, it was too early to reach a conclusion on how extensive radioactive contamination of Japan’s oceans would be, and how long it would have an impact on marine life in the area.
Further research was needed on ocean currents, sediments and how different species of fish are affected by radioactive contamination, he said.
As much as four-fifths of the radioactive substances released from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are thought to have entered the sea, either blown offshore or released directly into the ocean from water used to cool the site’s reactors in the wake of the accident.
Sea currents quickly dispersed that radioactivity, and seawater readings off the Fukushima shore returned to near-normal levels. But fish caught in the area continue to show elevated readings for radioactive cesium, which is associated with an increased risk of cancer in humans.
Just two months ago, two greenling caught close to the Fukushima shore were found to contain more than 25,000 becquerels a kilogram of cesium, the highest cesium levels found in fish since the disaster and 250 times the government’s safety limit.
The operator of the Fukushima plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said that the site no longer released contaminated water into the ocean, and that radiation levels in waters around the plant had stabilized.
But Yoshikazu Nagai, a spokesman for the company, said he could not rule out undetected leaks into the ocean from its reactors, the basements of which remain flooded with cooling water.
To reduce the chance of water from seeping out of the plant, Tokyo Electric is building a 2,400-foot-long wall between the site’s reactors and the ocean. But Mr. Nagai said the steel-and-concrete wall, which will reach 100 feet underground, would take until mid-2014 to build.
Volunteers to remove radioactive substances from a fishing boat in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, in this photo taken by Kyodo October 24, 2011. (Reuters / Kyodo)
TEPCO, operator of the Fukushima nuclear facility, failed to confirm that radiation leaks at the plant had fully stopped. This came after a US report that irradiated fish are still being caught off the coast of Japan following the 2011 meltdown.
The Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) told journalists Friday they could not confirm that radiation had stopped leaking from the nuclear power plant struck by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. Still, they said that radiation levels in the seawater and seabed soil around the plant were declining.
A recent article in the academic journal Science revealed that 40 percent of bottom-dwelling marine species in the area show cesium-134 and 137 levels that are still higher than normal.
“The numbers aren’t going down. Oceans usually cause the concentrations to decrease if the spigot is turned off,” Ken Buesseler, study author and senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution told the Associated Press. “There has to be somewhere they’re picking up the cesium.”
“Option one is the seafloor is the source of the continued contamination. The other source could be the reactors themselves,” Buesseler added.
Radioactive cesium is a human-made radioactive isotope produced through nuclear fission of the element cesium. It has a half-life of 30 years, making it extremely toxic.
TEPCO confirmed that the radioactive water used to cool the plant’s reactors leaked into the ocean several times, most recently in April.
The plant is struggling to find space to store the tens of thousands of tons of highly contaminated water used to cool the broken reactors and prevent it from a meltdown.
The company managed to collect the water used to cool the spent fuel rods and circulate it back into reactor cores, so the reactors are now being cooled with recycled water. However, groundwater is still seeping through cracks in basement where the reactor and turbine are stored, posing further dangers.
With the groundwater seeping in, the volume of decontaminated water collected and stored at the Fukushima Daiichi plant could triple within three years, TEPCO told the AP.
The accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant was triggered by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011. An enormous tsunami crashed onto the land, resulting in the flash-flooding of four of the plant’s six reactors, shattering the cooling system. This led to a series of oxygen blasts, and a partial meltdown of the reactor core.
The incident was the biggest nuclear disaster in 25 years since the tragedy at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Multiple cases of contamination of air and seawater by radioactive material have been reported. Over 140,000 people were forced to leave an evacuation area 40 kilometers in diameter around the plant. Most of those people are still living in shelters. Full management of the disaster, including dismantling the reactors, is expected to take around 40 years.
Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant is struggling to find space to store tens of thousands of tons of highly contaminated water, it emerged today.
About 200,000 tons of radioactive water used to cool the broken reactors are being stored in hundreds of gigantic tanks built around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.
Operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) has already chopped down trees to make room for more tanks and predicts the volume will more than triple within three years.
“Our land is limited and we could eventually run out of storage space,” said water treatment manager Yuichi Okamura.
Tepco’s tanks are filling up mostly because leaks in reactor facilities are allowing ground water to pour in.
Outside experts say that if contaminated water is released, there will be a lasting impact on the environment.
And they fear that because of the reactor leaks and water flowing from one part of the plant to another, that may already be happening.
Nuclear engineer Masashi Goto said the contaminated water build-up poses a long-term threat.
He said that the radioactive water in the basements may already be getting into the underground water system, where it could reach far beyond the plant, possibly into the ocean or public water supplies.
“You never know where it’s leaking and once it’s out you can’t put it back,” he said.
He added that the Tepco roadmap for dealing with the problem was “wishful thinking.”
“The longer it takes, the more contaminated water they get.”
Another person has died of the Marburg viral disease in the southwestern district of Kabale, bringing the total number of such deaths to seven. Lydia Rusanyuka died Saturday morning at Rushoroza health center three after spending less than a week under medical care inside the isolation center. The deadly virus claimed its seventh victim just a little over a week since its outbreak in the district was first reported by health experts. The medics had settled onto the conclusion after samples from two relatives taken to the Uganda Virus Institute had tested positive. Rusanyuka, the mother of a mortuary attendant who also succumbed to the disease had been tested positive with the virus prior to her death. Her son, Jason Tumukunde also died of the same disease. Doctor Patrick Tusiime, the Kabale District health officer has said the deceased will be buried in Bukora, Kitumba sub-county Kabale district today. Meanwhile, the wife of the late Tumukunde, his sister and their eight-year-old daughter remain in isolation at Rushoroza after testing positive.
by Maria-Jose Vinas for NASA’s Earth Science News
Greenbelt MD (SPX)
September 2012 witnessed two opposite records concerning sea ice. Two weeks after the Arctic Ocean’s ice cap experienced an all-time summertime low for the satellite era (left), Antarctic sea ice reached a record winter maximum extent (right). But sea ice in the Arctic has melted at a much faster rate than it has expanded in the Southern Ocean, as can be seen in this image by comparing the 2012 sea ice levels with the yellow outline, which in the Arctic image represents average sea ice minimum extent from 1979 through 2010 and in the Antarctic image shows the median sea ice extent in September from 1979 to 2000. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio and NASA Earth Observatory/ Jesse Allen. View Arctic larger. View Antarctic larger.
The steady and dramatic decline in the sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean over the last three decades has become a focus of media and public attention. At the opposite end of the Earth, however, something more complex is happening.
A new NASA study shows that from 1978 to 2010 the total extent of sea ice surrounding Antarctica in the Southern Ocean grew by roughly 6,600 square miles every year, an area larger than the state of Connecticut. And previous research by the same authors indicates that this rate of increase has recently accelerated, up from an average rate of almost 4,300 square miles per year from 1978 to 2006.
“There’s been an overall increase in the sea ice cover in the Antarctic, which is the opposite of what is happening in the Arctic,” said lead author Claire Parkinson, a climate scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “However, this growth rate is not nearly as large as the decrease in the Arctic.”
The Earth’s poles have very different geographies. The Arctic Ocean is surrounded by North America, Greenland and Eurasia. These large landmasses trap most of the sea ice, which builds up and retreats with each yearly freeze-and-melt cycle. But a large fraction of the older, thicker Arctic sea ice has disappeared over the last three decades. The shrinking summer ice cover has exposed dark ocean water that absorbs sunlight and warms up, leading to more ice loss.
On the opposite side of the planet, Antarctica is a continent circled by open waters that let sea ice expand during the winter but also offer less shelter during the melt season. Most of the Southern Ocean’s frozen cover grows and retreats every year, leading to little perennial sea ice in Antarctica.
Using passive-microwave data from NASA’s Nimbus 7 satellite and several Department of Defense meteorological satellites, Parkinson and colleague Don Cavalieri showed that sea ice changes were not uniform around Antarctica.
Most of the growth from 1978 to 2010 occurred in the Ross Sea, which gained a little under 5,300 square miles of sea ice per year, with more modest increases in the Weddell Sea and Indian Ocean. At the same time, the region of the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas lost an average of about 3,200 square miles of ice every year.
Parkinson and Cavalieri said that the mixed pattern of ice growth and ice loss around the Southern Ocean could be due to changes in atmospheric circulation. Recent research points at the depleted ozone layer over Antarctica as a possible culprit.
Ozone absorbs solar energy, so a lower concentration of this molecule can lead to a cooling of the stratosphere (the layer between six and 30 miles above the Earth’s surface) over Antarctica. At the same time, the temperate latitudes have been warming, and the differential in temperatures has strengthened the circumpolar winds flowing over the Ross Ice Shelf.
“Winds off the Ross Ice Shelf are getting stronger and stronger, and that causes the sea ice to be pushed off the coast, which generates areas of open water, polynyas,” said Josefino Comiso, a senior scientist at NASA Goddard.
“The larger the coastal polynya, the more ice it produces, because in polynyas the water is in direct contact with the very cold winter atmosphere and rapidly freezes.” As the wind keeps blowing, the ice expands further to the north.
This year’s winter Antarctic sea ice maximum extent, reached two weeks after the Arctic Ocean’s ice cap experienced an all-time summertime low, was a record high for the satellite era of 7.49 million square miles, about 193,000 square miles more than its average maximum extent for the last three decades.
The Antarctic minimum extents, which are reached in the midst of the Antarctic summer, in February, have also slightly increased to 1.33 million square miles in 2012, or around 251,000 square miles more than the average minimum extent since 1979.
The numbers for the southernmost ocean, however, pale in comparison with the rates at which the Arctic has been losing sea ice – the extent of the ice cover of the Arctic Ocean in September 2012 was 1.32 million square miles below the average September extent from 1979 to 2000. The lost ice area is equivalent to roughly two Alaskas.
Parkinson said that the fact that some areas of the Southern Ocean are cooling and producing more sea ice does not disprove a warming climate.
“Climate does not change uniformly: The Earth is very large and the expectation definitely would be that there would be different changes in different regions of the world,” Parkinson said. “That’s true even if overall the system is warming.” Another recent NASA study showed that Antarctic sea ice slightly thinned from 2003 to 2008, but increases in the extent of the ice balanced the loss in thickness and led to an overall volume gain.
The new research, which used laser altimetry data from the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), was the first to estimate sea ice thickness for the entire Southern Ocean from space.
Records of Antarctic sea ice thickness are much patchier than those of the Arctic, due to the logistical challenges of taking regular measurements in the fierce and frigid waters around Antarctica. The field data collection is mostly limited to research icebreakers that generally only travel there during spring and summer – so the sole means to get large-scale thickness measurements is from space.
“We have a good handle of the extent of the Antarctic sea ice, but the thickness has been the missing piece to monitor the sea ice mass balance,” said Thorsten Markus, one of the authors of the study and Project Scientist for ICESat-2, a satellite mission designed to replace the now defunct ICESat. ICESat-2 is scheduled to launch in 2016. “The extent can be greater, but if the sea ice gets thinner, the volume could stay the same.”
A filament of magnetism snaking around the sun’s southeastern limb erupted on Oct 26th. The blast created a “canyon of fire” in the sun’s lower atmosphere. Click on the circle to animate the event:
The glowing walls of the canyon are formed in a process closely related to that of arcade loops, which appear after many solar flares. Stretching more than 250,000 km from end to end, the “canyon” traces the original channel where the filament was suspended by magnetic forces above the stellar surface.
As erupting magnetic filaments often do, this one launched a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. The Solar and Heliospheric Observary recorded the expanding cloud: movie. The CME does not appear to be heading for Earth or any other planet.
The Watchers watching the world evolve and transform
Solar activity was at low levels for the past 24 hours and X-Ray flux plot shown merely C-class threshold. However, a prominence eruption was observed north of Region 1600.
A bright CME was observed in STEREO Ahead COR 2 imagery at 18:24 UTC on October 27. Latest STEREO Ahead COR2 images indicate that this CME may be Earth directed. SIDC reports that a halo or partial-halo CME was detected.
STEREO Behind COR2 image from 21:40 UTC on OCtober 27 and earlier STEREO Ahead COR2 image from 18:54 UTC on October 27
SOHO’s LASCO C2 latest image is recorded at 11:12 UTC on October 26.
SpaceWeather.com reports that filament of magnetism snaking around the sun’s southeastern limb erupted on October 26. The blast created a “canyon of fire” in the sun’s lower atmosphere. This solar filament launched a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space but luckily, it was not Earth-directed. Stretching more than 250,000 km from end to end, the “canyon” traces the original channel where the filament was suspended by magnetic forces above the stellar surface.
GOES X-Ray flux show mostly quit conditions, only 3 C-class flares were observed during the past 24 hours.
All four visible Sunspot regions (1596, 1598, 1599, 1600) are currently stable. Three low-level C-class flares were observed from behind the west limb, likely from old Region 1594. Region 1598 remained the most magnetically complex region on the visible disk and produced a B9 flare at 12:35 UTC on October 27. Region 1596 has shown signs of penumbral decay, mainly in its trailer spots. There are no large coronal holes on the Earthside of the Sun.
There will be a slight chance for an isolated M-Class flare throughout the weekend. NOAA/SWPC forecasters estimated 15 % chances of M-class event. Sunspot 1598 is the one to watch.
These red, orange and green clouds on Saturn represent the tail end of a 2010/11 massive storm.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The storm, first detected in 2010, let out something of a cosmic burp
If on Earth, it would cover North America top to bottom and wrap the globe many times
The storm also led to a drastic change in the ringed planet
(CNN) — NASA says the Cassini spacecraft recorded the aftermath of a massive storm on Saturn that let out an “unprecedented belch of energy.”
Not only was the size of the storm unusual, but what the storm was made of left scientists puzzled.
The source of the cosmic burp, which rapidly changed the atmosphere’s temperature, was ethylene gas, an odorless, colorless gas that has rarely been observed on Saturn, NASA said.
“This temperature spike is so extreme it’s almost unbelievable,” said Brigette Hesman, the study’s lead author who works at Goddard. “To get a temperature change of the same scale on Earth, you’d be going from the depths of winter in Fairbanks, Alaska, to the height of summer in the Mojave Desert,” Hesman said in a statement released by NASA.
Scientists still haven’t figured out from where the ethylene gas came.
By comparison, a storm of similar size on Earth would cover North America from top to bottom and wrap the planet many times, researchers said.
The Cassini spacecraft first detected the disruption on December 5, 2010, and has been following it since, but researchers said the ethylene gas disruption that followed the storm was unexpected.
A storm this size happens once every 30 years, or once every Saturn year, NASA scientists said.
Launched in 1997, the Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
A full report will be published in November’s issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
Amateur astronomers have been keeping a close eye on Comet 168P/Hergenrother since October 1st when it suddenly brightened 500-fold, from 15th to 8th magnitude. At the time, the comet was making its closest approach to the sun (1.4 AU). Some observers speculated that solar heating caused the fragile comet to break apart. On Oct. 26th, a group of astronomers found evidence to support this idea. “Using the Faulkes North (F65) telescope,” writes Ernesto Guido et al., “we detected a fragmentation in Comet 168P.”
“Our images, taken on Oct. 26th, reveal the presence of a secondary nucleus, or fragment, about two arcseconds away from the main central condensation of comet 168P.” This is probably a chunk of rocky ice emerging from the haze of gas and dust that surrounds the main nucleus, still hidden inside. Comets are notoriously fragile, so its no surprise that Comet 168P/Hergenrother is breaking apart in this way.
The only question is, what happens next? Will the comet spit in two, with two heads and two tails, one tracking the fragment and the other tracking the parent? Or is this the prelude to a more complete disintegration? Amateur astronomers are encouraged to monitor developments while the comet remains bright enough to see through backyard telescopes. Here are the comet’s coordinates. For best results, we recommend the Comet Hunter Telescope.
MessageToEagle.com – Based on current models, galaxies grow by consuming other star systems and the so-called galactic cannibalism process is widespread in the universe.
Around the Milky Way galaxy and in the vicinity of our immediate cosmic neighborhood, known as the “Local Group” of galaxies, traces of spiral galaxies swallowing dwarf galaxies have been known to astronomers since 1997.
Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, researchers have recently discovered a band of stars, or stellar stream.
It is the first of its kind found in the southern Galactic sky, a region that has been hard to examine due to a relative lack of deep-sky imaging there. Deeper imaging enables astronomers to detect fainter stars.
Credits: NASA
This stellar stream, named the Triangulum stream, could be the remnant of an ancient star cluster slowly being ingested by the Milky Way, Earth’s home galaxy.
“The Milky Way is constantly gobbling up small galaxies and star clusters,” said Ana Bonaca, a Yale graduate student and lead author of a study forthcoming in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Click on image to enlarge
M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is a perennial favorite of amateur and professional astronomers alike, due to its orientation and relative proximity to us. It is the second nearest spiral galaxy to our Milky Way (after M31, the Andromeda Galaxy) and a prominent member of the “local group” of galaxies. From our Milky Way perspective, M33′s stellar disk appears at moderate inclination, allowing us to see its internal structure clearly, whereas M31 is oriented nearly edge-on. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer imaged M33 as it appears in ultraviolet wavelengths. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The discovery will help astronomers reconstruct how the Milky Way’s mass is distributed, further revealing its dynamic structure.
“The more powerful gravity of our Milky Way pulls these objects apart and their stars then become part of the Milky Way itself.”
Researchers have previously found evidence of the Milky Way eating up dwarf galaxies.Bonaca argues that the newly found stellar stream is the remnant of a star cluster rather than of a larger galaxy, because the stream is very narrow.
“Our discovery is more of a light snack than a big meal for the Milky Way,” says Marla Geha, associate professor of astronomy at Yale and a co-author of the study.
“Studying this digestion process in detail is important because it gives us new insight into how all galaxies form and evolve.”
Galaxies are believed to form hierarchically through the merger of smaller galaxies and still smaller star clusters.
Stellar streams form as they are ripped apart by the gravitational force of galaxies.
This process may be the primary way galaxies such as the Milky Way grow in mass, the researchers say.
A map of stars in the outer region of the Milky Way as traced by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Streams of stars are seen throughout both the Northern (top) and Southern Galactic hemispheres, corresponding to small galaxies and star clusters which are in the process of being ingested by the Milky Way. The newest discovery is designated as the Triangulum Stream. Credits: yale.edu
Triangulum was found by searching a region recently surveyed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), an international collaboration that is mapping the sky through wide-field photometry.
Bonaca, Geha and co-author Nitya Kallivayalil, a Yale postdoctoral fellow, relied specifically on the survey’s Data Release 8, which included information about vast new areas of the southern galactic sky.
The study is available now on the arXiv preprint server.
A loud, unexplained noise set off dozens of calls to the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office Friday morning after residents reported hearing an explosion so loud it shook their homes. YNN’s Meg Rossman reveals the source behind that explosion and why there’s no mystery behind that mystery boom.
NIAGARA COUNTY, N.Y. — It was the mystery boom heard ’round the world – or at least Niagara County that caused the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office to field dozens of calls similar to this exchange from concerned residents:
Dispatch: “Niagara County 911 what’s your emergency?”Caller: “…I heard an explosion and my windows all shook.
Dispatch: “You don’t see any fire or anything?
Caller: “No. No, I don’t.”
No fire and no damage but after several reports just after midnight Friday, Niagara County Undersheriff Michael J. Filicetti said deputies went to investigate.”We actually had several units respond down to the, mostly it was the Newfane area, Town of Somerset, Barker area,” he explained. “They checked around and couldn’t find anything.”
But they were offered plenty of suggestions, everything ranging from a sonic boom to a meteor.
“As of early this morning, we still hadn’t figured out what caused it,” Filicetti said.
According to officials at Columbia University, it’s not out of the question for tremors like Friday’s to be caused by landslides, sonic booms or even a meteor. In this case, however, the source turned out to be a 2.5 magnitude earthquake centered in the Town of Barker.
Dispatch: “Niagara County 9-1-1 what’s the address of your emergency?
Caller: “It’s not actually an emergency. I heard that explosion…”
So how do you explain that mystery boom?”They likely experienced a jolt and that jolt would likely set one’s house in motion and I suspect that’s the noise they heard,” Andrew Whittaker explained.
Whittaker, a structural engineering professor from the University at Buffalo, said it’s a common occurrence with minor earthquakes so close to the surface. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the area sits on a fault line and experiences several very minor quakes every few years, though none of any apocalyptic proportions.
“We have no evidence whatsoever that a large magnitude event is around the corner,” Whittaker said.
The disease causes extensive internal hemorrhages, according to the DNR. White-tailed deer usually develop symptoms seven days after exposure. Between eight and 36 hours after the start of symptoms like rapid pulse and breathing, fever and weakness, the deer lie down and die.
EHD is spread by a gnat called the midge — a species that multiplied well in this summer’s drought. It has been know to exist in Michigan for years, but this year’s outbreak is the worst in history.
“It is way worse than any other outbreak. We have had a few that got over 1,000 or maybe over a thousand a few years back, but this is by far the worst we have seen it,” said DNR Wildlife Biologist John Niewoonder.
The DNR says that the number of deer dead of EHD is actually much higher than the 11,000 or so reported, but admits that there is no telling exactly how many deer have died.
The DNR had hoped that by October, the numbers would be on the decrease because a hard freeze should kill off the midges.
Hunters should still feel free to hunt, the DNR says, and the agency will not put any limitations on deer hunting this year. But after this season concludes, the DNR will consider numbers gathered from deer check stations as they decide how many permits to issue next year.
“Typically these re-evaluations don’t result in big changes because the population just doesn’t change that much from one year to the next. This year may be different because of the disease. Hunters may notice bigger changes for next year than they normally would,” said Niewoonder.
It is important to put the number of dead deer in perspective. While there are more than 11,000 deer dead from EHD, hunters harvested more than 440,000 last year and an average of more than 50,000 die every year in car crashes.
The DNR says it does not anticipate that Michigan’s deer herd is in danger.
Humans cannot contract EHD. It occasionally infects domesticated animals — usually hoof stock, the DNR says — but they rarely get sick.
A total of 3 chipmunks tested positive for the plague in the South Lake Tahoe area. California Department of Public Health tested 38 chipmunks and 3 squirrels for the plague during the this month’s surveillance effort, El Dorado County Department of Environmental Health spokesperson Karen Bender said. The department said the results of the tests are not surprising, but do warrant precaution. The plague is an infectious bacterial disease that is spread by wild rodents and their fleas. People can be infected by close contact with the rodents or their fleas. “Risk of transmission is significantly reduced during the winter months because rodents and their fleas are less active when the weather is cold,” Interim El Dorado County Health Officer, Dr. Robert Hartmann said. Cases of the plague are common in mountain and foothill areas of California, but cases in people are rare. The plague can be treated by antibiotics if detected early. Symptoms of the plague appear within two weeks of exposure and include fever, nausea, weakness and swollen lymph nodes.
Biohazard name:
Yersinia pestis (chipmunks)
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
MessageToEagle.com – ‘Briz-M’, a Russian rocket recently exploded into some 500 fragments. Most of the debris is now, floating in low Earth orbit.
The good news is that the ISS can avoid a possible collision.
The bad news is that this new space junk cloud has become a threat to future space missions.
The rocket was previously floating inert in space after it failed on a mission to deliver two satellites to its intended orbits in a botched August launch. The rocket engine stalled seven seconds after ignition, leaving some 10 to 15 tons of rocket fuel unused in its tanks. On October 16, Briz-M detonated and shattering into hundreds of fragments.
A proton-M rocket carrying Briz-M.
The debris from the explosion was first noticed by Australian astronomer Robert McNaught. Russia is carefully monitoring the fragments, but there is a risk the number may increase further as the space junk pieces collide with each other and break apart, an industry source told Interfax on Thursday.
The space junk poses no immediate danger, but could threaten future space missions. “We just expanded the list of potential threats with new entries,” the source explained.
The debris is spread across altitudes ranging from 250 to 5,000 kilometers.Both American and Russian space experts believe most of the scrap will continue to orbit the earth.
Air Force Lt. Col. Monica Matoush, a Pentagon spokesperson, said the U.S. military was tracking debris from the Breeze M breakup.
The Defense Department’s joint functional component command for space, known by the acronym JFCC-Space, monitors objects in orbit and issues collision alerts to U.S. government, international and commercial satellite owners.
“The resulting debris field and impact to space objects on orbit are being assessed at this time, however JFCC-Space is currently tracking over 500 pieces of debris,” Matoush said in an email Tuesday. “
We expect that number to fluctuate as work to characterize the debris field continues.”
The explosion of Briz-M has cteared a space debris cloud that can threaten future space missions. Image credit: ESA
“Although some of the pieces have begun to re-enter, most of the debris will remain in orbit for an extended period of time,” US State Department spokesperson Jamie Mannina said in a statement.
The International Space Station orbits Earth at an altitude of about 400 kilometers. The station is not currently on a collision course with any of the fragments, and can be repositioned in the future if any danger arises.
Experts are worried how the debris cloud will affect future space missions.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
Earthquakes can – of course – damage nuclear power plants. For example, even the operator of Fukushima and the Japanese government now admit that the nuclear cores might have started melting down before the tsuanmi ever hit. More here.
Indeed, American reactors may be even more vulnerable to earthquakes than Fukushima.
But American nuclear “regulators” have allowed numerous nuclear power plants to be built in earthquake zones (represented by black triangles in the following diagram):
Some plants are located in very high earthquake risk zones:
(Note: Ignore the long lines in the diagram … they represent the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, which present a huge danger of flooding nuclear reactors , but not an earthquake risk).
The NRC won’t even begin conducting its earthquake study for Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York until after relicensing is complete in 2013, because the NRC doesn’t consider a big earthquake “a serious risk”
Congressman Markey has said there is a cover up. Specifically, Markey alleges that the head of the NRC told everyone not to write down risks they find from an earthquake greater than 6.0 (the plant was only built to survive a 6.0 earthquake)
We have 4 reactors in California – 2 at San Onofre 2 at San Luis Obisbo – which are vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis
For example, Diablo Canyon is located on numerous earthquake faults, and a state legislator and seismic expert says it could turn into California’s Fukushima:
On July 26th 2011 the California Energy Commission held hearings concerning the state’s nuclear safety. During those hearings, the Chairman of the Commission asked governments experts whether or not they felt the facilities could withstand the maximum credible quake. The response was that they did not know.
Chesapeake Energy has a permit to frack just one mile from the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport. Whether that is cause for alarm, experts can’t say.
***
“Hydraulic fracturing near a nuclear plant is probably not a concern under normal circumstances,” [Richard Hammack, a scientist at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory] said. “If there is a pre-stress fault that you happen to lubricate there (with fracking solution), that is the only thing that might result in something that is (seismically) measurable.”
That’s not very reassuring, given that “lubrication” of faults is the main mechanism by which fracking causes earthquakes. (Indeed, the point is illustrated by the analogous fact that leading Japanese seismologists say that the Fukushima earthquake “lubricated” nearby faults, making a giant earthquake more likely than ever.)
And as Akron Beacon Journal notes, fracking is allowed with 500 feet of nuclear plants:
“We’re not aware of any potential impacts and don’t expect any,” said FirstEnergy spokeswoman Jennifer Young today. “We see no reason to be particularly concerned.”
***
[But] experts can’t say if the proposed well so close to two nuclear power plants is cause for concern.
***
DEP spokesperson John Poister told the Shale Reporter that there are no required setbacks specifically relating to a required distance between such shale wells and nuclear facilities, just a blanket regulation requiring a 500-foot setback from any building to a natural gas well.
REYKJAVIK (Reuters) – Icelandic authorities warned people in the north of the island on Thursday to prepare for a possible big earthquake after the biggest tremors in the area for 20 years.
The north Atlantic island, where almost 320,000 people live, is a hotspot of volcanic and seismic activity as it straddles a fault in the earth’s surface.
The Civil Protection Department said in a statement that recent small quakes in an area under the sea about 20 km (12 miles) off the north of Iceland had prompted it to issue a warning to local people.
It said such shocks, one of which was a magnitude 5.6, often led to stronger quakes. Warnings were issued when there were grounds to expect a natural or manmade event that could threaten health and human safety, it added.
“People are anxious because they don’t know what might happen,” said Amundi Gunnarsson, chief of the fire brigade in Fjallabyggd, one of the small towns in the area, and a member of the Civil Protection Department.
“At the same time, life goes on as usual. People are going to work and children are going to school, but everyone is on alert,” he told Reuters by telephone.
The coastal area in the north is home to several small towns and a population of several thousand people.
The biggest town in the north of Iceland, Akureyri, has a population of about 17,000 people, and lies roughly 100 km south of the seismic activity.
Geologist Benedikt Ofeigsson said houses in Iceland could typically withstand quakes of a magnitude about 7.
“Of course there could be some damage to in walls and concrete in such strong earthquakes, but what is important that houses have stood firm,” he told Reuters.
(Reporting by Robert Robertsson, writing by Patrick Lannin; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Keith Weir)
A magnitude 5 earthquake struck north of Cosenza in southern Italy early on Friday, and police said a hospital had been evacuated after cracks were found in its structure, but there were no reports of injuries. The quake hit at 1:05 a.m. (7.05 p.m. EDT on Thursday) about 6.3 km (3.9 miles) underground, north of Cosenza in the Pollino mountains area on the border of the southern regions of Calabria and Basilicata, according to data from the Italian Geophysics Institute (INGV). It said on its website that at least 14 other tremors followed the initial earthquake. An Italian police official told Reuters a hospital in the small town of Mormanno had been evacuated as a precautionary measure because some cracks were found in its structure. No injuries were reported, the official said. Italian news agencies reported scenes of panic in the hospital and said many inhabitants of Mormanno and surrounding towns had come out in the streets. Police and fire fighters are surveying the area for further damage, officials said.
Today
Earthquake
Iceland
North Atlantic Ocean, [North of the island (under the sea)]
Icelandic authorities warned people in the north of the island yesterday to prepare for a possible earthquake after the biggest tremors in the area for 20 years. The north Atlantic island, where almost 320,000 people live, is a hotspot of volcanic and seismic activity. The Civil Protection Department said in a statement that recent small quakes in an area under the sea about 20km off the north of Iceland had prompted it to issue a warning. It said such shocks, one of which was a magnitude 5.6, often led to stronger quakes
New model says they are connected underground and relieve pressure in each other
By Becky Oskin
OurAmazingPlanet
The past decade of eruptions of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano may have acted as a pressure-relief valve for neighboring Mauna Loa, according to a new model suggesting two of the planet’s biggest volcanoes connect deep underground.
Scientists know each of the two Hawaiian volcanoes has its own plumbing —separate, shallow magma chambers. Such chambers are the source of Kilauea’s rising lava lake, which is threatening to spill over. But 50 miles (80 kilometers) down, in a part of the Earth’s mantle layer called the asthenosphere, Mauna Loa and Kilauea are dynamically coupled, said Helge Gonnermann, a professor at Rice University in Houston, who is the lead author of a new study showing the link.
“It’s like groundwater in an aquifer or oil in an oil reservoir,” Gonnermann told OurAmazingPlanet. “We know that there is melt that extends beneath both volcanoes. Changes in pressure can be transmitted to both volcanoes.”
The Hawaiian Islands are hotspot volcanoes, formed as the Pacific plate moves over a plume of hot magma in the mantle. Pressure changes in the pooled magma in the mantle could rapidly affect both volcanoes, the model indicates.
The model helps explains some intriguing observations: When one volcano inflates, the other starts to bulge about six months later. At times, such as in 2005, both volcanoes inflate at the same, GPS data show
The study suggests that Mauna Loa’s and Kilauea’s opposing pattern — when one is active, the other is quiet — occurs because eruptions at one volcano release pressure in the other.
The model suggests Mauna Loa, which produced its most recent blast in 1984, had accumulated enough magma for another eruption, but its pressure was relieved by Kilauea’s heightened activity.
“The hypothesis coming out of this model is that if we hadn’t seen this increased activity at Kilauea, then we would not have seen this pressure relief,” Gonnermann said.
The summit of Kilauea has recently started inflating, giving the researchers a real-world test. “If Kilauea continues to inflate like it is right now, and if our model holds water, we should also see another period of inflation at Mauna Loa in about half a year,” Gonnermann said.
The scientists also hope to test the model in other hotspot volcanoes, such as those of the Galapagos.
The findings are detailed in the November issue of the journal Nature Geosciences.
The Kuril Island volcano named Alaid, in Russia’s Far East has begun spewing ash with the giant ash cloud rising to an altitude of up to 700 meters.
The Alaid Volcano is the tallest and northernmost volcano in the islands, with a crater which is approximately 1.5-km-wide.
The first signs of activity were recorded on October 7th when thermal anomalies were observed a cloud of steam appeared.
Volcanologists are issuing warnings regarding the likelihood of an eruption of ash emissions which may reach a height of 10-15 kilometers above sea level.
Voice of Russia, Russia 24
25.10.2012 03:12 AM
Australian Antarctic Territory in the Southern Ocean, Heard Island and McDonald Islands
One of Australia’s two active volcanoes seems to be erupting. We say seems because the volcano in question, on Heard Island, is located in the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean, 2000km north of Antarctica and closer to Africa than to Australia. That’s about as close to the middle of nowhere as it is possible to be. Heard Island and its neighbour MacDonald Island are Australian territories and are uninhabited, but each possesses an active volcano. Scientific expeditions venture there infrequently, due to conservation issues and the fact the islands have a wretched climate, are thousands of miles from anywhere nice and can only be accessed or supplied by ship. That means little attention is paid to the islands, with the satellite images such as the one below seldom acquired. But NASA’s Earth Observatory says the image and other analysis detected heat signatures on Heard Island’s 2475m Mawson Peak that suggest recent volcanic activity. “Although not definitive, this natural-color satellite image also suggests an ongoing eruption,” NASA writes. “The dark summit crater (much darker than Mawson’s shaded southwestern face) is at least partially snow-free, and there’s a faint hint of an even darker area—perhaps a lava flow—within. Shortwave infrared data (collected along with the visible imagery) shows hot surfaces within the crater, indicating the presence of lava in, or just beneath, the crater.” The Australian Government’s official Heard and McDonald Island website, which has a nifty .aq domain, reports eruptions on McDonald Island. In 1992. Heard Island’s remote location means any eruptions are unlikely to bother anyone, as the region has no history of colossal, world-shaking, events. Penguins and expeditions that plan to visit the islands are, however, in jeopardy. Two of the latter are scheduled for the near future. In 2013 a solo adventurer plans to sail to the islands and then kayak ashore.
A sudden, unexpected burst of high winds caused a controlled burn in the Croatan National Forest to get out of control and burn 21,000 acres this summer, according to a report on the fire. The U.S. Forest Service released its “Learning Analysis” of the fire that prompted road closures in the forest and affected the region for weeks with heavy smoke. The report shows that the controlled burn that began on June 14 to remove undergrowth and improve habitat for the red cockaded woodpecker in 1,567 acres went well at first. Subsequent burns on June 15 and June 16 also had no issues. However, the report cites a sudden burst of high winds during a 20- to 30-minute window around 2:30 p.m. on June 16 that sent embers across South Little Road outside of the controlled burn area as the reason behind the wildfire. The report shows that maximum winds had been up to only 15 mph, but that the wind suddenly picked up to 23 mph. “The winds that kicked up for that half an hour were what we suspect as contributing to us having a spot fire,” Barry Garten, acting district ranger for the Croatan National Forest, said on Thursday. “We did everything that we possibly could to make sure that everything was in good shape but when the wind comes up like that, a kind of anomaly of a wind that no one saw, it makes it difficult to keep everything in check.”
According to the report, a forest service helicopter spotted the new fire at about 3 p.m. June 16 and estimated its size at 50 to 75 acres. By 6 p.m., it had grown to 235 acres. Forestry officials opted not to fight the fire through the night of June 16, citing safety concerns, according to the report. By the morning of June 17, the fire had spread to 2,800 acres. The report lists that the controlled burn created a “smoke screen” that made detecting the wildfire difficult. The report also mentioned the importance of maintaining communication with the National Weather Service about weather conditions during controlled burns. The report, put together by eight forestry officials that were not directly connected to the fire, mentioned that the preparation, plan and practices established for controlled burns were followed and that officials took appropriate action once the wildfire started.
Colorado authorities said they were hoping to determine Wednesday how many buildings had been burned by a fast-moving wildfire that sprang up Tuesday afternoon. The blaze in south-central Custer County was quickly spread by 50 mph winds. The high winds prevented crews from fighting the fire from the air. Officials said the wildfire was ignited by a house fire in a subdivision south of Wetmore and that it had burned into “broken terrain” of relatively uninhabited areas of Custer and Pueblo counties. More than 300 homes have been evacuated, said Steve Segin of the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center. A separate wildfire in Estes Park has consumed 979 acres and was only partially contained, the National Park Service reported.
Sandy is expected to bring high winds, heavy rain and extreme tides to the eastern US seaboard
Hurricane Sandy has swept north over the Bahamas towards the US, having reportedly killed some 20 people as it tore through Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica.
Schools, offices, airports and bridges had closed across the Bahamas as residents stocked up on supplies.
Forecasters warn the storm could pose a major threat to the US East Coast.
Early on Friday, Sandy had dropped to a category one hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph (150 kph), said the US National Hurricane Center.
It was moving north at about 13 mph centred between Cat Island and Eleuthera in the central Bahamas about 185 miles south-east of Freeport on Grand Bahama Island.
Florida was already being lashed by heavy rain and high winds, with the coastal state being put under a tropical storm warning.
“We’re looking for tropical-storm force winds along the coast and then some very dangerous surf conditions over the next couple of days,” said James Franklin, the NHC’s chief hurricane forecaster.
“So we can’t really emphasise enough to keep people out of the water, the winds are going to be very strong.”
Some US broadcasters were already referring to Sandy as The Halloween Hurricane – or even Frankenstorm, due to the possibility of it blending with a winter storm over the United States – as it was expected to bring coastal flooding and power outages around All Hallow’s Eve – on 31 October.
The storm was expected to head north-west at a slower pace on Friday, getting gradually larger all the while.
Although it is forecast to weaken, the NHC said it would likely remain a hurricane during the next 48 hours.
Guantanamo battered
Earlier on Thursday Sandy had caused a storm surge leading to severe flooding along Cuba’s south-eastern coastline.
Civil emergency authorities revealed 11 people died as the storm lashed the communist island – nine of those in Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second-largest city.
TV footage of the popular tourist destination showed fallen trees, toppled houses and debris-choked streets.
More than 50,000 people had been moved from their homes in the city as a precaution.
Strong winds and rain also battered the US naval base and detention facility at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, confining some workers to their quarters, delaying a hearing and prompting a number of prisoners to be moved to safer accommodation.
Elsewhere, nine deaths were reported in Haiti – where much of the infrastructure remains in a very poor condition following a massive earthquake in 2010.
In Jamaica earlier, more than 1,000 people sought refuge in shelters as Sandy caused widespread power outages, flooded streets and damaged buildings.
One elderly Jamaican was killed when a boulder fell on his house.
A 48-hour curfew was imposed in the island’s major towns to deter the looting that had accompanied previous storms.
Forecasters warned the category one hurricane would grow in size
A man has been crushed to death by boulders as Hurricane Sandy sweeps across Jamaica, moving north to Cuba.
The category one hurricane struck the island on Wednesday, unleashing heavy rains and winds of 125km/h (80mph).
Schools and airports are closed, and a curfew has been imposed in major towns. A police officer was shot and injured by looters in the capital, Kingston.
A hurricane warning has also been issued in Cuba, where Sandy is expected to make its next landfall.
Moving at 22km/h, the hurricane struck Kingston on Wednesday evening and headed north, emerging off the island’s northern coast near the town of Port Antonio.
Sandy has prompted a hurricane watch in the Bahamas, while Florida has been placed on tropical storm watch.
“It’s a big storm and it’s going to grow in size after it leaves Cuba,” said forecaster Michael Brennan from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami.
Officer shot
The NHC predicts that Sandy could dump up to 50cm (inches) of rain across parts of Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and eastern Cuba.
“These rains may produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides, especially in areas of mountainous terrain,” the centre warned in a statement.
More than 1,000 Jamaicans have sought refuge in shelters, with residents reporting widespread power outages, flooded streets and damages to buildings.
An elderly man was crushed to death by stones that fell from a hillside as he tried to get into his house in a rural village, authorities said.
Much of the island’s infrastructure is in a poor state of repair, and a lack of effective planning regulation has resulted in homes being built close to embankments and gullies.
“A part of the roof of my veranda just went like that [and] at least five of my neighbours have lost their entire roofs,” a resident of the coastal city of Iter Boreale told Reuters news agency.
Kingston prepares for the arrival of the hurricane
The country’s sole energy provider, the Jamaica Public Service Company, said 70% of its customers were without electricity.
Authorities have imposed a 48-hour curfew in all major towns. But looters in Kingston ignored the order and wounded a senior officer in a shooting, police said.
In some southern Jamaican towns, crocodiles were caught in rushing floodwaters, which carried them out of mangrove thickets, the Associated Press reports.
One big croc was washed into a family’s front yard in the city of Portmore, according to the news agency.
While Jamaica was ravaged by winds from Hurricane Ivan in 2004, the eye of a hurricane hasn’t crossed the island since Hurricane Gilbert in 1988.
Almost 50 people were killed by that storm, and the then Prime Minister, Edward Seaga, described the hardest hit areas near where Gilbert made landfall as looking “like Hiroshima after the atom bomb”.
Hurricane Sandy, which closed businesses and airports on Jamaica as it moved north in the Caribbean, may strike the U.S. East Coast next week with the potential to cause millions of dollars in damage.
Sandy’s top winds reached 85 miles (137 kilometers) an hour as it moved off the north coast of Jamaica and headed toward Cuba, according to a U.S. National Hurricane Center advisory at 8 p.m. New York time.
“The table is set for some pretty major weather,” said Henry Margusity, an expert senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania. “Is it going to be an epic storm or is going to be just your typical nor’easter? We will have the answers next week.”
Sandy is expected to cross Cuba overnight and the Bahamas tomorrow, according to the hurricane center. The storm may then move parallel to the U.S. East Coast and either be pushed into the Atlantic Ocean or pulled into the coastline.
A computer model based in Europe took the storm up Delaware Bay, while another by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had Sandy curve into Portland, Maine, Margusity said. Both events would take place early next week.
The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency said residents should monitor the storm’s progress.
Weather Patterns
One of the major weather patterns determining where Sandy will end up is the North Atlantic Oscillation, which is currently blocking weather systems moving off the U.S. The system may turn Sandy into the U.S. coast, Margusity said.
A storm on that potential track may do millions in damage from downed trees, power outages and flooding, he said.
Before then, Sandy is forecast to cross eastern Cuba and the Bahamas, where hurricane warnings have been issued, according to the hurricane center.
As much as 20 inches (51 centimeters) of rain may fall on parts of Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, the center said. Three inches are possible in Florida.
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net
ORLANDO BARRIA / EPAA boy plays next to firefighters in a flooded street amidst garbage that was dragged by the heavy rains in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic after Hurricane Sandy hit the country on Oct. 25, 2012. About 8,755 people have been forced to leave their homes due to heavy rains caused by Hurricane Sandy.
(WASHINGTON) — Much of the U.S. East Coast has a good chance of getting blasted by gale-force winds, flooding, heavy rain and maybe even snow early next week by an unusual hybrid of hurricane and winter storm, federal and private forecasters say.
Though still projecting several days ahead of Halloween week, the computer models are spooking meteorologists. Government scientists said Wednesday the storm has a 70 percent chance of smacking the Northeast and mid-Atlantic.
Hurricane Sandy in the Caribbean, an early winter storm in the West, and a blast of arctic air from the North are predicted to collide, sloshing and parking over the country’s most populous coastal corridor starting Sunday. The worst of it should peak early Tuesday, but it will stretch into midweek, forecasters say.
“It’ll be a rough couple days from Hatteras up to Cape Cod,” said forecaster Jim Cisco of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration prediction center in College Park, Md. “We don’t have many modern precedents for what the models are suggesting.”
It is likely to hit during a full moon when tides are near their highest, increasing coastal flooding potential, NOAA forecasts warn. And with some trees still leafy and the potential for snow, power outages could last to Election Day, some meteorologists fear. They say it has all the earmarks of a billion-dollar storm.
Some have compared it to the so-called Perfect Storm that struck off the coast of New England in 1991, but Cisco said that one didn’t hit as populated an area and is not comparable to what the East Coast may be facing. Nor is it like last year’s Halloween storm, which was merely an early snowstorm in the Northeast.
At least 1,250 families evacuated to safer ground as flash flood, triggered by incessant rains, hit the town of Buug, Zamboanga Sibugay, a military officer said here. Two families were also forced to flee their homes due to landslides near the mining village of Lamare, Bayog town in the adjacent province of Zamboanga del Sur Thursday. No one was hurt or injured during the incident as the two families managed to flee before huge chunks of crumbling earth destroyed their houses made of light materials. Capt. Alberto Caber, Spokesman of the Army’s 1st Division, said ground troops and civilian disaster response teams reported that the flood water swelled in the Barangay Poblacion – the town center of Buug and in the nearby village of Bula-an, prompting residents residents to flee to higher ground. “The flood water reached as [high] as five feet, prompting the rescue and evacuation Thursday of the affected residents in the area,” Caber said. He said local disaster officials on the ground reported that the flood was triggered by continuous rains since Wednesday night.
Local weather bureau of Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) said the incessant rain was triggered by the monsoon and enhanced by the tail ends of tropical storm Ofel. Close to 6,250 persons were evacuated by the rescuing police and military troops to the nearby Villa Castor Elementary School. Caber said no casualty was reported while local authorities have yet to assess the damage brought by the flood. Maj. Gen. Ricardo Rainier Cruz III, 1st Army Division chief, directed the military units located in the coastal areas to closely monitor the water level. “As the need arises, [we will] undertake rescue and retrieval operations jointly with the PNP, local officials and civilian volunteers,” Cruz said.
Today
Flash Flood
Turkey
Province of Gaziantep, [Gaziantep-Sanl urfa Highway]
Three people were killed early on Thursday in the province of Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey when a passenger bus was drifted in flood. The passenger bus was among several vehicles which were drifted by flood along the Gaziantep-Sanl urfa Highway after flash floods hit the city, said the report, adding that several people were also missing. Search and rescue teams were dispatched for searching for the missing people since the early hours of the day, said the report. The floods came during the holidays of Eid al-Adha (Feast of Sacrifice), a four-day Islamic holiday. Thousands of people were jamming the roads during the Eid to visit relatives, with authorities calling on drivers to be careful while driving.
Petty traders preparing for Hari Raya Haji shoppers had their business interrupted by flash floods. Lemang stall operators along Jalan Damansara had to wait for the floods to subside after heavy rain at 5pm yesterday before reopening for business. The flash floods also caused a 3km-long jam on the Sprint Highway from Section 16. Muslims are celebrating Hari Raya Haji today amid a forecast of heavy rain by the Meteorology Department.
As such, it is disturbing news that the ground beneath unit 4 is sinking.
Specifically, Unit 4 sunk 36 inches right after the earthquake, and has sunk another 30 inchessince then.
Moreover, Unit 4 is sinking unevenly, and the building may begin tilting.
An international coalition of nuclear scientists and non-profit groups are calling on the U.N. to coordinate a multi-national effort to stabilize the fuel pools. And see this.
Given the precarious situation at Unit 4, it is urgent that the world community pool its scientific resources to come up with a fix.
LOS ANGELES—The operators of the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant say a hydrogen leak is the latest problem to plague the troubled plant, but it was small and presented no risk to workers or the public.Plant operator Southern California Edison said in a statement Monday that the leak was discovered in a non-nuclear part of the facility Sunday and has been reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Orange County Register (
http://bit.ly/RSeFa9 ) reports that hydrogen is used to cool electrical generators at the plant, and a pipe fitting will be replaced because of the leak.
The plant located between Los Angeles and San Diego hasn’t produced power since Jan. 31 because of excessive wear in its reactors, and it’s not clear when, or if, it will return to service.
A contained radioactive water leak detected at EDF’s Flamanville nuclear plant did not cause any damage to the environment or harm any employees, France’s nuclear safety watchdog ASN and EDF said on Thursday. The nuclear safety agency said on its website EDF had detected a leak in a water pipe that feeds the plant’s reactor 1 primary circuit late on Wednesday. It was stopped and did not cause any radioactive contamination. The incident was defined as a grade 1 incident on the international nuclear event scale (INES), where the maximum 7 is the most severe. There were 66 Level 1 incidents in 2011 in France according to the ASN.
Health experts have confirmed an outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus in the western district of Kabale after samples from two relatives taken to the Uganda Virus Institute tested positive. Police Thursday stopped the burial of Boaz Turyahikayo a lecturer at Uganda Christian University and his sister Mildrid Asasira after it emerged that their family had lost four people from a mysterious disease in just a month. The other two are Lillian Banegura their mother and an elder brother Bernard Rutaro who passed away early this month. Dr. Patrick Tusiime the Kabale district health officer said a team from the Ministry of Health and World Health Organization is on its way to oversee the burial of the two victims. The Marburg virus was last reported in Uganda in 2008. It carries symptoms similar to those of Ebola that include fever, vomiting and internal bleeding.
Biohazard name:
Marburg virus disease (MVD)
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
Measles hasn’t been seen in the Saskatoon Health Region in the past 15 years, but Thursday the region is reporting a case of the disease. Parents of infants should to check their children’s vaccination records, said Julie Kryzanowski, the region’s medical health officer. About one in four children younger than two are not properly covered by the vaccine because their immunizations are not up to date, she said. “We’re at about 76 per cent coverage rate for children under two years with two doses, so public health will be calling parents of children who are behind with their measles vaccine,” Kryzanowski said. “We’ve set up extra drop in clinics in Saskatoon and some of the surrounding communities of our health region starting Saturday and running through next week.” Measles can be quite serious. “If somebody isn’t protected by immunization and they are exposed to a case of measles, over 90 per cent will be infected,” Kryzanowski said. “Whenever we see a single case of measles we are concerned about the risk of an outbreak because measles is so contagious.” While rare, there are cases seen across the country. “Most of the cases of measles that we do see in Canada are sporadic cases and usually attributed to travel internationally or people coming from overseas to Canada and bringing the measles virus with them.” The case here has been linked to a case in Prince Albert reported last month.
Biohazard name:
Measles
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
In this visualization, the Gulf Stream is seen as the dark red current coming into the Atlantic from the Gulf of Mexico.
By Miguel Llanos, NBC News
A changing Gulf Stream off the East Coast has destabilized frozen methane deposits trapped under nearly 4,000 square miles of seafloor, scientists reported Wednesday. And since methane is even more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas, the researchers said, any large-scale release could have significant climate impacts.
Using seismic records and ocean models, the team estimated that 2.5 gigatonnes of frozen methane hydrate are being destabilized and could separate into methane gas and water.
It is not clear if that is happening yet, but that methane gas would have the potential to rise up through the ocean and into the atmosphere, where it would add to the greenhouse gases warming Earth.
The 2.5 gigatonnes isn’t enough to trigger a sudden climate shift, but the team worries that other areas around the globe might be seeing a similar destabilization.
USGS
Methane hydrate samples
“It is unlikely that the western North Atlantic margin is the only area experiencing changing ocean currents,” they noted. “Our estimate … may therefore represent only a fraction of the methane hydrate currently destabilizing globally.”
The wider destabilization evidence, co-author Ben Phrampus told NBC News, includes data from the Arctic and Alaska’s northern slope in the Beaufort Sea.
And it’s not just under the seafloor that methane has been locked up. Some Arctic land area are seeing permafrost thaw, which could release methane stored there as well.
An expert who was not part of the study said it suggests that methane could become a bigger climate factor than carbon dioxide.
“We may approach a turning point” from a warming driven by man-made carbon dioxide to a warming driven by methane, Jurgen Mienert, the geology department chair at Norway’s University of Tromso, told NBC News.
“The interactions between the warming Arctic Ocean and the potentially huge methane-ice reservoirs beneath the Arctic Ocean floor point towards increasing instability,” he added.
For thousands of years, permafrost has trapped Siberia’s carbon-rich soil, a compost of Ice Age plant and animal remains. But global warming is melting the permafrost and exposing the soil, causing highly flammable methane to seep out. NBC’s Jim Maceda reports.
He also noted, however, that “one of the big unknowns is the magnitude of rapid methane escape from the ocean floor, and how natural filter systems react and affect the future ocean, its environment and the climate.”
Another unknown is what caused the Gulf Stream changes, said Phrampus, an earth sciences PhD candidate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
“Multiple events can play a factor, such as changing sea level or an addition of cold/fresh water from the north,” Phrampus said, adding he was hopeful that the changes might be “reversible under their own influence.”
But, he added, “we need more data to resolve this, and we are currently investigating this process.”
(Source: Assumption Office of Emergency Preparedness)
BAYOU CORNE, LA (WAFB) -
A sharp tremor was recorded by USGS monitors just after 9 p.m. Wednesday at the site of the giant Louisiana sinkhole in Assumption Parish.
The giant sinkhole appeared in August near the Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou areas.
The Assumption Parish Police Jury says the tremor was large enough that the body wave phases could easily be identified. A body wave travels through the interior of the earth.
The preliminary location of the tremor was just SE of Oxy #3 cavern at a depth of 500m. There is no additional information specific to this seismic activity at this time.
The sinkhole is now about four acres in size.
Residents were forced from their homes on August third, two months after the bayous started bubbling. They are still evacuated from their homes.
The Assumption Parish, LA sinkhole continues to grow. The ground opened up on August 3, 2012 and residents were evacuated from their homes. The sinkhole, or slurry, is consuming land and trees.
Today
Unusual geological event
USA
State of Louisiana, [Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou areas, Assumption Parish]
A sharp tremor was recorded by USGS monitors just after 9 p.m. Wednesday at the site of the giant Louisiana sinkhole in Assumption Parish. The giant sinkhole appeared in August near the Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou areas. The Assumption Parish Police Jury says the tremor was large enough that the body wave phases could easily be identified. A body wave travels through the interior of the earth. The preliminary location of the tremor was just SE of Oxy #3 cavern at a depth of 500m. There is no additional information specific to this seismic activity at this time. The sinkhole is now about four acres in size. Residents were forced from their homes on August third, two months after the bayous started bubbling. They are still evacuated from their homes.
Officials say nine people have been slightly hurt in a chemical tank leak that restricted outdoor activities in a Southeast Texas city. Emergency authorities in Texas City lifted the shelter-in-place order shortly after 5 a.m. Thursday in a storage tank spill involving hydrochloric acid. Diane Tracy with New Jersey-based Dallas Group of America Inc. says company officials are investigating Wednesday night’s accident. Tracy says one Dallas Group employee, four workers with a neighboring transportation company and four firefighters were injured. Tracy says all nine victims were treated and released from a hospital. Homeland Security coordinator Bruce Clawson says the victims suffered acid exposure in the leak around 11 p.m. Wednesday. A shelter-in-place order was issued just before midnight Wednesday.
25.10.2012
HAZMAT
USA
State of California, Santa Monica [Lincoln and Ocean Park boulevards]
Fire crews have blocked off the parking lot outside Albertson’s grocery store in Santa Monica while a hazardous materials team investigates a low-level radioactive substance which was found inside a trash bin close by. The material was discovered Wednesday morning near the store on Lincoln and Ocean Park boulevards, according to reports. The store has not been evacuated but the parking lot has been blocked off. “We do have firefighters inside the Albertson’s doing radiation monitoring,” Santa Monica Fire Department Chief Mark Bridges told KNX Newsradio. “They are not getting any radiation readings inside the store, but outside we’re getting above-normal readings.” Bridges also confirmed that “low-level radioactive material”, thought to be medical waste, was found in a trash bin.
Earthquake swarms and a region-wide rotten egg smell recently reminded Southern California residents they live next to an active volcano field, tiny though it may be. At the time, scientists said the phenomena did not reflect changes in the magma chamber below the Salton Sea. But now, researchers may need to revise estimates of the potential hazard posed by the Salton Buttes – five volcanoes at the lake’s southern tip. The buttes last erupted between 940 and 0 B.C., not 30,000 years ago, as previously thought, a new study detailed online Oct. 15 in the journal Geology reports. The new age – which makes these some of California’s youngest volcanoes – pushes the volcanic quintuplets into active status. The California Volcano Observatory, launched in February by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), already lists the area as a high threat for future blasts. “The USGS is starting to monitor all potentially active volcanoes in California, which includes the Salton Buttes,” said study author Axel Schmitt, a geochronologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “With our results, I think this will further enhance the need to look into the system,” Schmitt told OurAmazingPlanet. Schmitt and his colleagues dated zircon crystals in the hardened lava of the buttes with a relatively new technique, a “helium clock” that starts ticking once the minerals begin cooling at the surface.
The National Science Foundation’s EarthScope project funds an extensive seismic imaging project in the Salton Sea that may soon reveal more information about what’s happening deep underground. “We’ll be looking with great interest to see what we can tell from the Salton Seismic Imaging Project,” said Joann Stock, a Caltech professor and an expert on the region’s volcanic hazards who was not involved in the new study. “I think (Schmitt’s study) is a great contribution,” she said. “It’s an area where we should be concerned. We know that there’s a lot of hot stuff down there,” she told OurAmazingPlanet. In August, an earthquake swarm shook the nearby town of Brawley. The USGS attributed the temblors to faults in the Brawley Seismic Zone. In September, a sulfurous stench emanated from the Salton Sea and wafted across the Inland Empire. The odor was tentatively linked to a fish die-off, but could also have been caused by volcanic gases, Stock said.
[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.]
A 5.3 magnitude earthquake hit Alexandria early on Friday morning.
Hatem Oada, head of the National Institute for Astronomical and Geophysical Research, said in a statement to the state-run MENA news agency that regional seismic networks indicate the tremor hit at 5:35 am, Cairo time. No damages or injuries have been reported.
The epicenter of the quake was in the Mediterranean Sea, north of the Delta. This region is not typically seismically active, Oada said.
SYDNEY, Oct 21, 2012 (AFP) – - A strong 6.2-magnitude earthquake rattled the South Pacific island of Vanuatu Sunday, seismologists said, but there were no immediate reports of damage and no tsunami warning was issued.
The quake struck at 10:00 am (2300 GMT Saturday) 500 kilometres (310 miles) northwest of the capital Port Vila at a depth of 35 kilometres, the United States Geological Survey said.
The USGS had earlier put the magnitude at 6.6.
Vanuatu lies on the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire”, a zone of frequent seismic activity caused by friction between shifting tectonic plates.
It has been rocked by several large quakes in recent years, averaging about three magnitude 7.0 or above incidents every year without any major damage.
Biggest earthquakes during the last 48 hours
Size Time Quality Location
5.2 21 Oct 01:25:15 Checked 19.3 km NNE of Siglufjörður
4.9 20 Oct 22:53:46 38.3 116.8 km NE of Kolbeinsey
4.8 21 Oct 00:10:20 Checked 20.4 km NNE of Siglufjörður
4.4 21 Oct 01:03:42 90.0 20.1 km NNE of Siglufjörður
4.3 21 Oct 02:20:01 90.0 27.5 km NNE of Siglufjörður
4.1 21 Oct 00:10:21 90.0 16.6 km NE of Siglufjörður
A verdict in the trial of seven top Italian scientists for manslaughter for underestimating the risks of an earthquake which killed 309 people in L’Aquila, central Italy, in 2009, is expected on Monday.
“The verdict is expected on October 22,” said Enzo Musco, a lawyer for Professor Gian Michele Calvi who is one of the defendants.
The prosecutor’s office has asked for sentences of four years in prison for each of the seven who were all members of the Major Risks Committee.
The committee met in the central Italian city on March 31, 2009 — six days before the powerful earthquake devastated the region — after a series of small tremors in the preceding weeks had sown panic among local inhabitants.
Prosecutor Fabio Picuti said the experts had provided “an incomplete, inept, unsuitable and criminally mistaken” analysis after that meeting, which reassured locals and prevented them from preparing for the quake.
The experts had said after their meeting that they could not predict an earthquake but urged local authorities to ensure safety rules were respected.
The seven include Enzo Boschi, who at the time was the head of Italy’s National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology.
The La Repubblica daily on Friday also reported on a separate case against an engineer who lost his daughter in the earthquake but was put on trial for failing to respect anti-quake regulations in one of his constructions.
Diego De Angelis, 67, was convicted on Thursday and sentenced to three years in prison.
Mount Merapi erupting in 2010. (JG Photo/Boy T Harjanto).
Solo, Central Java. A lava dome that formed on top of Mount Merapi following its 2010 eruption has collapsed, prompting volcanology officials to issue a warning on Friday of a possible deadly cold lava stream on the mountain slope.
Tri Mujianto, from the Merapi mountain observatory in Jrakah, in the Selo subdistrict of Boyolali, said the lava dome had disappeared but he could not say precisely when.
“The dome is now no longer there but we were not able to monitor when it collapsed. Some [of the material] may have fallen inside [the crater] while some may have flowed into the channel of Apu River,” he said.
They have not been able to determine the cause of the collapse, as there has been no rain in the crater area for days. They also haven’t been able to estimate the volume of cold lava in the collapsed dome.
Tri said the alert status for Merapi remained at the normal level but warned that should rains fall over the crater, cold lava stream may flow down through natural river channels. A cold lava stream is congealed lava and other volcanic mud and debris flushed down the slopes of a volcano by heavy rains.
“Entering the rainy season, the frequency of cold lava stream is rising. We have checked the conditions at the craters several times and it appears to still be very much unstable. People on the slopes of Merapi, especially those living on the banks of rivers originating from the peak, should remain alert,” he said.
Meanwhile, Subandriyo, the head of the Volcanology office in Yogyakarta, said that parts of the lava dome facing Boyolali district had collapsed, and ventured that it was due to its fragile condition.
“The collapse was not directly recorded because there were so many small deflagrations. On the scale, they did not even reach one kilometer down the slope,” Subandriyo said.
He warned that rains with intensity of more than 20 millimeters and lasting more than two hours were enough to trigger flash floods of cold lava down the mountain’s slope.
Contact Information:
U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
Office of Communications and Publishing
12201 Sunrise Valley Dr, MS 119
Reston, VA 20192
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Experts in volcano hazards and public safety have started a conversation about volcanoes in the southwestern United States, and how best to prepare for future activity. Prior to this meeting, emergency response planning for volcanic unrest in the region had received little attention by federal or state agencies.Though volcanic eruptions are comparatively rare in the American Southwest, the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah host geologically-recent volcanic eruption deposits and are vulnerable to future volcanic activity. Compared with other parts of the western U.S., comparatively little research has been focused on this area, and eruption probabilities are poorly understood.“A volcanic eruption in the American southwest is an example of a low-probability, but high-impact event for which we should be prepared to respond,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “No one wants to be exchanging business cards during an emergency, and thus a small investment in advance planning could pay off in personal relationships and coordination between scientists and first responders.””The goal of the conference is to increase awareness of volcanism and vulnerabilities in the American Southwest, and to begin coordination among volcano scientists, land managers, and emergency responders regarding future volcanic activity,” said Dr. Jacob Lowenstern, one of the organizers of the conference, and the U.S. Geological Survey Scientist-In-Charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. “This is the first time these federal, state, and local agencies have met to discuss their roles, responsibilities, and resources, should an eruption occur.”The “Volcanism in the American Southwest” conference on Oct. 18-19 in Flagstaff, Ariz. was organized by the USGS, Northern Arizona University, University at Buffalo, and New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, the meeting included interdisciplinary talks, posters, and panel discussions, providing an opportunity for volcanologists, land managers, and emergency responders to meet, converse, and begin to plan protocols for any future volcanic activity.
More information about the meeting, including presentation abstracts, is online.
Indonesia issued today an official alert at the straight of Sunda for the increasing activity of Mt. Anak Krakatoa. Dense clouds surrounding the mountain blind it from human eyes while fishers and tourists must remain at a distance of two kilometres, said Andi Suardi, head of the watch deport in Hargopancuran. Just 30 days earlier, Anak Krakatoa spewed lava and other material 2,000 meters high above the peak; there have been since hundreds of quakes in the area and black clouds continue to veil the mouth of the mountain. Situated between Sumatra and Java Islands, Anak Krakatoa emerged from sea late in the 1930s and from 1950, growing an average of five meters per year. Science has confirmed another five active volcanos and the authorities have activated the alert in their vicinity, and Indonesia has more than 400 volcanos and some 130 remain active.
A huge wave dragged a Polish woman to her death as she walked on a Spanish beach with a friend on Friday in a storm that also left a young French man missing.
As the powerful storm smashed into northeastern Catalonia, a big wave snatched away the 37-year-old Polish woman in the holiday resort of Lloret del Mar in the early hours, emergency services officials said.
“She was walking along the beach with a friend when she was surprised by a wave that dragged her in,” said a police spokesman.
Her corpse was found five nautical miles down the coast near Blanes later in the morning, officials said, and she was identified by her clothes and jewellery.
The French man, described only as a young person, disappeared after going fishing in a rocky area of the coast of Roses, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) further north.
Only his fishing rod was recovered.
Emergency services were alerted by the French man’s friend after he went fishing in a rocky area known as Carretera de Canyelles and failed to return, an emergency services spokesman said.
“This morning we found his fishing rod in a rocky area and began a search of the land and sea with helicopters and specialized vehicles,” he said.
Catalonia’s emergency services declared a state of alert on Friday because of forecasts for the weekend of heavy rain, rough seas with waves higher than 2.5 metres (eight feet) and strong winds.
The authorities warned people to avoid breakwaters, coastal paths and beaches affected by the waves.
Storms also beat down on the neighbouring northern Spanish region of Aragon, causing floods in the province of Zaragoza.
Spain has been punished by extreme weather in the past year.
After the driest winter in 70 years, forest fires scorched more than 184,000 hectares (454,000 acres) of land in the first nine months of 2012, the largest amount in a decade, according to government figures.
While the roads remained clear of any snow, ewes and lambs picked their way through the icy crust
By Hamish Clark
It’s been a bitterly cold end to Labour Weekend, with bad weather sweeping across the South Island.
Snow fell in Canterbury from Lake Tekapo up to Methven, while over on the West Coast, a tornado flattened an old theatre in the northern township of Hector.
The storm arrived at the break of dawn and blanketed the countryside. Temperatures dived in the wintry blast to near freezing – a turnaround on yesterday’s 20degC highs.
Five-to-10cm of snow covered the Canterbury Foothills, falling as far south as Twizel and Tekapo, cutting short holiday-makers’ long weekend away.
One by one, caravans, campervans and boats joined the queue home, although one classic bike was left on the side of the road.
“We have just come back from Twizel on the old motorbike and been in the snow,” says motorcyclist Grant Jones. “I have just blown a head casket on her, so she is on the trailer now until home.”
While the roads remained clear of any snow, ewes and lambs picked their way through the icy crust.
“[We have] few lambing ewes and a few sorry looking lambs,” says farming student Hamish Forrester.
Over on the West Coast, there was not much left of an old Hector theatre and dancehall north of Westport – a tornado flattened it in the middle of the night.
But if Tourism New Zealand ever wanted the perfect promo, this was it – visitors say they loved seeing the snow in Tekapo.
Brett Dutschke, Monday October 22, 2012 – 17:09 EDT Much of central Australia is baking in heat not experienced at this time of year in decades.
Temperatures have been reaching the high thirties each day for about a week, the longest it has been this hot at this time of year in more than 20 years.
Today is Yulara’s eighth day of reaching 35 degrees or more. In more than 20 years of record there hasn’t been a longer run of such heat at this time of year.
Alice Springs has reached at least 38 degrees in each of the past six days, beating the previous September/October record of four days, most recently set in 2008.
Across the border in far southwest Queensland, Birdsville has almost equalled its longest run of 40-degree days for this time of year. Sunday was the fourth day of 40 or more. This is only one day short of the October record of five days, set in 1988. Monday had only reached 39.4 degrees by 3:30pm. Birdsville’s records go back to the 1950s.
This heat has a few more days to go, at least until Wednesday in Yulara and Alice Springs and until Thursday in Birdsville, when a cooler southerly change is due. This change will drop temperatures by about 10 degrees.
Before the cooler change arrives Alice Springs is on target for nine consecutive days of 35 degrees, also a record for this time of year.
The persistent snow and rain hit the northwestern part of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, causing a dramatic temperature drop. This has resulted in the freezing of the road surface on several sections of Sayram Lake-Guozigou Highway, causing traffic congestion in the direction to Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, northwest China.
A hailstorm has left a trail of destruction, damaging furniture and ripping off roofing sheets at Lumanto Basic School in Lufwanyama. The storm, which happened last Friday, damaged a 1×2 classroom block at the school, whose window panes and part of the wall collapsed. Lufwanyama district education board secretary Hilda Kulelwa confirmed the tragedy in an interview yesterday. Ms Kulelwa said the hailstorm struck when schoolchildren were on lunch break and no one was hurt. “We had a very strong wind yesterday (Friday) which ripped off iron sheets at Lumanto Basic School. The desks are also damaged. The storm struck as soon as the grade nines finished their practical examinations,” she said. Ms Kulelwa said the damage left by the hailstorm will affect the school timetable as some classes will have to be rescheduled until the affected block is rehabilitated. She said the matter has been reported to the district commissioner and the provincial education officer. And Lufwanyama district commissioner Alex Kalela said his office will write to the provincial permanent secretary, requesting for the rehabilitation of the school as soon as possible. “The children are writing their final examinations and we don’t want their timetable to be affected. We are appealing to the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit to quickly repair the roofs before the rains start,” Mr Kalela said.
Ekurhuleni metro police ran for cover as hail the size of golf balls shattered their car windscreens and side mirrors, spokesman Kobeli Mokheseng said. The hail “came down like a ton of bricks” for about five minutes on Saturday between 2pm and 3pm, he said. “Metro police officers who were patrolling… ran for cover following heavy rain and winds blowing uncontrollably,” said Mokheseng. He said metro police were still assessing the damage, and that no one was hurt. The hail appeared to have been heaviest in Edenvale, Midrand, Germiston, Boksburg and Benoni. People took to the social networking site, Twitter, to express their dismay at the damage it caused. “What a scary experience yesterday really bad weather hail were so big damaged my younger sister’s kids playroom,” a Twitter user wrote. “Tennis ball sized hail at our place on Saturday crazy.” Another Twitter user wrote: “Talk about hail damage… 12 windows KO!!!!”. “Every car in the East Rand that wasn’t under cover or was on the road is damaged. Mine has 3 dents on boot,” wrote another person. “My mom’s Clio took a beating… Hail damage all over! It went right through the body work.” The Sunday Times showed a photograph of a Benoni man, Jimmy Sales, inspecting his car’s shattered rear windscreen under the headline “This weather is insane”. The newspaper carried an inset picture of a hailstone almost the size of a cricket ball which was among those which fell at the Glendower Golf Club, reportedly damaging several cars in the parking lot and gouging chunks out of the green.
22.10.2012
Flash Flood
Bulgaria
Province of Burgas, [Varvara and Ahtopol, Municipality of Tsarevo]
BLACKWELL, Okla. — Transportation officials say a stretch of Interstate 35 in northern Oklahoma is open again after a massive dust storm triggered a multi-vehicle accident.
Oklahoma Department of Transportation spokesman Cole Hackett said the 8-mile stretch of Interstate 35 reopened Thursday evening.
Transportation workers had been called in earlier Thursday to close the highway between U.S. 60 and Oklahoma 11. The area just south of the Kansas state line remained closed for several hours as crews cleared debris from the crash and waited for winds to die down.
weather.com
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol said visibility was less than 10 feet as gusts as high as 55 mph blew dust over the roadway Thursday afternoon.
No one was killed in the multi-vehicle accident, though Blackwell Police Chief Fred LeValley said nine people were injured.
In a scene reminiscent of the Dust Bowl days, choking dust suspended on strong wind gusts shrouded Interstate 35, which links Dallas and Oklahoma City to Kansas City, Mo. Video from television station helicopters showed the four-lane highway virtually disappearing into billowing dust on the harsh landscape near Blackwell, plus dozens of vehicles scattered in the median and on the shoulders.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Jodi Palmer, a dispatcher with the Kay County Sheriff’s Office. “In this area alone, the dirt is blowing because we’ve been in a drought. I think from the drought everything’s so dry and the wind is high.”
The highway patrol said the dust storm caused a multi-car accident, and local police said nearly three dozen cars and tractor-trailers were involved. Blackwell Police Chief Fred LeValley said nine people were injured, but there were no fatalities.
State transportation workers were called into to close the highway between U.S. 60 and Oklahoma 11, an 8-mile stretch of the cross-country roadway.
The area is just south of the Kansas state line in far northern Oklahoma. Interstate 35 runs from the Mexican border in south Texas to Duluth, Minn.
A red flag fire warning was in place for parts of northern Oklahoma on Thursday, as is a blowing dust advisory.
The National Weather Service forecast for the area said winds would subside to 20 mph or lower overnight but that gusts as high as 28 mph could continue. Calm winds were expected by Friday night.
The area has suffered through an extended drought and many farmers had recently loosened the soil while preparing for the winter wheat season.
“You have the perfect combination of extended drought in that area … and we have the extremely strong winds,” said Gary McManus, the Oklahoma associate state climatologist.
“Also, the timing is bad because a lot of those farm fields are bare. The soil is so dry, it’s like powder. Basically what you have is a whole bunch of topsoil waiting for the wind to blow it away. It’s no different from the 1930s than it is now.”
Steve Austin, a Kay County commissioner, said visibility was terrible.
“It looked like a huge fog was over the city of Ponca City,” he said. “We’ve had dust storms before, but I don’t remember anything of this magnitude in years.”
There are no flooded and isolated settlements after the heavy rain in the coastal municipality of Tsarevo on Sunday. A bridge has been hit by a tidal wave on the road between the southeastern village of Varvara and town of Ahtopol, municipality mayor Georgi Lapchev said. He added that the road was closed and experts were working to restore the damaged section. He said there was a roundabout route. He noted that Sunday’s heavy rain caused damages and other settlements might experience problems as well.
Flash floods in Papua in eastern Indonesia on Sunday night has displaced over 1,000 people and damaged over 200 houses and other public facilities, an official of disaster relief agency said here on Monday. Spokesman of the National Disaster Management and Mitigation Agency Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said that heavy rains at mountainous area led to overflow of Eranouli river and caused flash floods in Eranouli village in Panja district at about 21:00 pm Jakarta time (1400 GMT). “Over 200 houses and scores of office building have been damaged and about 1,000 people have escaped to higher grounds,” he said. The waters inundated the village by up to 2 meters high, said Sutopo. The waters also damaged a health clinic and a clean water facility, he said.
A flash flood triggered by torrential rain has killed at least nine construction workers and left 15 others missing and feared dead in India’s remote northeast. Karma Zyatso, chief secretary of Sikkim state, says the workers, who lived in camps, were swept away by the swirling waters of a flooded river Friday in Chungthan, a small town in the mountainous region. Zyatso said Sunday that authorities had recovered nine bodies and were searching for the 15 missing workers, who were building roads.
At least 11 Peruvians were killed and 10 more are missing after a mudslide Wednesday slammed into a small village in a mountainous jungle region, officials said.
Those killed in the landslide include five children, Ronald Garcia, the provincial mayor, told RPP national radio network.
The avalanche of mud and rocks swept away 24 homes when it crashed into the village of El Porvenir, in the northern department of San Martin, at dawn.
The head of Peru’s Civil Defense Institute, Alfredo Murgueytio, told the daily El Comercio in an interview posted online that rescuers pulled 11 bodies from the rubble, and that 10 people are still missing.
Mayor Garcia said that some of the missing people may have fled into the hills to save their lives.
“Whole families are missing,” said Garcia. More than 80 families live in the village, he said.
El Porvenir residents are mostly coffee farmers, officials said.
Heavy rain in Peru’s Andean region in recent weeks has triggered several landslides.
Tornadoes reportedly touched down Monday afternoon in three Northern California counties, knocking down some trees and power lines as a powerful storm blew over the region. Officials said no injuries were reported by the tornadoes, which were caused by the first storm of the season in Northern California. The National Weather Service said preliminary reports indicated that the tornadoes touched down in Sutter, Yuba and Butte counties. The unstable weather prompted the agency to issue a tornado warning for Placer County. Officials said they received reports from residents of toppled trees and power lines and damage to rooftops after shingles were ripped off by powerful winds.
22.10.2012
Tornado
USA
State of Pennsylvania, Fern Glen [Lancaster County]
Authorities have confirmed that a tornado caused a pavilion to collapse at a Lancaster County park, injuring 15 people and causing millions of dollars in damage. The EF-1 tornado touched down shortly after 8 p.m. Friday and over the next 10 minutes traveled about 16 miles from Fern Glen to Paradise in Lancaster County, packing maximum winds of 100 to 110 m.p.h., the National Weather Service said Sunday. Officials said several dozen people attending a baseball game near Paradise sought shelter at the 40-by-40-foot pavilion, but high winds collapsed it. Police said 10 to 12 people were injured, but the weather service put the injury total at 15. Authorities said most of the injuries were minor; one person had a broken bone. The tornado damage was sporadic and contained within a larger area of straight-line wind damage, weather observers said. Officials said 50 structures were damaged, including several barns that were destroyed. Two small high-tension towers and thousands of trees were toppled. The county emergency management office estimated damage at $3 million to $5 million.
More than 20 schoolchildren, who have fallen sick in some posh localities of the city, are attending their classes, posing a danger to others kids. Teachers suspect students are afflicted with chickenpox. With blisters over body, fever and tiredness, these students are going to school. The parents say they have to send their children to schools as their absence from the school would affect studies and they might miss the chance of writing their annual test because of falling short of minimum attendance necessary to appear in examination. “I know many children who are suffering from chickenpox, a woman teacher, residing in Arera Colony, told TOI. Instead of quarantining such kids, their parents were sending them to schools, which may trigger the spread of the contagious disease, she said. These kids, some from my locality, are from the posh localities, she said. The health officials should take some steps and visit schools.
Biohazard name:
Chicken Pox
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.
Hospitals in the city have reported cases of rickettsial disease caused by tick bites – a rare infectious fever that is common in hilly regions having a tropical climate. Though doctors said the disease “is very rare” in Delhi, AIIMS has reported at least two cases in its paediatric unit over the past six weeks. Serological reports from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) confirmed that these patients were afflicted with scrub typhus, a variant of rickettsia. Doctors at three private hospitals said they had sent samples to the NCDC and received confirmed reports. Serological tests to confirm the infection is not available in government and most private hospitals. The Director of Health Services (DHS) Dr N V Kamat said the city’s infectious disease surveillance programme was yet to be notified about the cases. Dr V K Paul, the head of paediatrics in AIIMS, said: “The disease is very rare and we do not often get patients suffering from the it in Delhi. But we have received confirmation from the NCDC that two of our patients were diagnosed with Scrub Typhus over the past six weeks.” Dr Atul Gogia, associate consultant of internal medicine in Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said: “We have seen 8-10 cases of scrub typhus in the past month. We used to see a case once a year. This year, there has been a sudden jump. So we are sending every suspected, unexplained fever for tests.” Dr Gogia said patients have a characteristic black mark, known as eschar, left by the mite on the body accompanied by fever.
Biohazard name:
Typhus (Scrub)
Biohazard level:
3/4 Hight
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans, but for which vaccines or other treatments exist, such as anthrax, West Nile virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, SARS virus, variola virus (smallpox), tuberculosis, typhus, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, yellow fever, and malaria. Among parasites Plasmodium falciparum, which causes Malaria, and Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes trypanosomiasis, also come under this level.
Solar activity has increased to active during the past 24 hours, featuring a long duration M9.1 flare and six C flares.
The M9.1 flare was released by sunspot region 1598 on the east limb of the Sun and peaked at 18:14 UT on October 20th. A high-speed shock wave registered 516 kilometers per second (320 miles per second) observed at 18:15 UT. An associated CME was observed by LASCO C2 at 19:00 UT, but is not directed towards Earth.
Earlier today sunspot region 1596 produced a M1.3 (2003UT), C7.8 (0316UT), and C5.6 (0534UT). Both regions 1596 and 1598 maintain potential for further isolated M-class to X-class activity.
Solar wind speed is expected to increase slightly days one and two under the influence of a coronal hole wind stream. NASA and NOAA has issued a WARNING for high flying aircraft, the ISS, NSSO and NSTAC due to an increased possibility of satellite deep dielectric discharge.
In a flux of high energy charged particles, they penetrate the spacecraft or satellite’s outer surface and bury themselves in dielectric materials such as circuit boards and the insulation in coaxial cables. The buildup of charge will continue until the dielectric strength of the material is exceeded, when a sudden electrical discharge will occur. This miniature lightning stroke can cause permanent damage in the associated or nearby circuitry.
Watch for increased extreme weather events which include earthquake, volcano, tornado, and cyclone activity over the next 48 to 72 hours.
A gray, 2-inch rock that hit a Novato home is the first confirmed chunk of the meteor that dramatically exploded over the Bay Area, a scientist said Sunday. Lisa Webber, 61, found the meteorite in her yard on Saturday, three days after the object fell onto the roof of her home on St. Francis Avenue. She had heard a strange sound at the time but didn’t think twice about it until she read a Chronicle story saying debris from the meteor would be found in a band stretching east of San Rafael toward Napa and Sonoma. Some have marveled at the potential cosmic significance of the fact that it hit a home belonging to a man of the cloth – Webber’s husband, Kent Webber, is pastor at Presbyterian Church of Novato. The space rock, in fact, had first hit the roof of his study, she said. “It’s just science – and it’s cool,” said Lisa Webber, an administrative nurse at UCSF Medical Center. “It’s wonderful. It’s like the heavens coming down, and history and this thing probably came from an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter – I mean, how cool is that?” Peter Jenniskens, a leading meteor hunter at the Seti Institute in Mountain View, confirmed that the space rock was indeed debris from the meteor that streaked over the sky Wednesday night.”The significance of this find is that we can now hope to use our fireball trajectory to trace this type of meteorite back to its origins in the asteroid belt,” Jenniskens wrote on his group’s website. At the time the object hit her roof, Webber thought the sound she heard had come from an animal that was rummaging on her property. She checked the roof, found nothing, and quickly forgot about it until she read The Chronicle on Friday night. That’s when she went searching through the yard and found a rock. She summoned her neighbor’s son, the two put a magnet to the object, and they stuck together. On Saturday, neighbor Luis Rivera climbed onto the roof and found an indentation left by the meteorite. “The surprising thing about it all is that it’s something from the orbit between Mars and Jupiter, and it ended up in Novato,” Rivera said. “And when Lisa was relating all of this to me, it took a while to sink in as to the odds of this happening.”
Russia could start building a space rocket capable of destroying asteroids threatening the Earth, chief of rocket and space corporation Energia said Friday.
“There are three large asteroids, including Apophis, whose orbits cross the Earth’s orbit and which could hit the Earth in the next several decades,” Vitaly Lopota told the state newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
To change the orbit of a small planet of Apophis’ size, a 70-ton rocket was needed to “tow” an asteroid away from Earth or to destroy it with a thermonuclear blast, Lopota said.
Apophis was discovered in 2004. It will approach the Earth dangerously close, at about 30,000 km, which is less than one-tenth of the Moon’s distance from Earth, in 2029.
Experts calculate impact of a collision between Apophis and the Earth will be equal to a 1,700-Megaton explosion.
Lopota said existing Russian rocket carriers with RD-171 engines could be redesigned to produce a rocket capable of destroying an asteroid. Energia was ready to build such a rocket within three to five years, he said.
Currently, RD-171 engines made by NPO Energomash have been used on Zenit-3SL missiles employed in the Russia-Ukraine-Norway-U.S. joint project Sea Launch.
“We call them Tsar Engines, which no other country possesses,” Lopota said, referring to Russian artifacts, the Tsar Cannon and Tsar Bell, which were the world’s largest in their time.
by Francis Reddy for Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt MD (SPX)
This plot shows the fractions of settled disk galaxies in four time spans, each about 3 billion years long. (full size chart) There is a steady shift toward higher percentages of settled galaxies closer to the present time. At any given time, the most massive galaxies are the most settled. More distant and less massive galaxies on average exhibit more disorganized internal motions, with gas moving in multiple directions, and slower rotation speeds. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
A comprehensive study of hundreds of galaxies observed by the Keck telescopes in Hawaii and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has revealed an unexpected pattern of change that extends back 8 billion years, or more than half the age of the universe.
“Astronomers thought disk galaxies in the nearby universe had settled into their present form by about 8 billion years ago, with little additional development since,” said Susan Kassin, an astronomer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the study’s lead researcher. “The trend we’ve observed instead shows the opposite, that galaxies were steadily changing over this time period.”
Today, star-forming galaxies take the form of orderly disk-shaped systems, such as the Andromeda Galaxy or the Milky Way, where rotation dominates over other internal motions. The most distant blue galaxies in the study tend to be very different, exhibiting disorganized motions in multiple directions. There is a steady shift toward greater organization to the present time as the disorganized motions dissipate and rotation speeds increase. These galaxies are gradually settling into well-behaved disks.
Blue galaxies – their color indicates stars are forming within them – show less disorganized motions and ever-faster rotation speeds the closer they are observed to the present. This trend holds true for galaxies of all masses, but the most massive systems always show the highest level of organization.
Researchers say the distant blue galaxies they studied are gradually transforming into rotating disk galaxies like our own Milky Way.
“Previous studies removed galaxies that did not look like the well-ordered rotating disks now common in the universe today,” said co-author Benjamin Weiner, an astronomer at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “By neglecting them, these studies examined only those rare galaxies in the distant universe that are well-behaved and concluded that galaxies didn’t change.”
Rather than limit their sample to certain galaxy types, the researchers instead looked at all galaxies with emission lines bright enough to be used for determining internal motions. Emission lines are the discrete wavelengths of radiation characteristically emitted by the gas within a galaxy. They are revealed when a galaxy’s light is separated into its component colors. These emission lines also carry information about the galaxy’s internal motions and distance.
The team studied a sample of 544 blue galaxies from the Deep Extragalactic Evolutionary Probe 2 (DEEP2) Redshift Survey, a project that employs Hubble and the twin 10-meter telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Located between 2 billion and 8 billion light-years away, the galaxies have stellar masses ranging from about 0.3 percent to 100 percent of the mass of our home galaxy.
A paper describing these findings will be published Oct. 20 in The Astrophysical Journal.
The Milky Way galaxy must have gone through the same rough-and-tumble evolution as the galaxies in the DEEP2 sample, and gradually settled into its present state as the sun and solar system were being formed.
In the past 8 billion years, the number of mergers between galaxies large and small has decreased sharply. So has the overall rate of star formation and disruptions of supernova explosions associated with star formation. Scientists speculate these factors may play a role in creating the evolutionary trend they observe.
Now that astronomers see this pattern, they can adjust computer simulations of galaxy evolution until these models are able to replicate the observed trend. This will guide scientists to the physical processes most responsible for it.
The DEEP2 survey is led by Lick Observatory at the University of California at Santa Cruz in collaboration with the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., the University of Chicago and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. in Washington.
A bright fireball, reportedly with hues of red and orange, streaked across the night sky visible from San Francisco’s Bay Area on Wednesday, October 18, around 8 p.m. local time (3UTC on October 18). Many say they heard a boom, which was so loud it “shook their homes,” some residents said, making them think it may be an earthquake.
Wes Jones in Belmont, California caught the meteor disappearing behind the trees while using a wide-field camera. Image copyright Wes Jones. Used with permission.
Belmont, California astronomer Wes Jones captured the fireball as it sailed across the sky on October 17, just as it was entering the trees.
Here is the capture data for the Wes Jones’ image above:
Camera: Interactiveastronomy Skyeye Camera
Camera Location: 122°16’31.73″ W, 37°31’1.17″ N
Altitude: 17 Meters
Exposure Duration: 30 seconds
File Write Time: 07:44:44 PM PDT 10/17/2012
The video above is raw footage from the security camera at Lick Observatory, located in the hills above San Jose, California. Camera is a little out of focus. Round structure to the left is the 40-inch Nickel refracting telescope dome. Lights in the background are the San Jose cityscape. Video posted to YouTube by Erik Kovacs.
Screen grab from Google maps (not clickable) of area where October 17, 2012 meteorite might have fallen. One expert said it might have come down in the hills north of Martinez, California. If so, he said, hikers might be able to find pieces of the meteorite.
Jonathan Braidman, astronomy instructor at Oakland’s Chabot Space and Science Center, told SuiSunCityPatch.com that the meteor may have been “roughly the size of a car when it broke up over the Bay Area.” He said hikers might be able to find small pieces of the meteorite in the hills north of Martinez, California.
Was the October 17, 2012 meteor seen over the Bay Area associated with the Orionid meteor shower? If it were associated, it would have to have radiated from the same point in the sky as the Orionids. That point is in the the same famous constellation Orion the Hunter, shown here. Can anyone who saw the October 17 meteor tell us if it radiated from this constellation? More about this weekend’s Orionid meteor shower here.
Is the October 17, 2012 meteor associated with the Orionid meteor shower? That shower is coming up this weekend. Although I didn’t see it, and don’t know if its path could be traced back to the constellation Orion – which is the radiant point for all meteors in the Orionid shower – the answer is likely that the two are not associated. Meteors in annual showers are tiny, icy bits left behind by comets orbiting the sun. The Orionids, in particular, come from one of the most famous comets, Comet Halley, which last visited Earth in 1986. The meteor seen over the Bay Area on October 17, 2012 was more likely a larger, rocky meteor, just a random chunk of space debris that entered Earth’s atmosphere and vaporized due to friction with the air.
The October 17, 2012 meteor sighting is reminiscent of another meteor sighting earlier this year, when – on the morning of April 22, 2012 – many in Nevada and California saw a bright flash across the sky, and heard an audible boom, or explosion. The object was later called “a small asteroid” whose estimated weight was some 70 metric tons.
Wikimedia Commons image of a bollide or fireball – a piece of space debris entering Earth’s atmosphere and causing a particularly bright streak across the sky.
Astronomers use the word bolide to describe an exceptionally bright fireball such as this one. The term bolide – which comes the Greek word bolis, meaning a missile or to flash – is particularly applicable when the object is so bright it can be seen in broad daylight, when the object explodes in the atmosphere and when it creates audible sounds. In other words, all of these phenomena are known to occur, and astronomers even have a word for it.
Bright meteors or bollides were also seen in the U.K. and New Zealand in 2012. They are not uncommon, if you are considering the entire globe.
However, from any one spot on Earth, they are uncommon, Among astronomers, it’s sometimes said you might witness one bolide, or very bright fireball, in your lifetime. So if you saw this one, this was yours!
Bottom line: Many in San Francisco’s Bay Area saw an exceptionally bright meteor, and heard a loud boom, on the night of October 17, 2012. Photo and video in this post, plus information on the Orionid meteor shower, which peaks on the morning of October 21.
Concentrations of red tide have been detected from Charlotte County to Collier County. Hundreds of dead fish are washing ashore and a foul odor now fills the air at many beaches throughout Southwest Florida. Many residents and visitors are hoping that red tide is on its way out of town, but at Wiggins Pass State Park in Collier County, things aren’t looking too great. Thousands of dead fish remain in sight. But beachgoers we spoke with said they aren’t letting the toxic algae ruin their fun. “This is the first time I’ve seen this,” said Karl Udo, who has been visiting Southwest Florida from Germany for over 20 years. “It’s no good.” The toxic algae started to wash through Collier County beaches just last week, carrying with it the unpleasant stench. “You got to breathe through your mouth. So don’t take deep breaths through your nose,” said Liz Koch, who is visiting from Chicago. The latest tests done by county officials show that red tide is at medium levels throughout some of Collier’s beaches. The toxin can cause respiratory irritation, a concern for county officials with tourist season in sight.
Crews working on an old Air Force fuel spill have found potentially cancer-causing chemicals beneath a southeast Albuquerque neighborhood, Kirtland Air Force Base announced. The New Mexico Environment Department said Friday that Air Force crews found the pollutant Perchloroethylene, or PCE, in water around 500 feet underground while installing test wells. However, officials say they don’t believe the recently discovered pollutant is connected to a decades-old Kirtland Air Force Base jet fuel spill threatening Albuquerque’s water supply that could be as large as 24 million gallons. Davis tsaid that the chemicals likely came from a dry cleaner. Jim Davis, head of New Mexico Environment Department Resource Protection, told reporters that the chemical is threatening groundwater and not residents in the neighborhood above the contamination. Still, the discovery could trigger action under the federal Superfund law, a program aimed at the nation’s most serious hazardous chemical contamination problems. New Mexico Environment Department Secretary David Martin praised crews for making the discovery.The department has launched a probe to see if any businesses that used PCE were located in the vicinity of the well clusters in the past. The Air Force is two years away from finalizing a cleanup plan in connection with a toxin-laden plume from a 40-year underground pipe leak was discovered at Kirtland Air Force Base. The spill was first discovered in 1999 when the Air Force noticed a pool of fuel coming up out of the ground at its old aircraft fuel storage center, which dates back to the 1950s. Air Force officials say the fuel was leaking from an underground pipe for at least 40 years as tests on elements in the plume — which contains the cancer-causing Benzyne and other harmful toxins — show it dates back to at least the 1970s. Less than half a million gallons have been pumped out of the ground.
[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.]
Boats sit in the Beilun River, which separates China and Vietnam, on Tuesday, October 30. Tropical Storm Son-Tinh was moving northeast along the northern Vietnamese coast on Monday after tearing the roofs off hundreds of houses and breaching flood defenses overnight, the state-run Vietnam News Agency reported.
An uprooted tree crushes a car in China on Sunday. 
Mario Tosti / AFP – Getty Images
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MessageToEagle.com – Based on current models, galaxies grow by consuming other star systems and the so-called galactic cannibalism process is widespread in the universe.
MessageToEagle.com – ‘Briz-M’, a Russian rocket recently exploded into some 500 fragments. Most of the debris is now, floating in low Earth orbit.
Sandy is expected to bring high winds, heavy rain and extreme tides to the eastern US seaboard
Kingston prepares for the arrival of the hurricane
NOAA
USGS
Mount Merapi erupting in 2010. (JG Photo/Boy T Harjanto).
weather.com
