Earth ChangesS


Cloud Precipitation

Hailstorms blanket parts of Saudi Arabia white

Snow on the road to Mecca
Snow on the road to Mecca
Al Jazeera confirms snow in Saudi Arabia. January 15, 2016

Video .. snow coats the migration route.

(One part of the Al Jazeera story says snow, a different part says hail. I'm guessing hail, but it still must have been a real shock to the drivers.)


Question

Strange sounds heard in Singapore, Hungary and California

Sky trumpets or the Trumpets of the imminent apocalypse.
Sky trumpets or the Trumpets of the imminent apocalypse.
These three videos of strange sounds from the sky were captured in January 2016 around the world.

The strange sky trumpets were recorded in Singapore, Budapest and California. What's going on?

Strange sounds heard in Singapore at night on January 13, 2016


Strange sound from the sky on January 9, 2016, in Budapest, Hungary


Comment: See also: SOTT Exclusive: Strange sounds are back: 'Sky trumpets' heard in the Netherlands, the UK and Morocco

Eerie unexplained noises emanating from the sky heard in Singapore


Question

Eerie unexplained noises emanating from the sky heard in Singapore

Singapore
Singapore
Yahoo news shared a video posted by Youtuber Muhammad Luqman Mohamad Hakim on 2 January 2016, and captioned it:
"A Singapore resident recently captured footage featuring bizarre unexplained noises coming from the sky on January 2nd, 2016. According to him, the sounds were heard for almost 2 hours. Can you explain it?"

There is another video uploaded in Youtube, 2 days ago by Richard Ong and he titles his video, "Strange Sounds Heard in Singapore Night Sky - 13 Jan 2016". The eerie noise in his video sounds like a trumpet.


Comment: See also: SOTT Exclusive: Strange sounds are back: 'Sky trumpets' heard in the Netherlands, the UK and Morocco


Attention

Dead humpback whale found in northwest Mexico

Juvenile humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) Ensenada,
© EFE/PROFEPAAn official with the Profepa federal environmental protection agency inspects the carcass of a juvenile humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) that washed up on a beach north of Ensenada, a resort city in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California, on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016.
Inspectors examined the carcass of a whale that washed up on a beach north of Ensenada, a resort city in the northwestern state of Baja California, Mexico's Profepa federal environmental protection agency said.

The dead marine mammal was a juvenile humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), a protected species in Mexico.

Profepa inspectors examined the whale's carcass and determined that fishing nets and human activities did not cause the whale's death.

The inspectors were unable to obtain tissue samples due to the animal's advanced state of decomposition, making it difficult to determine the reason why the whale beached itself and died.

Attention

Mount Egon volcano rattles Flores Island, Indonesia

Volcano on Flores island
Evacuation ordered as volcano on Flores rumbles to life
Residents living around the base of Indonesia's Mount Egon were ordered to evacuate as the Flores Island volcano began to rumble because of rising magma.

A 2-mile exclusion zone was established around the 4,487-foot volcano, which last erupted in 2008, forcing more than 10,000 people to flee.

Egon is the only one of six volcanoes in Indonesia currently on an alert level of 3 or 4 that is not currently erupting.

The vast archipelago has 127 active volcanoes, more than any other country on the planet.

Bizarro Earth

Rare winter hurricane Alex forms in the Atlantic

Hurricane Alex
© NOAA
January was already shaping up to be a weird month, what with a hurricane out in the Pacific, but it just got weirder: Say hello to Hurricane Alex, a rare January storm in the Atlantic and the first storm of the 2016 Atlantic hurricane season.

A season that doesn't officially begin until June 1.

Alex is the first such storm to form in January since 1978 and only the fourth January storm formation on record going back to 1851. The climatological average first date for the first named storm in a season is July 9.

While it's decidedly not hurricane season, the official June 1-Nov. 30 dates of that season are artificial ones, chosen because they encompass the bulk of tropical cyclone activity. But when conditions are right, storms can, and do, form outside of those bounds.

Alex formed from a system that first developed in the warm waters off the east coast of Florida last week and has tracked eastward across the ocean, gradually becoming stronger and more organized.

Comment: See also: Hurricane Pali sets Pacific record


Bell

SOTT Exclusive: Strange sounds are back: 'Sky trumpets' heard in the Netherlands, the UK and Morocco

strange sounds
In the last couple of weeks, Dutch citizens have reported hearing strange sounds in the sky. Martijn Mastenbroek from Pijnacker, a town in the Dutch province of South Holland, was at home on the evening of January 10th when he suddenly heard a peculiar sound.

"It sounded like trumpets," he recalls. "It lasted about five seconds. No, it wasn't coming from the washer. It really came from outside. My girlfriend heard it too."

Residents in other towns (Bleiswijk, Moordrecht, Lichtenvoorde and Beek) and cities (Gouda, Almere and Heerlen) reported on social media that they also heard these strange trumpet-like sounds. One resident from Gouda was able to record the sound with a camera (see below). Another video of the sound was posted on Facebook by user 'Jeff Afca', who was in Almere at the time.


Sun

3 suns phenomenon seen in Kazan, Russia

Sun dog
© Victoria SvetlakovaSun dog
This intense three suns phenomenon appeared in the Russian sky on January 12, 2016 stunning residents across the city of Kazan.

I mean look at the pictures and the video. They are overwhelming.

Sun dogs are either caused by the refraction of light on plate-shaped hexagonal ice crystals in high and cold cirrus or cirrostratus clouds or drifting in the air at low levels like in these pictures.

Sun dog
© Marseille Gizatullin
The crystals act as prisms and bend the light rays passing through them with a minimum deflection of 22°.


Attention

Update: 2 more sperm whales found dead on Dutch beach

Sperm whale washed ashore on Texel
© namedreep/TwitterSperm whale washed ashore on Texel, Jan 12th, 2015
Two more sperm whales became stranded and died on the Dutch coast a day after five others, likely from the same pod, lost their lives nearby in a rare North Sea beaching, experts said Thursday.

"They are two males," said Jan Boon from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), which is based on the northern Dutch island of Texel where the whales washed up.

One was found near the Texel port in front of NIOZ's buildings in the village of 't Hoorntje, while the other became stranded further to the north.

"The one I've seen here in the south has unfortunately been dead already for some time," Boon told AFP.

"There's blood, it's mouth is open," he said.

The two whales and the five others that died on Wednesday after floundering ashore late Tuesday are "probably from the same pod of six whales" that came ashore in Germany earlier this week.

Comment: See also this earlier report: 5 sperm whales die on Texel beach, Netherlands


Attention

Cuttlefish mass die-off on island near Chile

Dead cuttlefish
© Twitter / Leonidas Romero SáezDead cuttlefish
Thousands of cuttlefish mysteriously washed up on Santa Maria off Coronel, Chile on January 12, 2016.

The cause of the mass die-off remains unexplained.

The animals appeared in the South Island Harbor.

Scientists have started insvestigating the possible causes for this mysterious and apocalyptical mass die-off.