Of course the politically correct verbiage is "climate change."

Between the 13th and 11th centuries BCE, most Greek Bronze Age Palatial centers were destroyed and/or abandoned throughout the Near East and Aegean, says this paper by Brandon L. Drake

A sharp increase in Northern Hemisphere temperatures preceded the wide-spread systems collapse, while a sharp decrease in temperatures occurred during their abandonment. (Neither of which, I am sure - the increase or the decrease - were caused by humans.)

Mediterranean Sea surface temperatures cooled rapidly during the Late Bronze Age, limiting freshwater flux into the atmosphere and thus reducing precipitation over land, says Drake, of the Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico.

This cooling and ensuing aridity could have affected areas that were dependent upon high levels of agricultural productivity. The resulting crop declines would have made higher-density populations unsustainable.

Indeed, studies of data from the Mediterranean indicate that the Early Iron Age was more arid than the preceding Bronze Age. The prolonged arid conditions - a centuries-long megadrought, if you will - lasted until the Roman Warm Period.

Emergency workers pulled more than 100 survivors from the rubble of homes, schools and a hospital in an Oklahoma town hit by a powerful tornado, and officials lowered the death toll from the storm to 24, including nine children.

The 2-mile (3-km) wide tornado tore through Moore outside Oklahoma City on Monday afternoon, trapping victims beneath the rubble, wiping out entire neighborhoods and tossing vehicles about as if they were toys.

Seven of the nine children who were killed died at Plaza Towers Elementary School, which took a direct hit, but many more survived unhurt.
"They literally were lifting walls up and kids were coming out," Oklahoma State Police Sergeant Jeremy Lewis said. "They pulled kids out from under cinder blocks without a scratch on them."

The Oklahoma state medical examiner's office said 24 bodies had been recovered from the wreckage, down from the 51 they had reported earlier. The earlier number likely reflected some double-counted deaths, said Amy Elliott, chief administrative officer for the medical examiner.

"There was a lot of chaos," she said.

Additional Images - a collection of photos from photographers who were in the Oklahoma City area on Monday and Tuesday.

Temperatures, just as News 4 reported in March


Buffalo, N.Y. - Canalside is just weeks away from being packed with people attending summer events. But visitors could be met with hundreds of dead fish in the water.

Hundreds of dead fish started washing up from Lake Erie, the Niagara River and their tributaries in March, and News 4 reported after concerned viewers called about the dead fish. And though it's been months, you can still find dozens of them floating in the Commercial Slip.

Donald Zelazny, the DEC's Great Lakes Program Coordinator, said, "This is actually one of the larger die-offs of these fish that we've seen in quite a while."

So it's no surprise that people who see them are worried about disease and pollution. But the DEC now has biological evidence of what it has said all along: these fish, a member of the herring family called "gizzard shad," died of natural causes.

"They're very susceptible to cold temperatures and temperature fluctuations. So we generally see a die-off of this particular type of fish every year," Zelazny explained.

A giant tornado, a mile wide or more, killed at least 51 people as it tore across parts of Oklahoma City and its suburbs Monday afternoon, flattening homes, flinging cars through the air and crushing at least two schools packed with children.

As the injured began flooding into hospitals, the authorities said many people remained trapped, even as rescue workers were struggling to make their way through debris-clogged streets to the devastated suburb of Moore, where much of the damage occurred.

Event Time
2013-05-21 01:55:08 UTC
2013-05-21 12:55:08 UTC+11:00 at epicenter

Location
52.505°N 160.470°E depth=33.9km (21.1mi)

Nearby Cities
136km (85mi) ESE of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Russia
147km (91mi) ESE of Vilyuchinsk, Russia
159km (99mi) ESE of Yelizovo, Russia
988km (614mi) SE of Magadan, Russia
2483km (1543mi) NE of Tokyo, Japan

Technical Details

At least 37 people -- including seven children at an elementary school -- were killed when a storm with a massive tornado struck an area outside Oklahoma City on Monday afternoon, officials said.

Seven children were killed at Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Oklahoma, a police official said. Emergency personnel were scouring the school's rubble Monday evening, video from CNN affiliate KFOR showed. The footage also showed a number of other leveled buildings.

The tornado was estimated to be at least 2 miles wide at one point as it moved through Moore, in the southern part of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, KFOR reported. Video from CNN affiliates showed a funnel cloud stretching from the sky to the ground, kicking up debris.

A tornado emergency was issued for the south side of the Oklahoma City metro area, Monday afternoon.This is a rare warning from the weather service, which says it issues one "when a severe threat to human life and catastrophic damage from a tornado is imminent or ongoing." The National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma is tweeting updates. At 4:22 p.m. ET. they tweeted:

"the tornado is so large you may not realize it's a tornado. If you are in Moore, go to shelter NOW!"

This story is breaking. We'll update this post as we get more. KFOR is streaming its live coverage.

Update at 4:44 p.m. ET. Devastated Neighborhoods:

Helicopter images of Moore, Oklahoma from KFOR show tracts of devastated neighborhoods. The images show homes missing their roofs, some of them completely leveled.

The reporter on the helicopter said one school was razed by a mile-wide tornado. KFOR showed people walking listlessly through the streets, surveying the damage and reuniting with their families.

Update at 4:38 p.m. ET. Reminiscent Of 1999 Tornado:

Kurt Gwartney of NPR member station KGOU in Oklahoma City said one of the issues with today's tornadoes is that people are at work and school.

"What we're seeing from helicopter coverage," Gwartney tells our Newscast unit, "is very reminiscent of the May 1999 tornado that killed lots of people especially in the Moore area of the Oklahoma City metro.

A report from USA Today at time, put that 1999 tornado's top winds at 318 mph.

A record-smashing snowstorm has buried parts of Newfoundland under about 2 feet of snow.

There were no reports of serious damage or disruption.

Gander tallied a heavy, wet snowfall of 69 cm (7 inches) between Saturday morning and Sunday night, weather data accessed by AccuWeather.com showed. Of this amount, 46 cm fell (18 inches) within only 12 hours on Sunday. The snow depth reached at least 55 cm (22 inches) on Sunday and still stood at 51 cm on Monday morning.