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© Rachelle Baer via Canadian PressDebris is scattered across the New Rosedale Hutterite colony southwest of Portage la Prairie, Man. on Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Weather agency seeking eye witness accounts, pictures of Wednesday's storm
Environment Canada is looking for photos and eye witness accounts of the "exceptional" storm which ripped through Southern Manitoba last week.
Several communities were left cleaning up after a huge tornado-producing storm plowed through the province on Wednesday, ripping out trees, snapping hydro lines, flipping vehicles, and damaging buildings.
Environment Canada has given the tornado a preliminary Enhanced Fujita Scale 1 — or EF 1 — rating but said that additional experts and witnesses are being consulted and the rating might change.
The tornado touched down west of Long Plain First Nation, Man., just before 7 p.m., according to the weather agency. It headed east through the community causing extensive damage, including lifting a house off its foundation.
The tornado went further east across the Assiniboine River and through the southern part of the New Rosedale Hutterite Colony, damaging grain bins and destroying farm sheds.
The twister finally lifted near Highway 240 around 7:20 p.m., Environment Canada said.
The tornado was considered exceptional because of the damage and also a "swath of 10 to 20 kilometres wide of straight-line wind damage affecting a significant part of the region," Environment Canada said. Some of the winds gusted to 140 km/hr.
© Wikimedia CommonsCommon swift (Apus apus)
In birding, like in any other sport, they say you have to be good to be lucky but sometimes nothing explains a great event other than pure simple luck.
A rare glimpse of a common swift, winging its way over Cape Race, NEwfoundland and Labrador.
Due to a compounding series of events Ken Knowles and I were driving through Portugal Cove South on the southern Avalon Peninsula at 1 p.m. on a Tuesday. There is a dead zone for cellphone reception between Renews and Portugal Cove South. The smartphoned chimed as we arrived back into the land of cellphones.
In the time it took to drive from Renews to Portugal Cove South a storm of emails and texts had been flying back and forth between birders in response to a photograph of a bird that Cliff Doran had taken at the Cape Race lighthouse. We checked out the picture on Cliff's Facebook page.
It was a swift. A somewhat blurry photo with the tail cut off.
Swifts are worldwide group of birds built for flying at breakneck speeds in search of airborne insects. They tend to hunt high above swallows and other fly-catching birds.
There are no swifts native to Newfoundland and Labrador.
© Scott SommerdorfFirefighters work to set a back fire as favorable winds allow for the strategy on Antelope Island, Saturday, July 23, 2016.
No injuries were reported Saturday, nor were there reports of fire consuming any of the island's iconic mammals.
"The total acreage for Antelope Island is 28,000," said Jeremy Shaw, manager of Antelope Island State Park. "We're approaching half the island pretty rapidly. The wind's not helping us right now."
The blaze has been dubbed the West Antelope Fire. It is spreading north and east, was 35 percent contained as of Saturday evening. Ground crews and aircraft battled the blaze throughout the day.
Flood batters Assam
An Assam Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) official said that the flood have inundated large areas in Tinsukia district on Sunday, besides Lakhimpur, Golaghat, Morigaon, Jorhat, Dhemaji, Sivsagar, Kokrajhar, Barpeta, Bongaigaon, Nagaon, Dhubri, Dibrugarh and Chirang districts, which have remained flooded since last few days.
"As on today (Sunday), 6,41,043 people in 1,206 villages in the 14 districts remained affected due to the current flash of floods. The concerned district administrations have opened 81 relief camps in the flood hit districts housing 21,931 marooned people," an ASDMA official said.
One person died due to floods in Lakhimpur district on Sunday, the ASDMA officials said. Two deaths - one in Lakhimpur and another in Morigaon - due to floods were reported on Saturday.
Update: Charred corpse found at 'Sand Fire' site as raging flames consume 20k acres (PHOTOS, VIDEOS)
© brian_obrien / InstagramFire fighters have 10 percent containment of the fire.
The body was found on Iron Canyon Road, an area of Santa Clarita that authorities had ordered to be evacuated. A resident in the area told KTLA that the deceased man was found burned in a car after being separated from his partner.
© ReutersAn aerial view of Australia's Great Barrier Reef
Parts of the Queensland reef are still bleaching even in the Southern Hemisphere's winter, and fish populations are disappearing. The Great Barrier Reef has suffered from bleaching in as much as 93 percent of the reef, with 80 percent enduring severe bleaching, Climate Central reported in April.
Coral Watch's Justin Marshall spent a week surveying reefs near Queensland's Lizard Island and said the lack of fish was the most shocking discovery. "I was seeing a lot less than 50 percent of what was there [before]. Some species I wasn't seeing at all," he told the Guardian.
Coral bleaching is the result of warming sea water which causes coral to release algae in an effort to cool. The algae give coral its color. When the coral is unable to cool down and find new algae, it dies and turns a white color. The dead coral then attracts dark algae which give it a brown appearance.
This dark, or 'turf', algae block the fish from food and shelter, which causes fish populations to deplete through dying or relocating to more promising food sources.
© Noah Berger / ReutersThe Erskine Fire burns above South Lake, California.
A fire that erupted on Friday in the Sand Canyon area near Santa Clarita located north of Los Angeles has already incinerated some 4,450 hectares and has grown to more than eight and a half square miles.
He was identified as Peter Hawkes, who attended Staples High School in his freshman year and graduated in 2011 from New York's Xavier High School. He graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2015.
Hawkes and another man were at the struck just before 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Indian Tree Golf Course in suburban Arvada, the Denver Post reported. Other reports said they were under a tree.
Hawkes spent several hours in a burn unit but was pronounced dead by 1 a.m. Wednesday, the Denver Post said. The condition of the other man was not available.
© TwitterHundreds have fled their homes as the Califormia fire remains largely out of control
The mandatory evacuation orders were prompted by the so-called Sand Fire burning in the Angeles National Forest and areas near Santa Clarita, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said. Earlier, evacuation orders affected around 300 homes.
Authorities discovered a burned body Saturday evening outside a home on Iron Canyon Road in Santa Clarita, just north of Los Angeles.
Detectives were trying to determine whether the person was killed by the blaze or another cause, Los Angeles County sheriff's Lt. Rob Hahnlein said. The home also may have burned, he said.
The fire broke out at around 2:11 p.m. local time Friday (5:14 p.m. ET) and swelled to 11,000 acres by noon Saturday and then to 20,000 acres by Saturday evening, fire officials said. More than 900 firefighters were battling the blaze, the Angeles National Forest said.
Comment: The earth has its own electromagnetic field, and the vast majority of species on Earth rely on these electromagnetic forces to remain relatively stable so that they can exist and can function properly. Organisms are extremely sensitive to any alteration in this field, and find it difficult to adapt to changes. In the past 100 years, humans have drastically altered the electromagnetic environment on the surface of the earth, and this is now having some serious adverse effects on the health of everything inhabiting this planet.
Although man-made EMF may not be solely responsible for all of the changes we are seeing with regard to crazy weather, mass animal die-offs, and other strange phenomena... it is still clearly a significant contributing factor.