Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

3 rhinos and other animals killed by lightning bolt that 'shook the ground for miles' in West Bengal, India

Simon Tomlinson
Daily Mail
Wed, 18 May 2016 20:55 UTC
Cut down in their prime: The family had been living in the reserved forest at Gorumara National Park in India's West Bengal state for more than a decade
Cut down in their prime: The family had been living in the reserved forest at Gorumara National Park in India's West Bengal state for more than a decade
Three members of a rhino family have been killed by a lightning strike at an Indian national park.

A 27-year-old female, a 14-year-old calf and a baby rhino were found dead after they were struck by a bolt that 'shook the ground' for miles, officials said.

The family had been living in the reserved forest in Gorumara National Park in India's West Bengal state for more than a decade.

Uma Rani, Jalpaiguri district's forest officer, said: 'The deaths were caused by lightning. It was an unprecedented accident.

'Some other animals have also died and we are checking the forests.'

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Fire

Mount Etna in Sicily erupts spewing ash and smoke hundreds of metres into the skies


The Local.it
Wed, 18 May 2016 15:42 UTC
Mount Etna eruption May 2016
© INGVThe volcano's north-east crater at 13:42pm on Wednesday.
Sicily's Mount Etna is erupting again.

Europe's most active volcano has spent the last 24 hours sending huge plumes of ash and smoke hundreds of metres into the skies above Sicily.

The 3350-metre high volcano began to stir on Tuesday, with emissions from its north-east crater growing in intensity throughout the day.

"On May 17th we witnessed an increase in the amplitude of volcanic tremors and recorded intense degassing accompanied by occasional, weak emissions from the north-eastern crater," explained the Catania branch of Italy's National Vulcanology and Geophysics Institute (INGV).

Vulcanologists are classing the eruption as 'Strombolian' - a category characterized by explosive bursts of activity during which cinder, ash and smoke are ejected from the crater with great force.

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Rainbow

Circumhorizontal arcs spotted in Alabama's Tennessee Valley

Christina Edwards
WHNT News 19
Mon, 16 May 2016 19:19 UTC
Check out this really cool photo that Kim Johnson sent us from Arab, at approximately 11:30am Monday.
Circumhorizontal arc Arab, AL
© Kim JohnsonArab, Alabama
Kim described it as a "straight rainbow just hovering in the sky at Arab City Hall."

Cindy Bryan saw something similar, too, in Fort Payne -- about 45 miles east as the crow flies.
Circumhorizontal arc in Alabama
© Cindy BryanFort Wayne, Alabama
While it looks like a rainbow and it belongs in the atmospheric optics family, this phenomenon is actually a circumhorizon arc. It is a halo that is located beneath the sun, parallel to the horizon.

Circumhorizon arcs occur when sunlight passes through plate-oriented ice crystals suspended in the sky; these ice crystals are what make up high, thin clouds like cirrus and cirrostratus clouds, located about 16 thousand to 50 thousand feet above the ground.

As the sun rises higher in the sky, sunlight enters a portion of the ice crystal that is nearly vertical before exiting out the flat, horizontal bottom. As it does so, the light refracts and produces bright, prismatic colors. Often, the colors are more vibrant and pure than those seen in a rainbow.

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Cloud Lightning

Three killed by lightning strikes in Thailand and Cambodia; 30 dead for the latter in first 5 months of 2016

Khouth Sophak Chakrya
Phnom Penh Post
Wed, 18 May 2016 18:19 UTC
Lightning strike
Two Cambodians working on a farm in Thailand's Rayong province were killed by lightning on Monday.

A border communications officer, who asked to remain anonymous, said the victims were a mother and a son from Battambang province.

Their bodies were sent to Cambodia yesterday via border checkpoint 400, to be handed over to their relatives for a funeral. Their names were not immediately available.

Separately, 64-year-old farmer Hoern Plorng was struck down while cutting bamboo during a storm in O'Chrou district in Banteay Meanchey yesterday, according to district police chief Ee Cheng Sokha.

National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM) spokesman Keo Vy said yesterday that Plorng's death was the 30th lightning fatality in Cambodia since the start of the year.

According to a May 17 NCDM report, lightning this year has killed 30 and injured 35 people, compared to 18 deaths and seven injuries in the first five months of 2015.
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Attention

Second powerful earthquake of the day hits Ecuador: Magnitude 6.8

Gonzalo Solano
abcnews.go.com
Wed, 18 May 2016 18:02 UTC
quake
© El Comercio/AP
Two powerful earthquakes jolted Ecuador on Wednesday, a magnitude 6.7 early morning temblor followed by a 6.8 shake near midday.

The extent of damage from the second quake was not immediately clear, though President Rafael Correa announced on Twitter some areas along the coast had lost power and said schools would be cancelled nationwide as a precaution. The first caused little serious damage.

Both appeared to be aftershocks of a magnitude 7.8 quake a month earlier.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the second quake hit at 11:46 a.m. (12:46 p.m. EDT; 1646 GMT) and was centered along the coast below land about 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of the city of Rosa Zarate.

The earlier quake was centered less than 10 miles (about 10 kilometers) away and struck shortly before 3 a.m. local time. Both are less than 100 miles (155 kilometers) west-northwest of the capital, Quito.
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Attention

Second whale washes up on the beaches of Spain within a week


Spanish News Today
Wed, 18 May 2016 17:38 UTC
Dead whale
Another whale beaches on the beach of Matalascañas in Huelva

Following the discovery last week of a live whale calf on the beach of Punta del Moral in Ayamonte, in the province of Huelva (Andalucía), a second beached whale was found on the Atlantic coast on Tuesday in Matalascañas, around a hundred kilometres further east.

The animal, which measured 9.5 metres in length, was found dead on the beach of Asperillo, and despite the fact that this incident occurred so close to Ayamonte and such a short time afterwards the Department of the Environment in the regional government reports that there is no reason to conclude that there is any relation between the two deaths.

The responsibility of removing the dead whale from the beach lies with the Town Hall of Almonte.
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Hardhat

Evidence proves widespread Texas earthquakes have been triggered by oil and gas operations


Science Daily
Wed, 18 May 2016 17:15 UTC
texas earthquakes Oil and gas operations
© Cliff Frohlich/ University of Texas at AustinFigure showing the location and cumulative number of natural (tectonic) and induced earthquakes in Texas between 1980 and 2010.
Earthquakes triggered by human activity have been happening in Texas since at least 1925, and they have been widespread throughout the state ever since, according to a new historical review of the evidence published online May 18 in Seismological Research Letters.

The earthquakes are caused by oil and gas operations, but the specific production techniques behind these quakes have differed over the decades, according to Cliff Frohlich, the study's lead author and senior research scientist and associate director at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin.

Frohlich said the evidence presented in the SRL paper should lay to rest the idea that there is no substantial proof for human-caused earthquakes in Texas, as some state officials have claimed as recently as 2015.

Comment:

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Attention

Whale carcass found on beach in Egypt


Egyptian Streets
Tue, 17 May 2016 14:36 UTC
Dead whale
© Al-Wafd
Civil Protection personnel pulled out the carcass of a dead whale that had washed ashore on a beach approximately ten kilometers west of Egypt's northwestern city of Marsa Matrouh, privately-owned al-Wafd reported.

The whale, which was first spotted by city locals who then reported it to the authorities, is around 15 meters long and weighs seven tons. An earlier version of this article had cited the general director of the Fisheries Authority in Matrouh as saying the animal is a humpback whale native to the Atlantic Ocean. However, its appearance suggests it is a sperm whale.

Dead whale
© The Cairo PostDead whale on beach at Marsa Matrouh
He went on to say that the whale had come to the warm waters of the Mediterranean to find a mate but was stranded due to the shallow waters outside Marsa Matrouh, which have a depth of no more than ten meters.

In video clips posted on social media, the whale carcass can be seen bobbing back and forth in the salty water, while a number of bystanders watch and take pictures.

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Cloud Lightning

Lightning bolt kills two and critically injures 6 in Tripura, India


india.com
Wed, 18 May 2016 13:58 UTC
Lightning
Two people were killed and six others critically injured when lightning struck them in Tripura on Wednesday, police said.

Basana Debbarma, 42, and Bipul Debbarma, 38, were killed at Champahour in western Tripura. A police official said the victims were in a paddy field when the lightning hit them.

Rains accompanied by high velocity winds and lightning lashed Tripura on Wednesday, damaging crops and uprooting electric poles and trees.

Source: Indo-Asian News Service
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Cloud Lightning

Lightning bolt kills 4 and injures 8 in Jharkhand, India


india.com
Wed, 18 May 2016 13:44 UTC
Lightning
Four persons including three teenagers were killed and eight others injured when they were struck by lighting at Murmu village of Lohardaga district today evening, a senior police officer said.

Four persons including three teenagers were killed and eight others injured when they were struck by lighting at Murmu village of Lohardaga district today evening, a senior police officer said. Four persons including a girl were killed after rain accompanied by storm struck in the evening causing extensive damage, Superintendent of Police, Karthik S said.

All the injured have been sent to a hospital in adjoining Latehar district. The deceased were identified as Sharif Ansari (28), Sunil Singh Kherwar (15), Sanjay Singh Kherwar (13) and Kanti Kumari (12). Of the eight injured, six were minors including two minors and a woman.
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