Look at that!

Fire emerges from the frozen lake Baikal in Siberia.

The pearl of Asia is not only known for its emerald green and strange sounds of its ice. Nope! It also contains huge amount of methane that can burn or more dramatic could suddenly explode!

Oklahoma has been placed under a national fire advisory as much of the state struggles with unrelenting drought and tinder-dry vegetation capable of igniting and quickly spreading out of control, state forestry officials said Wednesday.

The rare advisory -- and the first for Oklahoma - issued by the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, is in effect for two weeks and warns residents and fire departments to prepare for potentially severe wildfires.

The national center also cautioned that areas in the neighboring states of Texas, Colorado, New Mexico and Kansas could be ripe for similar extreme wildfires through February. While only two of Oklahoma's 77 counties are currently under a burn ban, Oklahoma Forestry Services officials cautioned residents Wednesday to "avoid doing anything that can cause a spark."

The ingredients for a potentially disastrous fire outbreak are already in place in the mounds of accumulated limbs, dry brush, leaves and needles from years of ice storms and tornadoes that carpet forest floors.

"The situation we're in with the state of our fuels, drought, dryness of fields, fires become more resistant to control under these conditions," said Mark Goeller, the forestry services fire management chief. "Pine needles, logs, big-diameter woody material ... the things from these natural disasters we've experienced throughout the state, all those fuels are critically dry."

One person was killed and five others injured after they were struck by lightning outside a shop in Wartburg, KwaZulu-Natal, paramedic services said on Thursday.

ER24 spokesperson Russel Meiring said paramedics were called to the scene by local authorities.

Meiring said paramedics found five people sitting under a tree with onlookers gathered nearby.

Meiring said one of the men, believed to be in his late 20's, had sustained numerous injuries and showed no signs of life.

Police are looking to trace the owner of the animal that mauled the toddler in Fife.

A toddler has been left with serious facial injuries after being mauled by a dog.

The two-year-old girl was standing with her mother and a family friend when the Staffordshire pitbull terrier-type dog pounced on her.

She suffered injuries to her eyes and mouth in the attack in Fife.

Police Scotland confirmed the girl was taken to hospital after the incident in a car park at Kirkside Court, Leven.

Researchers in Norway were in for a shock when they discovered more than 30 plastic bags and other plastic waste inside the stomach of a whale.

The whale, which had been put down by wardens off the coast of western Norway, had clearly consumed a huge amount of non-biodegradable waste.

Despite the grisly findings, researchers say that the plastics found in the whale are 'not surprising', as the amount of waste in the seas continues to grow.

A juvenile humpback whale was found dead and floating Thursday near the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, according to Virginia Aquarium spokesman Matt Klepeisz.

The whale was spotted at 7:30 a.m. at the north island of the HRBT, and the Army Corps of Engineers towed it to Craney Island.

The aquarium's Stranding Response Team was dispatched to help, Klepeisz said.

Virginia Aquarium Stranding Response now investigating. Officials say the whale was found near HRBT. #13NewsNow pic.twitter.com/MXHESNDErG

— Steven Graves (@13StevenGraves) February 2, 2017

It's nothing compared to D.C.'s record-warm December in 2015 — when the daffodils were blooming and people wore short-sleeve T-shirts on Christmas — but so far, this month has been hovering in uncharted territory, as well.

It's not a sexy record, but it's a significant one. As of Friday morning, the city has had 16 days above 32 degrees, which is the longest span of time it's been above freezing in January since records began in D.C. in 1872.


January is supposed to be the coldest time of the year, but the weird-weather spell is yet another warm milestone for the capital, all of which have occurred since 2010.

So far, this January has an average temperature of 41.9 degrees, which is the second-warmest January since 2000 and the 12th-warmest overall.

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow on Thursday morning, predicting six more weeks of winter during Groundhog Day festivities at Gobbler's Knob, a small hill just outside Phil's hometown.

Members of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club's Inner Circle revealed Phil's forecast by poem, as is tradition.

"It's mighty cold weather, you've been braving," this year's verse read. "Is it more winter or is it spring that you're craving? Since you've been up all night and starting to tottle, I, Punxsutawney Phil, shall not dawdle," the proclamation read. "My faithful followers, I could clearly see a beautiful, perfect shadow of me. Six more weeks of winter, it shall be!"

Records dating to 1887 show Phil predicting more winter 102 times while forecasting an early spring just 18 times — including last year, the AP reports. There are no records for the remaining years.

From as far back as 2008, video recordings of strange and eerie sounds have been appearing on the internet. They occasionally garner a mention in the media but are generally ignored or explained away as a 'hoax', the result of "secret government weapons", the "activation of HAARP" or "HAARP-like technologies", the by-product of "top secret construction work on underground bases", or "aliens", etc., etc.

Variously described as groaning, metallic, clashing, clanging and trumpet-like, these (usually loud and pronounced) noises seem to come from the sky but generally reverberate in such a way that listeners are unable to make out from which general direction they come.

These 'strange sky sounds' have been observed all over the globe and first really caught the public's attention in 2011, when a spate of events sparked such widespread interest that significant effort was made to discredit the phenomenon through the dissemination of fake recordings.

Some, certainly, are hoaxes. That's human nature; we mock that which we do not understand. But the sheer proliferation of 'strange sound events' in recent years, the similarities (with minor differences) between them, and the diversity of the locations they've been recorded in (sometimes more than once), speaks to there being a global reality to this phenomenon. In the course of tracking and reporting these events on SOTT, we've noticed that they tend to come in waves; there can be 'silence' for some time, then 4 or 5 'strange sounds' events occur in disparate locations (perhaps within the same region or continent) in the time span of a week or fortnight. And, as best we can tell, this trend seems to be increasing.

Here is our 'best of' strange sounds summary video, comprising some events from around the world in 2016. Please excuse the occasional foul language - muting or otherwise distorting it would have interfered with the strange sounds themselves. Besides, hearing them curse and swear, you get a real sense of the observers' astonishment!

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, some carpenters working at Jack Delehanty's home in Tupper Lake put out on the ice some entrails and egg skeins from walleyes they had caught. The next day Jack noticed an unfamiliar bird picking at the walleye eggs. Jack consulted with his sister, Alex, and their mother, Charlcie Delehanty, a longtime birder, and they were also puzzled. Alex then sent me pictures and video they had taken to see if I could identify the bird. That night, I realized it was a first-year Ross's gull, an incredibly rare vagrant from the Arctic.

Thanks to the internet, my news of the Ross's gull reached the birding community within hours, and hundreds of birders from all over the country and Canada soon flocked to Tupper Lake (and Jack's home!) to see the bird, which has been hanging out much of the time near the Tupper Lake boat launch and the causeway near the bridge over the Raquette River. This bird has provided a small but significant economic boost to the Tupper Lake community as hundreds of visiting birders have bought food and gas and occasionally spent the night. A similar appearance of this species in Newburyport, Massachusetts attracted thousands of birders from around the country.