Two dolphins were found early Monday, July 6, on the beach at San Simeon Cove.

The adult marine mammal was dead when it was spotted under the San Simeon Pier. The baby dolphin, found somewhat north of that, died as trained rescuers frantically tried to keep it alive, even though they knew the odds were heavily stacked against that effort being successful.

It's not known yet whether the two short-beak common dolphins were together, perhaps as mother and her about 3-foot-long baby.

"It was heartbreaking, so sad" to hear the dying baby calling out, said Carolyn Skinder, program coordinator for the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary's southern region. She was one of those called for the rescue effort.

Officials say they don't yet know what killed the animals.

Skinder said the carcasses have been shipped to Sausalito, where scientists will do necropsies (the animal equivalent of an autopsy). They hope to determine whether the two dolphins were related, and what may have killed them.

Experts are investigating the death of a 12-foot minke (MIHNK'-ee) whale found on a Long Island beach.

Rob DiGiovanni of the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation says the whale was found Wednesday night at Robert Moses State Park.

He says the adult male appears to be about 3 years old. The whale appeared to have shark bites, but he says that may have happened after it died.

A necropsy is being performed to determine the cause of death.

DiGiovanni says minke whales are common in the waters off Long Island.

In recent weeks, a humpback and a True's beaked whale have also washed up on Long Island beaches.

Source: The Associated Press.

Temperatures will drop to freezing on much of Australia's east coast this weekend in what could be the region's bitterest cold snap in five years.

Strong cold winds, rain, snow and hail were expected to batter the nation's south-east for days.

Sydneysiders could expect an average maximum temperature of 59F (15C) for four days - a two year record.

And temperatures across the region were expected to drop three to seven degrees below average for up to five days, according to Weatherzone.

The NSW Bureau of Meteorology warned of a burst of cold weather caused by a series of cold fronts set to move through the state on Friday and continue over the weekend.

Snow was expected at higher elevations overnight on Thursday.

Toronto police are warning people to avoid a section of Eglinton Avenue West where a large sinkhole has opened up.

Police said the six-metre long sinkhole — large enough to swallow a car — opened up on Eglinton Avenue West, between Keele Street and Richardson Avenue.

Anne Marie Aikins, a spokeswoman for Metrolinx, said construction on the Eglinton Crosstown LRT line was not responsible for the sinkhole.

"As soon as we heard about the issue this morning we sent our team to the site and they determined it's unrelated to our construction and hasn't impacted their work on the Crosstown," Aikins wrote in an email to CBC News.

With the dollar-led global economy on the verge of systemic collapse, increasing chaos in the political and social spheres is mirrored by climate chaos. In June 2015, thousands of wildfires broke out across western North America, with the entire continent on course for its fieriest season in recorded history. June is the peak of tornado season in the US, but the intensity of the storms that brought them was stunning. The worst death toll from a tornado occurred in central China, where a waterspout capsized a cruise ship on the Yangtze River.

The record May rainfall in Texas and Louisiana... just kept falling out of the sky last month, with the Red River reaching its highest level in 70 years. Parts of southern China also saw their worst flooding in over 70 years. Localized flash-flooding struck the world over, not least in Accra, capital of Ghana, where hundreds were killed when a gas station exploded. Tbilisi, Georgia, was similarly impacted when a 'wall of water' washed through, killing 20 people and half the city zoo's animals. Other capitals inundated in deluges last month include Ankara, Bangkok, and Madrid, while Oman saw 5 years' worth of rain... in a single day.

Intense monsoon rains last month also killed thousands of wild animals at a sanctuary in India, while thousands of pigs drowned in southern China's floods. Animal die-offs included millions of crabs on the Californian coast, and hundreds of thousands of antelope in Kazakhstan. The heatwave that killed thousands in India in May moved into Pakistan last month, where it killed some 1,200 people. In normally hot, dry climates, there were yet more bizarre scenes of inches - and sometimes FEET - of hail trapping cars on roads. While Alaska baked in record hot temperatures, Norway had five times more snow cover than normal for June.

In addition to auroras and noctilucent clouds being seen much further south than usual, strange objects or lights in the sky were caught on camera, including three objects leaving Earth's atmosphere. Strong seismic activity came in the form of another powerful eruption of Indonesia's Mount Sinabung, while Malaysia was hit with its strongest earthquake since 1976. There is also incredible footage of enormous sinkholes opening up across the US in June, swallowing moving cars, roads, driveways, backyards, and golf greens. And don't miss the eruption of multiple methane-infused mud geysers on another golf course in Canada!

There is still a lot of sea ice in Hudson Bay, Foxe Basin, Davis Strait and Baffin Bay this week - more than average for this date - with slightly less than average in the Beaufort Sea. Past behaviour of Western and Southern Hudson Bay polar bears suggests the mean date that bears come ashore for the summer this year will be later than average due to the plentiful ice available, regardless of when polar bear biologists decide that "breakup" has occurred.

Hudson Bay, with almost 50% of the bay still covered in ice, has the third highest coverage this week since 1992 (after 2009 and 2004); Davis Strait has the highest coverage since 1992; and Foxe Basin and Baffin Bay have the highest coverage since 1998. For this week, the Beaufort Sea this week has the second highest coverage since 2006 (after 2013), and more ice than was present in 1971, 1982, 1987, 1988 and 1998 - among others.

Although data of the losses caused by the snowstorm last weekend are still being consolidated, regional deputy manager and head of the Civil Defense Operations Center Regional Emergency (COER), German Chaiña Quispe gave some preliminary scope.

He said that eight provinces received snowfall, with the hardest hit being San Antonio de Putina, Carabaya and Sandia.

Snow killed more than two thousand alpacas in Puno, while more than 2000 families and 73 thousand animals were harmed in the town of Ananea.

He added that the other affected districts are Quilcapunyo, Putina and Sina.

Thanks to Argiris Diamantis for this link

Rain in Albuquerque from 6 a.m. Monday to 6 a.m. Tuesday set a 24-hour record for the city, breaking a standard that dates to 1893 and positioning Albuquerque nicely for a wetter-than-average monsoon season.

"Pretty much all the climate indicators are calling for an average to above-average monsoon season," Brian Guyer, meteorologist with the Albuquerque office of the National Weather Service, said Tuesday.

In the first week, we've already had 60 percent of an average monsoon season, he said, so "I'm guessing we are headed to above average."

Albuquerque's official 24-hour rainfall total on Monday and Tuesday was 2.24 inches, besting the city's previous 24-hour total of 2.08 inches, set on Sept. 28, 1893.

That brings Albuquerque's total rain for the first week of this month to well over 2 inches. The average July rain total for Albuquerque is 1.5 inches, and the city's record total for the month is 4.9 inches, set in 1930. As of 6 p.m. Tuesday, Albuquerque's total rainfall for the year was 6.60 inches, 3.14 inches above normal.

Monsoon season runs from July 1 through September 30. Guyer said that Albuquerque's average rainfall during the period is 3.79 inches and that the city got more than 8 inches of rain in its wettest monsoon seasons, in 1988 and 2006. By contrast, Guyer said, Albuquerque's driest monsoon season was in 1953, when there was only 1.1 inches of rain.

"Typically, the wettest weeks of the monsoon season are the last week of July and the first week in August," Guyer said.

Last week a tourist on a whale-watching trip in Faxaflói, just outside Reykjavík, was attempting to photograph a humpback whale when a bird interrupted the shot.

Upon further inspection, the bird was discovered to be an albatross, and likely an Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross, a rare sight so far north.

Bird-watching enthusiast Mike King shared the photo, taken by his nephew Jared Mein, on Twitter, where it was noticed by Birding Iceland.

"Albatrosses are rarely found in the Atlantic region of the northern hemisphere. The species that live in the Atlantic are all native to the southern hemisphere, and some are known to go into the northern hemisphere of the Pacific Ocean. So this is a bird far outside of its normal territory," ornithologist Gunnar Þór Hallgrímsson told RÚV.

A powerful tornado ripped through the Mira community in northeastern Italy, a couple of miles west of Venice, near the Adriatic Sea. Unaccustomed to the phenomenon, the Italians were shocked, disconcerted and alarmed by the event.

A video posted on Facebook by Carlotta Menegazzo shows a classic cone-shaped whirlwind twisting across the town of 40,000 citizens, sucking up everything it can, damaging houses and businesses.


An eyewitness in a car made a video of the scene as debris lashed against the vehicle. The passengers in the car are arguing with the driver telling him he should drive away and get out of the tornado's path. But then they approach too close and the voices in the video start to become somewhat hysterical.