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Tue, 26 Oct 2021
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Cow

Unseasonal rain and hail kill 2,100 cattle in Nashik, India

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The hailstorms and unseasonal rain have so far claimed lives of more than 2,100 cattle in the Nashik division.

Officials said compensation is likely to be given to the owners of 581 cattle only.

The heavy rain that lashed Nashik division, including Nashik, Jalgaon, Dhule, Nandurbar and Jalgaon districts, claimed the lives of 2,139 cattle that included 117 big animals - cow or buffalo and 2,022 small animals- sheep, goat, calf, donkeys. The proposal to compensate for the lost cattle is being made.

"The damage is tremendous. The reports and panchanamas so far show 2,139 cattle have died because of lighting or hailstorms. The hails were very big in size and killed the animals almost instantly. There was hardly any chance for the farmers to take care of their animals," the officer from revenue division of Nashik said.

Ice Cube

Hail storm dumps metre of ice on Eritrean capital

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A freak rain storm has dumped as much as 1m (3ft) of hail on Asmara, capital of Eritrea, in what appears to be the heaviest rainfall ever recorded there.

This week's storm lasted just 90 minutes, but afterwards parts of the city were completely blocked by ice, government-run newspaper Hadas Eritrea reports. Footage on local television shows streets running with water, and vehicles buried under the hail.

Comment: Another "rare" hailstorm hit Dubai on the same day.


Magnet

6.2 earthquake near Paracas, Peru

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© USGS
USGS earthquake location map.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says a strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.2 has struck Peru at at 08:59:20 GMT on Saturday.

The epicentre, with a shallow depth of 9.85 km, was initially determined to be at 14.0563 degrees south latitude and 76.2263 degrees west longtitude.

It was located at 21km south southeast of Paracas, Peru.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

According to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center no tsunami warning, watch or advisory is in effect.

According to the USGS, earthquakes in Peru usually occur as thrust-faulting on or near the thrust-interface at the boundary between the South America plate and the subducting Nazca plate. The Nazca plate subducts beneath the South America plate at the Peru-Chile trench offshore of western South America, and the thrust interface between the two plates dips east-northeast beneath the South American continent.

Bad Guys

USGS: Magnitude 4.4 - 9km NNW of Westwood, California

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© USGS
Event Time
  1. 2014-03-17 13:25:36 UTC
  2. 2014-03-17 06:25:36 UTC-07:00 at epicenter
  3. 2014-03-17 14:25:36 UTC+01:00 system time
Location

34.135°N 118.486°W depth=9.9km (6.1mi)

Nearby Cities
  1. 9km (6mi) NNW of Westwood, California
  2. 10km (6mi) NW of Beverly Hills, California
  3. 12km (7mi) W of Universal City, California
  4. 12km (7mi) N of Santa Monica, California
  5. 562km (349mi) SSE of Sacramento, California

Bizarro Earth

USGS: Earthquake Magnitude 6.2 - 74km WNW of Iquique, Chile

Iquique Quake_170314
© USGS
Event Time
2014-03-17 05:11:34 UTC
2014-03-17 00:11:34 UTC-05:00 at epicenter

Location
20.049°S 70.829°W depth=10.6km (6.6mi)

Nearby Cities
74km (46mi) WNW of Iquique, Chile
182km (113mi) SSW of Arica, Chile
234km (145mi) SSW of Tacna, Peru
235km (146mi) NNW of Tocopilla, Chile
484km (301mi) SW of La Paz, Bolivia

Technical Details

Attention

7.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of northern Chile

A magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the Pacific coast of Chile at a depth of 20.5 miles (32 km), the U.S. Geological Survey said on Sunday.

The quake was centered 44 miles (70 km) northwest of Iquique, in northern Chile, the USGS said.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

Cloud Precipitation

Not done yet: another snowstorm set to sweep from St. Louis to DC

Spring officially starts on Thursday, but Mother Nature will bring another blast of winter weather from Missouri to Delaware before the seasons change.

A winter full of nasty snow and ice will not end quietly as a gathering storm slides east and collides with a fresh cold air mass on Sunday into Monday.

Across the South, the focus will be on severe weather. Farther north, a wintry mess will quickly unfold into Monday.

As yet another push of cold air drives southward across the Midwest and Great Lakes, moisture will surge northward. A swath of snow and sleet is expected to develop from Missouri eastward along the Ohio River on Sunday.

While the precipitation may start as a brief period of rain, the arrival of cold air should allow the majority of the precipitation to fall as snow or sleet in cities such as Springfield and St. Louis, Mo., Louisville, Ky., and Cincinnati, Ohio.
snowstorm march 2014
© AccuWeather.com
East of the Appalachians, the most treacherous conditions are expected on Sunday night through the morning commute on Monday as temperatures fall below freezing.

Snow and ice should extend along the Ohio River and then across the Mason-Dixon Line by Monday morning and even reach places as far south as the North Carolina/Virginia border.

Most places in this band can expect enough snow to shovel with some spots in the mountains of West Virginia and Virginia picking up around a half foot of fresh snow.

Since much of the snow is forecast to fall at night in locations such as Baltimore, Md., Washington, D.C., and Charleston, W.Va., roads can quickly become slick and snow covered. Conditions for Monday morning's commute will be poor.

Question

Yet another case of outgassing: Sniffing out the mysterious stench kicking up a stink in Sutton Coldfield, Great Barr and Walsall

A rather whiffy mystery surrounds a pervading pong hanging over Sutton Coldfield, Great Barr and Walsall.

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What did you think of the pong which seemed to be in the air over Sutton Coldfield, Great Barr and Walsall?
The strange stench started nostrils twitching last afternoon on Friday and sparked a volley of tweets ranging from the curious to - some might say - the downright offensive.

No official explanation has been given for the smell, although a similar foul "farmyard" waft detected in 2008 was blamed on strong easterly winds wafting it from across the Channel.

Back then, it was dubbed the "Euro-whiff" by the Met Office - and could it now be back?

Whatever the cause, Twitter has been alive with people kicking up a stink across Walsall, Sutton and Great Barr.

Question

Final death toll from massive Harlem explosion: 8 - Cause remains unknown, but investigators suspect natural outgassing after discovering unusually high levels of methane in soil

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© NY Times/Robert Stolarik
Emergency crews continued on Friday to work at the site of the fatal explosion in East Harlem that destroyed two buildings. Nearly 75 percent of the debris has been removed, officials said.
After an eighth body was extricated from the rubble of two buildings in East Harlem that were leveled by an explosion, fire and safety officials began on Friday narrowing in on what caused the blast.

With all of those missing now accounted for, investigators revealed that combustible levels of gas had been detected underground near the site on Park Avenue, a few hours after the explosion on Wednesday morning. Crews from Consolidated Edison drilled 50 holes in the ground and, in five of them, found air containing from 5 percent to 20 percent methane, said Robert Sumwalt, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board.

"That's a pretty good concentration of natural gas," said Mr. Sumwalt, whose agency is investigating the explosion, which also injured roughly 60 people. "It further leads to our hypothesis that this may well have been a natural gas leak."

Normally, no methane would be found in New York City's soil, he said.

The source of any leak, however, was still unknown.

Comment: Video footage of the blast:




Cloud Lightning

Incredibly rare tornado over lake Kariba, Africa

It was late afternoon on Lake Kariba when the thunderclouds started forming like ominous grey monsters on the horizon.
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© Roger de la Harpe, Matusadona
The regals fish eagle posing in front of the distant tornado.
We were photographing a fish eagle perched on a dead stump, the amazing colours of the bird glowing in the soft afternoon light over Matusadona National Park in Zimbabwe. Beyond the fish eagle, the storm grew darker and we could see the rain coming down over the lake in torrents.

Suddenly, what seemed like a large tornado began to form at the base of the clouds, growing bigger and bigger as it reached the water. Roger de la Harpe was lucky enough to capture this sighting with amazing skill, the regal fish eagle providing the context and foreground of this rare African phenomenon.