Earth ChangesS


Snowflake Cold

Frost to grip Eastern United States this weekend

Alex Sosnowski
accuweather.com
Sat, 13 Sep 2014 08:48 UTC
Following a chilly rain during part of the weekend, the coolest air since the spring will settle over the Northeast Sunday night into Monday morning.

Temperatures are forecast to dip into the 50s from Boston and New York City to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. The last time readings were this low was during the first couple of days of June in most cases and in late May in others.

The northern and western suburbs of the Interstate-95 cities will dip well down into the 40s. Cities forecast to drop into the 40s this weekend include Pittsburgh, Buffalo, New York, and Burlington, Vermont.

Some locations from northern Pennsylvania, upstate New York and northwestern New England will dip into the 30s. Provided skies remain clear and winds diminish, there is a risk of scattered frost for a few hours late Sunday night into Monday morning.
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Attention

Seven sperm whales strand on Italian beach - three die


thelocal.it
Fri, 12 Sep 2014 22:13 UTC
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Three sperm whales died on Friday while four were saved after washing up on a beach in central Italy, according to media reports.

The seven sperm whales were found stranded on a beach in the Punta Aderci nature reserve at around 7.00am by surfers in the seaside town of Vasto, Tgcom24 reported.

Three of the whales have died and the other four have now been safely assisted back into the sea by rescuers.
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Attention

Black bear that attacked Virginia man eludes capture

Greta Kreuz
wjla.com
Tue, 26 Aug 2014 20:19 UTC
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© AP Steven Krichbaum holds a bloody rock that he used to strike a bear that attacked him while he was out walking with his dog in the George Washington National Forest last week .
A bear that attacked a Virginia man in the George Washington National Forest in West Virginia has eluded attempts to capture it.

Steven Krichbaum, 59, of Staunton, Va., and his dog, Henry, encountered the female bear and her two cubs while walking in the forest in Hardy County, West Virginia. The mother bear attacked Krichbaum after the dog went after the cubs, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries said in a statement.

"She charges down the bank and bites my thigh and she has my leg in her mouth chewing on me, and I'm on my back screaming," said Krichbaum.
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Attention

Woman injured by sixth grizzly bear attack this summer in Alaska

Laurel Andrews
Alaska Dispatch News
Wed, 13 Aug 2014 16:51 UTC
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Hungry: Thea Thomas was attacked by the brown bear hiking on Heney Ridge Trail (file picture)
Thea Thomas tried to step off the trail as a brown bear sprinted toward her, chasing a friend's dog that she had brought along for a hike in Cordova on Tuesday afternoon. Yet in an instant, Thomas was flat on the ground, face-to-face with an angry bear that bit her repeatedly during the mauling on Heney Ridge Trail.

"By the end, I was thinking, 'I could die here," Thomas said from an Anchorage hospital Wednesday, where she was medevaced after the attack.

Thomas, a 57-year-old commercial fisherman, has lived in the Southcentral Alaska community of Cordova for 32 years, she said. "I hike those trails all the time."

Heney Ridge Trail is a 4.1-mile trail that follows Hartney Bay before climbing up through spruce-hemlock forest, salmon-spawning streams and a mile of steep incline up above the treeline, according to the U.S. Forest Service website.

The trail "is probably the most common place over the 30 years I've lived there that I've seen bears," she said.
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Bizarro Earth

A big chunk of the Sierra Nevada caught fracturing on video

Scott K Johnson
Ars Technica
Wed, 10 Sep 2014 09:15 UTC
Rock Fracturing
© Screen Capture Youtube
If you like geology, you're used to relying on an active imagination. Most geologic processes occur too slowly to see them play out for yourself. Many of the exceptions are dangerous enough that you might not want a front row seat or are rare enough that the odds of being there to witness them are disheartening. Sometimes, though, the Earth throws us a bone - or in this case, a gigantic slab of granite.

One interesting way that rocks weather and crumble apart is called "exfoliation." Like the skin-scrubbing technique, this involves the outermost layers of exposed igneous or metamorphic bedrock sloughing off in a sheet. Over time, this tends to smooth and round the outcrop - Yosemite's Half Dome providing a spectacular example.
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Bizarro Earth

Dead giant squid found by fisherman off Texas coast


Discovery News
Thu, 11 Sep 2014 15:30 UTC
Dead Giant Squid
© KTRK/ABC13A fisherman caught a 200-pound giant squid off Matagorda, Texas.
About 100 miles off the Texas Gulf Coast city of Matagorda, a young fisherman named Michael Belvin and his friends came upon what they thought was an oversized white plastic trash bag floating in the water.

It turned out that Belvin and pals found not garbage remnants but a giant squid -- a rare sight anywhere, let alone in Gulf Coast waters. The squid measured about 10 feet long and weighed 200 pounds.
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Bizarro Earth

Hidden Napa earthquake faults found by NASA radar

Becky Oskin
Live Science
Thu, 11 Sep 2014 16:17 UTC
Napa Fault Lines
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/Google EarthGround deformation from the Aug. 24 earthquake in Napa, California. Each color fringe corresponds to deformation of 4.7 inches (12 centimeters).
The Aug. 24 Napa earthquake woke several small, previously unrecognized Napa Valley faults, according to the first results from a high-flying NASA radar instrument.

The magnitude-6.0 Napa earthquake, the biggest to shake northern California in 25 years, injured 170 people and killed one woman, who died from brain bleeding caused by a falling television. Some 800 homes were damaged, and 103 have been deemed too dangerous to enter.

Most of the damage was centered on the West Napa Fault. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) found that the West Napa Fault moved a total of 18 inches (46 centimeters) along a 9.3-mile-long (15 kilometers) length, USGS scientist Dan Ponti said Sept. 4 at a USGS earthquake seminar.
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Ice Cube

Calgary goes from 25° C to 0 in one day

Jenna Mcmurray
Canoe.ca
Mon, 08 Sep 2014 23:14 UTC
Monday's snowfall was a shock to the system for Calgarians, who were basking in balmy weather just hours earlier.

The temperature plummeted from a summery high of 25 C (77 F) Sunday to the freezing point (32 F) Monday, and several centimetres of snow accumulated in many parts of the city and surrounding areas.

snow car
© ALEXA HUFFMAN/DAILY HERALD TRIBUNE/QMI AGENCYGwenda Jean Pierre brushes snow off of her car during the first snowfall of the season in Grande Prairie, Alta. on Monday, Sept. 8, 2014.
"It's just a shock to the system," Environment Canada meteorologist Bill McMurtry said.

"Many people were out in the sun, enjoying nice warm temperatures (Sunday) and (Monday) people are looking out their windows going, 'It's snowing.'
#snow #Alberta #cbc #yeg #september #global
pic.twitter.com/wvwAmZxQQ4

- Hunter & Olivia (@HunterOlivia) September 8, 2014
"It just shows you how much things can change in 24 hours. The general consensus is it's too early."

The people aren't wrong.

Even from a scientific standpoint, it's strange to have a significant dump of snow this early in the transition to fall.
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Black Cat

Cougar killing of dog prompts warning in Nanaimo, Canada

Chris Bush
Nanaimo News
Tue, 09 Sep 2014 20:37 UTC
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© CHRIS BUSH/The News BulletinRegional parks staff posted warnings at the Witchcraft Lake Trail head after a cougar made off with a Nanaimo woman’s dog while she was hiking in Mount Benson Regional Park Wednesday. Conservation officers are warning people cougars normally inhabit the park and hikers should keep dogs leashed or avoid taking their pets into the woods altogether.
A Nanaimo woman is reeling from seeing her dog taken and killed by a cougar.

Serra Stewart was returning from a hike with her father and three dogs on Witchcraft Lake Trail, in Mount Benson Regional Park, Wednesday at about 11 a.m. On a steep section of the trail, about 20 minutes from the parking lot on Wilkinson Road, a cougar appeared, eyed up the dogs that were off-leash and about seven metres away and snatched Charlie, Stewart's eight-year-old female dog.

"It was just there. The dogs didn't bark or anything," Stewart said in a text message. "It looked at all three and grabbed my girl. She screamed, only for about five to 10 seconds, and it was done. I lost it, threw my backpack and ran down the mountain after it. Of course, what's the point? She was gone and no way I can catch a cougar."

Sgt. Ben York, mid-Island region conservation officer supervisor, said in this case the cougar exhibited natural behaviour, given the circumstances.
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Wolf

Wolf attacks on sheep increasing in the Mercantour National Park, France

Dominic Thurlow-Wood
The Riviera Times
Tue, 09 Sep 2014 20:15 UTC
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Provence & Côte d'Azur: Total number of sheep killed in 2014 rises to 1,700
Further attacks by wolves in the Mercantour National Park this week have left dozens of sheep dead and shepherds feeling threatened. The increase in attacks has led to calls from the Mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, for controls on the wolf population.

According to France3, since the turn of the year there have been 450 wolf attacks in the Mercantour National Park, which have left 1,700 sheep dead. An increased number of recent attacks have been during daylight hours which is a worrying trend for breeders. In July, shepherds told Metronews that their flocks with constantly being "harassed" by the wolves.
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