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Weird Weather Rains Seaweed Over Gloucestershire Village


The Telegraph, UK
Thu, 09 Aug 2012 14:01 UTC
Seaweed Rain
© SWNS
Naomi Sheldon with some of the seaweed deposited in the front garden of her neighbour's house in Berkeley, Gloucestershire.
They were stunned to find their homes, gardens and cars littered with the smelly marine algae after a stormy weather spout swept up the debris from a beach 20 miles away.

Weather experts believe the seaweed was picked up from Clevedon Beach in North Somerset by a twister during freak weather conditions on the coast.

It was then carried through the air - before being deposited on the quiet street in Berkeley, near Cheltenham, Glos.

Stunned engineer Dr Richard Overton, 55, and his wife Kay, collected an entire bucket full of the green slime from their front garden.

He said: "I looked out of the window after a very big storm finished and to my amazement there were lots of flakes of seaweed scattered over the garden.

"I've heard stories of fish being picked up and dumped by storms but never seaweed. I was just so surprised."

Other residents on 'The Common', an up-market lane which overlooks acres of fields, also found seaweed in their gardens.
      Read More...
Arrow Down

Giant sinkholes in Brooklyn worry residents

Ellyn Marks
Pix 11
Thu, 09 Aug 2012 06:24 UTC

It's not the sky that's falling, but the earth opening up in a couple of spots in Bay Ridge, that has some of its residents rattled.

Mimi Carroll lives near the giant sinkhole on 79th Street that came close to swallowing a car last Wednesday.

"Thank God there wasn't a car going down the street at the time," she said. "So then it's not just damage to the street, and property, it's people."

But the mother of all sinkholes in the neighborhood was the cave-in at 92nd Street and Third Avenue at the end of June. Workers have yet to reach the damaged portion of the sewer main 70 feet below street level. It's expected to be weeks before the work is completed and the street reopened.

"We have to deal with keeping the hole structurally sound. We have to deal with buildings around us being shaken, and we have a lot of concerns from gas lines to electric," said construction worker George Aragona.
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Bizarro Earth

Update: Los Angeles rattled by two 4.5 magnitude earthquakes within 10 hours

Steve Gorman
Reuters
Wed, 08 Aug 2012 14:01 UTC
Image
© USGS
A magnitude 4.5 earthquake struck near the Southern California town of Yorba Linda for the second time in just over 10 hours on Wednesday, rattling the Los Angeles area, but no damage or injuries were immediately reported. The latest quake was recorded shortly after 9:30 a.m. (12:30 p.m. EDT) 2 miles (3 km) northeast of Yorba Linda, an affluent Orange County community southeast of Los Angeles that was the birthplace of the late former President Richard Nixon and houses his presidential library and museum.

It was centered about 5.5 miles (9 km) beneath the surface. The earlier temblor occurred at about 9:20 p.m. on Tuesday in about the same area at about the same depth, and was followed by more than a dozen smaller aftershocks overnight, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The two 4.5-magnitude quakes were both felt as far away as downtown Los Angeles, about 35 miles (56 km) away, where rattling and rumbling was felt for several seconds at a time.

USGS Data
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Bizarro Earth

USGS: Earthquake Magnitude 5.6 - Alaska Peninsula


US Geological Survey
Wed, 08 Aug 2012 13:19 UTC
Image
© USGS
Date-Time
Wednesday, August 08, 2012 at 14:05:19 UTC
Wednesday, August 08, 2012 at 06:05:19 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location
54.980°N, 161.222°W
Depth
55.5 km (34.5 miles)
Region
ALASKA PENINSULA

Distances
71 km (44 miles) SW of Sand Point, Alaska
972 km (603 miles) SW of Anchorage, Alaska
1006 km (625 miles) SW of Knik-Fairview, Alaska
1338 km (831 miles) SW of College, Alaska
      Read More...
Alarm Clock

4.4 Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Greater Los Angeles area, subsequent aftershocks


Washingtonpost.com
Wed, 08 Aug 2012 11:36 UTC
Image
© USGS
There are no reports of damage from a late-night moderate earthquake widely felt in Southern California. The U.S. Geological Survey says the magnitude-4.4 quake struck at 11:23 p.m. Tuesday and was centered two miles east of Yorba Linda in northern Orange County.

There was a magnitude-2.7 aftershock about a minute later. The quake was felt throughout the Los Angeles area, including the San Fernando Valley some 50 miles from the epicenter. Los Angeles firefighters found no damage after a citywide assessment completed early Wednesday. The epicenter is about 35 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

USGS data
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Bulb

Climate change and the Tooth Fairy

Sam Outcalt
Daily Camera
Mon, 06 Aug 2012 05:46 UTC
Image
Within Boulder County there is a strong and widespread belief that the current extreme weather events are produced by anthropogenic global warming. Without considering the scientific merits of this theory or religion a simple consideration of the implications of its validity might be instructive.

If true, the vast expenditure of global, national, state, county and municipal funds to attenuate its effects have failed.

If false, the current climate shift is the result of natural processes over which mankind has no control.

These options suggest that the current efforts to regulate the global climate are either ineffective or misdirected.

I doubt that this short note will diminish the strongly held belief within the county that these efforts are effective. Redirection of some funds spent in Boulder County on the study and regulation of the Earth's climate might be better spent on an Annual Tooth Fairy Festival, as the Tooth Fairy is a much cheaper abstraction based on similar logic.

The remainder of the funding should be terminated to aid in balancing the city, county, state and federal budgets.
      Read More...
Cloud Lightning

Two dead as storms wreck havoc in Austria and northern Italy


Agence France Presse
Sun, 05 Aug 2012 02:52 UTC
Storms wreaked havoc in Austria and northern Italy over the weekend, causing landslides that killed two people, authorities said Sunday.

An 84-year-old woman was killed when a landslide hit a farm in Afens, on the Italian side of the border with Austria.

In nearby Tulfer, the body of another woman who had been declared missing after her house was struck by a mud flow, was uncovered on Sunday morning.

Major storms lashed much of Austria and German-speaking northern Italy late Saturday, causing flooding and power cuts, and disrupting rail and road connections.

About 1,000 homes were without electricity Sunday morning in the Virgental valley in southern Austria.
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Details of New Zealand Eruption Emerge


OurAmazingPlanet
Tue, 07 Aug 2012 12:54 UTC
Tongariro Volcano
© Don Swanson, 1984 (U.S. Geological Survey)
The snow-capped Ngauruhoe cone of New Zealand's Mount Tongariro volcano is one of the youngest and more active parts of the volcano.
New Zealand's Mount Tongariro volcano, located in the central part of the North Island, erupted at 11:50 p.m. local time Monday night (Aug. 6).

Details were slow to emerge because of the lateness of the eruption and cloudy weather conditions that blocked some monitoring efforts, but as daylight broke, scientists were able to shed more light on what happened.

Michael Rosenberg, the duty volcanologist at GeoNet (run by New Zealand's GNS Science and the Earthquake Comission), wrote that the eruption at the Te Māri craters was a short-lived phreatic one. Phreatic eruptions are stream-driven eruptions that happen when water beneath or above the ground is heated up, potentially causing it to boil and "flash to steam," creating an explosion, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. These eruptions can send ash and rocks flying, which this eruption seemed to do.
      Read More...
Igloo

Johannesburg Marvels at Rare Snowfall


Agence France-Presse
Tue, 07 Aug 2012 15:41 UTC
Snow in JoBurg
© News24
South Africans have taken to social networks sharing pictures of snow falling in Joburg and surrounding areas. Share your snow photos with us.
Snow flurries blew through Johannesburg on Tuesday, dusting the city in white as residents poured into the streets to watch the snowflakes fall.

"It's amazing, Merry Christmas!" said Roger Gibbs, driving through a leafy suburb where the trees were frosted in white.

Snow falls annually in the mountains of South Africa and Lesotho, which even hosts a ski resort, but the high plains around Johannesburg haven't seen snow in five years.

The snowfall swept north across Johannesburg, coating southern neighbourhoods in the early morning and then moving toward the Sandton and Pretoria.

"Amazing! Never happened in my life," said Mizundile Eseu, 23, a security guard.

Authorities urged motorists to take care on the roads, with few drivers used to travelling on snowy streets, but no accidents had been reported by midday.
      Read More...
Info

Amazing Jumping Oak Gall Swarm Surprises Davis Neighborhood


iPscell.com
Mon, 06 Aug 2012 15:02 UTC
I was walking my dog Elvis with my daughter Julie on Sunday and as we have in the past, we came across something very science-y.

At the dog park where Elvis likes to play and hunt for rodents in the nearby bushes, there were millions (literally) of tiny sphere-like objects bouncing around on the ground.

Jumping Jehoshaphat!


The tiny balls bouncing all around us was like something out of a movie or invasion of the body snatchers.

These poppy seed-sized balls came in orange, yellow, and white versions. They were jumping around like crazy, collectively making an impressive "whoosh" sound.

What in the world? Others at the dog park were mystified too.

I've never seen anything like. No one had including people who had lived in Davis for decades.

Julie and I were puzzled. A fellow dog walker went home and got her husband, who is an entomologist. He took some to study, but off hand did not know what they were.

I speculated to Julie that this little bouncing balls were like some miniaturized form of Mexican jumping bean.
      Read More...
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