Blasting out of the Pacific, the third and most powerful "Pineapple Express" storm of the week swept over the Bay Area Sunday morning, dumping heavy rain on a region already soaked to the roots and reeling from power outages and flooding. "It's a mess," said CHP Officer James Evans. "We've got flooding everywhere."

Animals, so sensitive they suck their thumbs if upset, suffer population crash

While Australia's northern hairy-nosed wombat may be one of the world's most endangered mammals, its southern cousin has, by comparison, thrived. But now a food shortage - and an invasion of toxic plants - has killed thousands of southern wombats, prompting fears of a local extinction.

Nicknamed the "bulldozer of the bush" because of its stocky build and ability to survive in an arid landscape, the southern hairy-nosed wombat is in a parlous state in the Murrayland region of South Australia, one of its main population areas. Many animals are emaciated, and have also lost their coats, making them susceptible to skin diseases and sunburn. Brigitte Stevens, who runs the Wombat Awareness Organisation, has been conducting food drops in the area. "We're up there four or five times a week, and we see hundreds of dead wombats every time," she said. "There's just nothing for them to eat. They're literally starving to death."

One of Japan's longest tunnels has collapsed, trapping vehicles amid reports that at least five people have died.

Sections of concrete fell from the ceiling of the Sasago tunnel, 50 miles west of Tokyo, crushing cars and blocking the road with debris, report Sky News.

The tunnel began to cave at 08:00 local time (23:00 GMT Saturday), report the BBC. A fire is believed to have broken out and charred bodies have been pulled from the mouth of the tunnel by rescue workers.

Event Time
2012-12-02 00:54:23 UTC
2012-12-02 11:54:23 UTC+11:00 at epicenter

Location
17.012°S 167.626°E depth=34.1km (21.2mi)

Nearby Cities
101km (63mi) SSE of Lakatoro, Vanuatu
108km (67mi) NW of Port-Vila, Vanuatu
170km (106mi) SSE of Luganville, Vanuatu
433km (269mi) N of We, New Caledonia
581km (361mi) NNE of Dumbea, New Caledonia

Technical Details

The second in a series of storms slammed Northern California on Friday as heavy rain and strong winds knocked out power, tied up traffic and caused flooding along some stretches.

The weather also may be behind the death of a Pacific Gas & Electric worker in West Sacramento who was killed after his truck crashed into a traffic signal pole during the stormy weather.

Flights were delayed at San Francisco's airport, and in the city's affluent Pacific Heights neighborhood, traffic was blocked for hours after a large tree crashed down, smashing a car and obstructing a busy street.

A flash flood watch will remain in effect for most of the San Francisco Bay Area extending to the Santa Cruz Mountains throughout the weekend. A constant barrage of downpours could lead to standing water and overflowing drains, said Diana Henderson, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Monterey.

We've been flooded with emails ever since we published a police log post about several recent reports of unexplained 'explosion noises' in Salem.

Ever since we published a police log post entitled "Explosions Heard on Bridge Street" last week, we've received more than a dozen emails from Salem residents who are interested in finding out what's causing the unusual late-night noises.

At 12:22 a.m., on Monday, Nov. 19, local police officers responded to multiple reports of loud explosions in the area of Bridge Street. A search of the area, however, didn't reveal the source of the alleged sounds, according to the following morning's police log.

Some local residents even emailed in other information, including other dates when they swear they heard similar unexplained booming sounds echoing across the city.

One even suggested that there could be some correlation between that earthquake in Maine in October and the booming noises heard just beforehand in Salem. (A minor 2.1 earthquake was recorded in Belfast, Maine, on Friday night.)

Here's some of the comments our readers have posted about the recent noises:

Jared Robinson Yeah. The explosions on bridge st were wicked loud. There were like 4-5 loud ones.

Carolyn Costain Hey Jared, I hope, Peabody and Salem can find and explanation for the explosions and I hope they "are" just transformers. I do a lot of research and people have described and heard the same kind of unexplained explosions as we heard ,usually before an earthquake. I have been looking at the earthquake live maps but see no activity, " yet" when we felt that quake a few months ago, there were reports of the same kind of explosions heard and within only a few short days the quake struck. I hope both Salem and Peabody find the "actual source" and that its not the earth shifting in our area?

Albuquerque, N.M. - Wildlife managers at one of the nation's premiere bird-watching spots have a mystery on their hands. A strange-looking bird with dark plumage showed up at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge earlier this month to join the tens of thousands of cranes and geese that spend the winter in the Rio Grande Valley.

The problem: No one knows exactly what kind of bird it is.

The debate has spread from the refuge's fields and wetlands onto Facebook, where guesses have ranged from some kind of mutant to a Thanksgiving turkey disguised as a crane for self-preservation. Birding experts from New York to California continued studying photographs of the bird Thursday, spurring even more theories.

The refuge posted a photograph of the bird on its Facebook page this week, sparking dozens of comments. Aside from the disguised turkey and oil-slicked bird theories, some suggested it could be a hybridization between a crane and an emu or a trumpeter, which are native to South America.

It could be a sandhill crane that has come down with a feather-staining fungal infection. Or maybe he - or she - has a genetic disorder that results in too much melanin production.

"It's different. It's got to be a hybrid-cross more than likely, but what, we don't know," Refuge Manager Aaron Mize told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

Members of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Team Sapsucker - known as some of the best birders anywhere, they hold the U.S. record for finding the most bird species in 24 hours - say it's a sandhill crane. "We can't say why it's colored so differently, but we can be certain about species anyway," said Pat Leonard, a spokesman for the Cornell lab.

Other bird-watchers have reported seeing birds with similar coloring in wintering areas in California and along the Platte River in Nebraska. Some experts have said breeding birds have been known to preen mud into their feathers, resulting in the unusual colors.

When oil began gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, it was universally seen as an environmental disaster. Oil company British Petroleum, or BP, has been asked to pay a record $4.5 billion fine for their role in the three-month long spill, which some sources say may still be leaking. However, it seems that was just the tip of the iceberg.

A study conducted by researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States and the Universidad Autonoma de Aguascalientes (UAA) in Mexico has found that the clean-up mission appears to have made the disaster even worse - 52 times worse, to be exact.

Over the course of the three months that oil was leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, 4.9 billion gallons of oil spilled into the gulf. In order to clean it up, two million gallons of oil dispersant were used. According to the study, the mixture of oil and dispersant made the spill 52 times more toxic.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Pollution, came to this conclusion by looking at rotifers, microscopic organisms at the bottom of the Gulf's food chain. The five types of rotifers were used for this experiment because rotifers are very sensitive to toxicity and react quickly to changes in environment.

If anyone lived on the summit of California's Mount Shasta, they'd need a mighty big shovel to dig out of the snowstorm that will bury the mountain in astronomical amounts of snow through the weekend -- amounts that could flirt with world records. The Thursday morning National Weather Service summit forecast for Shasta predicted an incredible 33 to 39 inches of snow -- just for Thursday alone. (By comparison, Atlanta, Ga., has reported 38.9 inches of snow since March 1, 1989 -- a period of over 23 years.)

But it gets crazier.

Add in another 37 to 43 inches of snow Thursday night, and additional amounts ranging from 21 to 35 inches every 12 hours through Saturday night, plus a light dusting of 11 to 17 inches on Sunday... ...and you get a storm total of 176 inches. On the low end. Add up the high end of the numbers and you get a forecast maximum of 218 inches of snow in four days!

A record-breaking snowfall in Moscow has disrupted flights, created havoc on the roads, and forecasters say the storm will rage until Friday morning. Moscow's city hall said the Russian capital hasn't seen a bigger snowfall in November in about 50 years. The weather forecast service said on Thursday that a third of November's typical amount of snow had fallen in the past 24 hours, creating a 12 centimeter (4.7 inches) cover.

The roads in the capital were clogged up and about 70 flights from Moscow's largest Domodedovo airport were disrupter overnight. On Thursday, all three of the capital's airports are working normally.