When thousands of blackbirds began falling from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas, late on Dec. 31, 2010, most experts dismissed the event as a random occurrence.

Wildlife officials blamed the sudden death of thousands of red-winged blackbirds on fireworks set off by local New Year's Eve revelers. But NewsChannel5 Chief Meteorologist Mark Johnson wasn't quite convinced.

"Fireworks go off all the time," he said. "This doesn't normally cause hundreds of thousands of birds to leave their roosts in a frenzy... and then fall to their deaths."

Johnson began to look deeper into the event, which was one of several dozen mysterious animal and fish deaths worldwide during late 2010 and early 2011. These events gained international attention for several months this past winter. As the mass death events started piling up, Johnson started an Internet blog chronicling each event.

"I wanted to also explain the likely cause of each of these events in the blog," Johnson added. "Every one of them had a very logical explanation, except for Beebe, Arkansas."

Several news outlets are reporting that some 2,300 dead sea birds have been found along four miles of beach in Chile. The mass avian die-off has left corpses from Cartagena to Playa de Santo Domingo, and is a no doubt unnerving sight. We really need to stop these mass animal die-offs, they're creeping me out.

According to reports, most of the birds were gray petrels, with some pelicans, gannets and Guanay cormorants as well. Many of the birds were found with broken wings and bruising, suggesting that the birds were caught in fisherman's nets and drowned before being dumped back into the water.

Though fishing nets do kill a certain number of birds per year, it is usually much lower. Jose Luis Britos, the director of the Museum of Natural History of San Antonio, Chile, is quoted as putting the number at around 15 to 20 annually.

While the cause of death seems understood, how so many birds came to die in this manner is still a mystery. One theory blames nearby oil exploration. However, recent bird and dolphin die-offs in Peru have suggested that warming ocean waters could have played a role. Unseasonably warm waters along the Peruvian coast seem to be causing schools of anchovy to seek out the cooler, deeper waters around Chile.

Two children from Ashland, Missouri are dead on this Independence Day after an incident at the Lake of the Ozarks.

The Missouri Highway Patrol says Alexandra Anderson, 13, and her brother Brayden, 8, were swimming near the 6.5 mile marker in the Gravois Arm of the lake when they were electrocuted.

The Patrol says the "unknown source of electricity" killed the children just after 12 p.m.

"They were swimming out in the water at a private dock as they had probably done many times before and at some point in time they both received a shock," says Sgt. Paul Reinsch. "And at this time, the investigation is trying to determine exactly where that electricity came from."

Several adults at the scene were able to get the children out of the water and perform CPR until medical personnel arrived.

Industrial food model and soy-based aquaculture a disaster for fish, environment

Agribusiness behemoths including Monsanto and Cargill are set to cash in big from industrial fish farming or "aquaculture" as the soy industry spreads its reign to the seas, a new report from environmental and consumer watchdogs shows.

The new report, Factory-Fed Fish: How the Soy Industry is Expanding Into the Sea from Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Europe, shows how the use of soy as feed in aquaculture - branded as "sustainable" - is an environmental disaster, harming fish both wild and farmed as it pollutes the oceans and brings unknown effects to consumers eating the soy-fed fish.

"Our seas are not Roundup ready," said Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch, referring to the 93 to 94 percent of soybeans produced in the United States that are genetically modified by Monsanto to tolerate the application of its Roundup herbicide.

Phoenix -- Wow, what a weather day in the Valley. We had scattered showers and mostly cloudy conditions throughout the day.

At Sky Harbor Airport, we got .14" of rain (as of 3pm, Wednesday), the first measurable rain at the airport in 55 days!

Top it off with afternoon temperatures in the 70s and we're thinking, this has got to be the coolest July 4th on record for Phoenix. It was. Almost.

Here is the information for today: The high will go down as 91 degrees. That actually happened just past midnight during the early morning hours. Yes, the high occurred in the morning.

The low will mostly likely end up being 74 degrees. It could go lower before midnight, but if so, not by much.

Indianapolis -- An odd-shaped cloud hovering south of Indianapolis captured Hoosiers' attention Wednesday evening.The cloud was spotted by thousands of Hoosiers who gathered to watch a fireworks display in downtown Indianapolis, and many RTV6 viewers from Shelby, Hamilton, Johnson, Hancock, Hendricks, Putnam and Delaware counties also said they saw the cloud.

RTV6 Meteorologist Todd Klaassen said the odd-shaped cumulonimbus cloud is often seen during thunderstorms, and that rain fell briefly in Shelby County. What made it stand out was the fact that it was the only cloud in the sky for most people.The Storm Shield app showed a small thunderstorm over southern Shelby County at the time. The storm was slow-moving and covered a very small area.

Some RTV6 Facebook fans said they saw lightning coming from the cloud as sunset neared.

Torrential rain is causing disruption, with up to a month's rain expected to fall in parts of the UK within a day.

The number of flood warnings, meaning flooding is expected, is steadily rising in England, and more than 120 flood alerts are in place in the UK.

A caravan park in North Yorkshire is being evacuated amid flooding, and sporting fixtures are being affected.

Meanwhile, Prince Charles has visited flood-hit Hebden Bridge, in West Yorkshire, which is seeing more rain.

The Environment Agency has issued 124 flood alerts, which warn people to be prepared for possible flooding.

The town of Darwen in Lancashire, which was evacuated last month when rivers burst their banks - is among 35 places in the North East, the North West, the Midlands and the Anglian region of England, that are subject to a flood warning.

Denver (Reuters) - Investigators probing the cause of the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history have located the point of ignition but have not concluded how the blaze started, officials said on Thursday.

At its height, the 12-day-old blaze forced the evacuation of some 35,000 people in and around Colorado Springs, the state's second most populous city, and threatened the campus of the U.S. Air Force Academy before fire crews gained an upper hand late last week. It destroyed more than 300 homes and killed two people.

Since it was first reported on June 23, the blaze has burned more than 14,000 acres of drought-parched timber and brush, mostly in the Pike National Forest about 50 miles south of the Denver metropolitan area. But as of Thursday, ground crews had managed to carve containment lines around 90 percent of the fire's perimeter, said incident commander Rich Harvey.

Harvey said he anticipates full containment by late in the week as crews work to extinguish flames in a few stubborn areas. "When there's been no smoke visible and no heat detected for 24 hours, we'll be comfortable there will be no further growth and we'll call it 100 percent contained," Harvey said.

Date-Time
Friday, July 06, 2012 at 02:28:24 UTC

Friday, July 06, 2012 at 01:28:24 PM at epicenterTime of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location
14.690°S, 167.266°E

Depth
179 km (111.2 miles)

Region
VANUATU

Distances
46 km (28 miles) NNE of Port-Olry, Vanuatu

93 km (57 miles) N of Luganville, Vanuatu

355 km (220 miles) NNW of Port-Vila, Vanuatu

689 km (428 miles) N of We, New Caledonia

Unless you live in Seattle, you likely did not know that the National Weather Service just announced that the city endured its third coolest June on record. As much of America swelters through a heat wave, it's not surprising that the usual suspects are telling everyone that it's because of "global warming."

I have a longtime friend, Ron Marr who has a Jack Russell Terrier and in a recent commentary for Missouri Life magazine, he wrote that, "Jack doesn't believe in global warming in the least; he does not believe the recent atmospheric hellfire results from ozone holes or aerosol cans or giant leprechauns with a big magnifying glass. We share the same views on the topic and have discussed them often. Our considered opinion is that this streak of blazing nonsense stems from the fact that - to put it in scientific terms - it's summer and the sun is hot."

On July 3rd Seth Borenstein, a reporter for the Associated Press, a newswire service that has been reporting global warming lies for decades, wrote that "If you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, scientists suggest taking a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks."

It's summertime, Seth! It gets hot in the summer!

It did not take long for the high priests of global warming to proclaim the current WEATHER to be CLIMATE. There's a very big difference. Weather is what is occurring now while climate is measured in terms of centuries. It's about trends and cycles.

It surely has been a hot summer thus far. Reuters reported that "more than 2,000 temperature records have been matched or broken in the past week as a brutal heat wave baked much of the United States." The announcement was made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on July 2nd.

Meteorologist Joe Bastardi took another reporter to task for coupling the heat wave with global warming, pointing out that "The US is less than 10% of the globe" while ignoring that "Scandinavia had coldest June on record and that Australia is having a bad winter."