Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

US, Massachusetts: Lightning starts fire

When police knocked on Donna Lemire's door late Tuesday night and told her to leave, it was not an April Fool's joke.

A passing storm brought torrential downpours and lightning, which struck outside her building in the Shadowbrook Condominium complex around 11:30 p.m., causing a water pipe to burst and flames to erupt from the third floor ceiling.

Fire Lt. Mark Nelson said a lightning bolt struck a tree outside 17 Shadowbrook Lane, traveled into the ground and through Lemire's building.



Image
©Rachel Juzapavicus
A lightning strike Tuesday night at 17 Shadowbrook Lane in Milford shattered the window of this car, started a fire and burst a water pipe at the condo complex.


Arrow Down

India: Hailstones hit huts, humans & cattle - Ice from sky but not in darjeeling

Hail stones the size of cricket balls flattened about 100 huts, injured three persons and killed cattle in the Bindol gram panchayat area last night.

The storm had started around 9.30pm and grew with each passing minute till it stopped two hours later. A fresh shower of hailstones hit the area again early this morning.

"First came the wind. Strong gusts blew away roofs of tiles and tin. Then came the hailstones. As the night progressed, the size of the stones increased and they came hurtling down, some of them as big as cricket balls," said Narayan Bhowmik, a tea stall owner in Bamua, 20km from here and one of the worst hit areas. The storm left scars across a 9km radius.

Image
©Nityananda Sarkar
A heap of hailstones in front of a house in Bindol

Cloud Lightning

Tornado hits central Arkansas

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - The National Weather Service says an unknown number of people were injured when a tornado swept through the Little Rock, Arkansas, area last night. At the North Little Rock Airport, the tornado destroyed a hangar and several small planes and left several others flipped over onto their wings.

Gregory Greene has lived in this part of Tornado Alley for all of his 39 years and had never seen a tornado.

Butterfly

Tasmania Hurricane-Force Winds leaves a $2m bill

TASMANIANS embarked on a massive clean-up effort yesterday after hurricane-force winds caused damage around the state costing millions.

Homes were left without roofs, major roads were blocked by fallen trees and power lines, boats broke their moorings and debris littered the streets as winds of up to 176km/h stormed through in a wild-weather blitzkrieg.

Laptop

Storm knocks news sites offline

A number of major news websites have disappeared from the internet this morning following wild storms across south-eastern Australia.

Nuke

Flashback Electric Earth: The Brandberg Massif

The deserts of Namibia hold many unusual geological structures that stretch the imagination and defy conventional explanation. Are electric discharges responsible for their formation?

Brandberg - Electric Earth - Namibia
©NASA/USGS

Umbrella

Still More Rain Forecast this Week for Arkansas after Flooding

Little Rock (AP) - More rain will fall in Arkansas during the week, likely adding more water to already flooding rivers in the state's eastern sections.

Cloud Lightning

Wilpena Pound: An Electrifyingly Intriguing Geological Feature

The Flinders Range contains some of the most unusual geological formations in Australia. Indications of gigantic electric arcs are unmistakable.

In several previous Picture of the Day articles we have considered the geological history of the Australian continent and found that there are several disconformities in the appearance and structure of many formations. The famous "Red Center" is particularly noteworthy because Uluru, Kata Tjuta and other monolithic stone tors stand in isolated grandeur above the relatively flat landscape.

The Flinders Range is a rugged outcrop of sandstone and quartzite that begins about 250 kilometers north of Adelaide and stretches for 800 kilometers. The mountains are extensively folded and fractured, with several deep gorges cut through them. One of the most unusual features in the range is Wilpena Pound, a natural amphitheater of stone covering 83 square kilometers, with interior dimensions of 11 kilometers by 8 kilometers.

Wilpena Pound
©Unknown
Wilpena Pound, Flinders Range, South Australia

Stop

A swarm of so-called "killer bees" attacked two people and a dog in Phoenix

The dog was chained up in the backyard when the Africanized honey bees attacked.

The dog's owner Chantel Armenta tried to get him free but could not, and when she ran in the house, the bees followed, stinging her and her husband.

Her husband is allergic to bee stings and had to be rushed to the hospital. He is expected to live, but the dog may not.

Stop

South Africa: Man attacked by swarm of bees

A man is fighting for his life in hospital after he was stung more than 1 000 times by African honey bees at a Drummond farm on Wednesday.

A paramedic who rushed to the man's aid was also stung several times and was admitted to hospital briefly after he showed signs of a severe allergic reaction to the stings.

Netcare 911 spokesperson Chris Botha said that when paramedics arrived they saw a man collapsed on the ground.

"When the paramedics got out of their ambulance they realised a large swarm of African honey bees was incensed and had stung the man repeatedly. The bees continued to swarm around the man.