An investigation is underway after two whales washed up dead on Rhode Island shores in two days.
Mystic Aquarium's Animal Rescue Team received a call on Sept. 5 about a dead humpback whale off of the Mohegan Bluffs on Block Island. The Animal Rescue and Veterinary Teams will travel to the location for sampling or necropsy as weather permits within the upcoming days, according to the aquarium.
A dead minke whale was also found Wednesday afternoon on the shores of Scarborough State Beach in Narragansett. The Animal Rescue and Veterinary Teams collected several samples and will be sent out for further analysis, however due to the advanced stage of decomposition, they will not perform a necropsy.
Mystic Aquarium said there have been a total of five whale-stranding responses so far in 2017. Although it is coincidental the two whales washed up within a day of each other, Mystic Aquarium cannot draw conclusions about the relativity.
A number of earthquakes were detected at Bárðarbunga in Vatnajökull tonight, according to the Icelandic Met Office. The largest quake was 4.1 in magnitude, with another one following at 4.0.
The quakes were a total of 21, with three of them over 3.0 in magnitude. There are currently no signs of increased volcanic activity in the area, although it has seen a large number of quakes over the past years.
Bárðarbunga is located north-west of Vatnajökull, Iceland's largest glacier. It is considered a highly active volcanic area, having last erupted between the years 2014-2015.
A grizzly bear feasting on an elk carcass charged a bow hunter in Montana and attacked him, slashing a 16-inch (41-centimeter) cut in the man's head that required 90 stitches to close.
"The bear just flat-out charged us," said Tom Sommer, as he recovered in a Montana hospital on Tuesday afternoon. He said it closed the 30-foot (9-meter) distance in 3 or 4 seconds.
"It bit my thigh, ran his claws through my wrist and proceeded to attack my head," Sommer said. "I could hear bones crunching, just like you read about."
Sommer said he and a hunting partner were looking for an elk they had been calling Monday morning when his partner spotted the grizzly in the southern end of the Gravelly Range, just north of the Idaho border.
South Padre Island Fire Department Chief Doug Fowler confirmed Wednesday that a shark bit a woman near beach access 14 off of South Padre Island on Saturday.
The woman was knee-deep into the water when she felt a sharp pain on her foot, according to Fowler. Fowler says she did not suffer any life-threatening injuries.
"This is a really rare instance, and the people I've talked to can't remember another time in their lives when this happened on the island," Fowler said. "We take it very seriously--the safety of our beach goers and we work really hard in order to try to ensure their safety."
Fowler added that beach patrol will continue to stay vigilant as they check warning flags, patrol around the beach and, if necessary, move people from the beach if they're in harm's way.
Houses and infrastructure on Barbuda have been "totally demolished," Antigua and Barbuda PM told media following a helicopter trip to the Caribbean island. The island of 1,600 residents went radio silent for over twelve hours, causing wild speculations over their fate.
Conflicting reports emerged in the vacuum of information and the absence of direct communication with the island. Some claimed that 1,000 people had died but this was quickly debunked, with calls for people to wait for official confirmation before retweeting carelessly and generating unnecessary panic and dismay.
The prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, has confirmed one fatality after making a roundtrip to the island on a helicopter.
"There has been a fatality. An infant died as a result of their mother trying to escape a damaged property. We are not too sure of the cause of death," Browne told local ABS news in an interview.
Browne said the scenes he witnessed on the island were "heart-wrenching."
"If I was a crying man, I would have cried," Browne told ABS. "[It was] one of the worst feelings I have ever felt in my entire life... Absolute devastation, this is no hyperbole."
A third hurricane is set to threaten the US in the space of six days.
Katia, a storm off the Mexican coast, has strengthened into a hurricane, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
It is 185 miles (295 km) east of Tampico, Mexico, and has maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour (120 kph).
In the next 48 hours some additional strengthening is also forecast, the NHC added.
Models so far show it remaining in the southern Gulf in the coming days.
The news comes as tropical storm Jose was upgraded to a hurricane in the Atlantic, far east of Hurricane Irma, which is currently heading towards Florida.
Comment: While climate scientists are now saying Harvey "should serve as a warning", they are not considering the importance of atmospheric dust loading and the winning Electric Universe model in their research. Such information and much more, are explained in the book Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection by Pierre Lescaudron and Laura Knight-Jadczyk.
The accumulation of cometary dust in the Earth's atmosphere plays an important role in the increase of tornadoes, cyclones, hurricanes and their associated rainfalls, snowfalls and lightning. To understand this mechanism we must first take into account the electric nature of hurricanes, tornadoes and cyclones, which are actually manifestations of the same electric phenomenon at different scales or levels of power.
Heavy rain and 185-mph winds lashed the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico's northeast coast Wednesday as Hurricane Irma roared through Caribbean islands on its way to a possible hit on South Florida.
The strongest Atlantic Ocean hurricane ever measured destroyed homes and flooded streets across a chain of small islands in the northern Caribbean, passing directly over Barbuda and leaving the island of some 1,700 people incommunicado.
France sent emergency food and water rations to the French islands of Saint Martin and Saint Barthelemy, where Irma ripped off roofs and knocked out all electricity. Dutch marines who flew to three Dutch islands hammered by Irma reported extensive damage but no deaths or injuries.
While France received no immediate reports of casualties, the minister for French overseas territories, Annick Girardin, said: "We have a lot to fear for a certain number of our compatriots who unfortunately didn't want to listen to the protection measures and go to more secure sites ... We're preparing for the worst."
Spectacular Northern Lights lit up parts of Sweden over the weekend. Social media was awash with beautiful depictions of the dazzling show.
The sky in northern Sweden lit up in mysterious shades of blue and green at the weekend, prompting amateur and professional photographers alike to try to capture the magic caused by the natural phenomenon also known as an Aurora Borealis.
Jan-Åke Fors, a photographer in Kiruna in northern Sweden, was one of the lucky spectators, hashtagging his pictures of the show with #awesomenight.
Kelly Mclaughlin Daily Mail Wed, 06 Sep 2017 20:24 UTC
Dramatic pictures have started to emerge on social media showing the scale of the flooding on St Martin
St Maarten's famous international airport, Princess Juliana, has been destroyed by Hurricane Irma.
The storm ripped through the airport on Wednesday, with 185mph winds blowing over safety fences and battering nearby Maho beach.
Huge rocks smashed into planes, and boarding walkways were slammed to the ground by the downpour of rain and gusts of wind, which also brought loads of sand on to the runway.
Inside the airport, which lies on the Dutch side of Saint Martin island, the check-in lounge was flooded and walkways were damaged by the storm.
Parts of the building had broken off during the storm and were seen lying on the runway after the storm passed.
Photos of the damage were documented by a hurricane rescue team, who went in after the storm passed.
More than 100 aftershocks have rattled southeastern Idaho since a 5.3 magnitude quake hit near the town of Soda Springs late last week, and experts say they could continue for another week or so.
The 5.3 quake hit was the second in the series, and it hit about 6 p.m. Saturday. There were no reports of injuries or damage, though officials say 17,000 people reported feeling the 5.3 quake from as far away as Salt Lake City, Utah.
Soda Springs resident JoAnna Ashley was in nearby Georgetown visiting her parents when the biggest earthquake hit. She grabbed onto the shaking refrigerator and watched as a bottle of tiki torch fuel perched on top wobbled toward the edge. Her kids, ages 5 and 8, grabbed onto Ashley during the shaking.
"They didn't scream, but were all, 'Momma, what's happening?' in that worried voice," Ashley said.
Comment: While climate scientists are now saying Harvey "should serve as a warning", they are not considering the importance of atmospheric dust loading and the winning Electric Universe model in their research. Such information and much more, are explained in the book Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection by Pierre Lescaudron and Laura Knight-Jadczyk. Increasing cometary and volcanic dust loading of the atmosphere (one indicator is the intensification of noctilucent clouds we are witnessing) is accentuating electric charge build-up, whereby we can expect to observe more extreme weather and planetary upheaval as well as awesome light shows and other related mysterious phenomena.
See also: Study: Tornado outbreaks are increasing - but scientists don't understand why. A coauthor of this paper states "What's pushing this rise in extreme outbreaks is far from obvious in the present state of climate science."