Earth ChangesS


Snowflake Cold

China's Yellow River Hukou Waterfall freezes in -12° Celsius temperatures

Kiran Moodley
Independent, UK
Tue, 23 Dec 2014 03:00 UTC
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© IndependentChina's recent cold snap as given some added icy glamour to an old landmark.
Tourists have been flocking to a section of China's Yellow River in far greater numbers recently as part of the Hukou Waterfall has frozen over in the incredibly cold weather.

With temperatures dropping to as low as -12° Celsius, part of China's second-largest waterfall has become a wall of ice, making it seem like someone has emptied the contents of a fire extinguisher over the entire scene.

The Hukou Waterfall is situated where the provinces of Shanxi and Shaanxi meet and it is roughly 66-ft high.

Located on China's Yellow River - the third-longest on the continent - the waterfall is hugely popular among tourists and the recent cold snap in the area has not deterred many visitors now keen to see the natural phenomenon in its new guise as an ice palace.

One tourist told reporters, "Ice is everywhere. Icicles on the waterfall; everywhere. I did not know the Yellow River could be frozen so it's surprising. I came here specifically for the stunning view of the Yellow River."

While some may be in a hurry to see "Hukou on ice", temperatures in the far west of China may drop even further. Two years ago, the mercury fell to -40° Celsius, so the waterfall could freeze over entirely by the onset of Spring.

Comment: Think the past winter was bad? Get ready for mini Ice Age

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Attention

Girl 'plays dead' to survive brutal black bear attack in Florida

Jill Reilly
Daily Mail, UK
Mon, 22 Dec 2014 19:40 UTC
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She was out walking her dog at 6pm when the bear suddenly appeared and tackled her. Pictured: Investigators at the scene of the attack
A 15-year-old girl who suffered horrific injuries after being attacked by a bear only survived because she remembered to 'play dead.'

Leah Reeder, 15, sustained deep bites and gouges to her legs, back, neck and face, after the attack on Sunday in Eastpoint, Franklin County, on Florida's panhandle.

She was out walking her dog at 6pm when the bear suddenly appeared and tackled her.

'I was listening to music and I heard my dog start barking. It was like a black blur,' she told Apalach Times from her hospital bed.

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Palette

Italian earthquakes raise concern over safety of Michelangelo's David

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Mon, 22 Dec 2014 23:27 UTC
michelangelo david
More than 250 tremors have been rattling Florence and the Chianti region since Friday, raising concerns over the safety of Michelangelo's David.

According to Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, the two major shocks that hit the wine-growing region measured 3.8. and 4.1 on the Richter scale, while several others reached 3.0 to 3.5, scaring people but leaving no one injured.

Minor tremors are continuing at the moment, sparking alarm over the national art treasure, with the focus on Michelangelo's statue of David. Earlier this year, experts found David at risk of crumbling down under its own weight because of tiny fractures in its ankles.

Comment: More than 30 earthquake tremors hit Italy's Chianti region

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Question

500 crows found dead in Indian village

Gurbax Puri, Anirudh Gupta
The Tribune (India)
Mon, 22 Dec 2014 17:54 UTC
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Nearly 500 crows have been found dead in the past four days at Baghiari village near Tarn Taran, which is close to a bird sanctuary at Sarai Amanat Khan. With bird flu causing deaths of geese at Sukhna Lake in Chandigarh, senior officials of the Animal Husbandry Department have responded quickly to take preventive measures in the area. The district administration is also on alert.

"The reasons for the birds' deaths could be the use of pesticide in fields, contaminated water or the cold wave. However, we have sent the carcasses of birds to Regional Diagnostic Laboratory in Jalandhar to know the exact cause of the deaths," said Dr Raminder Monga, Deputy Director, Animal Husbandry Department. He added that it would take six days to know the reason for such a high bird mortality," said Dr Monga. Deputy Commissioner Balwinder Singh Dhaliwal met officials of various departments and constituted response teams. Amarinder Singh Tiwana, a PCS officer, has been made the point person to coordinate with all teams. Dhaliwal urged people in the area to stay alert and do not panic.
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Binoculars

Wrong place, wrong time: European robin turns up thousands of miles away in China

Stuart Winter
Daily Express, UK
Sun, 21 Dec 2014 14:51 UTC
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© GettyPhotographers were awestruck by the sighting of a European robin in the Temple of Heaven
Appearances on greetings cards, wrapping paper and festive tree baubles are one thing but the notion of a cheery redbreast preening in front of hundreds of assembled cameras does sound a little incongruous.

Take a peek at this week's photo and while the robin looks very much like your common-orgarden favourite, the way it was pictured in all its flame-toned glory has become the talk of the birdwatching world.

However this delightful individual has been holding court in Beijing's Temple of Heaven Park, creating the kind of scenes reminiscent of a rarity arrival on the Isles of Scilly or the north Norfolk coast.

How this robin arrived in the Chinese capital thousands of miles from its European home is open to conjecture. There is increasing evidence that small populations of migratory birds often take a "left-hand turn" and fly in the reverse direction in autumn as a survival technique against a possible disaster on their normal wintering ranges.

Comment: See also: Rare bird from Mongolia turns up in Wakefield, UK

Wrong time, wrong place: Rare bird found in Barrie, Canada

As well as these articles (which could have some relevance as to possible explanations for these odd migrations): Animal Magnetism: How the magnetic field influences animal navigation

Earth's magnetic field is weakening 10 times faster now

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Snowflake

Excessive snow removed from ski slopes in Norway

Robert Felix
iceagenow.info
Mon, 22 Dec 2014 14:33 UTC
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Too much snow around the ski lifts.

20 Dec 2014 - "During the last two days we've got more snow than we had in the last two years together," says a victorious Vegar Sårheim. "I had never believed we would experience this."

Late Saturday night he worked together with the trail crew in Breimsbygda Ski Centre Utvikfjellet feverishly removing the snow around the ski lifts.

We face the greatest challenges around the lifts, because for security reasons there must be two feet clearance. So we need shoveling away large amounts of snow, says Sårheim. - We have received about 1.5 meters of snow in a short period of time. And the forecast until Christmas is that there will come much more. So once we have cleared away this snow, we will face a fantastic Christmas.

Sårheim sees the humor in that slopes actually need to remove snow. - Yes, this I had never imagined that I would experience that.

Thanks to Argiris Diamantis for this link
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Sun

US: Chicago on track to break sunshine shortage record

Lizzie Schiffman Tufano
DNAinfo.com
Mon, 22 Dec 2014 12:04 UTC
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If the thought of entering another Chicago winter isn't depressing enough, meteorologists say the city is on track to have one of the gloomiest Decembers in its history.

There has been no direct sunshine recorded in Chicago for 15 days this month, according to Frank Wachowski, who mans the official North West Side Midway Airport sunlight observatory.

Since Dec. 12, the city has seen only 33 minutes of sunshine, which peeked through the clouds Thursday.

That puts December 2014 on track to break the record for darkest December since 1975, when the National Weather Service recorded 19 percent sun exposure. As of Monday, Wachowski had recorded 16 percent sun exposure this month.

The record for darkest month ever in Chicago was November 1985, when sunlight hit the city for 16 percent of the month.

Percentages are determined by dividing the total number of hours between sunrise and sunset by the minutes of exposed sunshine recorded with monitoring equipment, Wachowski said.

Wachowski, 77, is a retired meteorologist, but since 1980 he has recorded sunshine data with official transistor sensors mounted atop his home in southwest suburban Burbank. He set up his home operation after the National Weather Service abandoned sunshine monitoring in the early 1980s, allowing him to keep the equipment and monitor data independently.

Wachowski said that in part, the lack of snowfall could be to blame. If a snowstorm blows through Chicago, the tightly packed cloud cover might dissipate. In the meantime, the clouds have been locked between a layer of cold air close to the ground with warmer air above the clouds.

Comment: It's probably going to get a lot darker and gloomier with the what is what is coming our way. See:

The virtues of Vitamin D: It's time we saw the light

Got Melatonin? Melatonin improves mood in winter depression

Teaching the neurons to meditate

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Question

Seal found 20 miles inland near St Helens, UK

Emily Gosden
The Telegraph, UK
Mon, 22 Dec 2014 21:00 UTC
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© Liverpool Echo
Seal washed up in a field in Newton-le-Willows near Warrington, Cheshire
A seal had to be rescued from a field more than 20 miles inland - after apparently getting "very, very lost".

The seal, which was discovered in Newton-le-Willows, near St Helens in Merseyside on Monday morning, was likely to have swum up to 50 miles away from its home before clambering into the fenced-off field from a nearby brook, experts said.

It was found in a "distressed" state by a dog-walker at about 9.45am, sparking a rescue operation involving the emergency services and the RSPCA as police warned locals to stay away from the "potentially dangerous" animal.

The creature, believed to be a juvenile male grey seal, was eventually coaxed into a trailer using mackerel as bait and taken to a wildlife centre for checks.

Farm owner Gary Watkinson, who owns the field where the seal was found, said: "We woke up this morning and found a seal in our field, which is quite unusual to say the least.
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Eye 2

Over 100 live snakes released on Vietnam highway


tuoitrenews.vn
Sun, 21 Dec 2014 20:40 UTC
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Over 100 snakes of different kinds crawled along a national highway in southern Dong Nai Province, throwing locals into panic on Saturday afternoon.

Around 4.40pm, locals who travelled and live in a neighborhood in the province's Thong Nhat District along the National Highway No. 1 were petrified at the ghastly sight of over 100 snakes crawling across the highway.

Witnesses said they earlier saw three men, who resembled Buddhist monks with shaved heads in yellow outfits, getting down from a seven-seat car with three green sacks.

The men unpacked the sacks as if they were pouring out the contents.
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Info

Two otters found dead in Sundarbans oil spill, Bangladesh

Iftekhar Mahmud
en.prothom
Sun, 21 Dec 2014 20:25 UTC
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Autopsy on the two otters, recovered by forests department workers from the river Shela in the Sundarbans on Thursday, have confirmed that they had died from ingestion of oil.

The veterinarians of the forests department on Saturday found furnace oil in the mouths and lungs of the two animals. Previously innumerable otters could be seen in the rivers of the southwest regions, but now they are only found in the Sundarbans. These are enlisted as endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Fishermen of Narail and the Sundarbans use otters to catch fish, and National Geographic as well as other wildlife agencies have done researches on this.

After 350 thousand litres of oil was spilled in the river Shela of the Sundarbans in the 9 December tanker capsize, the shipping ministry has stated that this will cause no harm to the forest. The ministry for environment and forest took samples of water from the rivers Shela and Pashur and observed that the water has an adequate level of dissolved oxygen for plants and animals to survive. In other words, the animals and plant life was free of risk.
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