Earth Changes
Four tourists from Sweden and Finland are still missing, a day after they were feared to have been swept away by an avalanche in Arctic Norway, police have said.
The avalanche occurred on Wednesday in the northern Norwegian region of Troms. Three Finns and a Swede were skiing in the area and were reported to police as missing at around 1500 GMT, police said.
Weather conditions did not allow rescue crew to continue their work on Thursday, although the searches were not called off.
"The snow mass is huge. There is a high risk of triggering a new avalanche ... and there is a small storm in the area," Troms police chief Astrid Elisabeth Nilsen told a news conference.
He got the photo of the bald eagles, but he also got a picture of something he had never seen before - a circumhorizon arc or as Raper calls it "an upside-down rainbow."
"I had been watching a juvenile eagle up in a tree waiting and watching for it to fly to get a photo," said Raper, of Florence. "I turned around to watch a pelican in the river and when I turned back to look at the eagle, there was this cloud with all these colors.
"I had never seen anything like it before, and I grabbed my camera and started trying to take photos. It was there maybe five minutes, I got three photos and it was gone," Raper said. "It was amazing. So glad I got to see it and got a photo."
According to Andy Kula, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Huntsville, a circumhorizontal arc is an "optical phenomenon" cause by ice crystals in the clouds.
Social media has lit up after an unusual cloud formation was seen around Sydney on Wednesday.
Known as mammatus clouds, the formation is most often associated with thunderstorms.
"Never seen anything like it," one Twitter user wrote.

The Empire Mountains emerge from cloud cover after the second round of winter storms brought snowfall to the surrounding metro Tucson area and southeast Arizona, Jan. 2, 2019, south of Vail, Ariz.
In Phoenix, the overnight low was 30 degrees for the first time in five years and more cold temperatures were expected Thursday. The Tucson area saw as much as 6 inches of snow.
"It was pretty magical," said Jessica Howard, a resident of the Tucson suburb of Vail who took her 8- and 5-year-old children to play in the snow. "My social media feeds are like 100 percent snow pictures right now."
Snow dusted cactuses and mountains in southern Arizona and covered the Grand Canyon in the north.
Amarillo Animal Management and Welfare said they have picked up birds at that location.
The City of Amarillo said the birds might have flown into power lines or cables near the electrical station at the intersection.
Xcel Energy Spokesperson Wes Reeves said they do not have any evidence of birds impacting their facilities at that intersection, and there have been no service interruptions related to animal contact in that area in recent weeks.
The death toll from flash floods and landslides caused by torrential rains due to a tropical depression in the eastern Philippines has jumped to at least 68, officials have said, warning that the number of fatalities will climb even higher.
Fifty-seven of the victims were reported in the eastern region of Bicol, located south of the main island of Luzon, civil defence officials said on Monday. Eleven others died in the nearby region of Eastern Visayas.
Twelve people were also injured in various accidents in the two regions most affected by the rains even days before the tropical depression - known locally as Usman - made landfall in Eastern Samar province on Saturday.
Comment: Update:The Philippine Star on January 3 reports:
The death toll from Tropical Depression Usman in Bicol, the Visayas and Southern Tagalog has reached 87, with 20 others missing, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) reported yesterday.
NDRRMC spokesman Edgar Posadas said the figures are still subject to validation by the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG)'s Management of the Dead and the Missing (MDM).
Posadas said Usman also directly affected 45,348 families or 191,597 people from 457 barangays in Bicol, Eastern Samar and the Cavite-Laguna-Batangas-Rizal-Quezon (Calabarzon) region, as well as in Mindoro-Marinduque-Romblon-Palawan (Mimaropa).
Update: The Gulf Today on January 3
reports:
The death toll from landslides and floods in the eastern Philippines has climbed to 122 as emergency teams reach isolated areas and recover more bodies, officials said Thursday.
According to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, DPA, quoted civil defence and disaster risk reduction officials as saying that nearly 30 people were still reported missing in the affected areas in the eastern regions of Bicol and Eastern Visayas.
The tropical depression was the last and deadliest cyclone to hit the Philippines in 2018. Previously, Typhoon Mangkhut was considered the deadliest, killing more than 80 people in September.
Nearly 25,000 people were displaced by the landslides and floods, the national disaster risk reduction office said.
The source of Linthipe River in Dedza turned blood red on Wednesday, December 19, 2018, shocking residents living along the river.
Shocked residents of Nthandizi and Airfield in Dedza said the blood like flow was noticed at around 2pm.
"As usual, we came to this place to wash our clothes besides drawing water for home use. But to our surprise we saw that blood like stuff was flowing in the river. This scared us and we called some people to witness the bizarre phenomenon," one woman said.
Comment: As noted above, the cause of these rivers suddenly turning red could be due to algae, contamination from a mine or even deliberate industrial pollution, but the question remains why so many waterways across the planet are suddenly being affected in this way? Could it be related to the ground becoming increasingly unstable, changes in the properties of the water or is it just increased negligence from manufacturers?
- River turns red in Tyumen, Russia (2018)
- Sea waters turn red in Italian port city (PHOTOS) (2017)
- Lagoon becomes blood red in Mexico (2016)
- River in arctic Russian city mysteriously turns blood red: Update nickel plant at fault (2016)
- River turns blood red overnight alarming residents in Guatemala (2016)
- Lagoon becomes blood red in Mexico (2016)
- Yet another European river turns 'blood' red overnight, this time in Northampton, UK (2014)
- Chinese river turns blood-red over a couple of hours (2014)
- River turns blood red overnight in The Netherlands! (2013)
- Another European river turns 'blood' red overnight, this time in Slovakia! (2013)
- Lebanon: Beirut River mysteriously runs blood red (2012)
- Yangtze River turns red (2012)
This intensification is believed to eventually result in dangerous (3°C and up) global warming. Observational evidence has thus far falsified these IPCC-endorsed claims.
Comment: See also:
- First ever sun-dimming experiment will mimic volcanic eruption in attempt to reverse 'global warming'
- The 'global warming' storytellers have just revealed their hand
- Primary cause of global warming finally discovered
- Your new BS detector kit: How to differentiate science from pseudoscience using 'global warming' as an example
- The Dark Story Behind 'Man-Made Global Warming', Those Who Created it - And Why
- UN claims planet has only 12 years to avert chaos caused by debunked global warming
















Comment: Related article: Snow on saguaros: Desert cities in US Southwest see freeze