Welcome to Sott.net
Thu, 21 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Earth Changes
Map

Seismograph

6.1 magnitude earthquake hits off the Bonin Islands, Japan


Firstpost
Fri, 08 Sep 2017 11:59 UTC
chart
A 6.1-magnitude earthquake hit off Japan's Bonin Islands on Thursday but there was no tsunami risk, seismologists said.

The quake hit at a depth of 450 kilometres (280 miles) at 02:27 am (17.27 GMT) 770 kilometres south of Shimoda, according to the United States Geological Survey.

Japan Meteorological Agency said the quake poses no tsunami risk.

A 9.0-magnitude earthquake in March 2011 triggered a massive and deadly tsunami, which smashed into a power station and sparked the world's worst atomic accident since Chernobyl in 1986.

Tokyo Electric is working to clean up and dismantle the reactors in a process that is expected to take at least four decades.

Source: AFP
      Read More...
Question

Huge jelly blobs spotted off Norway's coast baffles scientist

Stephanie Pappas
Live Science
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 11:22 UTC
Gelatinous blobs
© Erling
Svensen
Gelatinous blobs about one metre in diameter. Have you seen them?
Giant, jelly-like blobs have been sighted off the western coast of Norway, but the identities of these mysterious objects have scientists stumped.

The blobs are about 3.3 feet (1 meter) in diameter and are translucent, except for a strange dark streak running through their center, Science Nordic reported. No one knows what they are, or what made them.

"This is a mystery, actually," said Michael Vecchione, an invertebrate zoologist at the Smithsonian Institution who has been corresponding with Norwegian researchers about the blobs. "It could be an egg mass, or something completely different, but we just don't know at this point until we get some more detailed observations."
      Read More...
Attention

Florida Keys Emergency Manager: 'You must evacuate; you cannot afford to stay'


CBSMiami
Tue, 05 Sep 2017 05:22 UTC
road out of florida keys
© swansons.se
The road out of the Florida Keys.
Evacuation orders are being given in the Florida Keys as Monroe County emergency managers prepare for Hurricane Irma.

Key West International Airport will close Wednesday night, cancelling all commercial flights until further notice.

A State of Local Emergency was declared for Monroe County on Tuesday afternoon. Traffic is building on the overseas highway as locals and tourists get out of the keys ahead of an evacuation order.

"We're just evacuating, getting out-of-town before everybody else does," said Key West resident Luann Huff.Huff lives in Key West. She's heading to Central Florida and she's not alone on the road.

Burns lives in Marathon. His house is ready and he's gassing up his truck and is ready to leave. "For the Florida Keys, if you were to create the worst case scenario that is what we are looking at," said Monroe Co. Emergency Operations Center Director Martin Senterfitt.

The grim outlook prompted Senterfitt to order mandatory evacuations. "We're emphatically telling people you must evacuate, you can not afford to stay on an island with a Category 5 hurricane coming at you. Most of this island chain is only three to five feet above sea level. With the surges we're expecting this is not the place to be," said Senterfitt.

Comment: See also:

      Read More...
Attention

Signs and Portents: Mutant two-headed pig with two noses and three eyes born in Shaanxi, China

Jamie Bullen
Mirror
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 18:53 UTC
A man holds the two-headed piglet

A man holds the two-headed piglet
This piglet has left farmers baffled after it was born with two heads, two noses and three eyes.

Fears have emerged for the deformed animal's survival following the strange birth on Tuesday at a pig farm in Wangcha, a village in China's Shaanxi province.

Puzzled farmers shared a recording of the mutant piglet, which was born among a litter that is not believed to have suffered the same fate.

Currently, farmers say the piglet is alive - but because of its deformities, it is not known how long it will survive.

Another "mutant piglet" with two bodies and eight legs died minutes after being born on a Chinese farm earlier this month.

      Read More...
Attention

Swimmer attacked by otter in lake at Bear Creek Village, Pennsylvania

Tom Venesky
Times Leader
Fri, 01 Sep 2017 18:34 UTC
otter
A woman swimming in the lake at Bear Creek Village was the victim of an attack so rare that wildlife officials aren't certain on a cause.

She was swimming in the lake on the evening of Aug. 17 when she was bitten three times on the legs by a river otter, according to Game Commission wildlife conservation officer Phil White, who investigated the incident.

The otter followed and bit the swimmer as she made her way to shore and then left once she exited the lake, White said.

White, who declined to release the victim's name, said the swimmer sought treatment for her injuries and received a rabies vaccination as a precaution. Otters aren't uncommon in the area, White said, and the primarily aquatic animals travel through Bear Creek Village on their way to the Francis E. Walter Reservoir.

What is unusual, White added, is for an otter to attack a human.
      Read More...
Tornado1

Category 5 Irma hits Leeward Islands at peak strength, eye misses Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands

Bob Henson and Dr. Jeff Masters
Wundergroud
Wed, 06 Sep 2017 16:42 UTC
Irma hurrican leeward islands
© UW-Madison/CIMSS
Above: VIIRS infrared image of Hurricane Irma taken at 1:35 am EDT Wednesday, September 6, 2017. At the time, the island of Barbuda was in the eye, and Irma was a Category 5 storm with 185 mph winds.
Hurricane Irma smashed into the small Lesser Antilles islands of Barbuda (population 1,638), Saint Barthelemy (population 9,000), Anguilla (population 15,000), and Saint Martin/Sint Maarten (population 8,000/33,000) early Wednesday as a mighty Category 5 hurricane with 185 mph winds. As the front southwestern eyewall of Irma hit, Barbuda reported sustained winds of 118 mph, gusting to 155 mph, before the instrument failed. The minimum pressure in the eye was 916 mb on Barbuda and St. Barthelemy. Preliminary reports from these islands indicate heavy wind and storm surge damage occurred. On Saint Martin, storm surge flooding to rooftop level was observed. Irma brought a storm surge of 7.95 feet (2.42 meters) to Barbuda, according to a Wednesday afternoon blog post by storm surge scientist Dr. Hal Needham. Barbuda has not been heard from yet.

A hurricane with top winds of 185 mph has never been recorded in these islands, and Irma's landfall intensity of 185 mph winds in the Leeward islands is tied with the 1935 Florida Keys Labor Day Hurricane as the highest landfall intensity on record for an Atlantic hurricane (third place globally.) The most recent close analog for Irma may be Hurricane Hugo (1989), which tore through the Leewards and struck Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm, causing $3 billion in damage (1989 dollars) and 72 deaths.
      Read More...
Cloud Precipitation

Hurricane Irma pummels the Dominican Republic

Lindsay de Feliz
The Wahington Post
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 17:28 UTC
Palm trees bend in Samana, Dominican Republic, on Thursday, as Irma roared off the northern coast of the island the country shares with Haiti
© Tatiana Fernandez/AP
Palm trees bend in Samana, Dominican Republic, on Thursday, as Irma roared off the northern coast of the island the country shares with Haiti
Irma's strong winds and torrential rains pummeled the Dominican Republic on Thursday, damaging homes and inundating streets in the beach towns on the north coast, according to local media reports.

Among the towns pounded by the storm were Cabarete and Sosua, part of the Puerto Plata region popular with foreign tourists.

More than 5,500 people in the country were evacuated in the run-up to the storm, officials said.

      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

The 275 trillion pounds of water from Hurricane Harvey deformed the earth's crust in Houston

Alexis C. Madrigal
The Atlantic
Tue, 05 Sep 2017 00:00 UTC
Hurricane Harvey

An aerial photograph reveals the huge swathes of flooded land in Houston, Texas on Sunday. Hurricane Harvey blustered through the town on Friday and Saturday, bringing with it unprecedented downpour and triggering life-threatening floods.
The weight of water can deform the Earth's crust, if there's enough of it. And we can measure that change with the ultraprecise global-positioning satellites humans have launched into orbit.

On Monday, Chris Milliner of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory tweeted a simple map visualizing data from the Nevada Geodetic Laboratory. It showed that the GPS data from special stations around Houston detected that the whole area had been pushed down roughly two centimeters by the weight of the water that fell during Hurricane Harvey.
      Read More...
Fire

Wildfires in Oregon consume over 10,000 acres of forest, haunting images of smoke and ash visible from space


RT
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 15:25 UTC
oregon wildfire
© Travis Madison / Facebook
Wildfires are engulfing the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon, with more than 10,000 acres of forest destroyed. The inferno is sending smoke and ash into the sky which is visible from space. Hundreds of people have been forced to evacuate the area.

"The biggest danger isn't necessarily the fire pushing through - it's the ash fall," said Lt. Damon Simmons, spokesman for the Oregon State Fire Marshal's Office, as cited by The Hood River News.

Ash from the fire has reached as far as the Hood River 47 miles (76km) away with massive smoke trails from the inferno visible from space.


The Eagle Creek fire was man-made, has evaded containment and now covers an area of more than 10,000 acres since it broke out Saturday. The fire even jumped the Columbia River to Washington in the early hours of Tuesday morning, reports King 5 News.

Police interviewed a 15-year-old male from Vancouver, Washington they believe started the fire by setting off fireworks on the Eagle Creek Trail.
      Read More...
Snowflake

Over 3 feet of spring snowfall and counting: It's dumping in Australia


TransWorld Snowboarding
Wed, 06 Sep 2017 14:51 UTC
All this snow is opening up new options to stomp
© Richard Phillips
All this snow is opening up new options to stomp
As we celebrate the last days of our North American summer, Mother Nature is showing no signs of slowing up winter in the Southern Hemisphere, even though they're already seven days into spring.

In the past week, it's dumped over three feet of sweet white fluffy stuff at Perisher Resort in Australia.

Temperatures have been brisk and sitting below zero, helping to make this snow extra cold and light; perfect for faceshots, pow slashes, and big sends.

Perisher is experiencing one of the best seasons they've had in the past five years. When this storm is all said and done, it could break a few records in terms of snow depth.

This recent snowfall is the icing on top of the other storms they've had this season, as over six feet of powder has falling in August alone.


Comment: See also: Australia shivers through coldest start to September EVER: Freezing weather and record Spring snowfall turns coastal towns white

      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts