Earth Changes

Flood fear after rain forecast for North and Mid-Wales

BBCNews.com
Thu, 21 Jun 2012 11:21 UTC

Parts of mid and north Wales have been warned they may be at risk of localised flooding as more heavy rain is forecast.

Downpours are expected on Friday and are likely to continue into Saturday, Environment Agency Wales said.

It added that recent rainfall in the area means rivers may rise quickly and that it may lead to flood warnings.

Agency officers are checking flood defences and that rivers and streams are clear of blockages.

Devastating floods hit parts of mid and north Wales earlier this month after extreme localised flooding.

Environment Agency Wales said that the latest rain will be heaviest in mid and north Wales.

It said that a concentrated weather system of extremely heavy rainfall is currently forecast for the north west of England, not far from the Welsh border.

"Current predictions indicate that the heaviest rainfall will largely affect English counties, however, there is a risk that the weather system may move, bringing heavier rain into parts of north east Wales," the agency added.

Caribbean System May Spawn Floods From Florida to Caymans

Brian K. Sullivan and Rupert Rowling
Bloomberg Business Week
Thu, 21 Jun 2012 11:17 UTC

Storm forecasters are tracking a potential tropical weather system that may spawn heavy rain and flooding from the Bahamas and Florida to the Cayman Islands.

The disturbance has a 30 percent chance of organizing and strengthening into a tropical depression or storm in the next two days as it moves northwest into the Gulf of Mexico, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

Two days of heavy rain and local flooding may occur across western Cuba, southern Florida, the central Bahamas and Yucatan peninsula, the NHC said. The center is also monitoring Tropical Storm Chris southeast of Newfoundland, the third named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.

Chris was 630 miles (1,010 kilometers) from Cape Race, Newfoundland, moving east-northeast at 20 mph, the NHC said in its 5 a.m. Atlantic time advisory. Its top winds were 60 mph. Little change in strength is expected with the storm forecast to become post-tropical by the end of the week.

Oman records back-to-back earthquake tremors

Rahul Das
Times of Oman
Thu, 21 Jun 2012 11:15 UTC

Muscat: Two back-to-back earthquakes were recorded closer to Oman by the Earthquake Monitoring Centre at Sultan Qaboos University in the last 24 hours but there were no reports of damage to property or loss of life.

While an earthquake measuring 4.8-magnitude was reported in the Arabian Gulf around midnight, the other was reported from southern Iran with 4.2-magnitude on Tuesday evening.

Speaking to Times of Oman, Dr Issa Al Hussain, director, Earthquake Monitoring Centre, Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), said that they record around 150 earthquakes from all over the globe every month.

"Locally we record around four to five quakes every month but most of them are weak and its epicenter is far away from Oman,- he said. But given Oman's close vicinity to where the Arabian plates meet the Eurasian plates, how much risk does it pose to the Sultanate?

Increased seismic activity reported at Iceland's Katla Volcano

IcelandReview.com /ESA
Thu, 21 Jun 2012 11:11 UTC

Increased seismic activity was detected in Mýrdalsjökull glacier in south Iceland, under which the volcano Katla lies, last night. Twenty-six minor earthquakes were picked up by sensors, all of which had their epicenter within the Katla crater.

A seismic activity expert on watch at the Icelandic Meteorological Office informed ruv.is that the earthquake swarm had started at 1 am and continued through 5 am.

However, there is no reason to be concerned about an imminent volcanic eruption or glacial outburst in Katla. The earthquakes were all shallow and originated in seismic activity in the geothermal system.

Click here to read about another recent earthquake swarm in Katla.

Russia declares state of emergency as hundreds of wildfires race across northern interior

NASA.gov
Thu, 21 Jun 2012 11:03 UTC

Russia has declared a state of emergency in several eastern regions due to hundreds of wildfires. NASA's Terra satellite captured this image of fires and smoke in north central Russia on June 15, 2012, at 05:50 UTC (1:50 a.m. EDT) The red spots are where the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard the Terra satellite detected heat signatures. Dry conditions, agricultural burning, lightning and human involvement have contributed to many wildfires across Siberia over the last few weeks.

Click here for larger image.

To learn about smoke from Siberian fires crossing the Pacific Ocean, visit here .

Duluth in State of Emergency after Torrential Rains Sweep City, North Shore

Pioneer Press
Wed, 20 Jun 2012 01:00 UTC

© The Associated Press/The Duluth News-Tribune/Bob King
A car fell into a huge sinkhole in Duluth, Minn. on Wednesday, June 20, 2012.

Major flooding struck in and around Duluth on Wednesday after up to 10 inches of rain fell overnight across northeastern Minnesota, leaving neighborhoods isolated, zoo animals drowned and state parks closed.

Steady, torrential rain kept up into Wednesday morning, June 20, closing Interstate 35 and a tunnel into downtown Duluth. Police said sinkholes and washouts made travel dangerous.

Residents of the far west Duluth neighborhood of Fond du Lac, near the rising St. Louis River, were asked to leave their homes. Seventy people arrived at shelters opened by the Red Cross, officials said.

State emergency management officials set up an operations center in response to the flooding across Aitkin, Carlton, Cook, Lake and St. Louis counties, including the Duluth area.

Gov. Mark Dayton declared a state of emergency and directed the Minnesota National Guard to help the region cope with the disaster.

Dayton planned to travel to Duluth on Thursday morning.

There were no immediate reports of deaths or serious injuries, though an 8-year-old boy was swept about six blocks through a culvert near Duluth. The boy suffered scrapes and bruises but was fine, St. Louis County Undersheriff Dave Phillips said, calling it a "miracle out of this whole disaster."

Minnesota Department of Public Safety officials cited Duluth police reports that half of the Fond du Lac neighborhood was under evacuation and the town of Thomson was partially evacuated.

Duluth Roads Collapse, Sinkholes Swallow Cars

Alan Hoglund
WDIO Eyewitness News
Thu, 21 Jun 2012 03:05 UTC

Minnesota, US - The damage is breathtaking. "The roads are just a disaster around here," Greg Vogt, with Expert Tire in Duluth said.

In and around Duluth, roads collapsed and sinkholes swallowed cars. On East Skyline Drive a car sits 10 feet below the surface of the road, in a massive sinkhole.

Deep water left some vehicles totaled, like a Volvo behind Expert Tire, and a Chevy Tahoe near the interstate.

"Water was all the way up to the retaining wall," Matt Kebhart said, talking about a three-foot wall in front of the interstate.

Kebhart works at an auto body shop on London Road. Behind it, a dumpster sat in a deep pool of standing water. "That dumpster, I don't even know where it came from," he said.

Sinkhole Swallows Another Florida Home

Mary Kenney
Tampa Bay Times
Thu, 21 Jun 2012 02:59 UTC

Florida, US - Susan Minutillo, 79, climbed out of her dark gray Mercury and saw the emergency trucks outside her house in Beacon Woods East. She'd left about half an hour before to run an errand for a friend, leaving a crew to do a survey of her home, checking for sinkholes. The survey was routine. Just like her day was supposed to be.

"I never thought this would happen to me," she said Wednesday afternoon, sitting at the kitchen table in her neighbor's home, voice thick with unshed tears. "I don't know where I'll go now."

At about 3 p.m., a sinkhole under the back half of her home began to collapse. Forty-five minutes later, half the house was gone, and county officials plastered a dark orange sign with black block letters spelling "condemned" on the garage door.

Emergency vehicles from the Sheriff's Office, Pasco County Ground Inspections, the Fire Department and others circled the property, surrounding the house with yellow tape and shutting off the electricity and water still pumping into the broken home.

Deadly Colorado wildfire surpasses 100-square-mile mark

Keith Coffman
Reuters
Wed, 20 Jun 2012 07:31 UTC

A deadly, stubborn wildfire that ranks as the most destructive on record for Colorado has scorched more than 100 square miles (259 square km) of rugged mountain terrain northwest of Denver, but a cool snap on Wednesday gave fire crews a chance to take the offensive.

The so-called High Park Fire already is blamed for one death and has consumed 189 homes in the 12 days since it was ignited by lightning at the edge of the Roosevelt National Forest, and authorities say they expect property losses to climb once more damage assessments are made.

As of Wednesday, an estimated 1,000 homes remained evacuated on the western outskirts of Fort Collins, a city of more 140,000 people that lies adjacent to the national forest about 55 miles north of Denver, according to Larimer County Sheriff's spokesman John Schulz.

The only casualty reported from the fire so far was a 62-year-old grandmother whose body was found last week in the ashes of a cabin where she lived alone. She was the fourth person to die in a Colorado wildfire this year.

Monsanto Vs. Nature: The Weeds Fight Back

Jim Hightower
Alternet
Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:56 UTC

© sneigwh.blogspot.com
Pigweed can grow three inches a day and reach seven feet or more. It took ten years from the first appearance of Roundup (the miracle chemical weed killer) resistant weeds for 10 super weeds to spread to 22 states infesting soybeans, corn and cotton. Common and giant ragweed, pigweed and most recently johnsongrass are all species of weeds exhibiting roundup resistant tendencies.

So much of Monsanto's poison was spread in the past decade that weeds naturally developed a resistance to it.

Rather than find ways to cooperate with the natural world, America's agribusiness giants reach for the next quick fix in a futile effort to overpower nature. Their attitude is that if brute force isn't working, they're probably not using enough of it.

Monsanto, for example, has banked a fortune by selling a corn seed that it genetically manipulated to produce corn plants that won't die when sprayed with the Roundup toxic weedkiller. Not coincidentally, Monsanto also happens to manufacture Roundup. It profits from the seed and from the huge jump in Roundup sales that the seed generates. Slick.

Comment: To learn more about The Escalating Chemical War on Weeds read the following articles:

Superweeds Go Mainstream
Monsanto's Superweeds Come Home to Roost: 11 Million U.S. Acres are Infested
Scientists say genetically engineered crops encourage stronger weeds

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Earth Changes

Flood fear after rain forecast for North and Mid-Wales

Caribbean System May Spawn Floods From Florida to Caymans

Oman records back-to-back earthquake tremors

Increased seismic activity reported at Iceland's Katla Volcano

Russia declares state of emergency as hundreds of wildfires race across northern interior

Duluth in State of Emergency after Torrential Rains Sweep City, North Shore

Duluth Roads Collapse, Sinkholes Swallow Cars

Sinkhole Swallows Another Florida Home

Deadly Colorado wildfire surpasses 100-square-mile mark

Monsanto Vs. Nature: The Weeds Fight Back

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