Earth Changes

Huge waves and heavy rain flood southern Britain

Sky News
Sat, 08 Feb 2014 18:57 UTC

The Coastguard warns of "phenomenal" 14-metre waves as 80mph winds hit the coastline of southern England

Southern Britain was on alert as hurricane-force winds and heavy rain combined with high tides threatened more flooding misery.

South Wales and the South West were the first areas to be hit by the storm, which moved over the rest of southern England during the afternoon.

The Coastguard in Brixham, Devon, said waves of up to 46ft (14m) were forecast to hit some areas.

The extreme weather also puts more pressure on inland areas including the crisis-hit Somerset Levels.

Residents there have endured weeks of rain, with many evacuated over the last 48 hours with help from the Royal Marines.

Some 1,500 military personnel remain on standby in case the storm caused significant damage.

An elderly woman was taken to hospital with serious injuries after a tree fell on to the car she was travelling in.

The woman, thought to be in her 70s, suffered a chest injury and a broken leg during the accident in Yardley, Birmingham.

Another female passenger in the car was taken to hospital with neck pain.

Huge waves smash into British coastline, swells up to 75 feet recorded off-shore, UK government considers establishing tsunami-warning system

Nathan Rao
Express, UK
Thu, 06 Feb 2014 00:00 UTC

The largest wave ever seen in British waters was recorded at 3.30am yesterday by a buoy operated by the Plymouth Coastal Observatory at Porthleven, Cornwall.

The beast destroyed the previous record British wave of 67ft and forecasters warned it was only the beginning of 72 hours of storm hell.

It came as experts recommended a TSUNAMI warning system be installed in the Atlantic to protect Britain and Ireland from enormous waves they claimed were 'increasingly likely'.

The UK was battered by 90mph winds and torrential rain again overnight - but by far the most violent storm forecast in recent times is yet to hit with widespread damage and disruption expected in the coming days.

Parts of a key railway line were destroyed and nearly 10,000 homes were left without power as the brutal weather wreaked havoc yesterday.

Police helicopters were scrambled to help evacuate 150 properties in the Somerset flooding danger zone as David Cameron set up a £100million emergency fund to assist communities in coping with the crisis.

Winds of 105mph were recorded on the Isles of Scilly, off Cornwall while one pub in Chesil Beach, Dorset was completely submerged by a giant 60ft wave.

500 flood alerts across England and Wales as southwest UK braces for yet ANOTHER hurricane-force storm

The Guardian
Sat, 08 Feb 2014 11:33 UTC

© Matt Cardy/Getty Images
Waves break at high tide in Porthleven, Cornwall, on Saturday as south-west England and Wales braced for more storms and flooding

Somerset, Devon and Dorset at greatest risk of flooding as Environment Agency issues warnings as far north as Hull

Large areas of England and Wales are on flood and storm alert as a new storm is poised to hit the south and south-west with winds of up to 80mph.

The flooded Somerset Levels where many residents have already been forced from their homes after weeks of heavy rain remain at the highest risk of continued flooding on Saturday.

The Environment Agency said there was a risk of flooding along the coast of Devon and Dorset from the combination of high tides and high winds.

There are more than 300 low-level flood alerts and nearly 200 medium-risk flood warnings in place across Wales and southern and central England as far north as Hull.

"Storm was like a freak of nature, I thought it was the end of the world"...

Car-sized boulder breaks off mountain in French Alps, smashes into first carriage and leaves train dangling over steep embankment - 2 dead, 10 injured

BBC
Sat, 08 Feb 2014 10:37 UTC

© GregLeclerc, exclusive by Nice-Matin
The train with two carriages was carrying 34 passengers when the accident happened

Two people were killed when a falling boulder derailed a tourist train in the southern French Alps, local officials and firefighters say.

At least nine people were injured.

The train was travelling from Nice to the town of Digne-les-Bains on a line which crosses gorges and viaducts at up to 1,000m (3,200ft) above sea level.

Images from the scene show the two-carriage train dangling from the tracks, the side of one carriage caved in by the rock.

Satellites show no global warming for 17 years 5 months

Christopher Monckton
wattsupwiththat.com
Thu, 06 Feb 2014 10:18 UTC

The monthly satellite lower-troposphere temperature anomaly from Remote Sensing Systems, Inc., is now available.

Taking the least-squares linear-regression trend on this dataset (the bright blue horizontal line through the dark blue data), there has now been no global warming - at all - for 17 years 5 months.

Would readers like to make a projection of how many mainstream media outlets will report this surely not uninteresting fact?

It shows that the Hiatus hernia for true believers in the New Religion continues.

My own prediction is that the number of media reporting 17 years 5 months without any global warming will be approximately equal to the number of general-circulation models that predicted such a long Pause notwithstanding ever-rising CO2 concentration.

Print out the graph as a postcard and send it to the editor of a newspaper near you that has shut down democratic debate by announcing that it will refuse to print any letters at all from "climate deniers".

Firefighters save dog from sinkhole in Buffalo, New York

USA Today
Mon, 03 Feb 2014 08:22 UTC

© AP
Firefighter Michael Paveljack, right, gets a kiss from Mack the dog he rescued from a sink hole in Buffalo, N.Y. Sunday Feb. 2, 2014.

A German shepherd is back on solid ground after being rescued from a sinkhole that opened up in a Buffalo park.

The 3-year-old dog dropped more than 10 feet to the bottom of the watery hole during a Sunday morning walk with his owner, Mattie Moore, who nearly fell in herself.

Buffalo firefighter Michael Paveljack said rescuers put plywood around the 2-foot hole to stabilize the ground, then widened the gap for the rescue. Paveljack climbed down a ladder and fashioned a makeshift harness from the dog's leash that allowed rescuers to hoist it from the hole.

Moore told The Buffalo News the dog has a sore hip but otherwise seems fine.

The sinkhole appears to have been caused by a broken underground water pipe that eroded the soil.

Source: The Associated Press.

What's killing trumpeter swans in Washington state?

Jeff Burnside
komonews.com
Fri, 07 Feb 2014 07:51 UTC

Majestic trumpeter swans, the largest of all waterfowl, whose wingspans can reach eight feet, are dying at a higher than normal rate in their winter haven in northern Puget Sound. And Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists think they know why.

They've counted 261 dead swans so far this winter in Whatcom County. That's about a 75 percent increase over the normal death rate in winter when their physical and environmental challenges are greatest.

"We believe and have some evidence that aspergililosis is playing a factor in the mortality," said state wildlife biologist Chris Danilson, while standing near a Skagit Valley field dotted with Trumpeter Swans and drenched in brilliant winter sunshine.

"It's a fungus that they'll usually pick up in the feed that they're eating," he said. "So a lot of times it's in the grains or corn, wastage in fields left over from the harvest. It can get moldy."

UK: Wet weather here to stay as jet stream blamed

Sky News
Fri, 07 Feb 2014 06:44 UTC

Forecasters have told Sky News the unsettled weather that has brought heavy rain, strong winds and flooding is set to remain until at least the middle of this month.

After that, conditions "may start to calm down and the second half of February could be slightly more settled", said a Met Office spokeswoman.

The relentless wet weather that has pummelled much of the UK for the past couple of months has been caused by a powerful jet stream, experts said.

It pushed an "exceptional" succession of low pressure systems across the Atlantic Ocean, as powerful winds and a deluge of rain struck the country, especially southwest England.

There have been a number of major winter storms during December and January and the Met Office said it was the relatively short time between each one that has led to major flooding.

It said: "It was their rapid succession, with further rain falling on already saturated ground that caused the significant flooding problems."

Stores close early as twin Winter storms sock U.S. Northwest

Gulfnews
Sat, 08 Feb 2014 00:40 UTC

© AP/Register-Guard/Chris Pletsch
Eugene, OR
Snow expected to turn to freezing rain in many areas

Northwest residents absorbed the second blow of a 1-2 winter punch Friday by taking a snow day and keeping their cars in the garage.

In downtown Portland, streets coated with a thin layer of packed snow were nearly traffic-free before the first flurries fell in the afternoon. Shops closed early or didn't open at all, office buildings generally packed with workers were quiet, and the city government was closed to all but essential personnel.

It was a similar scene throughout western Oregon and southwest Washington as the region awaited and then received its second winter storm in two days.

The storm was expected to drop a foot or more of snow in mountainous parts of southern Oregon and 2 to 8 inches in western Oregon valleys that got slammed Thursday, the National Weather Service said.

The snow was expected to turn to freezing rain Friday night and Saturday in many areas. That will turn roadways icy and increase the possibility of downed power lines, forecasters warned.

The first storm dropped more than a foot of snow on parts of the Pacific Northwest and left one person dead in an Interstate 5 pileup in southwest Washington. It also closed schools and offices.

The new storm did not lead to any immediate reports of fatal crashes or massive traffic jams.

Storms cut power to 55,000 homes in western, northern France

RFI
Fri, 07 Feb 2014 00:00 UTC

Winds of up to 120 kilometres cut off power to some 55,000 households and rain flooded shops and homes in north and west France overnight Thursday. The storms, which started in mid-December, are set to continue for at least a week.

Coming on the heels of storm Petra, storm Qumaira has brought gale-force windsto 36 departments north of a diaganol from Charente-Maritime in the west to the Ardennes in the east.

Worst hit was Brittany, France's far west, which has suffered the worst effects of a series of storms for over a month.

There two towns, Quimper and Morlaix, were flooded with over 100 shops and dozens of homes affected by waters as high as 60 centimetres.

Thousands of homes suffered power cuts, 25,000 in the Loire, 12,000 in Normandy and 10,000 in the Paris region.

Apart from the flooding, damage to property was not as bad as expected, mostly limited to fallen trees blocking roads.

New Lt. Governor of Virginia Winsome Sears: "We're going to have safer neighborhoods, safer communities, and our children are going to get a good...

parzival

Bill Gates is going to be the one with the uncertain future,,, * New Lt. Governor of Virginia Winsome Sears: "We're going to have safer...

parzival

The more we hear about adverse affects the more we will merely shrug. It's a catch 22. Is that an asteroid trail in the photo?

sass

Welcome to the new normal. The more sensory exposure we have about such things, the less it is an issue.

sass

more misbehaving phuqqin' jewzskies starring on the sott; speaks for itself

Jibrish

Earth Changes

Huge waves and heavy rain flood southern Britain

Huge waves smash into British coastline, swells up to 75 feet recorded off-shore, UK government considers establishing tsunami-warning system

500 flood alerts across England and Wales as southwest UK braces for yet ANOTHER hurricane-force storm

Car-sized boulder breaks off mountain in French Alps, smashes into first carriage and leaves train dangling over steep embankment - 2 dead, 10 injured

Satellites show no global warming for 17 years 5 months

Firefighters save dog from sinkhole in Buffalo, New York

What's killing trumpeter swans in Washington state?

UK: Wet weather here to stay as jet stream blamed

Stores close early as twin Winter storms sock U.S. Northwest

Storms cut power to 55,000 homes in western, northern France

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