Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said a rapidly developing low-pressure mass is expected to bring heavy rain, snow and strong winds which will affect almost entire Japan on Tuesday and Wednesday, December 16 and 17, 2014.

Heavy storm conditions, high waves, floods, disruption of transport system and avalanches are expected as a result.

JMA called for particular readiness in Hokkaido for potential violent snow storm of magnitude seen "once in a few years". Maximum instantaneous winds reaching 108 - 126 km/h (67 - 78 mph) are forecast nationwide except for Okinawa, Amami and some other regions.

The Kuril Islands will see wind gusts eclipse typhoon strength and could approach 130 - 160 km/h (80-100 mph) Tuesday night and into Wednesday.

According to the JMA, two low-pressure masses, one over the Sea of Japan and the other over Honshu, are expected to grow fast and move northeast on Tuesday, eventually forming an atmospheric pressure distribution typical to winter over Japan. (JT)

The two masses will converge Wednesday over Hokkaido and grow further, creating a situation that will cause a strong cold airstream to continue to move toward Japan until Thursday.


Meteorologist Robert Speta of the WestPacWx said heavy rainfall could trigger localized flooding on Japans Pacific coast. This storm acts a lot like the sea effect snow event we seen this past weekend in Tohoku and Hokoriku.

"To put it in perspective this storm will have a deeper pressure and stronger gradient than the one on March 4, 2013 that killed nine in Japan," he said.

Investigators revealed Tuesday that a Flour Bluff woman who was found dead in her home Monday night appears to have been attacked by dogs she was fostering, and that attack is what resulted in her death.

The Nueces County Medical Examiner determined that 64-year old Rita Woodard, known to many as Rita Ross, died from a heart attack after multiple dog bites. One of her dogs was put to sleep after being severely injured by the attacking dogs.

Ross, who spent much of her time rescuing stray dogs, was discovered around 6:30 p.m. Monday. Several dogs were found feeding on her remains.

The Medical Examiner released a report late Tuesday stating that Ross had died from coronary artery atherosclerosis following multiple dog bites. Corpus Christi Police Department Commander John Houston, who supervises Animal Care Services, said it appeared that five of the 17 dogs found at Ross's home were responsible for the attack.

Those five will likely be euthanized.

Many of the dogs were in cages at Ross's home, and four have already been turned over to the group For the Love of Strays for adoption. The remaining eight dogs will be turned over to Ross's son, who lives out of state.

Major cities in the Bay Area are experiencing record rainfall during the first half of December, the National Weather Service said Tuesday.

National Weather Service meteorologist Charles Bell said:

"It's the wettest start ever for December."

San Francisco has seen more than 9.14 inches of rain through early this morning. The previous record of 7.10 inches was set in 1889. Data go back as far as 1849, Bell said.

A dust-up between the people of Walmart and a confused deer inside a North Carolina store was caught on camera by a customer.

The deer, apparently a doe, wandered into the store Monday afternoon in Charlotte's University City neighborhood and ended up being tackled and pinned to the ground by a group of Walmart workers and customers.

Witness Edmond Ratcliffe captured cellphone video of the incident.

"You never know when you have seen it all... I'm in Walmart today and a wildlife shopper decided that he needed to stop by Walmart for a celebrity appearance," Ratcliffe posted on Facebook.

If the supervolcano underneath Yellowstone National Park ever had another massive eruption, it could spew ash for thousands of miles across the United States, damaging buildings, smothering crops, and shutting down power plants. It'd be a huge disaster.

A super-eruption would be very bad - though also pretty unlikely

But that doesn't mean we should all start freaking out. The odds of that happening are thankfully pretty low. The Yellowstone supervolcano - thousands of times more powerful than a regular volcano - has only had three truly enormous eruptions in history. One occurred 2.1 million years ago, one 1.3 million years ago, and one 664,000 years ago.

Ten bighorn sheep have died over the past two weeks following an outbreak of pneumonia in a herd that lives along the upper Yellowstone River near Gardiner.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks staff has collected a mix of dead rams, lambs and one adult ewe and taken them to the state wildlife lab in Bozeman, where all were determined to have died from pneumonia.

Historically, pneumonia affects bighorn sheep herds differently. According to FWP wildlife veterinarian Jennifer Ramsey, "Sometimes we'll see a large scale, all age die-off in which most of the population dies, and that population never really rebounds. Yet in other herds we seem to see a low-level mortality year after year."

Hundreds of persons turned out this morning to get a glimpse of a whale that washed up at the Kitty foreshore opposite Pere Street.

Speaking to TrakkerNews wildlife conservation specialist Annette Arjune-Martins said her organization along with members of the Guyana Defense Force were looking and trying to free the whale since Sunday after they were notified of the mammal being trapped in fishing net at Mahaicony Foreshore.

Their efforts proved futile and this morning they got word of the find at Georgetown seawall of the dead whale.

Martins said she will be working along with the Public Works Minister Robson Benn on the way forward as to what they will do with the remains.

The whale size is approximately 20 feet.

Workers on Germany's highest mountain, Zugspitze, cover the glacier with oversized plastic sheets to keep it from melting during the summer months. Scientist have said geoengineering must be researched to find a possible solution of last resort to dangerous levels of global warming.

I was saying to my wife over dinner at a restaurant on the beach in Rio that the world has gone nuts since we were younger and in college. Even back then, I was able to isolate major patterns in civilization that showed me the future was bleak but never could anticipate the extent and level of sickness we were headed into.

Gerald Celente agrees with me saying, "The world is crazy. Look at the leaders of the world, it's a freak show." There are so many points of insanity in our world it is hard to know where to begin. How many of us would ever have thought we would see in the world, right in the mainstream press the outright claim, "ISIS: Enslaving, having sex with 'unbelieving' women, girls is OK." Perhaps we should not be surprised when we realize how sexual barbarism has filled the world since time began, or at least since the onset of organized religion.

A glaucous gull, which only recently reappeared on the Black Sea coast after more than a century, has drawn prominent birdwatchers to the northern province of Rize.

The glaucous gull is believed to have first appeared in 1874 in the busy Turkish province of Istanbul. This is actually the sole evidence of their existence in the Turkish territory, but there has been no sighting of the bird for 140 years.

The white-headed and-tailed bird has been described as the glaucous bird, which has first been recorded in 1874 in Istanbul, according to a discussion among Turkey's key bird watchers.

Lava from a volcano on Hawaii's Big Island is on course to reach a shopping center with a gas station and a supermarket in seven to 10 days, officials said.

Lava is about 1 mile from the shopping center in the small town of Pahoa, Hawaii County Civil Defense Director Darryl Oliveira said Monday. The shopping center also contains a hardware store, pharmacy and auto repair shop.

There's still a great deal of uncertainty about when the lava might reach the center and what it could hit. The lava could smother one structure in the complex or cover them all, he said.

"It just depends on what the flow does as it comes through," he told reporters during a conference call.

Oliveira says the county has been in touch with the merchants about evacuation plans. The county hasn't yet advised them to leave.

The supermarket, one of the biggest stores in the center, plans to start removing equipment on Tuesday and shut down on Thursday. Malama Market said in a statement it was encouraging customers to keep shopping until its doors close.

The gas station would sell its remaining fuel and pump out what's leftover if it does have to evacuate, Oliveira said. It would then fill its tanks with water and firefighting foam.

This plan has been approved the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and by the state Department of Health, he said.

An earlier idea called for the gas station to put sand into the tanks, but this wouldn't have removed all flammable vapors. It also would have destroyed the pumping system. By using firefighting foam, the gas station may use the tanks again if lava bypasses the area and it wants to reopen.

Lava has never hit a gas station on the Big Island in the past, Oliveira said.

Lava has been threatening Pahoa town, which has a population of about 900, for months. In October, it burned a house and covered part of a cemetery but stalled just before hitting Pahoa's main road.

It later started flowing from a different spot.

The lava could still cross the town's main road and a highway, which would make it more difficult for residents of Pahoa and the broader community of Puna to get to other parts of the island.