Torrential rain battered eastern Sicily on Wednesday, where mudslides have killed at least three people and muddy torrents have swept away cars and washed out bridges, authorities said.
Earth Changes
© Unknown
Reference Image, not article specific.
Reference Image, not article specific.
Giovanni Long, 16, told khou.com that he fell several feet and was under water for about 15 seconds as he tried to claw his way out of a hole 6 feet deep and 10 feet wide as he was walking in Kleinwood, a suburb northwest of downtown Houston.
"Everything beneath me crumbled," he told the website after the Monday afternoon incident. "I didn't know what to do."
"I was trying to dig my way out of the hole, but the ground kept breaking back into me," added Long, who finally got out with a few scratches on his back and a sprained ankle. "It's funny now that I think about it ... but when it happened, it was actually scary."
Why the 12-inch water line broke wasn't determined, but it's possible that recent rain after months of drought caused the ground to shift.
The drought itself caused daily water main breaks across Houston.
© NOAA Photo Library, NOAA Central Library; OAR/ERL/National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL)
A climate study has found increasing fluctuations between cloudy days and sunny ones, and between dry days and downpours. Above, an example of one extreme.
A climate study has found increasing fluctuations between cloudy days and sunny ones, and between dry days and downpours. Above, an example of one extreme.
The world isn't just warming, in parts of the planet the weather is becoming more erratic, new research indicates.
By looking at measurements of sunlight striking the planet's surface as well as precipitation records, a study has found that in certain places, daily weather is increasingly flip-flopping between sunny and cloudy, and downpours and dry days. It's not yet clear why this is happening.
This is the first global climate study to examine variation in day-to-day weather. So far, climate science has focused on extremes - record temperatures or intense storms, for example - or on averages, such as estimates that global temperatures have risen 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) since the Industrial Revolution.
"I think it turns out day-to-day variability is actually important and perhaps more attention should be paid to it," said David Medvigy, the lead researcher and an assistant professor in the department of geosciences at Princeton University.
This is because increases in weather fluctuations have important implications, particularly for plants - which currently pull about 25 percent of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide emitted by humans out of the air.
© USGS
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 18:48:15 UTC
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 02:48:15 PM at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location:
15.345°S, 65.110°W
Depth:
533.3 km (331.4 miles)
Region:
BENI, BOLIVIA
Distances:
60 km (37 miles) SSW of Trinidad, Bolivia
251 km (155 miles) NNE of Cochabamba, Bolivia
342 km (212 miles) NW of Santa Cruz, Bolivia
350 km (217 miles) ENE of LA PAZ, Bolivia
© n/a
In other words, what these emails confirm is that the great man-made global warming scare is not about science but about political activism. This, it seems, is what motivated the whistleblower 'FOIA 2011' (or "thief", as the usual suspects at RealClimate will no doubt prefer to tar him or her) to go public.
As FOIA 2011 puts it when introducing the selected highlights, culled from a file of 220,000 emails:
"Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day."
"Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes."
"One dollar can save a life" - the opposite must also be true.
"Poverty is a death sentence."
"Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize
greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels."
Today's decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on
hiding the decline.
© Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
An image from a live video feed shows oil gushing from BP’s Macondo well on May 28.
An image from a live video feed shows oil gushing from BP’s Macondo well on May 28.
The April 20, 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 people and dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days, until the well was declared capped, on July 15, 2010.
But attorney Stuart Smith told Courthouse News that new oil is washing up on barrier islands in Louisiana and Mississippi. "There's a deafening silence on the issue," from the Coast Guard and from BP, Smith said.
"We've been doing environmental testing, we've been spending a lot of time and resources doing what's called 'fingerprinting' the oil," Smith said.
"Oil from different reservoirs contains different concentrations of various stuff, and so each reservoir has a fingerprint. If you test it, you can tell where it's coming from. The Macondo well was the only well that was completed into that particular reservoir.
© KING 5 News
A high wind warning is in effect on the coast until noon Tuesday, along with flood watches through Wednesday night for rivers that easily flood in Western Washington, and a winter storm warning for the north Cascades until 6 p.m. Tuesday for up to a foot of new snow.
"We've had a lot of rain and a lot of wind," said KING 5 Meteorologist Rich Marriott. "The good news is the winds will begin to die down a little bit."
Moderate to heavy rain was blanketing Western Washington Monday morning. Between 1-2 inches of rain fell in the lowlands overnight, and Marriott predicts about 1-3 inches more for Tuesday. The rain will stick around through Wednesday morning, possibly causing some urban flooding due to clogged drains. Read Rich's complete forecast.
The Olympic Peninsula could see as much of 10 inches of rain, which could lead to some river flooding. A Flood Warning is in effect for Mason County on the Skokomish river at Potlatch.
© Unknown
Fuego Volcano
Fuego Volcano
The explosions were accompanied by moderate to strong booming noises and shock waves that could be felt in up to 15 km distance. Near-constant rock avalanches are observed on the upper slopes beneath the summit crater, some of which reach the vegetated areas.
© NOAA
Hurricane Kenneth, as seen in this GOES West satellite images taken today (Nov. 21), becomes the fourth tropical system on record to form in the eastern Pacific Ocean after November 18, and the second-latest hurricane after Hurricane Winnie on December 5, 1983.
Hurricane Kenneth, as seen in this GOES West satellite images taken today (Nov. 21), becomes the fourth tropical system on record to form in the eastern Pacific Ocean after November 18, and the second-latest hurricane after Hurricane Winnie on December 5, 1983.
Kenneth has punishing winds of 145 mph (230 kph), but is currently not considered a threat to land as it pushes westward some 750 miles (1,210 kilometers) south-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Category 4 is the second-highest category on the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane strength. The storm is expected to remain a hurricane through Thursday before weakening.
Though the official hurricane seasons for both the eastern Pacific and Atlantic last until Nov. 30, it is rare for storms to form this late in the year, as tropical ocean waters are cooler than they are at the height of the season in August and September and therefore less likely to fuel the storms.
© NASA
NASA' Terra satellite captured cloud streets in Hudson Bay, Canada on November 20, 2011 at 12:25 p.m. EST (17:25 UTC).
NASA' Terra satellite captured cloud streets in Hudson Bay, Canada on November 20, 2011 at 12:25 p.m. EST (17:25 UTC).
I love looking at unusual cloud formations, and these have to be some of the most intriguing. These long, horizontal rolls of clouds are called "cloud streets" and NASA's Terra satellite had a "drive by" of these clouds, observing them over Hudson Bay, Canada on November 20, 2011 at 12:25 p.m. EST (17:25 UTC). These rows of clouds stretch from northwest to southeast over the Hudson Bay.
Cloud streets are long lines or bands of cumulus clouds that usually form within the lower one to three kilometers of the atmosphere, and come from eddies in the atmosphere.
According to NASA's Earth Observatory and the Goddard Space Flight Center Flickr page, cloud streets form when cold air blows over warmer waters, while a warmer air layer - or temperature inversion - rests over top of both. The comparatively warm water of Hudson Bay gives up heat and moisture to the cold air mass above, and columns of heated air - thermals - naturally rise through the atmosphere. As they hit the temperature inversion like a lid, the air rolls over like the circulation in a pot of boiling water. The water in the warm air cools and condenses into flat-bottomed, fluffy-topped cumulus clouds that line up parallel to the wind.
Hudson Bay is a large body of saltwater located in northeastern Canada. Also in the image, are several snow-covered islands in Hudson Bay. The larger island to the north is South Hampton Island, and the smaller island east is Coats Island, and further east is Mansel Island.
