© YouTube/M C
Earth Changes
The phenomenon is known as a "sun dog" or mock sun, an optical phenomenon which appears as a bright spot to the left or right of the real sun within a 22-degree halo. It is caused by the refraction of sunlight by ice crystals in the atmosphere, and has been known since Greek Antiquity.
Residents of the town of Hailun said they witnessed the sun dog Sunday around 9 a.m., and that it lasted for about five minutes.
© LYNE LUCIEN/THE DAILY BEAST
Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria were among the most expensive hurricanes in U.S. history, according to the disaster tracking group Enki Holdings. Combined with a severe and unusually long wildfire season, the government will need to pay at least $216 billion in disaster relief, more than the annual gross domestic product of Portugal.
The disaster relief bill passed by Congress this fall only provides $36.5 billion to be split between both flood damage and wildfire fighting.
The vast majority of costs from natural disasters came from this year's hurricane season, which caused an estimated $206.6 billion in damage, the most expensive season on record according to a report released by Enki that used a computer simulator along with economic and infrastructure data to estimate the costs of every hurricane since 1871.
While 2005's Hurricane Katrina still ranks as the costliest hurricane to hit the U.S. at $118 billion, Harvey which brought 50 inches of rainfall to the Gulf Coast caused $92 billion in damage, while Irma and Maria cost $59 billion and $42 billion, according to the study.
© YouTube/Storyful (screen capture)
The video - shot by Adelaide man Caleb Travis and uploaded to YouTube - shows lightning illuminating the sky over Glenelg.
The lightning leaves a lasting trace as it forks and snakes across the sky, and was filmed during Monday night's thunderstorms over the city.
The Bureau of Meteorology said two lines of thunderstorms moved across Adelaide on Monday night, and more than 280,000 lightning strikes were recorded over 24 hours around the state and over coastal waters.
"We wouldn't see that very often. It was a pretty dynamic system as it moved across so it was electrically active for a long period of time," senior forecaster Vince Rowlands said.
Comment: See also: Electric universe: Lightning strength and frequency increasing and Picket fence auroras and plasma ropes, electrical phenomenon in Earth's skies intensifies
The Electric Universe model is clearly explained, with a lot more relevant information, in the book Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection by Pierre Lescaudron and Laura Knight-Jadczyk.
© The Scottish Sun
There are many theories as to what the boom was - cryoseism, earthquake or sonic boom. But none have been definitely proven.
Cryoseism seemed to be the first theory most concluded on social media.
According to Frost Quake's website, a cryoseism is defined as "'a natural phenomenon that occurs when extremely cold temperatures lead to sudden deep freezing of the ground, after it has been saturated with water."
Earth science professor at Tennessee Tech Larry Knox said a cryoseism just wasn't likely.
"As I understand them, cryoseisms occur where the ground is saturated with ground water and temperatures drop suddenly to, or below, zero degrees Fahrenheit. There was a temperature drop on Sunday, but not of that magnitude," Knox said via email. "Also, cryoseisms are generally accompanied by earthquake-like vibrations that are strong enough for people to feel them - no earthquakes were reported as far as I know."
A little-known active stratovolcano erupted in a fiery explosion in the Amazonian Andes of Ecuador known as 'Reventador' in early December. Reventador is Spanish for 'troublemaker'.
Roscoe and a German colleague captured the rumblings and fiery explosions with wide-angle videos using moonlight alone by applying a unique filming technique at a specific rate and sped up the video to show the activity over the course of a three-day period.
© AFP
Rescuers are using heavy machinery to search for survivors after the landslide on the slopes of Mount Merapi
Rescuers are using heavy machinery to search for survivors after the landslide on the slopes of Mount Merapi
An avalanche of sand and rock cascaded down the slopes of Mount Merapi in Central Java about 10am (11am Singapore), burying a group of miners digging through the rocks and sand.
"The landslide happened suddenly and immediately buried the miners," disaster mitigation agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said in a statement.
© Twitter: Jenna Blyth
A number of suburbs across Melbourne experienced large hail.
A number of suburbs across Melbourne experienced large hail.
The State Emergency Service (SES) said they had received hundreds of calls for assistance after storms brewed on yesterday afternoon.
A severe thunderstorm warning for damaging winds, heavy rain and large hailstones remains current for much of the state.
More than 30,000 homes properties are still without power, down from about 100,000 around the state last night.
Power was also out in parts of suburban Melbourne but the impact was far less significant.
The weather bureau's Dean Stewart said Melbourne received 20 millimetres of rain within 15 minutes, causing flash flooding in many suburbs.
"The highest wind gust in the state was up at Kilmore Gap to the north of Melbourne - 117 kilometre per hour - but a lot of towns reported gusts over 100kph, [followed by] Wangaratta with 113kph, Bendigo 111kph, Mangalore 107kph, Laverton 98kph," he said.
© YouTube/Adapt 2030 (screen capture)
© Songquan Deng/Shutterstock
A lake near Stowe, Vermont (Songquan Deng/Shutterstock)
A lake near Stowe, Vermont (Songquan Deng/Shutterstock)
Scientists used a network of thousands of seismic measurement devices in the largest geological study of its kind, detecting the enormous blob upwelling under Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts - and possibly elsewhere.
"The upwelling we detected is like a hot air balloon, and we infer that something is rising up through the deeper part of our planet under New England," says geophysicist Vadim Levin from Rutgers University - New Brunswick.
Comment: Also See:
- Study claims chemical tipping point of magma determines explosive potential of volcanoes
- Experts scramble to keep an eye on long-dormant volcano in Iceland
- Scientists find Earth's largest volcanic region two kilometres below Antarctic ice sheet
- The ground around the Yellowstone supervolcano has deformed after 1,500 quakes this summer
- Climate changes can spur volcanoes into life
Comment: The Daily Beast can't help itself: every report and consequence of extreme weather events must be blamed on manmade global warming. The fact that many Republicans, like Trump, deny manmade global warming (something about which they happen to be correct) just gives them the opportunity to sanctimoniously blame the "climate change deniers" for what no one can prevent. Convenient, yes, but slimy and just plain wrong. Sad.