Earth Changes

Servere hailstorm causes damage to crops in Northeastern Wisconsin

Insurance Journal
Fri, 18 Jul 2014 13:34 UTC

© Samantha Hernandez/Door County Advocate
Growing corn shorn from its stalks along Walker Road in the town of Sevastopol after a localized hailstorm ravaged crops Monday night.

A severe hailstorm caused significant damage to crops in northeastern Wisconsin, farmers and researchers said.

Matt Stasiak, an agricultural researcher, tells the Door County Advocate the hail crushed cherry trees, grapevines, winter wheat, corn and other crops in Sevastopol on Monday night.

"A lot of foliage was stripped right off the cherry and apple trees," he said. "I saw some corn that had been ripped down to the stalks."

Stasiak also said five or six unfinished experiments at the Peninsular Agricultural Research Station were ruined. His team will have to wait until next year to repeat them.

A farmer tending to 60 acres of corn said the storm reduced the crop to one foot tall from four feet. The farmer said he remembers a similar hailstorm that hit the area 51 years ago, but it didn't leave behind "snowbanks" like the one on Monday night.

Wildfires rage on U.S.West Coast causing evacuations of entire towns

Nicholas K. Geranios
Yahoo News
Fri, 18 Jul 2014 00:00 UTC

© AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
A plane drops fire retardant on the Chiwaukum Creek Fire near Leavenworth, Wash., Thursday, July 17, 2014. The blaze closed a section of U.S. Highway 2, and resulted in the evacuation of nearly 900 homes.

A small north-central Washington town and a nearby hospital threatened by a wind-whipped wildfire have been evacuated, and the blaze has burned at least 35 homes in Okanogan County, the sheriff said.

Sheriff Frank Rogers said late Thursday he's heard of no injuries from the Carlton Complex of wildfires.

The sheriff issued his highest evacuation notice Thursday for Pateros, a town of about 650 people along the Columbia River. Residents drove south to Chelan. A hospital in nearby Brewster was evacuated as a precaution, with the patients sent to Omak.

"The whole town was evacuated," Rogers said in a telephone interview as he drove the eight-mile stretch between Brewster and Pateros. "It was a chaotic mess but we got everybody on the highway."

"There's nobody in Pateros" except a few "stragglers" who stayed, he said, adding the fire was burning in the town, although the small business district was believed intact.

Rogers said perhaps 15-20 homes have burned in Pateros and another 20 homes in the Twisp-Winthrop area. He had no estimate of how many homes have burned in the entire county of about 40,000 people.

Quiet sun: Current solar cycle one of weakest in over a century

Climate Depot
Fri, 18 Jul 2014 12:27 UTC

Ten days ago, the sun was quite active and peppered with several large spots. Now the sun has gone quiet and it is nearly completely blank. It appears that the solar maximum phase for solar cycle 24 may have been reached and it is not very impressive. It looks as if this solar cycle is "double-peaked" (see below) which is not all that uncommon; however, it is somewhat rare that the second peak in sunspot number during the solar max phase is larger than the first. In fact, this solar cycle continues to rank among the weakest on record which continues the recent trend for increasingly weaker cycles. The current predicted and observed size makes this the smallest sunspot cycle since Cycle 14 which had a maximum of 64.2 in February of 1906. Going back to 1755, there have been only a few solar cycles in the previous 23 that have had a lower number of sunspots during its maximum phase. For this reason, many solar researchers are calling this current solar maximum a "mini-max". Solar cycle 24 began after an unusually deep solar minimum that lasted from 2007 to 2009. In fact, in 2008 and 2009, there were almost no sunspots, a very unusual situation during a solar minimum phase that had not happened for almost a century.

Comment: For more information on the electrical nature of the universe and the factors that are currently affecting the sun and the weather here on earth, read Pierre Lescaudron's new book, Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.

Florida residents infected with chikungunya virus from domestic mosquitos

Matt Sedensky and Mike Stobbe
Associated Press
Thu, 17 Jul 2014 05:41 UTC

Health officials are reporting that for the first time, U.S. mosquitoes are spreading a virus that has been tearing through the Caribbean.

Two people in Florida have domestically-acquired chikungunya (chik-en-GUN-ye) infections, officials said Thursday. In both cases, they said, a person infected with the virus after visiting the Caribbean was then bitten again by an uninfected mosquito in Florida, which then transmitted the illness further.

Health officials urged residents to prevent mosquito bites, but said there was no cause for alarm.

"There is no broad risk to the health of the general public," said Dr. Celeste Philip, a public health official with the Department of Health.

Federal officials noted it's an unfortunate milestone in the spread of a painful infectious disease that has raced across the Caribbean this year and is apparently now taking root in the United States.

New data shows extreme drought in 80% of California

Latimes.com
Thu, 17 Jul 2014 15:55 UTC

More than 80% of California is now in an extreme drought, according to new data by the National Weather Service.

The NWS' Drought Monitor Update for July 15 shows 81% of California in the category of extreme drought or worse, up from 78%. Three months ago, it was 68%.

The map shows that drought conditions worsened in parts of Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties.

The new data comes as officials are getting tough on water wasters.

Saying that it was time to increase conservation in the midst of one of the worst droughts in decades, the State Water Resources Control Board adopted drought regulations that give local agencies the authority to fine those who waste water up to $500 a day.

Earth's magnetic field could flip sooner than expected

Kelly Dickerson
Scientific American
Wed, 09 Jul 2014 00:00 UTC

Changes measured by the Swarm satellite show that our magnetic field is weakening 10 times faster than originally predicted, especially over the Western Hemisphere

© www.geologypage.com
Changes in Earth’s magnetic field from January to June 2014 as measured by the Swarm constellation of satellites. These changes are based on the magnetic signals that stem from Earth’s core. Shades of red represent areas of strengthening, while blues show areas of weakening over the 6-month period.
Credit: ESA/DTU Space

Earth's magnetic field, which protects the planet from huge blasts of deadly solar radiation, has been weakening over the past six months, according to data collected by a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite array called Swarm.

The biggest weak spots in the magnetic field - which extends 370,000 miles (600,000 kilometers) above the planet's surface - have sprung up over the Western Hemisphere, while the field has strengthened over areas like the southern Indian Ocean, according to the magnetometers onboard the Swarm satellites - three separate satellites floating in tandem.

The scientists who conducted the study are still unsure why the magnetic field is weakening, but one likely reason is that Earth's magnetic poles are getting ready to flip, said Rune Floberghagen, the ESA's Swarm mission manager. In fact, the data suggest magnetic north is moving toward Siberia.

"Such a flip is not instantaneous, but would take many hundred if not a few thousand years," Floberghagen told Live Science. "They have happened many times in the past."[50 Amazing Facts About Planet Earth]

Scientists already know that magnetic north shifts. Once every few hundred thousand years the magnetic poles flip so that a compass would point south instead of north. While changes in magnetic field strength are part of this normal flipping cycle, data from Swarm have shown the field is starting to weaken faster than in the past. Previously, researchers estimated the field was weakening about 5 percent per century, but the new data revealed the field is actually weakening at 5 percent per decade, or 10 times faster than thought. As such, rather than the full flip occurring in about 2,000 years, as was predicted, the new data suggest it could happen sooner.

Comment: All objects with magnetic fields because of flowing currents - the Dynamo Mechanism - are subject to such pole reversals over time. The span of time between reversals depends on how fast the body is spinning, how large the body is, whether the body is solid or gaseous, and how electrically-conducting it is. The Earth and Sun differ in many ways from each other, but both have magnetic fields. The solar magnetic field reverses with every sunspot cycle (11 years) while Earth's takes much longer (300,000 years or more).

It may very well be fortuitous that the Sun, at this time, is producing less sunspots and CMEs (consistent with the onset of ice ages). A weakened magnetosphere that could reach near-zero levels would leave Earth vulnerable to extreme phenomena such as the strong geomagnetic storms, like the Carrington Event. Precipitated by an enormous sunspot in 1859, the sky turned blood red with bolts of lightning electrifying the atmosphere. Telegraph operators all over the world received electric shocks, people were electrocuted and fires were started through telegraph connections. In today's technological climate, the impact of a weak magnetic field and a strong solar delivery would be unimaginably devastating.

But that's not the real news here; the real news is that these scientists leave it open that magnetic reversals could happen much quicker than assumed, and that the next one could happen much sooner than expected.

Wrong place, wrong time: Pacific (Arctic) loon spotted in New Hampshire

world.einnews.com
Fri, 18 Jul 2014 10:49 UTC

An immature Pacific loon was seen at Seal Rocks along the coast in Rye on Saturday and Sunday.

This bird normally spends its summers in the Arctic making it a rare sighting in New Hampshire. It is also listed in Roger Tory Peterson's Field Guide to the Birds East of the Rockies as an Arctic loon.

It was reported as part of the New Hampshire Audubon's Rare Bird Alert for Tuesday, July 15.

Dead humpback whale washes ashore on Blacks Beach, Australia

Marianne Phimister
Daily Mercury (Australia)
Fri, 18 Jul 2014 10:29 UTC

Dead humpback whale washes ashore in Mackay.

A dead humpback whale has washed ashore at Blacks Beach this morning.

It is believed that it is the same whale that was seen in the water yesterday.

Sharks were seen feeding off the whale at Blacks Beach yesterday afternoon.

The dead whale was been spotted in waters close to shore at Blacks Beach, a National Parks department spokesman said.

"A number of sharks are feeding on the carcass and rangers in attendance are urging the public to refrain from boating or swimming in the area for safety," the spokesman said.

"There is no clear indication of a cause for the whale's death.

Residents are asked to stay away from the area.

The Ice Age looms: Record cold summer temperatures across many U.S. states

Robert Felix
iceagenow.info
Thu, 17 Jul 2014 09:38 UTC

Just scan down this list! It's amazing. Feels like October in Oklahoma, Iowa, Alabama, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Mississippi, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Kansas, even Manitoba. Have you seen much about this in the mainstream media?

Cold front brings record-breaking temperatures to Oklahoma City

Temperatures in Oklahoma City climbed only to 72 degrees Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. The record for the coolest high temperature for July 16 in Oklahoma City was 74 degrees, set in 1967, according to National Weather Service records.

Cold front brings record-breaking temperatures to Oklahoma City on Wednesday

Record low temperature for Sioux City, Iowa

The National Weather Service recorded a low of 49 degrees at Sioux Gateway Airport in Sioux City, breaking the old record of 50 degrees set in 1976.

After record low, Sioux City to see warming trend

Cold Breaks 128-Year Record in Mobile - Huntsville ties 69-year-old record low

Forecasters say Mobile, Alabama, has broken a 128-year-old record with a low temperature of 64 F, one degree cooler than the low of 65 F set in 1886. Meanwhile, Huntsville tied a record low for the date of 59 degrees set in 1945. In fact, temperatures ranged from the mid- to upper 50s across north Alabama.

Cold temps break 128-year record in Mobile

Super typhoon Rammasun slams China, Vietnam - risk of damaging winds, flooding, mudslides, coastal storm surge

Eric Leister
Accuweather.com
Fri, 18 Jul 2014 09:14 UTC

After moving over extreme northern Hainan China Friday afternoon, local time, the eye of Super Typhoon Rammasun will crash into the Leizhou Peninsula early Friday evening.

Rammasun, packing winds of 155 mph with higher gusts, is expected to make landfall again as the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane early Friday evening, local time.

Rammasun will likely bring widespread winds of over 100 mph to northern Hainan Island on Friday afternoon and Friday night (local time) with higher gusts. Widespread wind damage is expected across northern Hainan, as well as the Leizhou Peninsula to the north.