Earth ChangesS


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Winter Storms Converge on Atlantic Canada

Alex Sosnowski
AccuWeather
Fri, 21 Jan 2011 02:12 UTC
The same snowstorm that hit New England Friday morning will affect the Maritimes and the Gulf of St. Lawrence region of Canada into Friday night. A second storm will hit Newfoundland later in the weekend.

The heaviest snow will stretch from southeastern Maine through Prince Edward Island, southeastern New Brunswick and northwestern Nova Scotia, where 15 to 25 centimeters of snow will fall from the storm.




A mix with or a change to rain will limit accumulations in southeastern Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

Like many storms that visit the region, the system is strengthening. As a result, winds will kick up and can gust past 80 kph tonight, raising seas and leading to blowing snow.

Image
© AccuWeather.com
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Igloo

US: Forecast for the Rest of Winter Looks Rough

Heather Buchman
AccuWeather
Fri, 21 Jan 2011 01:00 UTC
For people who are sick of the cold and snow and hoping for a quick end to winter, AccuWeather.com Chief Long Range Forecaster Joe Bastardi may have bad news.




More persistent cold is expected to hold strong through at least the middle of February across much of the eastern two-thirds of the country. Bastardi also expects wintry events to last into April in some areas, which would be longer than last year.

Based on what is predicted for the rest of the season, Bastardi also says that this winter could end up being the coldest for the nation as a whole since the 1980s.

Persistent Cold, Storminess to Continue from Plains to East

While cold weather is of course a part of winter, the persistent nature of colder-than-normal conditions and a lack of brief warm spells people can typically look forward to during midwinter have been unusual this season. Temperatures since Dec. 1, 2010 have averaged below normal from Boston and New York City to Chicago, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Atlanta and even Miami.

Temperatures are expected to continue averaging below normal in many of these places, from the northern and central Plains into the East, through at least the middle of February.

The biggest snowstorms in February will target areas mainly north of a line running from the Mason-Dixon Line to the Ohio River and I-40 across the Plains, according to Bastardi.

Image
© AccuWeather.com
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Radar

Magnetic Mayhem - Is Earth's fluctuating magnetic field responsible for recent spike in mass animal deaths?

Chantel Day
KLHU Special Report
Fri, 14 Jan 2011 16:14 UTC
Chantel Day of KLHU TV presents this special report probing a possible connection between the recent mass marine and avian deaths with erratic fluctuations in the planet's magnetic field:

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Question

FDA Claims They Poisoned Birds In North Dakota


MSNBC
Fri, 21 Jan 2011 15:22 UTC
When the US Federal Department of Agriculture heard that an officer from the Animal Control Center was planning to send some of the dead starlings to South Dakota State University for testing, they claimed that they had killed the birds in an effort to cull the population.

Nice try

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Eye 1

Farmer wants to know what's killing his buffalo

Justin Murphy
Auburnpub.com
Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:26 UTC
Image
© Yellowstone National Park
Dozens of buffalo on a Sempronius farm have died mysteriously over the last four months, and veterinary examinations provide no clue to what happened.

"We're going nuts down here trying to figure out what's going on," farm owner Peter Head said. "This is going to put me out of business."

Beginning in October, the buffalo have been dying off sporadically - as many as six on some days. Of the original 110 animals, 55 have died, including 17 of 23 calves and many of the older animals, Head said.

"They just stand around like they have stomach cramps," Head said of the sick buffalo. "Like something's bothering them on the inside."
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Bizarro Earth

24 Stranded New Zealand Whales Die


Time
Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:10 UTC
Beached Whales
© Department of Conservation / AFP / Getty ImagesOne of 25 pilot whales that died after beaching themselves in the sand at Spirits Bay, New Zealand.

Wellington - New Zealand conservation officials on Friday euthanized 10 pilot whales, the only survivors of a 24-strong pod that became stranded in a mangrove swamp.

The whales had been found earlier in the day trapped in the shallow water and mud in Parengarenga Harbor on North Island, with 14 already dead.

The mammals had been there for some time and the 10 survivors were in poor shape, said Department of Conservation area manager Jonathan Maxwell.

With worsening weather and a high tide more than eight hours away, "the chance of successfully refloating the whales was virtually nil," Maxwell said.

"Sadly, the current conditions were against these animals. The kindest thing was to end their suffering," he said. "If we felt there was a real chance we could have successfully rescued them, we would have."
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Bizarro Earth

Violent Seismic Activity is Tearing Africa in Two

Axel Bojanowski
Spiegel Online
Thu, 20 Jan 2011 12:32 UTC
volcano Africa
© University of Bristol / Lorraine FieldIndeed, Africa is starting to split apart. The first tear came in the last million years, resulting in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. And now the earth is opening up in a massive expanse of land stretching south from Ethiopia to Mozambique.
High-Speed Geology

The fissures began appearing years ago. But in recent months, seismic activity has accelerated in northeastern Africa as the continent breaks apart in slow motion. Researchers say that lava in the region is consistent with magma normally seen on the sea floor -- and that water will ultimately cover the desert.

Cynthia Ebinger, a geologist from the University of Rochester in New York, could hardly believe what the caller from the deserts of Ethiopia was saying. It was an employee at a mineralogy company -- and he reported that the famous Erta Ale volcano in northeastern Ethiopia was erupting. Ebinger, who has studied the volcano for years, was taken aback. The volcano's crater had always been filled with a bubbling soup of silver-black lava, but it had been decades since its last eruption.

The call came last November. And Ebinger immediately flew to Ethiopia with some fellow researchers. "The volcano was bubbling over; flaming-red lava was shooting up into the sky," Ebinger told Spiegel Online.

The earth is in upheaval in northeastern Africa, and the region is changing quickly. The desert floor is quaking and splitting open, volcanoes are boiling over, and seawaters are encroaching upon the land. Africa, researchers are certain, is splitting apart at a rate rarely seen in geology.
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Fish

Trapped in ice, 'thousands' of fish die in Detroit River

Frances Willick
The Windsor Star
Fri, 21 Jan 2011 09:08 UTC
Image
© Nick BrancaccioFish appear to be trapped by ice flows on the Detroit River near Windsor's Alexander Park at Riverside Drive East and George Avenue Thursday Jan. 20, 2011. Dead fish can be seen with thousands of live fish schooling just below the surface.

Residents in Riverside are concerned about what they say is a major fish kill in the Detroit River.

Andre Mailhot was out walking his Jack Russell terrier in Alexander Park - a municipal park that runs along Riverside Drive roughly between Strabane and George Avenues - on Tuesday when he saw "thousands and thousands" of dead fish floating in the water.

"I couldn't believe it. As far as I could see, I could see all those little white spots," Mailhot said. "They were just coming down the river like somebody threw them in the water."
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Hourglass

First dead birds, then dead fish ... now crickets


MSNBC
Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:50 UTC
dead crickets
© Unknown

A virus has killed millions of crickets raised to feed pet reptiles and those kept in zoos.

The cricket paralysis virus has disrupted supplies to pet shops across North America as a handful of operators have seen millions of their insects killed.

Some operations have gone bankrupt and others have closed indefinitely until they can rid their facilities of the virus.

Cricket farms started in the 1940s as a source of fish bait, but the bulk of sales now are to pet supply companies, reptile owners and zoos, although people also eat some.

Most U.S. farms are in the South, but suppliers from Pennsylvania to California also raise crickets.

Comment: A virus?
"However, biologists say these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated"
The above article certainly does it's best to alleviate any concerns people may have with these animal mass-death events, but are they all unrelated? With more information and study, time will surely tell..

Dead birds rain down on towns half a world apart

Dead birds found in Koroneia Lake, Greece

Dead Birds in China: Birds continue to fall around the world - may be a precursor to reversal of poles

Mystery as thousands of dead birds fall from sky in Australia

Romania: A Second Wave of Dead Birds

New Zealand: Mystery as sparrows drop dead

Hundreds of dead penguins wash up on Brazil shores

More mass animal deaths: Hundreds of fish meet an icy end in a frozen pond in Manchester

Read More...
Bad Guys

Japanese Dolphin Slaughter Caught on Video


3 News, New Zealand
Thu, 20 Jan 2011 18:56 UTC
Dolphin Slaughter
© 3 News, New ZealandIn this screenshot from YouTube, a fisherman is seen wrestling a bleeding dolphin.

New footage shot in the small Japanese town of Taiji shows dolphins are still being slaughtered inhumanely and in mass quantities, despite assurances from authorities the annual hunt no longer used such techniques.

The video, shot by US group Save Japan Dolphins, was shot on Tuesday and uploaded to YouTube.

It appears to disprove claims dolphin hunting was made more humane in the wake of 2009's documentary on the hunt, The Cove, which exposed the brutal methods used to kill around 1500 dolphins every year.

The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Australian marine science student Nicole McLachlan, who is in Taiji: "One of the hardest things I have witnessed here is the distress and anguish of these animals during a slaughter... ''And today some were taken under the tarps and killed while the rest of their family remained in the waters nearby.

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