Earth Changes
Cleanup and rescue operations begin in Buenos Aires after torrential rain causes widespread flooding and severe disruption in Argentina's capital. About 167mm of rain hit Buenos Aires, a record in the city for the month of April. Clogged drains are being cleared and emergency services have been using boats to assist people left marooned
Officials in Hillsborough county, Florida, have released footage showing a giant cavity under a house caused by a sinkhole which engulfed a man as he slept. Jeff Bush, 36, is missing and presumed dead. Neighbours have been asked to relocate after tests revealed a chance of more sinkhole activity
© USGS
2013-04-06 04:42:36 UTC
2013-04-06 13:42:36 UTC+09:00 at epicenter
Location
3.532°S 138.455°E depth=75.1km (46.7mi)
Nearby Cities
237km (147mi) E of Enarotali, Indonesia
256km (159mi) WSW of Abepura, Indonesia
272km (169mi) WSW of Jayapura, Indonesia
330km (205mi) E of Nabire, Indonesia
1165km (724mi) WNW of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
Technical Details
© USGS
There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from the quake, which struck seconds after 12am Saturday local time. A 6.1-magnitude quake struck Russia's far east last month, and a 6.9 quake rocked the region in February. Neither caused significant damage.
USGS data
© KHOU
How intense? For the answer I turned to Dick Orville, a professor of meteorology at Texas A&M University who helped establish a network that tracks lightning in Houston.
For Tuesday night's event you can see an hourly map here showing lightning strikes - both cloud-to-ground and within clouds - within 100 miles of Houston.
People in Hitchcock spent the day patching up windows on their homes and cars after an intense hail storm pounded the community Tuesday night.
People said the hail was the size of softballs.
"I didn't know what to think," Betty Whittington said.
Hail busted out the rear window of her SUV.
Surveillance video captured images of the hail falling at the Bostonian Inn on Highway 6.
The storm also had strong winds.
"It sounded like the house was fixing to fly away," said Hardy Whittington.
People said the hail was the size of softballs.
"I didn't know what to think," Betty Whittington said.
Hail busted out the rear window of her SUV.
Surveillance video captured images of the hail falling at the Bostonian Inn on Highway 6.
The storm also had strong winds.
"It sounded like the house was fixing to fly away," said Hardy Whittington.
© Tami Galesky via WKTV
Lake effect snow fell across central New York on Tuesday, including here in the Town of Grant, NY.
Lake effect snow fell across central New York on Tuesday, including here in the Town of Grant, NY.
In addition, the 10.5 inches also breaks the one-day calendar day record for the entire month of April in Syracuse. The previous record was 7.1 inches on April 4, 1975.
The heat is on Syngenta and Bayer CropScience, makers of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are heavily indicated in sharp bee decline as each new study proves. The EU is still discussing a ban and the EPA is being sued for allowing the manufacturers conditional registration of their class of chemicals which include clothianidin and imidacloprid - also acutely deadly to bees. Both governmental authorities appear to have catered to corporate influence at the expense of the bee population and the future of crops.
Alice Jay of Avaaz activist group said:
No one knows for certain what's killing our bees, but leading scientists have powerful evidence pointing to these pesticides. Protecting bees and our countryside must come before the profits of the pesticide industry.
Record-breaking flash-flooding has drowned countless people in Buenos Aires, Argentina
The "tsunami of rain," as it has been called, has forced thousands of people to be evacuated and caused significant damage to homes and infrastructure. An estimated 600,000 people in the area have no power, drinking water or working phone lines.
The Argentine government is working with provincial and local authorities to evacuate homes which in some La Plata neighborhoods were flooded with more than 1.5 meters of water.
Of the 48 confirmed fatalities in La Plata, 60 kilometers south of the national capital, only 24 have been identified, said Buenos Aires provincial security minister Ricardo Casal, adding that among the identified dead there was just one young person, a 21-year-old man, and all the rest were people over age 50.
The New Zealand, German and U.S. scientists found the pockmarks at a depth of about 1,000 meters on the seafloor of the Chatham Rise, about 500 km east of Christchurch. The three giant pockmarks, the largest measuring 11 km by 6 km in diameter and 100 meters deep, were possibly twice the size of the largest pockmarks recorded in scientific literature, said a statement from New Zealand's Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS Science). The craters were part of a much larger field of thousands of smaller pockmarks that extended eastward along the Chatham Rise for several hundred kilometers. "Some of the pockmarks on the Chatham Rise are huge compared to similar structures observed elsewhere in the world," GNS Science marine geophysicist Bryan Davy said in the statement.
"They are big enough to enclose the Wellington city urban area, or (New York's) lower Manhattan." Gas release from the larger pockmarks could have been sudden and possibly even violent, with a massive volume expelled into the ocean and atmosphere within hours or days. Scientists could not rule out volcanic activity having caused the release of gas, but another possibility was the release of sub- seafloor hydrocarbon gas, which would have coincided with drops in the sea level of about 100 meters during ice ages and subsequent warming of sea temperatures.
Comment: Keep in mind that 'the worst flooding in over a half-century' hit Buenos Aires just four months ago in December 2012...