Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

Best of the Web: Monster Storm Bears Down On Australia, Hits Category 5

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Tropical cyclone Yasi seen off the coast of Australia, Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2011.
Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi was upgraded to category five off north Queensland this morning as the weather bureau warned it was likely to be "more life-threatening" than any storm seen in Australia in living memory.

The weather bureau says Cyclone Yasi is a large and very powerful tropical cyclone and poses an "extremely serious threat" to life and property within the warning area, especially between Port Douglas and Townsville.

"This impact is likely to be more life-threatening than any experienced during recent generations," the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said this morning.

Tens of thousands of people are fleeing their homes ahead of the monster storm, which is expected to hit the coast between Cairns and Innisfail some time tonight.

This morning it was estimated to be 650 kilometres east north-east of Cairns and 650 kilometres north-east of Townsville, moving west south-west at 30 kilometres per hour.

"There's still potential for it to become stronger ... as a strong category five we could see wind gusts in excess of 320 kilometres an hour (200mph). Which is just horrific."

Question

Snow spirals appear in US

As a winter storm of historic proportions prepares to sweep across the USA later this week, midwesterners should be alert for some unaccustomed sights. One of them is snow spirals. Michael French photographed this specimen in Frederick, Maryland, on Jan. 29th:

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© Michael French

Meteor

Best of the Web: Presence in the Force: 'Disturbance' in Interplanetary Magnetic Field blows hole in Earth's magnetosphere

According to the official forecast, the odds of geomagnetic activity on Jan. 31st were less than 10%. That was good enough for Kjetil Skogli of Troms, Norway. "We went out to look in spite of the low expectations--and there it was!" An aurora-burst was in progress directly overhead:
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© Kjetil Skogli

Cloud Lightning

Best of the Web: NASA Satellites Capture Data on 2000 Mile-Wide Monster Winter Storm Affecting 30 States

NASA Video of Storm on 1 Feb 2011
© NASAMassive winter storm over N. America, February 1, 2011
One of the largest winter storms since the 1950s is affecting 30 U.S. states today with snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain. NASA satellites have gathering data on the storm that stretches from Texas and the Rockies to the New England states.

NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites have been providing visible, infrared and microwave looks at the storm system's clouds, precipitation, temperatures and extent.

Fish

Florida, US: Thousands of Sharks Spotted off Palm Beach

A Florida pilot has captured an ominous sight in the waters off Palm Beach, thousands of sharks.


Steve Irwin works for "Island Marine Services" based in Fort Pierce.

He said he was flying about 100 yards off of Palm Beach, at 80 mph, when he spotted thousands of sharks, according to TV station WPTV.

Irwin recorded the migrating sharks on his iPhone.

Bizarro Earth

Shinmoedake volcano erupts again with big blast of ash, rocks

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© AP Photo/Kyodo NewsA dome of lava grows larger inside the crater of Mount Shinmoedake in the Kirishimna range on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu Monday, Jan. 31, 2011. Officials urged more than 1,000 residents to seek safer ground on Monday and expanded a no-access zone around the 4,662-foot (1,421-meter) volcano that has exploded back to life. The volcano erupted last week for the first time in 52 years.
A revived volcano in southern Japan erupted Tuesday with its biggest explosion yet, shooting out a huge plume of gas, boulders and ash and breaking windows 5 miles (8 kilometers) away.

The danger zone around Shinmoedake volcano was widened to keep residents safe. The largest eruption since it burst back to life last week covered wide areas in ash, shot boulders onto distant roads, knocked down trees and broke hundreds of windows in hotels and offices.

No serious injuries have been reported since the initial eruption last Wednesday, but public broadcaster NHK said a woman suffered cuts from shattered glass in Tuesday's blast.

NHK said the eruption was five times larger than the initial activity last week, which was Shinmoedake's first major eruption in 52 years.

Japan's Meteorological Agency has restricted access to the mountain, and on Tuesday broadened the no-go zone to anywhere within a 2 1/2-mile (four-kilometer) radius of the crater. Two lodges and scattered homes are within the perimeter.

Dozens of domestic flights in and out of Miyazaki - about 590 miles (950 kilometers) southwest of Tokyo - were grounded last week and more cancellations followed. Train service was temporarily suspended in the area and many schools closed.

The local government also reported damages to crops.

Cloud Lightning

Massive, 'Life-threatening' Tropical Cyclone Roars Toward Australia's Flood-Ravaged Northeast

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© ReutersTropical cyclone Yasi passing near the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu heading towards the coast of Australia on Jan. 31.
Authorities scrambled to airlift hospital patients from the path of a cyclone roaring toward waterlogged northeastern Australia and urged low-lying communities to evacuate because of potentially deadly flash floods.

Cyclone Yasi was expected to slam into the coast of Queensland state Wednesday as a Category 4 storm and dump up to three feet (one meter) of rain on communities already saturated from months of flooding.

"This storm is huge and it is life-threatening," Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said. "I know many of us will feel that Queensland has already borne about as much as we can bear when it comes to disasters and storms, but more is being asked of us - and I am confident that we are able to rise to this next challenge."

Yasi was barreling toward the Queensland state coast as a strong Category 3 storm with winds up to 137 mph (220 kph), but was expected to turn into a Category 4 storm with wind gusts up to 155 mph (250 kph) by Wednesday.

Bligh said the military would airlift 250 patients from the waterfont Cairns Base and Cairns Private hospitals to Brisbane, the state capital.

Although there were no mandatory evacuation orders yet, residents in waterfront and low-lying areas from the cities of Cairns to Townsville were being advised to leave.

Fish

More dead fish found in Arkansas River

Ozark, Arkansas - A state Game and Fish Commission official says more dead drum fish - but far fewer than the number reported in a previous fish kill - have been found in the Arkansas River near the lock and dam at Ozark, in the same area where thousands of dead fish were found a month earlier.

A news release Monday from the wildlife agency said a fish kill spotted Friday involved only about 500 fish, compared with 83,000 in a fish kill reported Dec. 29.

G&FC assistant fisheries chief Chris Racey said that, as with the previous fish kill, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff will test sample fish. Testing on fish from the Dec. 29 kill did not determine a cause, but ruled out parasites, disease or toxic chemicals.

Meteor

Dome of the Rock UFO and Kazakhstan Comet - Something Chaotic This Way Comes

At 1 am Israel time (UTC+2) on the 28th of January 2011, two videos were recorded in central Jerusalem. Both videos appear to have filmed the same event from different positions: A white ball of light descends from the sky and hovers over and slightly to the East of the Dome of the Rock, approximately over the garden of Gethsemane. After about 30 seconds, the ball of light shoots off into the sky at high speed.

First video shot from about 4 kms to the South of the Dome:


Second video, shot from what appears be just a few hundred meters to the West of the Dome:


Strangely enough at exactly the same time (all three were filmed at 11pm UTC on the 27th Jan.), another interesting aerial phenomena was being recorded at least 1000kms to the North East in Kazakhstan...

Comment: I've just remembered that a similar event was filmed in Kazakhstan last year:


Note the date: June 30th, the anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska cometary explosion over remote Siberia.

Our Connecting the Dots series discussed this other Kazakhstan event last summer.

Now, most Internet buzz seemed to connect this with the UFO that shut down Xiaoshan airport in the Chinese city of Hangzhou on the same night. In fact, the two events were generally confused as being one and the same. Here's a photo of the UFO over Hangzhou:

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At the time, we settled for the explanation that the spectacular display over Kazakhstan was a Russian rocket (its trajectory appears to be 'upwards' and the weird spiral over Norway the previous December had been claimed by the Russian government as one of its ICBM rockets)...

...but cometary fragments have been reported throughout history of performing 'unnatural' maneuvers themselves, sometimes slowing almost to a halt as they put on their show for us.

You have to wonder about spectacular mass 'UFO sightings' occurring at precisely the same times as these infinitely weirder visions entering or skirting our atmosphere.

Can we say "Cosmic COINTELPRO"?


Cloud Lightning

Best of the Web: Storm threatens 100 million in US with snow, ice, cold

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© Unknown
A mammoth storm threatens to dump mounds of fresh snow, sleet and ice on about 100 million already winter-weary people from the US heartland to the east coast, forecasters said Monday.

Blizzard, winter storm and freezing rain warnings were issued for more than 25 states, from North Dakota and Colorado down to New Mexico, then up through Texas, Kansas and Missouri to the Great Lakes region and across Pennsylvania to New England.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) urged residents to prepare in earnest for the fury of the storm as it barrels eastward across the country.

"A storm of this size and scope needs to be taken seriously," said FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, who warned that "it's critical that the public does its part to get ready."

Fugate urged residents in storm affected regions to "check on your neighbors, especially the elderly and young children -- those who can be most vulnerable during emergencies."