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Fri, 05 Nov 2021
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Snowflake Cold

Britain battered by hurricane-force winds, worst coastal surges in 60 years

Mark Duell & Sam Webb
Daily Mail, UK
Thu, 05 Dec 2013 14:55 UTC
  • More than 240 Environment Agency flood alerts in place in England and Wales, with most in East Anglia
  • Gusts of 140mph in parts of Aberdeenshire and Inverness-shire as ALL trains in Scotland are cancelled
  • Environment Secretary Owen Paterson will chair emergency Cobra meeting today on storm disruption
  • Police Scotland advise motorists not to drive in the south, west, central belt and south Perthshire
  • Storm will create the biggest waves in living memory off north-east over next few days, peaking on Saturday
  • Public should expect 36 hours of disruption, Norfolk Police warns as Great Yarmouth homes are evacuated
  • Evacuations planned in Essex and Suffolk as people are seen being rescued in North Wales and Merseyside
    • Image

    Huge waves engulf Whitehaven harbour, in the northwest of England. This part of the British coastline is usually protected by Northern Ireland, meaning there are never normally such big waves and tidal surges

    Thousands of people have been evacuated and hundreds rescued today as 140mph winds battered Britain in a hurricane-force storm.

    A lorry driver died in Scotland and a man riding a mobility scooter in King's Park in Retford, Nottinghamshire, was also killed when hit by a falling tree.

    More than 120,000 homes were left without power as the most serious tidal surge for 60 years is predicted to hit the east coast tonight.

    More than 10,000 homes in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex are being evacuated, while residents were also rescued in Rhyl, North Wales, and Merseyside.

    As they were taken away from their homes in dinghies, forecasters feared the worst is yet to come during tonight's high tide at around 10pm.

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Question

'Fishy smell' mystery in Greater Manchester leaves residents scratching their heads (and holding their noses)

Richard Wheatstone
The Daily Mirror, UK
Thu, 05 Dec 2013 14:40 UTC
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There's something fishy in the air in Greater Manchester.

In the last 24 hours a strange 'fishy' odour has slowly spread from one corner of the region to another.

And despite numerous enquiries with environmental health officials, police and fire departments, no one can confirm the source of the nasty stench.

It started on Tuesday when dozens of residents in Rochdale and Oldham complained of smelling an unpleasant aroma in the area via Twitter, the Manchester Evening News reports.

The smell appeared to have disappeared by Wednesday morning but by the afternoon there were several more reports in in Guide Bridge, Audenshaw , Droylsden and Ashton-under-Lyne.

In total, it appears to have travelled more than 12 miles
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Ice Cube

Millions affected by U.S. ice storm from Northern Texas to Kentucky - power outages likely

Alex Sosnowski
Accuweather.com
Thu, 05 Dec 2013 13:40 UTC
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An ice storm will affect millions of people into Friday and threaten to cut power for hundreds of thousands from northern Texas to western Kentucky. Travel by vehicle or foot will be dangerous during and after the storm, due to icy roads and falling trees and power lines. Snow and ice is already making travel difficult across Oklahoma, Texas and northern Arkansas. Conditions will worsen tonight.

Metro areas from Dallas to Little Rock, Ark.; Cape Girardeau, Mo.; Memphis, Tenn.; Evansville, Ind.; and Louisville, Ky.; will be affected by a period of freezing rain that will build up on exposed surfaces, including trees and power lines.

In some locations, the storm has the potential to allow one half an inch or more of ice to accumulate on the ground and accrue on elevated surfaces.

The storm is similar in size and may be similar in magnitude to a storm just several years ago.

According to Jesse Ferrell, weather expert and storm chaser for AccuWeather.com, "This will be the worst ice storm for the United States since January 2009 and will affect many of the same areas as that storm."
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Bizarro Earth

Workers try again to save whales trapped in Everglades, Florida

Suzette Laboy and Christine Armario
Associated Press
Thu, 05 Dec 2013 13:47 UTC
Stranded Whales
© AP Photo/National Park Service
In this Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2013, photo provided by the National Park Service, pilot whales are stranded on a beach in a remote area of the western portion of Everglades National Park, Fla. Federal officials said some whales have died. The marine mammals are known to normally inhabit deep water.
Everglades National Park - Wildlife workers are returning to Everglades National Park in Florida on Thursday to try leading 41 pilot whales out of dangerously shallow waters and back to the ocean where they belong.

"We're going to be cautiously optimistic on our way out," said Liz Stratton, assistant stranding coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "We don't know what we're going to find."

For now, the death count stands at 10. Six whales were found dead in the remote area on the park's western edge, and four had to be euthanized. The whales were first spotted on Tuesday about 20 miles east of where they normally live. It takes more than an hour to reach the spot from the nearest boat ramp and there is no cellphone service, complicating rescue efforts.

Stratton said NOAA has reached out to stranding experts about herding whales to deeper waters, an effort that failed on Wednesday.
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Heart - Black

U.S. Wildlife Services kill 1.5 million animals each year with no public accountability


nationofchange.org
Wed, 04 Dec 2013 09:42 UTC
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The Center for Biological Diversity and allies petitioned the Obama Administration today to reform the federal wildlife-killing agency known as "Wildlife Services," which kills nearly 1.5 million coyotes, bears, otters, foxes, birds and other animals each year without any requirement to disclose its activities to the public.

The secretive killing - which includes aerial gunning, traps and exploding poison caps - has gone on for decades with little public oversight or rules requiring the use of the best available science or techniques to reduce the deaths of non-target animals.

Today's petition was filed with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees Wildlife Services.

"Wildlife Services is an out-of-control, rogue agency that shoots, snares and poisons more than a million native animals every year, many unintentionally - including at least 13 endangered species," said Amy Atwood, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity and the primary author of the petition. "Despite calls for reform by members of Congress, scientists and the public, Wildlife Services is still operating without the kind of legally binding regulations that ensure transparency and accountability to the taxpaying American public, creating a free-for-all that should have been ended decades ago."
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Attention

About 40 whales trapped in Florida's Everglades National Park


The Christian Science Monitor
Wed, 04 Dec 2013 09:32 UTC
Four of about 40 pilot whales stranded in the Everglades National Park in southwest Florida have died, news media reported on Wednesday morning.


Wildlife officials are working to rescue 20 to 30 pilot whales stranded in a remote area of Everglades National Park in Monroe County.

About 30 whales are trapped in the shallow water near Everglades National Park, and about 10 whales are beached on the park's shore, Reuters reported. Four of the beached whales have died, the news agency said.
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Bizarro Earth

Mexico's Colima volcano activity: Strombolian-type explosions and lava flows occurring


Volcano Discovery
Thu, 05 Dec 2013 09:34 UTC
Activity remains elevated. Strombolian-type explosions and lava flows / glowing lava avalanches on the upper slope continue. Colima is one of the most active volcanoes in Mexico and in North America. It has erupted more than 40 times since 1576. One of the largest eruptions was on January 20 - 24, 1913. Nevado de Colima, also known as Tzapotépetl, lies 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) north its more active neighbor and is the taller of the two at 4,271+ meters (14,015+ ft). It is the 26th most prominent peak in North America. Prior to 2013, Colima had been relatively quiet since its last major eruption in 2008.

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Ice Cube

Volcanic ash from ancient Iceland volcanic eruption tied to global warming that ended Younger Dryas


ClimateScience.com
Thu, 05 Dec 2013 09:29 UTC
Image
© GFZ
Removal of a short core

Regional climate changes can be very rapid. A German-British team of geoscientists now reports that such a rapid climate change occurred in different regions with a time difference of 120 years. Investigation in the west German Eifel region and in southern Norway demonstrated that at the end of the last glaciation, about 12,240 years before the present, the climate became warmer, first recognised in the Eifel region and 120 years later in southern Norway. Nonetheless, the warming was equally rapid in both regions.

The team around Christine Lane (Oxford University) and Achim Brauer from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences reports in the latest volume of Geology (vol 41, no 12, p. 1251 - 1254) that within the younger Dryas, the last about 1100-year long cold phase at the end of the last ice age, a rapid warming first was measured in the Eifel region. Sediment cores from the Meerfelder Maar lake depict a typical deposition pattern, which was also found in the sediments of Lake Krakenes in southern Norway, but with a time lag of 120 years.

But how did the researcher reveal such an accurate time marking? "12,140 years ago a major eruption of the Katla volcano occurred on Iceland," explains Achim Brauer. "The volcanic ash was distributed by strong winds over large parts of northern and central Europe and we can find them with new technologies as tiny ash particles in the sediment deposits of lakes. Through counting of annual bands in these sediments we could precisely determine the age of this volcanic ash." Therefore, this ash material reflects a distinct time marker in the sediments of the lakes in the Eifel and in Norway.
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Bizarro Earth

Twin volcanoes erupt on volcanic island of Vanuatu

Alan Boyle
NBCNews.com
Thu, 05 Dec 2013 09:11 UTC
Steam and ash stream from the twin volcanoes on the island of Ambrym in the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu, as seen in a picture captured from the International Space Station as it passed overhead. "Not every day you get to see an active volcano, let alone two," NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins tweeted on Monday.

Image
© Mike Hopkins / NASA via Twitter
NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins shared this picture of the double volcano on the island of Ambrym in the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu on Dec. 2 via Twitter.
Ambrym is literally one of the hotspots for volcano tourists, but it has been known to turn deadly in the past. To find out more about the island and its double-barrelled volcano (Marum and Benbow), check out Phil Plait's volcano roundup on the Bad Astronomy blog.
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Nuke

Radioactive Japanese wave nears U.S.

Maxim Lott
Fox News
Fri, 29 Nov 2013 18:51 UTC
Image
© AP/NTV/NNN JAPAN
March 14, 2011: In this image made off Japan's NTV/NNN Japan television footage, smoke ascends from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant's Unit 3 in Okumamachi, Fukushima Prefecture, northern Japan.
In the wake of the deadly tsunami that hit Japan in 2011 and severely damaged a nuclear reactor, Japanese officials say the levels of radiation are safe for everyone outside the reactor area itself. But as radioactive water from the plant nears the West Coast of North America -- the water is expected to hit in 2014 -- can we be sure it's safe?

The nuclear reactor continues to leak radioactive water due to poor management, while Japanese subcontractors at the plant have admitted they intentionally under-reported radiation and that dozens of farms around Fukushima that were initially deemed safe by the government actually had unsafe levels of radioactive cesium.

Fukushima locals also claim they're seeing cancer at higher rates and the Japanese government is covering up the scale of the problem.

So what do independent estimates say? The first measures come from the U.S. government. The FDA has stepped up its monitoring of radiation in seafood due to the Fukushima incident.
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