© NASA
Earth Changes
This week, sky watchers near the Arctic Circle have reported nightly displays of bright noctilucent clouds. The silvery ripples of NLCs look amazing from the ground, but they look even better from space. NASA's AIM spacecraft took this picture of the entire Arctic surrounded by an electric-blue glow on July 24th:
Regular readers of Spaceweather.com have been waiting for this image since June. Normally, AIM transmits pictures of NLCs every day, but the regular flow of data was interrupted months ago. The reason has to do with the spacecraft's orbit. Since AIM was launched in 2007, its orbit has been precessing--that is, slowly rotating with respect to the planet below. Eventually, accumulated changes in AIM's orbital elements required a new way of pointing the spacecraft's instruments. Mission controllers have been working on that problem all summer long--and it has finally been solved.
Soldiers were in an amoured vehicle to deliver food and drinking water to people stranded in flooded areas in Pingtung County, southern Taiwan, on Sunday
Just using the 50 year cycle we can see possible floods in Japan, blizzards in Chicago, record cold Siberia, drought in the Middle East, now add the effects of the grand solar minimum. Its all about the repeat cycle of double typhoons. Dont forget the Earth spot connection, as the typhoons rolled over Taiwan earthquakes were triggered.
Sources
As many as five deaths were reported from Bhadrak districts alone. Three persons also sustained burn injuries after lightning struck them in three blocks of the district.
Balasore reported at least four casualties while reports of three deaths came in from Kendrapara. Keonjhar, Sundargarh, Angul and Ganjam also reported one death each.
The deceased in Bhadrak included Baidhara Rout, Narahari Das and Purnachandra Jena, all from Chandabali block. The other two deceased - Mrutyunjaya Behera and Santosh Sethi - belonged to Tihid and Bhadrak blocks respectively.
Comment: On the same day in another Indian state (Jharkhand) 3 people and 2 cows were also killed by lightning.
© Angela Antunes / CC by 2.0
Witnesses said it happened after 8 p.m. in her neighborhood. Alan Williams was working on a car with his friend nearby.
"We heard a woman screaming for help, so we ran over there and we saw the neighbor trying to get the dogs off her," Williams said. "There were three dogs on top of her."
The Chisholm Fire Department said the woman was attacked by her own dog. Witnesses said they believe there were multiple dogs.
"We ran and tried to distract dogs, get them off her," Williams said. "It worked for a little bit. Both dogs came at us trying to get them away until back up arrived and then the police finally came in."
Comment: Other recent serious dog attack reports include that of a four-year-old girl mauled by a pit bull terrier in Nuneaton, UK and of a teenager savaged by an akito in Fife, Scotland.
© Marine Animal Response Society
An endangered North Atlantic right whale that was found lifeless in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is being towed for a post-mortem examination in this file photo
An endangered North Atlantic right whale that was found lifeless in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is being towed for a post-mortem examination in this file photo
The federal fisheries department says the discoveries bring the total of confirmed North Atlantic right whale deaths to at least nine.
The department says one of the animals had not been counted amongst the previous eight right whale carcasses that have been spotted in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in recent weeks.
Officials didn't immediately say when the carcasses washed ashore.
Scientists are working to confirm the identities of the whales and learn more about the causes of death.
© Weather Channel
The orange and red area illustrates the very localized nature of the heavy rain near the Harrisburg International Airport. Locations shaded green saw far less rainfall.
The orange and red area illustrates the very localized nature of the heavy rain near the Harrisburg International Airport. Locations shaded green saw far less rainfall.
Among them are several rainfall extremes, strange tropical cyclone interactions and out-of-season conditions.
Here's a look at what we've seen so far and what's to come.
1. A Rain Event That Had a 0.1-Percent Chance of Happening
Abundant tropical moisture fueled a rare rain event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on the evening of July 23.
Harrisburg International Airport received 4.27 inches of rain in a single hour, from 5:56 to 6:56 p.m. EDT. A rainfall event of this magnitude in Harrisburg has just a 0.1-percent chance of happening in a given year, according to data from NOAA.
The total rain for the day at Harrisburg International Airport tallied up at 4.71 inches. This now stands as the wettest July day on record, and the fifth-wettest day overall for any month of the year at that location.
This downpour was extremely localized. Harrisburg's Capital City Airport, just a few miles to the northwest, saw less than a half-inch of rain during the same evening.
Comment: For more coverage on the extreme weather affecting the entire planet, check out our monthly SOTT Earth Changes Summaries. Last month:
SOTT Earth Changes Summary - June 2017: Extreme Weather, Planetary Upheaval, Meteor Fireballs
© Curtis nikkelpickle / YouTube
Two eyewitness videos show the menacing tornado's size multiplying over a number of minutes time, hovering closer to the roofs below before eventually fading.
The agency said the quake was recorded at 2:01 local time Sunday about 16 miles (26 kilometers) southeast of Kaupo, Maui, at a depth of 11 miles (17 kilometers).
Some areas experienced shaking but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
The agency says the earthquake was likely due to bending of the oceanic plate from the weight of the island and posed no significant hazard.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center reported that no tsunami was generated by the earthquake, which also had no apparent effect on the ongoing eruption of the Kilauea volcano.
Source: AP
For years I've been fascinated by what could be considered as one of the greatest mysteries of our planet: the demise of the woolly mammoths. Try to imagine the barely imaginable: millions of giant mammoths inexplicably flash-frozen overnight.
This is a fascinating event for several reasons. First, flash-freezing is a very peculiar process that does not really occur on our planet. Also, given the death circumstances, the magnitude and power involved to virtually wipe out the whole mammoth genus is truly astounding.
Mammoth painting in Rouffignac cave But maybe the most fascinating aspect of this event is that it occurred just 13,000 years ago when the human race was already widely established on planet Earth. For comparison, the upper paleolithic cave paintings found in Southern France (Lascaux, Niaux, Rouffignac,...) were made 17,000 to 13,000 years ago.
This event challenges our uniformitarian vision of history where the progress of life on our planet is a linear process, increasing day after day, undisturbed by any major external setback. Therefore such an event casts a different light on our human condition and the pervasive delusion that human beings are some kind of all-mighty creatures that are above natural laws, including those that govern major catastrophes.
It is a fascinating and puzzling topic because the numerous theories that have been proposed over the last two centuries to explain the demise of the woolly mammoths - such as them being caught in frozen rivers, victims of over-hunting, covered by hail storms, buried in mudslides, fallen in ice crevasses, caught by the ice age - are not sufficient to fully explain this mass extinction.
So, in the following article, I will try to provide explanations about how and why millions of woolly mammoths ended up flash-frozen overnight.
This is a fascinating event for several reasons. First, flash-freezing is a very peculiar process that does not really occur on our planet. Also, given the death circumstances, the magnitude and power involved to virtually wipe out the whole mammoth genus is truly astounding.
Mammoth painting in Rouffignac cave
This event challenges our uniformitarian vision of history where the progress of life on our planet is a linear process, increasing day after day, undisturbed by any major external setback. Therefore such an event casts a different light on our human condition and the pervasive delusion that human beings are some kind of all-mighty creatures that are above natural laws, including those that govern major catastrophes.
It is a fascinating and puzzling topic because the numerous theories that have been proposed over the last two centuries to explain the demise of the woolly mammoths - such as them being caught in frozen rivers, victims of over-hunting, covered by hail storms, buried in mudslides, fallen in ice crevasses, caught by the ice age - are not sufficient to fully explain this mass extinction.
So, in the following article, I will try to provide explanations about how and why millions of woolly mammoths ended up flash-frozen overnight.
Comment: The follow-up of this article is titled: "Did Earth 'Steal' Martian Water". It is available here
Sources
Comment: For an explanation of noctilucent clouds and its place in the unusual atmospheric events we've been having on the planet lately, see: Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.