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Cold Winter Kills at Least 40 in Afghanistan

Rahim Faiez
Associated Press
Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:40 UTC
Kabul Snow Storm
© AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq
An Afghan man, his head covered with his scarf, walks down the street during a snowstorm in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Feb. 19, 2012.
Kabul - More than 40 people, most of them children, have frozen to death in what has been Afghanistan's coldest winter in years, an Afghan health official said Monday.

The government has recorded 41 deaths from freezing in three provinces - Kabul, Ghor and Badakhshan, said Health Ministry spokesman Ghulam Sakhi Kargar.

All but three or four of those deaths were children, he said. Twenty-four of the deaths were in the capital of Kabul, mostly in camps for people who have fled fighting elsewhere in the country.

Kabul has been experiencing its worst cold snap and heaviest snowfall in 15 years, according to the National Weather Center.
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Heart - Black

US: Avalanches Kill 4 at Washington Ski Resorts


San Francisco Chronicle
Sun, 19 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© The Seattle Times/The Associated Press
Feb. 19, 2012: King County Sheriff's officers and other emergency officials work along Highway 2 near Stevens Pass ski resort in Skykomish, Wash., near where four skiers were killed in an avalanche.
Avalanches just minutes apart killed four people at two resorts Sunday - one burying three skiers at Stevens Pass ski resort in the Cascade Mountains and another sweeping a snowboarder off a cliff in Snoqualmie.

All four were in out-of-bounds areas of the resorts.

Just before noon, a snowboarder at Alpental, one of four areas at the Summit at Snoqualmie resort, was with two friends when he triggered an avalanche that caused him to fall about 500 feet over a cliff, authorities said.

Minutes later, 12 skiers in an un-groomed, out-of-bounds area at Stevens Pass resort were caught in an avalanche. Three of them did not respond to CPR and died, said Katie Larson, a spokeswoman with the King County Sheriff's Office.
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Snowflake

US: Winter Storm Dumps Snow on Parts of South; Crashes, Power Outages Reported


The Washington Post
Sun, 19 Feb 2012 01:32 UTC
Image
© Richmond Times-Dispatch, Eva Russo / The Associated Press
After a day of teasing, the snow finally starts to accumulate along Broad Street in downtown Richmond, Va., on Sunday, Feb. 19, 2012.
A winter storm on Sunday dumped several inches of snow on a band of southern states, triggering accidents on slippery roads and knocking out power to tens of thousands.

The storm brought wet snow to parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

In northern Tennessee, about 20 vehicles were involved in crashes along a three-mile stretch of Interstate 75 near the Kentucky border on Sunday afternoon.

Tennessee Highway Patrol Sgt. Stacy Heatherly said the crashes were reported shortly before 2 p.m. Sunday in near "white-out" conditions caused by heavy snowfall and fog. Police said a juvenile was seriously injured. All lanes of Interstate 75 had reopened by early evening.

Dozens of wrecks were also reported in North Carolina as snow, sleet and rain fell with little accumulation, according to The Winston-Salem Journal.
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No Entry

Update: Philippines: Public Warned: Don't Go Near Sinkhole Site

Candeze R. Mongaya
Inquirer News
Sun, 19 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
sinkhole
© Aldo Nelbert Banyanal
Residents of Barangay Cambuang, Dumanjug gather near a sinkhole in a farm few meters from the national road. They said the sinkhole is growing and has already swallowed an electric post and a small mango tree.
People should stay away from the new sinkhole in a farm in Dumanjug town because the soil may "cave in" anytime.

Geologist Maria Elena Lupo gave this warning yesterday as curious onlookers gathered at the site in barangay Cambuang.

"There's no way of knowing how big it will grow and when it will stop. It could suddenly collapse into an unexpected gap," said Lupo, senior geologist of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Mines and Geosciences Bureau in Central Visayas (DENR-MGB-7).

When Cebu Daily News visited the area yesterday, the ground continued to move.

Lupo, however, said the agency lacks the equipment to check the extent of "cavities" formed underground.

She said these empty gaps on the subsurfaceof the land are often found in volcanic or limestone areas.
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Arrow Down

Philippines: Sinkhole Stirs Village Still Nervous on Quake

Carmel Matus and Jhunnex Napallacan
Inquirer News
Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
sinkhole
© Aldo Nelbert Banyanal
Residents of Barangay Cambuang, Dumanjug gather near a sinkhole in a farm few meters from the national road. They said the sinkhole is growing and has already swallowed an electric post and a small mango tree.
Residents of a village here expressed alarm over a sinkhole that formed after an explosion, reviving tension in a community that is still nervous following an intensity 6.9 earthquake recently.

The hole was first discovered by a farm caretaker in Barangay Cambuang on Friday. It was initially the size of a frying pan, said Walter Pesablon, 36, who was watching over a 3-hectare farm in the village.

Pesablon said he didn't pay much attention to the hole at first, but when he returned to look at it after having breakfast, he noticed the soil moving and cracks forming around the hole.

An hour later, an explosion shattered the early morning silence of the village.

Pesablon said he checked again and saw a hole with a diameter of about 10 meters. By noon, it grew to 12 meters, the farm caretaker said. The next day, the hole had grown to about 20 meters in diameter and it appeared to be further increasing in size.
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Bizarro Earth

Auroras Over the USA


SpaceWeather
Sun, 19 Feb 2012 15:33 UTC
A solar wind stream hit Earth's magnetic field during the waning hours of Saturday, Feb. 18th. Although the stream was expected, the bright auroras it produced were not. Northern Lights spilled across the Canadian border into several US states including Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, and Minnesota:

Auroras
© Travis Novitsky
Image Taken: Feb. 18, 2012
Location: Grand Portage, MN, USA
Travis Novitsky took this picture from Grand Portage, MN. "Last night, my girlfriend and I were just settling in to watch a movie when the auroras made a surprise appearance," he says. "A quick look out the back door of my house revealed that, yes indeed, the lights were out! We jumped in the truck and drove a few miles inland from Lake Superior. For the next hour and a half we were treated to a green glow peppered with dancing curtains of green, purple and red. It was a spectacular night."

In Fairbanks, Alaska, "the auroras were so bright they drew a crowd on my street," reports Brandon Lovett. At the Poker Flats Research Range outside of Fairbanks, researchers launched a suborbital rocket to investigate how auroras affect GPS systems. Lovett could see the rocket soaring into the heavens from more than 20 miles away.
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Attention

UK: Incurable Virus Killing Thousands Of Lambs


Sky News, UK
Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:16 UTC
Baby Lambs
© MySparrowNest Blogspot
A new virus is causing lambs to be born with deformities so severe that they die within seconds.

It is thought midges brought the Schmallenberg virus to Britain from continental Europe last autumn.

The foetuses of newly-pregnant ewes bitten by the insects often fail to develop properly.

At Mayfield Farm near Mildenhall in Suffolk, 75 of the 1,700 lambs born so far this year were affected.

"In a ewe that was carrying twins, she would have a job lambing it. You would have to pull it out," said farmer Clive Sleightholme.

"The legs were fused together and tucked underneath, its head was angular, not formed properly.

"They had undershot jaws and they weren't fleshed out properly but nearly every one was alive when it was pulled out but only lived seconds up to a minute."

The Schmallenberg virus, which is not thought to cause risk to humans, was first identified in Germany in November. There have also been cases in Belgium, France and the Netherlands.
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Cloud Lightning

Sweden: Man Spent Two Months in Snow-Bound Car

Richard Orange
The Telegraph, UK
Sun, 19 Feb 2012 06:22 UTC
Doctors treating a man trapped for more than a month in a snow-bound car are putting his survival down to an 'igloo-effect'.

Image
© AP Photo
The man was found outside the town of Umeaa
Peter Skyllberg, 44, was found on Friday by a passer-by in a snow-scooter near the northern town of Umea. He had been snowed into his car since December or even November.

"It's not possible for humans to hibernate like a bear does," Dr Ulf Segerberg, the Chief Medical Officer at Norrland University Hospital.

"If you cool the body, of course the metabolism slows down, but I don't think he would have survived if that had happened."

He said that the air trapped around the man's car had probably instead formed a natural igloo. "In the car he had very warm clothes, he had a warm sleeping bag, and as the car was snowed under, that would have made it more like an igloo, and down below the snow you would normally have a temperature of around zero," he said.
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Bizarro Earth

Japan: Mt Fuji Volcano - Signs of Volcanic Unrest Reported


Volcano Discovery
Sat, 18 Feb 2012 11:42 UTC
Mt. Fuji
© Wikimedia Commons
Reports are appearing about unrest and signs of a possible awakening of Mt Fuji volcano in Japan.

According to a report which includes an unclear photo of the area, a row of new craters, the largest 50 m in diameter, has appeared on the eastern flank of the volcano at 2200 m elevation. Steam was observed erupting from these vents.

The observation joins other signs suggesting a gradual reawakening: A swarm of earthquakes including 4 of magnitude 5 have occurred northeast of Mt Fuji on and after 28 January. An earlier 6.4M quake occurred under the volcano on 15 March 2011. The report also mentions increased activity from a fumarole vent at 1500 m elevation and hot spring areas at the eastern flank observed since 2003.

These locations seem to be aligned geographically, and are probably connected. Dr. Masaaki Kimura of Ryukyu University is quoted to admit that there is an increased risk of and eruption on the eastern flank and that the status of the volcano should be closely monitored.
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Satellite

NASA Map Sees Earth's Trees in a New Light


ScienceDaily
Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
A NASA-led science team has created an accurate, high-resolution map of the height of Earth's forests. The map will help scientists better understand the role forests play in climate change and how their heights influence wildlife habitats within them, while also helping them quantify the carbon stored in Earth's vegetation.

Image
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
Global map of forest height produced from NASA's ICESAT/GLAS, MODIS and TRMM sensors.
Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; the University of Maryland, College Park; and Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, Mass., created the map using 2.5 million carefully screened, globally distributed laser pulse measurements from space. The light detection and ranging (lidar) data were collected in 2005 by the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System instrument on NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat).

"Knowing the height of Earth's forests is critical to estimating their biomass, or the amount of carbon they contain," said lead researcher Marc Simard of JPL. "Our map can be used to improve global efforts to monitor carbon. In addition, forest height is an integral characteristic of Earth's habitats, yet is poorly measured globally, so our results will also benefit studies of the varieties of life that are found in particular parts of the forest or habitats."
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