Anchorage, Alaska - At least 32 musk oxen were found frozen in the ice on the northern coast of Alaska's Seward Peninsula, killed in the aftermath of a tidal surge and flooding from a winter storm blowing in off the Chukchi Sea, the National Park Service said Tuesday.

Researchers found the frozen animals March 15 while flying over the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve to track at least four of the animals, which had been outfitted with radio collars.

"Basically, the radio collars led us to the dead animals," National Park Service spokesman John Quinley said.

Officials planned to fly over the area again Tuesday to determine the fate of another 23 animals in the herd. It wasn't immediately clear if any of those were fitted with collars.

"We didn't see any carcasses, but we didn't see them walking around," he said.

The remainder of the herd could be buried deeper in the snow. If so, the bodies wouldn't be visible until spring.

Magnitude 2.6
Date-Time

* Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 02:33:31 UTC
* Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 06:33:31 PM at epicenter

Location 59.757°N, 153.199°W
Depth 136.8 km (85.0 miles)
Region SOUTHERN ALASKA
Distances

* 52 km (32 miles) E (93°) from Pedro Bay, AK
* 79 km (49 miles) ENE (71°) from Pope-Vannoy Landing, AK
* 79 km (49 miles) SE (129°) from Port Alsworth, AK
* 247 km (153 miles) SW (231°) from Anchorage, AK

Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 0.6 km (0.4 miles); depth +/- 0.2 km (0.1 miles)
Parameters NST= 38, Nph= 0, Dmin=11.7 km, Rmss=0.69 sec, Gp= 94°,
M-type=local magnitude (ML), Version=1

Updated - California: Residents of 33 homes in an unincorporated area of the county are in their second day of being stranded from the outside world after a landslide on Monday afternoon blocked the only road to their homes.

According to Scotts Valley Fire District Cpt. Mike Pasquini, the slide, which occurred near Scotts Valley on Nelson Road at Sky Meadow Lane, does not present any immediate danger to residents.

"The homes are affected in the sense that they have no access," Pasquini said.

About 57 people live in the affected area and three to four houses are still without power, according to April Murray, public information officer for the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office.

Sheriff's officers contacted all of the residents on Monday and most said they were planning on staying in their homes.

"We have seen some people leave though," Murray said. "People with babies and animals have been making their way out."

Excessive snow in the northern Great Plains and Midwest may spur floods that rival the record- setting deluge of 2009, threatening U.S. wheat crops and livestock as cities in the region stockpile sandbags.

Since October, North Dakota, the largest wheat-growing state, South Dakota and Minnesota got almost 3 feet more snow than usual, National Weather Service data show. According to Bloomberg News, more than 20 inches remain in some areas, about the same amount that was on the ground at this time in 2009, before floods along the Red River of the North caused about $223.7 million in damage and killed more than 91,000 cattle.

Planting delays may curb wheat output for a third year in the U.S., the world's largest exporter. Global inventories of the grain already were eroded by floods last year in Australia and Canada and a drought in Russia that sent wheat prices to two-year high last month. World food prices tracked by the United Nations reached a record in February.

"There is strong interest in wheat" from traders because of the potential threat to U.S. production, said Jim Peterson, the marketing director of the Bismarck-based North Dakota Wheat Commission, an industry group. If floods delay the start of spring planting until late April, "you'll start seeing the market get quite concerned," he said.

Date-Time:
Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 13:31:29 UTC

Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 12:31:29 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
33.106°S, 16.027°W

Depth:
14.5 km (9.0 miles)

Region:
SOUTHERN MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE

Distances:
553 km (343 miles) NW of Tristan da Cunha

1917 km (1191 miles) SE of Ilha da Trindade, Espirito Santo, Brazil

3187 km (1980 miles) W of Cape Town, South Africa

3447 km (2141 miles) WSW of WINDHOEK, Namibia

An enormous algae bloom 50 miles long has been discovered in the English Channel.

The swarm of Skeletonema has come to the surface between the Lizard in Cornwall and Salcombe in Devon because of the warm weather.

Scientists at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) discovered the bloom and another off the south east coast of Ireland using satellite images.

Morris Island - A large pygmy sperm whale carcass washed up by the Morris Island lighthouse and was found over the weekend. It was too decomposed to say what killed it, researchers concluded.

The whale stranding follows a string of 13 bottlenose dolphin carcasses since late February. And a marine mammal stranding crew was in Charleston Harbor Monday recovering another dolphin carcass. But the pygmy sperm carcass is only the second whale to wash up on a South Carolina beach this year. A dwarf sperm whale was discovered in January.

The 11-foot-long male whale found on Morris Island didn't appear to have any external wounds, said Wayne McFee, National Ocean Service marine mammal stranding program scientist. Its organ were so far gone "there wasn't a whole lot we can tell with this one," he said. The ocean service lab is waiting the results of pathology tests of the dwarf sperm whale, he said.

West Palm Beach - The devastating earthquake that shook Japan caused a temporary jolt in groundwater levels throughout much of Florida, officials said.

The South Florida Water Management District reports that a network of groundwater gauges registered a jump of up to three inches in the water table from Orlando to the Florida Keys about 34 minutes after the quake struck on March 11.

The oscillations were observed for about two hours and then stabilized.

Planet-X, Comets & Earth Changes
by James M. McCanney
Minneapolis, MN: jmccanneyscience.com press, 2007 (first published in 2002)
182 pp.

A new model of the Universe

A scientific revolution in the theories of the nature of comets, solar system formation and astronomical phenomena in general is long overdue. For example, the impossibilities and contradictions inherent in the "dirty snowball comet model" and the "nebular collapse" theory of the origin of the solar system are legion. The theories fall short of explaining observed phenomena, but you'll never hear the scientists promoting them admit as much. Unfortunately, it seems that in all their mental excavations, the mass-produced scientists of our time have dug themselves into a trench of dreary proportions, carried along by the inertial stream of their cherished professors' naïve opinions. In fact, they can't even tell how deep they are in it, or that their theories are as woefully outdated as the mastodon fossils of which they catch passing glimpses. And thanks to James McCanney's work over the last thirty-odd years, they find themselves plunged, in the words of Mullah Nasr Eddin, "into the deepest galoshes that have ever been worn on sweaty feet."

James McCanney is something of a maverick in the scientific community. Having taught physics and mathematics at Cornell University, he was ousted because of pressure put on University authorities by professors in the astronomy department who didn't like what he was publishing. In that sense, academia is a tad like life in the Mob: "You can't say these things. If you do, we'll ruin you." But while McCanney may have suffered the fate of any scientist who attempts to go against the grain, his theories continue to hold up, predicting newly observed phenomena without having to resort to the "creeping crud" of widely accepted, bogus theories (McCanney's term for the shameless "revision" of old theories to account for unexpected observations).

The strongest activity at southern Japan's Shinmoedake volcano in 52 years shattered windows four miles away, sending hundreds of people fleeing the area.

Ash and other volcanic debris soared more than 6,000 feet into the atmosphere above Kyushu Island, about 950 miles from the epicenter of the catastrophic 9.0 magnitude quake off Honshu two days earlier.

Officials said it was unclear if the volcanic blast was related to the temblor.

Shinmoedake's last blast was on Feb. 1. Its rumblings resumed on Jan. 19 after the peak had remained dormant for two years.

Vulcanologists have been warning that a lava dome was growing inside the volcano's crater, but were not certain if it was a sign of an impending eruption.

Shinmoedake is one of several geologically active peaks in the Kirishima mountain range.