Earth ChangesS


Igloo

UK: Severe Warning As Arctic Blast Blows In

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© Unknown
Severe weather warnings are in place as much of the country faces perishing overnight temperatures, fearsome ice and snow as deep as 20cm.

Scotland will be hit by more snow showers tonight, along with western parts of the UK, according to the Met Office.

Sky News weather presenter Isobel Lang warned there could be up to 20cm (8in) of the white stuff in some areas.

Arctic winds will push snow showers further to the north and west tomorrow and by Saturday morning there is likely to be a blanket of snow over a large part of the UK.

Snowman

Ice storm chaos: How Atlanta commute turned into a demolition derby

atlanta,weather
© John Spink/Atlanta Journal & Constitution/APMotorists come to a standstill on the Stone Mountain Freeway due to an ice storm Thursday in Georgia's DeKalb County.
Atlanta reported more than 1,000 accidents as freezing rain coated roadways Wednesday night. The ice storm is another chapter in the South's strangely cold start to winter.

Atlanta, Georgia-Southerners are used to demolition derbies, but a mass of commuters surprised by an early winter ice storm found themselves on a giant hockey rink Wednesday.

The Atlanta metro area alone saw more than 1,000 accidents as motorists slid off roads, crashed into each other, and, in many cases, simply abandoned their cars and checked into motels literally miles from their homes. Few serious injuries were reported.

Georgia's state climatologist, David Stooksbury, came to the defense of the drivers involved in the great 2010 ice storm mashup. "I've seen drivers in the Midwest driving on ice, and they can't do it, either, so I don't want to hear it from them," says Mr. Stooksbury, who works at the University of Georgia.

Snowman

Flashback Snow Cover Turns Dalmatia White

Ice has covered the airports in Zadar and Split, and children in Split and Sibenik enjoy the winter ambient instead of going to school.
dalmatia
© Željko Skroče
Split, Croatia - During the night, snow painted Split white. If we were giving a short meteorological report, we would say that last night, from Tuesday to Wednesday, somewhere around 2am, light snow started to fall in Split carried by a north-easterly wind, only to totally turn the streets white by 4am. The strong winds pushed the snow to the ground, which had totally given way to the white covering.

However, it is important to explain to citizens in the northern parts of Croatia how Split's residents experience snow. It is always a welcome guest in Split, probably because it falls once every few years, and only lasts for a short time, because the surrounding mountains Mosor and Kozjak, as well as the proximity to the sea, rarely offer this part of Dalmatia to feel the joys of winter.

Igloo

Wrap up warm for a polar winter, Croatia!

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© find-croatia.com
Some meteorologists are expecting a freezing winter this year in Croatia, with temperatures dropping below last year's record temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius.

The "real" winters of some 50 years ago are back, says Kristijan Bozarov from Crometeo, the main Croatian meteorological website.

"This winter is likely to be somewhat colder than the last and colder than the average. But the coming cold front with snow is nothing unusual if you look at the period some 50 years ago."

Bizarro Earth

Series Of Earthquakes Hit Central Arkansas

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© USGS
Guy - Central Arkansas has been hit by a series of earthquakes recently, the biggest so far was a magnitude four that shook the town of Guy, about 150 miles west of Memphis. A research scientist from the University of Memphis, Dr. Steve Horton said Arkansas is getting a lot of unusual earthquakes, more than 60 in the last month. "In the New Madrid Seismic Zone there's approximately 200 per year, so if we had that many in Central Arkansas in less than a month, something is going on," said Dr. Horton.

That part of central Arkansas isn't even part of the New Madrid Fault Zone, so researchers are trying to figure out what's causing all those earthquakes. Horton thinks, the earthquake swarm could be the result of injecting salt water into old natural gas wells to force more gas production. "There's salt water that's a by product of the natural gas industry in that area and then disposed in a well," said Dr. Horton.

Even though the two areas are not connected, Horton's biggest worry is along the New Madrid Fault where he said damage from a magnitude six earthquake could be catastrophic to Mid-Southerners. "A probability of having that in a 50-year period is about 25 to 40-percent chance," said Dr. Horton.

Comment: There seems to be a good deal of activity in this area. See USGS Records 53 Quakes In Week In Arkansas County


Evil Rays

San Andreas, US: Mysterious quake fault tremors to be studied

Rumblings along stretch of San Andreas Fault could be quake precursors.

Seismic detectors will be installed along a stretch of the San Andreas Fault early next year to study mysterious tremors deep underneath, in the hope they will provide information about events that lead up to major quakes.

Seismologists will begin the installation in early 2011 near the town of Cholame, Calif., where the tremors were first detected in 2004. Tremors, which are different from earthquakes, are extremely faint, periodic rumblings some 12 to 25 miles underground - far deeper than earthquakes. Studies suggest tremors may serve as precursors to earthquakes.

"The discovery of tremors deep in the roots of active plate boundary fault zones is arguably the most important discovery in earthquake science in decades," said Roland Bürgmann of the University of California, Berkeley, part of the team that will install the sensors, in a news release about the project. "This is the first project in which a permanent instrument network has been specifically designed with tremor in mind."

Question

Arctic Hybrids Not a Good Sign, Warn Scientists

Hybrid Bears
© Jim MartellAmerican hunter Jim Martell shot this hybrid polar-grizzly bear near Nelson Head on southern Banks Island on April 16, 2006.

The two grizzly-polar bear hybrids discovered in Canada's North in recent years may be the tip of the iceberg, warn a trio of U.S. scientists who say the bears are a sign that Arctic biodiversity is at risk.

Pointing to other Arctic hybrids - an apparent bowhead-right whale photographed in the Bering Sea in 2009, a suspected narwhal-beluga found west of Greenland in the late 1980s, as well as various confirmed hybrid porpoises and seals - they argue governments must manage hybrids before interbreeding leads to the extinction of rare species.

In a commentary published in Wednesday's peer-reviewed journal Nature, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration marine biologist Brendan Kelly and his co-authors say rapidly disappearing sea ice means the barrier that once kept Arctic species apart is literally melting away.

"In addition to that, marine mammals are particularly infamous for hybridizing," says Kelly. "It turns out their genes haven't changed so much that they can't interbreed."

Co-author David Tallmon, a marine biologist with the University of Alaska, says while it's unlikely hybridization is widespread in the Arctic, no one has looked systemically at the issue. He and Kelly, along with Andrew Whiteley, a conservation geneticist at the University of Massachusetts, say the question of whether to try to stop animals from crossbreeding needs immediate attention.

Fish

Scientist says he found Japanese salmon fish thought extinct

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© AP Photo/Kyoto University via Kyodo NewsIn this undated photo released by Kyoto University via Kyodo News, a specimen of endangered Japanese salmon species is on display.
A Japanese salmon species thought to be extinct for 70 years is alive and well in a lake near Mount Fuji, a science professor said Wednesday. The black kokanee, or "kunimasu" in Japanese, was thought to have died out in 1940, when a hydroelectric project made its native lake in northern Akita Prefecture more acidic. Before then, 100,000 eggs were reportedly transported to Lake Saiko but the species was still thought to have died off.

But Tetsuji Nakabo, a professor at Kyoto University, said his team of researchers found the species in Lake Saiko, about 310 miles (500 kilometers) south of the native lake. "I was really surprised. This is a very interesting fish - it's a treasure. We have to protect it and not let it disappear again," he said. He posed for pictures and video with a specimen that was dark olive with black spots on its back. The kunimasu grow to about a foot (30 centimers) in length. Nakabo said the lake had sufficent kunimasu for the species to survive if the current environment is maintained, though he said in interviews he hoped fishermen would not catch it.

Igloo

US: Blast of Arctic Air Invades the South

The well-forecasted punch of arctic air has arrived over the eastern 1/2 of the United States and it will try to break a few records before it leaves.

Thanks to a large dip in the jet stream (trough), very cold air straight out of the arctic is blasting its way south and invading towns and cities not always accustomed to the very chilly air.



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Tuesday Highs
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Wednesday AM Lows


Cloud Lightning

US: "Like the Wizard of Oz" as Twister Hits Oregon Town

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© T. J. Gonzalez/The Statesman-Journal/AP This home was among several dozen damaged or destroyed by a twister in Aumsville, Ore., on Tuesday.
Aumsville's 'grandmother' survives; her plumbing store does not

A tornado struck a small Oregon town on Tuesday, tearing roofs off buildings, hurling objects into vehicles and homes and uprooting trees.

At least three homes were destroyed, as was the police chief's office, while dozens of properties were damaged, KGW TV reported.

"It literally came at an angle and just dropped down. The winds were so fast. My windows are shattered and I have glass all over in my house," Aumsville resident Vince Catron told KGW. "It looks like somebody just came through our house and just shook literally everything in it ... We have houses all around us destroyed."

No injuries were reported. There were early reports that some people had been trapped in cars.

The heaviest damage seemed to be in the central part of this town of 3,560 people located 45 miles south of Portland. Twisters are rare in this part of the country - just three others have touched down in the region over the last decade.