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Bizarro Earth

Vancouver Island will 'rip open like a zipper' when overdue megathrust earthquake strikes, experts say

Dirk Meissner
National Post
Sun, 18 Jan 2015 12:42 UTC
Capes Lake, Vancouver Island
© National Post, Canada
Capes Lake, Vancouver Island. The odds of another megathrust earthquake and tsunami on Vancouver Island happening within the next 50 years are about one-in-10, experts say.
Pachena Bay , B.C. - The low tide, bright sunshine and constant roar of endlessly approaching waves display the full power of the wide-open Vancouver Island shoreline at the remote beach handed down to Stella Peters and her family as a wedding dowry.

For generations, Peters and her relatives have been the keepers of Pachena Bay, the picturesque beach that scientists forecast as an epicentre for the next massive earthquake and tsunami.

The bay is also the home to the Huu-ay-aht First Nations village of Anacla, about 300 kilometres northwest of Victoria, which aboriginal oral history says was devastated when an ancient earthquake convulsed the West Coast of North America.

First Nations from Vancouver Island to northern California describe the earthquake and tsunami in similar legends and artwork involving a life-and-death struggle between a thunderbird and a whale that caused the earth to shake violently and the seas to wash away their people and homes.

When the next megathrust quake hits, residents on the west side of Vancouver Island will barely have 20 minutes to get to higher ground.
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Binoculars

Another completely lost bird: Brown pelican turns up in Nebraska in winter

Joel Jorgensen
Journal Star
Sun, 18 Jan 2015 21:33 UTC
Image
© Clark Grell | Lincoln Journal Star
American white pelicans — and one out-of-place brown pelican — enjoy the warm waters of the cooling pond at Gerald Gentleman power station near Sutherland.
Last Saturday, my alarm sounded at 3:45 a.m. and I rose out of bed in order to make the three-hour drive to Sutherland Reservoir to "twitch" a brown pelican.

For nonbirders, "twitching" is a British birding term meaning to chase after a previously located (usually rare) bird. Brown pelicans are typically found in coastal areas, but birds occasionally wander inland. The brown pelican I was chasing was found by Stephen J. Dinsmore and Kevin Murphy on Dec. 26. Nebraska's other seven documented sightings, as well as the vast majority of inland records from other states of brown pelicans, are during warmer months. Thus, a brown pelican in Nebraska is notable, but one in winter is crazy.

It seems most likely this particular brown pelican is from the Gulf Coast, perhaps Texas. Any part of the brown pelican's normal range is at a minimum a thousand miles from Sutherland Reservoir. It's impossible to know when this bird left its familiar coastal haunts to fly inland. The explanation for why this bird ended up at Sutherland in winter, and possibly why it is still alive, is easier to understand.

Sutherland Reservoir has a cooling pond, which receives water from the Nebraska Public Power District's nearby coal-fired Gerald Gentleman power station. The constant infusion of warm water into the cooling pond keeps the water open even during the coldest winters. This human-created environment allows several fish-eating bird species, including American white pelicans, double-crested cormorants and great blue herons, to overwinter at this site when they might otherwise migrate south to warmer climes or perish.

Comment: Recent reports of birds completely losing their way across the Northern Hemisphere: White-rumped sandpiper from Arctic North America ends up in Australia

Rare goose from northern Asia turns up in Suffolk, UK

Rare Eurasian kestrel appears in Nova Scotia, Canada

Another completely lost avian species: Couch's Kingbird flies from southern Texas to New York

Warbler that should be wintering in western Mexico turns up in Louisiana

Bean goose from Eurasia takes a wrong turn and winds up on the Oregon Coast

Four lost flamingos fly NORTH for the winter and turn up in Siberia

Wrong place, wrong time: European robin turns up thousands of miles away in China

Rare bird from Mongolia turns up in Wakefield, UK

Wrong time, wrong place: Rare bird found in Barrie, Canada

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Bizarro Earth

Iceland lava field may now be the biggest in 200 years

Nick Kirkpatrick
Washington Post
Mon, 12 Jan 2015 00:00 UTC
iceland_lava_field
© Jesse Allen and Josh Stevens/ NASA Earth Observatory
The infrared images above show the Holuhraun lava flow from Sept. 6, 2014
Bigger than the island of Manhattan, the lava flow from the Holuhraun lava field in Iceland is now the largest the country has seen in more than 200 years, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

Since August of last year, massive amounts of lava have been spewing from a fissure that erupted in Iceland's largely uninhabited Bárðarbunga volcanic system. In the past six months, the lava flow spread a total of 32 square miles, making it now the largest lava flow since the 1783 - 84 Laki eruption that wiped out 20 percent of Iceland's population.

According to the University of Iceland's Institute of Earth Sciences, the eastern part of the lava field was about 30 feet thick, and the center and western parts were about 40 feet thick.

Comment: See the volcanic activity around the world during the last year alone:



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Black Cat

Escaped zoo lynx attacks dog in Sweden


thelocal.se
Sat, 17 Jan 2015 19:18 UTC
Image
© Lycksele Zoo
A lynx at Lyksele Zoo.
A teenage girl in northern Sweden had the fright of her life on Wednesday night when a lynx which had escaped from a local zoo leapt out of the woods and pounced on her two-year-old Siberian husky.

Emma Danielsson, 18, had taken Kira out for a walk near her house in the small Sami town of Lycksele at around 11pm when she heard something crashing around in the nearby woods.

"At first I thought it was a fox, but the dog was reacting very strongly and starting to growl," Emma told Aftonbladet.

Then the lynx leapt out of the undergrowth.
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Cloud Lightning

Incredible footage shows 7 trees collapsing onto a highway in Australia

Louise Cheer
Daily Mail, UK
Sun, 18 Jan 2015 18:32 UTC
Image

The dash camera footage shows the moment the driver had to hit the brakes, while travelling along the Black Spur in Victoria's north-east
Two drivers travelling along a Victorian highway have narrowly escaped being crushed by seven trees during a wild storm.

Posted under YouTube name Ron Cooper, the dash camera footage shows the moment he had to hit the brakes just inches away from where the first tree falls in front of his vehicle.

The driver was travelling on the Black Spur highway between the towns of Healesville and Narbethong - north-east of Melbourne, which spans for about 30 kilometres, on December 29 about 2.15pm.

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Attention

Carcass of whale found near Chennai, India

Abdullah Nurullah
The Times of India
Sun, 18 Jan 2015 18:22 UTC
Image

The carcass that weighed around 15,000 kilograms was hauled with a crane and buried on the shore by forest department officials.
The carcass of a 40-foot-long tropical male whale washed ashore on the Sadras Kuppam Beach near Chennai on Sunday morning.

The whale, also known as the Bryde's whale, might have died after being struck by a large steel-hulled vessel as its spine was broken, a forest official said.

The carcass that weighed around 15,000 kilograms was hauled with a crane and buried on the shore by forest department officials.

"From the measurements of the whale, the small size of its dorsal fin and the absence of teeth, we declared it to be a tropical whale," said Supraja Dharini of Tree Foundation.
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Info

314 turtles found dead on Chennai beaches in 20 days, India


The Times of India
Sun, 18 Jan 2015 15:51 UTC
Image
© Tree Foundation India Facebook
An olive ridley sea turtle tangled in fishing net; Feb. 22, 2014.
The nesting season for Olive Ridley turtles is barely 20 days old and already 314 turtles have washed ashore dead on the city's beaches. Conservationists say the turtles die after getting stuck in trawlers' fishing nets.

On Saturday morning, 60 turtles were found dead on the stretch between Neelankarai beach and Alamparai village in Kancheepuram district, according to Tree Foundation that patrols the stretch every year during the nesting season. "The numbers are alarmingly high this year and we are just into the second week of the season that will continue till March-end," said Tree Foundation founder-chairperson Supraja Dharini. Tree Foundation volunteers buried the dead turtles near the shore later in the night.

Members and volunteers of the Students' Sea Turtle Conservation Network (SSTCN), a group that patrols the coastline from Neelankarai to Napier's Bridge, including Marina and Elliot's beaches, reported 70 dead turtles were washed ashore. SSTCN coordinator V Arun said, "Considering that only 5-6% of the dead turtles are washed ashore, the real death toll could be many times higher."

According to turtle conservation groups, most of the deaths are caused due to the failure in implementing the Tamil Nadu Marine Fishing Regulation Act, 1983, which prohibits fishing trawlers from operating within 5 km of the shore.

Comment: Other reports of turtle mass deaths over the past 2 years, some due cold weather conditions and some to unknown factors other than fishing nets: 1,122 dead turtles washed ashore in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, India in January

30 Kemp's ridley sea turtles suffering from hypothermia taken from Cape Cod to the Florida Keys

Over 1,200 sea turtles have washed up on Cape Cod beaches during December

Gulf World treating some 50 endangered sea turtles stranded by cold weather in Florida

23 Olive Ridleys turtles washed ashore in two days, Napier Bridge, India

800 turtles found dead on Nellore beach, India

Costa Rica investigates deaths of 280 sea turtles

Eighty sea turtles wash up dead on the coast of Guatemala

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Snowflake Cold

Oops! NASA only 38% sure 2014 was 'warmest on record'

David Rose
The Daily Mail, UK
Sun, 18 Jan 2015 01:43 UTC
  • NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies claimed its analysis of world temperatures showed '2014 was the warmest year on record'
  • But it emerged that GISS's analysis is subject to a margin of error
  • NASA admits this means it is far from certain that 2014 set a record at all
    • Image

    NASA's Gavin Schmidt - paid disinfo artist?
    The NASA climate scientists who claimed 2014 set a new record for global warmth last night admitted they were only 38 per cent sure this was true.

    In a press release on Friday, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) claimed its analysis of world temperatures showed '2014 was the warmest year on record'.

    The claim made headlines around the world, but yesterday it emerged that GISS's analysis - based on readings from more than 3,000 measuring stations worldwide - is subject to a margin of error. NASA admits this means it is far from certain that 2014 set a record at all.
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    Bizarro Earth

    Key reservoir for Sao Paulo drying out from extreme drought

    Stan Lehman
    Phys.org
    Sat, 17 Jan 2015 00:00 UTC
    Atibainha dam, Brazil
    © AP Photo/Andre Penner
    In this Oct. 10, 2014 file photo, the frame of a car sits on the cracked earth at the bottom of the Atibainha dam, part of the Cantareira System responsible for providing water to the Sao Paulo metropolitan area, in Nazare Paulista, Brazil. Halfway through the rainy season, the key reservoir for the hemisphere's largest city, the Cantareira water system, holds just 6 percent of its capacity, and experts warned Friday, Jan. 16, 2015 that authorities must take urgent steps to prevent the worst drought here in more than 80 years from drying it out.
    Halfway through the rainy season, the key reservoir for the hemisphere's largest city holds just 6 percent of its capacity, and experts warned Friday that Sao Paulo authorities must take urgent steps to prevent the worst drought in more than 80 years from drying it out.

    The system of reservoirs and rivers that provide water to millions in this city have received less rainfall than hoped during the first weeks of the wet season, raising fears they won't be replenished as hoped. Rainfall during the first two weeks of January totaled just 2.9 inches (7.1 centimeters), well below the historic average for the month of 10.7 inches (27.1 centimeters).

    The biggest problem is in the Cantareira water system, which is the largest of six reservoirs that provide water to some 6 million of the 20 million people living in the metropolitan area of Sao Paulo city. Cantareira is now down to 6 percent of its capacity of 264 billion gallons (1 trillion liters), the water utility Sabesp said on its website.

    Of the remaining five systems, Alto Tiete is at 11 percent of capacity, Rio Claro 25 percent, Alto Cotia 30 percent, Guarapiranga 40 percent and Rio Grande 70 percent.

    Comment: Sao Paulo experienced violent storms and heavy flooding in December, yet drought conditions persist. For a better understanding of the reasons why weather patterns have become extreme and unpredictable around the world, read Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.

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    Hardhat

    Man attacked by owl in Salem, Oregon

    Alisha Roemeling
    Statesman Journal
    Fri, 16 Jan 2015 20:46 UTC
    Image

    Great Horned Owl
    Ron Jaecks of Salem was on his usual morning run in Bush's Pasture Park on Tuesday when he was attacked, or so he thought.

    Jaecks was jogging near the baseball field about 5:15 a.m. Suddenly in the morning darkness his stocking cap was pulled from his head, and almost simultaneously he felt something puncture his scalp.

    Jaecks thought he was dying.

    "It was like a huge electric shock ran through my body, but also like I got hit in the head with a two-by-four all at the same time," Jaecks said. "Or maybe a strike of lightning."

    Jaecks, 58, immediately began to run faster, trying to escape his assailant.

    Running in circles and screaming, the general surgeon for Kaiser Permanente began to think that he was having a stroke or an aneurysm.

    Comment: See also: Barred owl attacks 6 people, terrorizes others in Jacksonville Beach, Florida

    Canadian rabbit trapper says owl attack left his head bleeding

    Multiple owl attacks reported in Springfield, Missouri

          Read More...
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