Earth Changes
At Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., 42 buildings were reported to be without electricity, the Chicago Tribune said. There was no word on when the lights would be back on.
In the north and west suburbs, crews armed with chainsaws worked to remove downed trees and branches from the streets. Delays were reported for suburban commuter trains and the city's mass transit system.
The storms moved through northern Illinois Tuesday night. Hundreds of flights were canceled at Chicago airports, subway passengers were stranded and at least 300,000 homes and businesses lost power. Commonwealth Edison said repairing the damage could take days.

Bob Bickford , a resident of the Country Club neighborhood, works on clearing a tree Wednesday morning that fell on an SUV Tuesday night and blocked Country Club Drive in Rock Hill.
The storms moved into York and surrounding counties around 9:30 p.m. Thunderstorms persisted for much of the night before finally subsiding shortly before daybreak.
A Rock Hill man was driving home on Country Club Drive when several trees fell on his SUV, said his wife, Lauren Mclean. The trees trapped the 55-year-old man inside his Ford Explorer.
She said a neighbor broke a window on the SUV to pull her husband to safety. He was treated for scrapes, cuts and bruises at the hospital, she said.
In nearby Chesterfield County, investigators say Michael Gulledge was killed by lightening during the storm. Gulledge was outside playing with several people in his Ruby neighborhood when the lightning bolt struck around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. Authorities say three others were injured by the same lightning bolt, but were treated and released at the hospital.

The rainy season's start has brought deadly floods to such places as Nanchang, in Jiangxi province
China's rainy season started off as last year's finished. The rains are usually heavy and they often bring flooding to some areas, but not this much.
Last year, more than 230 million people were affected by the rainfall, which not only triggered widespread flooding, but also a number of landslides.
In all, 4,200 people are thought to have lost their lives in the annual rains. It was China's worst floods in more than a decade.
Mike Welvaert, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service in La Crosse, says that these quick rises in river levels will be brief, lasting only a couple days as the excess water is absorbed, then moved downstream into the Mississippi or other large rivers. Those with interests along high-running rivers or streams should be aware of their surroundings, especially if the forecast includes heavy showers or thunderstorms.
The Mississippi River will start rising over the next few weeks as well as rain water from the smaller tributaries flows into the large river itself. Depending on the amount of additional rain over the coming days, the river could rise to near the flood stage by the July 4th weekend.

New Zealand sunset colored by the ash and other particles drifting around the Southern Hemisphere skies from the eruption of Chile's Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano.
But along with these negative aspects, the volcano has also been responsible for producing very colorful displays of deep reds and purplish hues as well as ripples of white both at dawn and dusk for many localities south of the equator.
This phenomenon of volcanic material coloring the twilight sky is well known and has been observed many times before in the aftermath of major eruptions. But just why does this occur? Before getting into an explanation, we should first explain how light is scattered to produce the various colors we see in our daytime sky.
Heavy rains opened a section of road 10 miles north of Reliance, South Dakota, about 60 feet wide and 50 feet deep that was obscured partly by an uphill grade, said Lieutenant Alan Welsh of the South Dakota Highway Patrol.
The vehicles plunged into the crevice and down into a normally dry creek bed that had been swollen by up to 6 inches of rain, Welsh said. The creek bed flows toward the Missouri River east of where the crashes occurred.
Both of the motorists were from nearby towns. Police identified them as a 56-year-old Chamberlain woman who was found in her vehicle about 100 yards from the crash site and a 61-year-old Lower Brule woman found four miles downstream.
State transportation officials have closed the road.
The villagers told PPI, that animals so far included 700 goats, 300 sheep, 40 cows, 25 buffaloes and 15 camels.
The villagers said that 200 goats, 95 sheep and 3 cows died in Pat Gul Muhammad area of Kachho while 160 goats, 5 cows, 3 buffaloes and 6 camels died in village Raju Dero, Sim and Torr within 20 days.
Similarly, over 175 goats, 7 cows, 3 buffaloes and 4 camels died in village Bari, Heero Khan and surrounding areas.

Flooding on the Trans-Canada Highway near Sintaluta, Sask. on Monday, June 21, 2011.
A stretch of about 150 km - from Whitewood to Balgonie - of the province's main highway is closed in both directions due to deep water on the road near the village of Sintaluta, located about 85 km east of Regina.
The Saskatchewan government decided to close the highway Monday, when water up to 60 cm deep in some places drowned out the road.
The flooding was caused by heavy rains which fell over the past few days in the already soggy area.
The most violent earthquake - 5.4 - hit just after 10:30pm, scaring the wits out of exhausted Christchurch residents.
"For us it wasn't a rolling, it was very sharp upheaval and really threw everything up and dropped it on the ground," says Peter Claridge.
Mr Claridge lives directly above the epicentre where the quake hit
"It emptied everything out, including the nails," he says.

Strong winds ripped a branch from a tree at 15122 Dunbar Court in Rosemount Tuesday afternoon. Lightning was the likely cause of an Eagan house fire.
More of the same is possible Wednesday and Thursday as a slow-moving low pressure system, more typical of winter or spring, creeps eastward across the region, said National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Friedlein.
Shortly after the midday summer solstice, observers reported funnel clouds over Willmar and Hutchinson, Minn., as well as Hampton and Coon Rapids in the metro area. Trees fell on some houses in the Coon Rapids and Blaine areas. Local and weather service officials were determining whether the damage was the result of a tornado.
Tornado sirens sounded across much of the metro area, including downtown St. Paul, where state Public Safety Commissioner Ramona Dohman and several staffers headed for an interior storm shelter after spotting a rotating funnel cloud several blocks away. But there were no reports of touchdowns.










Comment: Read The Christchurch Tragedy: A Message from the Universe to understand more about what's going on in Christchurch and how it affects the rest of the World.