Earth Changes
We received word from viewers early this morning who heard the loud sound they say felt like an explosion around 1 a.m. Friday in Barker, Somerset, Olcott, and Newfane. There were even reports of some residents in Canada hearing and feeling it. Some thought that it may have been caused by a plane at the Niagara Falls Air Base, but the Base tells us that they don't own any planes or equipment capable of creating a sonic boom. The FAA also confirms that there were no aircraft in the area around that time.

Waves, brought on by Hurricane Sandy, crash on a house in the Caribbean Terrace neighbourhood in eastern Kingston, Jamaica
State TV's nightly newscast says nine of the deaths were in Santiago province in eastern Cuba, which is home to Cuba's second largest city. It is also known as Santiago.
The other two deaths were reported in Cuba's Guantanamo province, bordering the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
The newscast says the oldest victim was an 84-year-old man in Santiago province.
The report of the deaths came at the end of the newscast.
Cuban authorities say most of the fatalities occurred when dwellings fell down, but the cause of others is still being investigated.

The Suomi NPP satellite caught this image of Hurricane Sandy yesterday morning (Oct. 25), just as the cyclone passed over Cuba.
On the one hand you have Hurricane Sandy barreling north, expected to hit somewhere on the U.S. East Coast in the middle of next week. At the same time, a cold front is moving across the middle of the country, bringing cold temperatures and snow.
The two will probably meet about the time the hurricane makes landfall and, together, could form an even bigger nor'easter (snor'eastercane, some have said). And that's bad news.
"In all likelihood, it will be worse than the Perfect Storm," said William Komaromi, a hurricane expert at the University of Miami.

Are we ready for winter? A number of converging factors could dump snow in Atlantic Canada early next week.
"It'll be a rough couple days from Hatteras up to Cape Cod," said Jim Cisco, a forecaster with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "We don't have many modern precedents for what the models are suggesting."
Forecasting the weather 4 or 5 days before it happens is difficult because so much can change in that time. However, it's also difficult to dismiss the results when every piece of guidance you use starts pointing towards the same thing, with even greater certainty, each time you update your forecast.
That's what's happening right now.
The computer models forecasters use for guidance in making their forecasts showed the first indications of the merger of these weather systems, and the results of each subsequent model have made it more and more likely.
The Atlas moth is the biggest moth in the world and is normally found thousands of miles away in South East Asia.
When it landed at a house in Ramsbottom, it was so large the Blackmore family "thought it was a bat".
The moth, which only lives for a week, has since died but 30 of its offspring are being reared at a butterfly farm in Bolton.
How the moth arrived in Ramsbottom is a mystery although it's believed to have escaped from a private collection.
Watch Video
2012-10-21 01:25:22 UTC+00:00 at epicenter
Location
66.296°N 18.685°W depth=9.9km (6.2mi)
Nearby Cities
18km (11mi) NNE of Siglufjordur, Iceland
73km (45mi) NNW of Akureyri, Iceland
283km (176mi) NNE of Reykjavik, Iceland
286km (178mi) NNE of Kopavogur, Iceland
291km (181mi) NNE of Hafnarfjordur, Iceland
The Civil Protection Department said in a statement that recent small quakes in an area under the sea about 20 km (12 miles) off the north of Iceland had prompted it to issue a warning to local people. It said such shocks, one of which was a magnitude 5.6, often led to stronger quakes. Warnings were issued when there were grounds to expect a natural or manmade event that could threaten health and human safety, it added.
"People are anxious because they don't know what might happen," said Amundi Gunnarsson, chief of the fire brigade in Fjallabyggd, one of the small towns in the area, and a member of the Civil Protection Department. "At the same time, life goes on as usual. People are going to work and children are going to school, but everyone is on alert," he told Reuters by telephone.
The preliminary location of the tremor was just SE of Oxy #3 cavern at a depth of 500m. There is no additional information specific to this seismic activity at this time. The sinkhole is now about four acres in size. Residents were forced from their homes on August third, two months after the bayous started bubbling. They are still evacuated from their homes.











Comment: Eleven deaths is a significant death toll for Cuba considering they have one of the world's best hurricane preparedness programs. Not including Hurricane Sandy, they've lost 35 people in hurricanes since 2001 despite consistently being in the the center of these storms. Perhaps they got caught by surprise. Time will tell if this foreshadows how the storm is received by many in the east coast. The storm is set to collide with an early winter storm coming from the west and an arctic blast coming from the north. So, make sure you all are prepared!