On Monday night and Tuesday morning, the Colima volcano showed two strong exhalations; ejecting lava down its slopes and ash skyward, that has reached several villages. Since last Sunday, the Volcan de Fuego de Colima was reactivated after several weeks of apparent calm and until Tuesday registered between 30 and 35 puffs per day, spewing lava down its slopes and ash that reached the people of Cheese, municipality of Cuauhtémoc, Colima, and some towns in the state of Jalisco.

Yesterday at 21:45 hours this morning between 8:00 and 8:30 am, the volcano emitted two strong exhalations heard that reached in the communities closest to the "granite colossus," mainly in the municipalities of Comala and Cuauhtémoc. From the city of Colima there was a big cloud of steam that rose to just over 2 miles. The chief operating officer of the State System of Civil Protection, Melchor Ursua Quiroz, said: "The volcano has been recharged" and in the last two days has been sharp exhalations, which triggered an alert status from monitoring equipment installed before this new volcanic activity.

Over 50,000 people were mobilized Tuesday to clear snow in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, after the city's worst snowstorm in more than 50 years continued past 60 hours.

Since Saturday, Harbin proper has seen an average daily snowfall of 11.4 mm, the highest level since daily weather recording began in the city in 1961, according to Harbin's weather station.

Residents, police and volunteers have helped to clear snow and ice on the streets, and special snow clearing machines and vehicles have also been mobilized, according to the city government.

Education authorities requested that all kindergartens, primary and high schools in the urban area close on Monday and Tuesday, as the accumulated snow on streets exceeded 10 cm in some areas.

The National Meteorological Center on Tuesday issued a blue alert for snowstorms, forecasting continuous snow in the eastern part of Heilongjiang for the next 24 hours. Snowfall is expected to reach 10 to 14 mm by 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning.

Climate alarmists' tactics -- exaggeration, misrepresentation, smear and scorn -- have hurt the movement more than helped it. No surprise there. Cultist are always the last to recognise the folly of their ways.

When the idea of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (AGW) from fossil fuel emissions arose it found strong resonance across a variety of important interests. For researchers it meant funding and recognition. With the media it was attention-grabbing drama. To activists it was the mother of all eco-threats. Business saw huge profits to be made, while bureaucrats recognised the potential for massive increases in power and control.

For politicians it was a no-brainer, with strong popularity on one side and only denigration on the other.

An impressive AGW bandwagon soon assembled and fired-up a luxurious hundred billion dollar gravy train. In late 2009 everything was on track for a glorious triumph by AGW forces at the Copenhagen Climate Summit, which was to have been the gateway to the clean, green new world promised by the eco-prophets.

Then came Climategate and the wheels started to come off.

In reality the whole vast AGW structure was built on a flimsy foundation of highly dubious prophesies by a small coterie of third-rate academics whose reputations and careers have been based almost entirely on dramatic claims about climate change which have proved to be either wrong, doubtful, or at best, yet to be verified. The description of their being "third rate" is used with due consideration. The attention-grabbing claims concerning AGW have been both fraught with uncertainty and subject to diverse unrefuted criticism. Well-founded credentials and reputations in research are not based on iffy speculation and un-verified predictions. Competent scientists avoid such speculation and take care to clearly qualify the limits and uncertainties involved in any opinions or predictions they may offer.

Aerial photos of Washington, Illinois, show the heartbreaking scale of the description visited on the town after tornadoes touched down there Sunday night.

Eighty one separate twisters were reported across the Midwest. The devastating storm outbreak brought winds of up to 200mph that flattened hundreds of homes and killed six people.

Residents of Washington, a downstate town of 15,000, were left to pick up the pieces Monday and begin recovering from the disaster.

Bits of American flags and insulation from destroyed houses clung to trees that had been stripped of most of their branches and remaining leaves by the twister.

Event Time
2013-11-19 13:32:54 UTC
2013-11-19 22:32:54 UTC+09:00 at epicenter

Location
2.647°N 128.402°E depth=63.6km (39.5mi)

Nearby Cities
110km (68mi) NNE of Tobelo, Indonesia
232km (144mi) NNE of Ternate, Indonesia
236km (147mi) NNE of Kota Ternate, Indonesia
382km (237mi) ENE of Bitung, Indonesia
850km (528mi) SW of Koror Town, Palau

Technical details

The storm that this Saturday affected Catalonien has accumulated up to 30 inches of snow in the Pyrenees and has even reached the regions of Ponent and Terres de l'Ebre, which have accumulated up to five inches of snow, which has left bleached landscape prints unusual for November, with snow down to elevations of only 300 or 400 meters in some areas.

Great Odin's ravens! The world is set to end in 100 days but according to Norse mythology the mighty Thor could save the day.

Viking folklore had its own take on the apocalypse called Ragnarok which would involve gods smiting each other, the sky stained with poison and three freezing winters - so we're a third of the way there already.

Norse experts have calculated that the viking gods are going to start flinging magic hammers at each other on February 22 2014 as Thor's dad Odin gets mauled to death by a wolf which will get the ball rolling for the armageddon.

Skandinavian cultural boffins at York's Jorvik viking centre have heralded the beginning of the end by blowing a sacred war trumpet.

Mythology states that the god Heimdallr would blow the magical Gjallerhorn to warn of Ragnarok which means Doom of the Gods. This will alert Odin's sons like Thor to the battlefield.

Seventeen people have died and hundreds were evacuated when storms tore through the Italian island of Sardinia last night.

Cars were swept away and caused a bridge to collapse, local media reported.

Television pictures showed torrential rain, with streets submerged in muddy floodwaters and rivers bursting their banks

Olbia Mayor Gianni Giovannelli said the city had been destroyed by the ''apocalyptic'' storm, with bridges felled and water levels reaching 3 meters (10 feet) in some places. He described the ferocity of the storm's rains as a ''water bomb.''.

After one of the quietest U.S. tornado seasons in 40 years, Sunday was nature's comeback, with a total of 81 tornado reports in Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana and Ohio.

Illinois was the hardest hit, with 43 tornadoes, followed by 23 in Indiana, 13 in Kentucky, one in Missouri and one in Ohio.

According to the National Weather Service's preliminary ratings, New Minden, Ill., in the southern part of the state, was in the swirl of an EF4 tornado, with winds of at least 166 mph. In Washington, Ill., the tornado, also an EF4, packed even more force, with winds from 170 to 190 mph.

According to the climatology of U.S. tornadoes in the Midwest, twisters of such force were unusual for this time of year. In the lower 48 states, the peak of severe weather and tornadoes usually occurs in April and May; November is known as the second peak for severe weather.

A strong earthquake has struck Japan's coast south of the Fukushima nuclear plant currently undergoing a dangerous removal of highly radioactive Unit 4 fuel rods, according to online reports.
The U.S. Geological Survey reports that a 5.7 magnitude earthquake has struck Japan 25 kilometers southeast of Toba, releasing the following tweet:

Strong earthquake, NEAR S. COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN, Nov-18 19:10 UTC, 0 #quake tweets/min, http://t.co/jAAXkTfU5k