A 4.8-magnitude earthquake shook Death Valley National Park on Wednesday at about 10:30 a.m., park officials reported.
Magnitude measures the energy released at the source of the earthquake, the U.S. Geological Survey says. It replaces the old Richter scale. Quakes between 2.5 and 5.4 magnitude are often felt but rarely cause much damage, according to Michigan Tech.
The storm leveled fields of corn, damaged agricultural buildings and had wind gusts of 80-100 mph in some places
Last Monday, a derecho (widespread windstorm) sped through parts of the upper Midwest. We first wrote about this last Tuesday, after wind gusts in parts of Iowa reached and exceeded 100 miles-per-hour. A week later, 75,000 Iowans are still without power.
The image at the top of the article shows brown scars, meaning that the blown-over crops are dying and are not coming back up. This is a devastating blow, partially because Iowa has led the U.S. in corn production for more than two decades in a row. For so many in the Midwest, this is their livelihood and with fall harvest not that far away.
Millions of acres of corn and soybeans were impacted by the storm, according to the Iowa Soybean Association. The damage is still being assessed, so it's not known exactly how much of the crop is destroyed.
In the middle of summer, unexpected snow blanketed the Baima Snow Mountain Nature Reserve in Deqen Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China's Yunnan Province.
The unusual snowfall results from the consecutive rain and decreased temperature. High altitude areas such as the Baima Snow Mountain Nature Reserve has turned into a world of ice and snow.
A pair of powerful earthquakes has rocked the Indonesian coast, measured at 6.8 and 6.9 magnitude, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), shaking the island of Sumatra.
The two quakes struck off Sumatra's western coast on Wednesday morning, with an estimated depth of 22 kilometers (13 miles) and 26 kilometers (16 miles) respectively. The first tremor impacted an area some 144 kilometers (89 miles) away from Bengkulu, while the second came closer to the city at 130 kilometers (80 miles).
There are no reports of injuries as of yet, however local media said the quakes shook the homes of island residents "as if a truck had passed" and did "minor damage," particularly to buildings with "poor construction."
Keoni Everington Taiwan News Mon, 17 Aug 2020 17:34 UTC
Three Gorges Dam braces for 'No. 5 Flood' days after 'No. 4 Flood' struck
Sichuan Province, which sits on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, on Monday (Aug. 17) braced for some of the worst flooding seen in over 70 years, likely to bring the "No. 5 Flood" downstream to the beleaguered Three Gorges Dam.
After the "No. 4 Flood" of the year passed through the Three Gorges Dam on Saturday (Aug. 15), the Changjiang Water Resources Commission (CWRC) issued an orange flood warning for the Jialing River and its tributary Fu River on the upper reaches of the Yangtze in Sichuan Province on Sunday (Aug. 16). It predicted that the latest bout of flooding will likely form the "No. 5 Flood" of the year and could come only two or three days after the previous one.
The peak of the No. 4 flood on the Yangtze River passed through the Three Gorges Reservoir at around 8 a.m. on the 15th. The water inflow reached 62,000 cubic meters per second, which was higher than the previous three floods this year.
Gansu province, normally one of China's driest regions, has been hit with nearly a week of torrential rains that have triggered mudslides, swept away bridges and snapped power lines. State television footage shot August 17, 2020, shows mudslides and rising water that swept away bridges, damaged power lines and trapped more than 10,000 local residents in Longnan, a city in the county of Wenxian in the northwestern province.
Flooding has worsened in Telangana state in southern India. Meanwhile the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh has also seen flooding over recent days.
Almost 15 million people have been affected and around 850 people have lost their lives as a result of this year's monsoon in India, according to figures from the Ministry of Home Affairs Disaster Management Division (DMD).
Telangana
Flooding that began in Telangana last week has now affected the districts of Jayashankar Bhupalpally , Hyderabad, Mulugu, Bhadradri Kothagudem, Warangal urban, Warangal rural, Karimnagar, Mancherial, Komaram Bheem, Nirmal and Peddapalli.
The Godavari river is still above the danger mark at Bhadrachalam and Dummugudem in Bhadradri Kothagudem district.
A magnitude 6.6 earthquake struck the Philippines on Tuesday, killing at least one person and damaging roads and buildings including a hospital and a sports complex being used as a novel coronavirus quarantine centre.
It was the strongest earthquake in eight months in the Philippines, which lies on the "Ring of Fire," a seismically active belt of volcanoes circling the Pacific Ocean.
"My things at home fell down and my neighbours' walls cracked and some collapsed," Rodrigo Gonhuran, 30, told Reuters from the central town of Cataingan, which has a population of more than 50,000 people and is near the epicentre.
One man, a retired police colonel, was killed when his three-storey house collapsed, while four people suffered minor injuries, provincial administrator Rino Revalo told DZMM radio station.
"The purpose of GLADIO was to attack civilians, the people - women, children, innocent people, unknown people, far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force the public to turn to the State and demand greater security. Under a strategy of tension, you 'destabilize in order to stabilize', to create tension within society and promote conservative, reactionary social and political tendencies."
~ Italian neo-fascist whose prosecution led to the discovery of NATO's 'Gladio' networks across Western Europe
- Vincenzo Vinciguerra
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