Earth Changes

Severe storms hit Kansas; Massive hail damages cars, homes in WaKeeney

Sean Breslin
The Weather Channel
Fri, 11 Aug 2017 01:31 UTC

Homes and vehicles were heavily damaged in a northwestern Kansas town Thursday afternoon when severe storms dumped huge hail on the area.

In one part of WaKeeney, a town of about 1,800 located some 200 miles northwest of Wichita, 90 percent of the vehicles in a parking lot were damaged by the hail, and nearby homes had window and siding damage, a National Weather Service employee reported.

In Trego County, where WaKeeney is located, hailstones as large as softballs were seen in some areas, according to reports relayed to the NWS.

"The atmosphere is primed this afternoon for giant hail and damaging winds as a slow-moving cold front drifts southward into the southern Plains at the surface and a burst of energy pushes southeastward from the central Rockies across the Plains," said weather.com meteorologist Jonathan Belles.

Strange sounds heard from the sky in Romania

Lake Victoria
YouTube
Sat, 05 Aug 2017 21:24 UTC

Strange sounds from the sky in Romania.

Rogue elephant kills 15 people over a month in India

Gulf Times
Wed, 09 Aug 2017 19:29 UTC

An elephant that has killed 15 people in eastern India over a months-long rampage could be shot within days if it is not brought under control, an official said yesterday.

Wildlife rangers and hunters assembled in Jharkhand after another victim was trampled to death on Tuesday evening, the state's chief forest and wildlife conservator L R Singh said.

The rogue elephant crushed four victims in Bihar state in March before crossing into neighbouring Jharkhand and killing 11 more.

"Villagers are living in fear, especially the Paharia tribe that lives on the upper hillier regions where the elephant roams. Something must be done," Singh said, referring to one of the poorest indigenous tribal communities in eastern India.

280 people have died of lightning strikes since April in Odisha, India

Outlook
Thu, 10 Aug 2017 18:08 UTC

A total of 280 people including 27 children have lost their lives in Odisha after being struck by lightning since April this year, official sources said today.

Stating that the deaths due to lightning strike occurred in 29 of the 30 districts of the state, Special Relief Commissioner (SRC) B P Sethi said Ganjam and Mayurbhanj districts reported the highest number of 30 deaths each.

Both the districts were followed by 24 deaths in Balasore, 17 in Bhadrak, 16 in Keonjhar, 15 each in Jajpur and Kendrapara, 13 in Koraput, 12 in Nabarangpur, and 11 each in Dhenkanal, Cuttack and Bargarh.

Among the other districts, eight persons were killed in Sundargarh, while seven each in Angul, Kalahandi, Khordha and Nuapada, six in Puri, five each in Balangir and Sambalpur, four in Nayagarh, three each in Gajapati, Jagatsinghpur, Jharsuguda, Kandhamal and Rayagada, two in Deogarh and one each in Boudh and Malkangiri.

Volcanoes Poas and Turrialba erupt in Costa Rica

Prensa Latina
Thu, 10 Aug 2017 17:58 UTC

Costa Rican volcanoes Poas and Turrialba started their Wednesday morning with significant eruptions of ashes, gases and aerosol, said reports made by the Costa Rican National Seismologic and Volcanologic Observatory (OVSICON).

Between the 01:00 and the 06:00 hours local time, Poas presented exhalations with the presence of ashes, which is still maintained up to now.

The column still does not go over the 400 meters over the top of the crater, located in the province of Alajuela, 45 kilometers northwest from San Jose.

The column of ashes is produced one day after the eruption of gases, for several hours.

Dead seabirds washing ashore on Long Island and New England beaches

Todd Mcleish
ecori.org
Wed, 09 Aug 2017 17:13 UTC

A dead great shearwater recently found on a Block Island beach

Walking on the beach at the north end of Block Island last month, Matt Schenck stumbled upon two dead and decomposing seabirds, which the avid birdwatcher identified as great shearwaters. While gulls of various species are commonly found dead on local beaches, shearwaters are an extreme rarity.

Except this year.

Hundreds of great shearwaters have turned up dead on beaches on Long Island and southern New England this summer, and no one seems to know why. In addition to the birds on Block Island, birders and biologists have reported dead shearwaters on Rhode Island beaches in Tiverton and Charlestown.

Shearwaters spend most of their lives far out to sea, where they soar just above the waves as they forage on small fish and other marine creatures near the surface of the water. Four species of shearwater — great, sooty, Cory's and Manx — are typically seen in Rhode Island waters, though they seldom travel within sight of land. Most breed on remote islands in the South Atlantic.

Sea lions wash up on California coast amid return of toxic blooms

Peter Fimrite
San Francisco Chronicle.
Wed, 09 Aug 2017 16:59 UTC

A California sea lion suffering from domoic acid poisoning

Scores of convulsing sea lions are washing up on Central California beaches after eating fish poisoned by a plume of toxic algae that could spread north toward the Bay Area and cause widespread problems, marine biologists said.

Since June, veterinarians at the Marine Mammal Center in the Marin Headlands have treated 89 animals — all but seven of them sea lions — plucked mostly off beaches near San Luis Obispo, where a large algal bloom formed in the ocean.

Of the 82 sea lions brought to the center, 31 have died, and virtually all of them had seizures caused by domoic acid, the dreaded neurotoxin that closed down the Dungeness crab season two years ago and killed off thousands of marine species over the past two decades, said Shawn Johnson, the center's director of veterinary science.

"We've rescued 64 animals just in July," said Johnson, who coordinates the rehabilitation of injured marine mammals rescued from San Luis Obispo to the Oregon border. "They've been coming in huge waves, as many as 10 a day."

Satellite captures epic scale of Greenland inferno in intricate detail

RT
Thu, 10 Aug 2017 14:16 UTC

Mesmerizing satellite images of a massive wildfire in Greenland have been captured from space.

While the wildfire could possibly be the biggest in the icy country's history, their satellite records go back only as far as the year 2000, and it's "certainly the biggest one" in that respect, said remote-sensing scientist Stef Lhermitte, speaking to New Scientist.

Wildfires in Greenland, which is mostly associated with snow, are not unusual. In fact, the region experienced similar wildfires in both August 2016 and 2015, but "2017 is exceptional in the number of active fire detections," Professor Lhermitte tweeted.

Comment: Unusual wildfires are burning in Greenland

Lightning strikes kill 6 people and 4 cattle in Ethiopia

Ezega
Thu, 10 Aug 2017 13:02 UTC

Lightning strikes kill six people in Ethiopia's northeastern region. The incident happened in Afar regional state, one of Ethiopia's developing regional states, with majority arid and semi-arid climate conditions, a state prone to negative weather conditions, including the recent El Nino driven drought that hits Ethiopia since 2015.

The tragedies occurred amid the Ethiopian Meteorology Agency's latest warning over the prospect of above-average rainfall with a probable thunderstorm.

Two people were killed as a result of the first lightning accident in Afar's Ewa district, while four others also lost their life attacked by another lightning accidents accident in another district, called Chefra, the Ethiopian State News Agency ENA quoted the regional Disaster Risk Management office as saying.

The two lightning strikes were accompanied by heavy rain and thunderstorm in the two districts, claiming six human lives and four cattle, it was indicated.

Boy bitten by shark: 3rd attack on Hilton Head, 5th in South Carolina in 2017

Mandy Matney
The Island Packet
Wed, 09 Aug 2017 12:33 UTC

Experts at the International Shark Attack File have confirmed a 10-year-old Kentucky boy was the third person bitten by a shark on Hilton Head Island since June.

Johnny Simatacolos said he didn't know what was happening when he felt a sharp pain from the bottom of his foot while swimming on a Sea Pines Beach around 3 p.m July 29 — the last day of his island vacation. He was swimming in waist deep water, not far from shore, around beach marker 47.

"I thought something bit me or I stepped on something like a crab," the fourth grader from Prospect, Ken., said. "I was screaming, a little. It was bleeding badly."

Johnny's parents treated his abrasions, assuming he just stepped on something, and bandaged his foot, according to dad Jim Simatacolos. He said there weren't lifeguards in the area at the time.

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Earth Changes

Severe storms hit Kansas; Massive hail damages cars, homes in WaKeeney

Strange sounds heard from the sky in Romania

Rogue elephant kills 15 people over a month in India

280 people have died of lightning strikes since April in Odisha, India

Volcanoes Poas and Turrialba erupt in Costa Rica

Dead seabirds washing ashore on Long Island and New England beaches

Sea lions wash up on California coast amid return of toxic blooms

Satellite captures epic scale of Greenland inferno in intricate detail

Lightning strikes kill 6 people and 4 cattle in Ethiopia

Boy bitten by shark: 3rd attack on Hilton Head, 5th in South Carolina in 2017

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