Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

Lightning strikes kills 5 farmers in Adilabad district, India

S. Harpal Singh
The Hindu
Tue, 30 Jun 2015 19:03 UTC
Image
Lightning struck at different places in Adilabad District and killed five farmers and agriculture labourers and injured three others on Tuesday afternoon when a spell of heavy rain lashed several parts. While four deaths took place in Koutala mandal, one labourers died in Kagaznagar mandal.

According to information, the farmers and labourers busy in sowing soyabean and cotton in respective fields were caught off guard in the sudden downpour at around 3.30 p.m. The deceased were dientified as Routhu Uddhav, 40, and Kangla Mangala, aged 30 years belonging to Thatipalli village, Punjari Parvathi, 30, of Chintala Manepalli and Routhu Venkati of Babasagar, all from Koutala village.

The identity of the persons who died at Kareguda in Kagaznagar mandal was yet to be established. This is the first time in the district that so many deaths have taken place due to lightning on the same day.
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Bizarro Earth

Texas residents terrorized by gangs of dive-bombing birds


RT
Tue, 30 Jun 2015 18:01 UTC
bird attack texas
© Reuters / Bogdan Cristel
A street corner in Houston, Texas has been taken over by a gang of proverbial angry birds. Residents say the feathery flock often dive-bombs passing humans, most likely trying to scare anyone away from their nests.

People living on the 800 block of Beverly Street in Houston Heights told the local TV station KHOU that the avian intruders have taken up residence in a tall tree, and occasionally swoop down on people walking by.

"I felt something hit my back, and I was like, what was that?" local resident Eliana Crenshaw-Gibbs told the station. "I turn around and see the bird coming at me, so I start running."

Another neighbor, Victor Valenzuela, was attacked as well.

"It's annoying, it's not very fun," he said. "I've seen it happen to a bunch of people: the UPS guy, my girlfriend walks by - she gets attacked."

Comment: There's been many cases of strange bird behavior in the last decade. One wonders what unseen changes are going on in the environment to cause them.

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Attention

Geologists discover evidence of helium and carbon dioxide leakage from the Earth's mantle in the Los Angeles Basin

Julie Cohen
Phys.org
Mon, 29 Jun 2015 15:40 UTC
Newport-Inglewood fault
© Sonia FernandezThe Newport-Inglewood fault was responsible for the 4.9 magnitude Inglewood earthquake in 1920 and the 6.4 magnitude Long Beach earthquake in 1933.
UC Santa Barbara geologist Jim Boles has found evidence of helium leakage from the Earth's mantle along a 30-mile stretch of the Newport-Inglewood Fault Zone in the Los Angeles Basin. Using samples of casing gas from two dozen oil wells ranging from LA's Westside to Newport Beach in Orange County, Boles discovered that more than one-third of the sites—some of the deepest ones—show evidence of high levels of helium-3 (3He).

Considered primordial, 3He is a vestige of the Big Bang. Its only terrestrial source is the mantle. Leakage of 3He suggests that the Newport-Inglewood fault is deeper than scientists previously thought. Boles's findings appear in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (G-Cubed), an electronic journal of the American Geophysical Union and the Geochemical Society.

"The results are unexpected for the area, because the LA Basin is different from where most mantle helium anomalies occur," said Boles, professor emeritus in UCSB's Department of Earth Science. "The Newport-Inglewood fault appears to sit on a 30-million-year-old subduction zone, so it is surprising that it maintains a significant pathway through the crust."

When Boles and his co-authors analyzed the 24 gas samples, they found that high levels of 3He inversely correlate with carbon dioxide (CO2), which Boles noted acts as a carrier gas for 3He. An analysis showed that the CO2 was also from the mantle, confirming leakage from deep inside the Earth.

Blueschist found at the bottom of nearby deep wells indicates that the Newport-Inglewood fault is an ancient subduction zone—where two tectonic plates collide—even though its location is more than 40 miles west of the current plate boundary of the San Andreas Fault System. Found 20 miles down, blueschist is a metamorphic rock only revealed when regurgitated to the surface via geologic upheaval.

Comment: Another case of gases leaking from deep below, as Earth continues to 'open up'. A small selection of outgassing reported on sott.net include:

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Bizarro Earth

Small eruption reported at Mount Hakone forces evacuations at nearby resort

Hiroyuki Nomura and Billy Mallard
Reuters
Tue, 30 Jun 2015 14:42 UTC
Mount hakone
© Reuters/Kyodo
Steam rises from Owakudani vallay at Mount Hakone where a small volcanic eruption took place, in Hakone town, west of Tokyo, in this aerial view photo taken by Kyodo June 30, 2015.
A small volcanic eruption at a Japanese hot springs resort not far from Tokyo prompted authorities on Tuesday to further limit access to the area, warn that more eruptions were possible and urge a handful of people to evacuate.

Japan, one of the world's most seismically active nations, has suffered a recent spate of eruptions, including one that forced the evacuation of a southern island. In September, 63 people died when a peak crowded with hikers suddenly erupted.

Volcanic ash was spat from a valley on Mount Hakone, which has been belching out unusual amounts of steam in recent months, forcing officials to close part of the resort at the start of the spring tourist season.

There were no reports of injury or damage, and roughly 40 people were urged to evacuate.

Japan's Meteorological Agency raised the warning level on the mountain to 3 from 2, closing a broader area, and an agency official said activity in the area, some 80 km (50 miles) west of Tokyo, seemed to have risen "to a new level".
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Cloud Precipitation

700 displaced, 1,500 houses damaged in Costa Rica floods

Richard Davies
FloodList
Mon, 29 Jun 2015 00:00 UTC
Costa Rica floods
© CNEFlood damage in Costa Rica, June 2015.
Costa Rica has experienced further heavy rainfall over the last few days which has left 19 communities isolated and forced over 700 people from their homes.

Heavy rain and floods that hit the nation's Caribbean and Northern regions on 21 June 2015 had left 25 communities isolated and forced over 500 people to evacuate their homes.

An improvement in the flood situation by 25 June 2015 allowed Costa Rica's National Emergency Commission (Comisión Nacional de Prevención de Riesgos y Atención de Emergencias - CNE) to announce that most of those displaced were able to return home. Repairs to damaged roads and bridges had also been carried out, re-connecting isolated communities.

By 27 June the country was faced with further torrential rain which has caused damage to roads, bridges and houses, and affected over 200 communities across 3 provinces of Limón, Heredia and Cartago.
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Cloud Lightning

Illinois man named Rod struck by lightning for the second time in his life

Anneta Konstantinides
Daily Mail, UK
Mon, 29 Jun 2015 19:08 UTC
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Illinois man Rod Wolfe, 58, has survived being struck by lightning for the second time in his life
An Illinois man named Rod has survived being struck by lightning for the second time in his life.

Rod Wolfe, 58, was moved from his garden to the driveway at his Chebanse home when lightning struck a tree four feet away and the current traveled to his boots.

Wolfe's wife Sue was working out back when she said she heard the 'most god-awful bang'.

'I didn't know where I was,' she told NBC 5. 'I thought July Fourth? What happened?'

That's when Sue found Wolfe, who had been fixing a downspout in their front yard in preparation for a garden benefit walk, 'on all fours'.

'He couldn't move, he couldn't walk,' she said. 'He didn't know where he was, he had a headache.'
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Cloud Lightning

33 cattle killed after lightning storm hits Perry County, Mississippi

Stephen Moody
wlox.com
Mon, 29 Jun 2015 18:33 UTC
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© Linda JordanThirty three animals were found dead because of a lightning storm that hit on Saturday night in Richton.
A total of 33 animals were found dead because of a lightning storm that hit on Saturday night in Richton.

"I never thought lightning could do something like this," said Ray Jordan, owner of the herd.

Jordan said he wanted to do a routine check of the herd after the lightning storm went through the area. On Sunday morning, he said he found the herd in a place where they usually go when it rains - an area in the pasture with two trees. Among the animals killed were 23 cows, nine yearlings and one bull.

He said he and his wife, Linda Jordan, expect to lose around $60,000 after losing the animals.

"A few of the cows were expecting, and we found one with a calf hanging out of the sack," Ray Jordan said.
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Cloud Precipitation

Heavy rains, flooding ruin thousands of crops along Mississippi

Giacomo Luca
KFVS News
Mon, 29 Jun 2015 05:24 UTC
crops ruined mississippi river floods
Several weeks of heavy rains across the Heartland has resulted in damaged farm lands near the Mississippi river in Southern Illinois and Missouri.

Kenny Bunselmeyer, a farmer with more than 35-years-experience said it's not the worst flood he's ever encountered, but the 2015 is going to have a serious effect on area farmers.

"Down here farmers are pretty resilient... You know we've dealt with the flood waters before... We're not immune to it by no means but we've dealt with it before and you know people survive it," Bunselmeyer said. "It's no fun but they'll get through it.""We've dealt with water down here before but it just seems like we have more extremes here in the last 10 years than we used to have or 15."

Bunselmeyer owns and farms some 3,600 acres in several Southern Illinois towns including Jacob and Carbondale. He said the floods have damaged 200 acres of his corn and soybean crops or an estimate $120,000 loss.

Comment: The flooding has also cause the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to close four locks on the Mississippi River bringing commercial barge traffic to a halt.

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Windsock

Phoenix, Arizona slammed with high winds, dust storms

Jerod MacDonald-Evoy
azcentral.com
Sun, 28 Jun 2015 21:02 UTC
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© Cheryl Evans/The RepublicA dust storm rolls across the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community on Saturday, June 27, 2015.
Metro Phoenix residents were slammed by wind and dust over the weekend as the first pair of monsoon-season storms rolled through.

The National Weather Service says the Valley will return to regular programming during the workweek. Expect highs to hover around 110 degrees during the day, while lows will be in the mid-80s at night. Wednesday looks like the best chance of more thunderstorms, with the Weather Service putting the likelihood at 20 percent.

Strong winds knocked out power to thousands of customers across the Valley on Saturday. Some endured triple-digit heat with no air-conditioning, while outside trees were felled or stripped of foliage.

By midday Sunday, as the cleanup got underway and power was restored, the state braced for another powerful storm by dinnertime.

That storm clouded highways throughout central and southern Arizona, caused heavy downpours and flood watches in Rim Country, and led to reports of 70 mph gusts in Gila Bend. No serious damage was immediately reported there.

Likewise, the worst was spared in the Yavapai County community of Mayer, where a 25-acre fire broke out on the second anniversary of the deadly Yarnell Hill Fire. As crews battled the flames on the ground and from the air, a strong thunderstorm cell appeared nearby, the Weather Service reported.

Weekend Dust Storms

Similar conditions two years ago turned a brush fire into a raging, fast-moving, wind-whipped blaze that overcame Prescott's Granite Mountain Hotshots and killed 19 of the crew's firefighters two days after the lightning strike.
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Fire

126 wildfires burn in Alberta: one of the worst wildfire seasons in the past 5 years

Trevor Robb
Edmonton Sun
Mon, 29 Jun 2015 15:27 UTC
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© ReutersSmoke rises from a wildfire north of Cold Lake, Alberta in May 2015.
Alberta is the middle of one of the worst wildfire seasons in the past five years, say Alberta wildfire officials.

As of Sunday, 126 wildfires were burning in Alberta, with 27 of them considered out of control. In the past 24 hours, 23 new fires have emerged but Geoffrey Driscoll, a wildfire spokesperson with Alberta's ministry of agriculture and forestry, says that's just the tip of the iceberg,

"Before that, it was 45 (new fires) the day before, 55 the day before, and 73 the day before that - yesterday was a slow day," said Driscoll, citing extremely dry conditions in northern Alberta combined with high winds and flash thunderstorms as the prime contributors in this latest onslaught of wildfires.

"It's summer in Alberta, so what we're getting, as well, is these thunderstorms coming through with not very much rain. We would get somewhere between 10,000 to 20,000 lightning strikes a night, and we were getting a lot of wildfires coming from those."

Of the 23 new fires in the past 24 hours, 12 of them were ignited due to lightning strikes. So far this season, there have been 1,145 wildfires recorded in Alberta, spanning over 101,500 hectares of land, compared to the five-year average of 724 fires to date.
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