The UN weather agency warned Tuesday that there is a fairly good chance of an El Niño climate phenomenon occurring later this year in the Pacific Ocean, which may bring drought and heavy rainfall to the rest of the world.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced Tuesday that its world weather modeling shows there is a "fairly large potential for an El Niño, most likely by the end of the second quarter of 2014."

"If an El Niño event develops - and it is still too early to be certain - it will influence temperatures and precipitation and contribute to draughts and heavy rainfall in different regions of the world," WMO chief Michel Jarraud said in a statement.

El Niño occurs every two to seven years, when prevailing trade winds that circulate surface water in the tropical Pacific start to weaken. It is characterized by unusually warm ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific.

It has a warming influence on global temperatures and is the opposite of the La Niña phenomenon, which is associated with cooling. The last El Niño took place between June 2009 and May 2010. El Niño is often followed by La Niña.

The WMO said that two-thirds of climate models suggested that El Niño might begin between June and August 2014, with some suggesting it might start in May. The remainder say that El Niño will not take place this year.

Wild elephants went on rampage in Bundu killing at least two people and leaving over a dozen injured on Monday.

The wild pachyderms also destroyed several houses, leaving several villagers homeless, spreading fear and panic among the locals.

Locals say this was not an isolated incident and they are regularly at the receiving end of elephants' wrath - especially during the paddy season.

Bheem Mehto, a villager from Bundu district of Jharkhand, said a heard of wild elephants attacked the village after dusk, killing two people.

Leandra Visser posted the above photo on Facebook during her holiday at De Kelder near Cape Town, South Africa. Her caption read, "Can someone please tell me what the hell this is? We picked it up on the beach at De Kelder. It's the real thing!!"

The weird looking creature is fish-like but with huge teeth and its head appears far too big for its tiny body.

According to the Afrikaans daily Die Burger, Visser denies that the image is a joke and the newspaper took it on themselves to send the photo to the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB) in Grahamstown for verification.

The paper quotes Alan Whitfield, chief SAIAB scientist as saying that just because the creature was found on a beach, does not necessarily mean it is a fish. Whitfield drew attention to the fact that the creature in the image has no fins.

Ross Withers, a tiler from Worcester, filmed the tornado after he spotted the 20ft tall cloud of dust and gravel swirling around outside The Pavilion in the Park pub in Tybridge Street on Saturday afternoon.

Video footage taken just yards away shows intrigued onlookers gathering to look at the tornado that flew narrowly close to cars and people before it fizzled out against a fence.

Tornadoes are not uncommon to the UK. In April 2012 tornadoes swept the country leaving a trail of damaged cars, uprooted trees and fallen power lines.


Source: SWNS

People living in Cape St. George, N.L., aren't sure what to do with a dead whale that's settled along their shoreline.

But the mayor of the west coast hamlet says letting the 12-metre sperm whale simply decompose is out of the question.

"We have people with houses reasonably close to it and the smell is the first thing you will encounter," Peter Fenwick said Tuesday. "Rotting marine fat is probably the most lousiest smell you've ever smelled in your life.

"It makes cod liver oil smell like perfume in comparison."

And then there are the clouds of flies it could attract.

"That's just intolerable for people, so it has to go," he said. "There's just no other way around it."

A Tallahassee family says they woke up to their dogs barking, and found their grill in a small sinkhole in their front yard.

"It's completely weird for us because even though we've lived in Florida for 14 years, we've never heard about that. Never. So for me it was a crazy thing that happened", says resident Erika Rojas.

Rojas says her family has lived in the home in front of Munson lake for two years. She says they noticed the ground was getting softer the last couple of weeks, but also says they could have never imagined they would have two sinkholes right in their front yard.

Resident Omar Perez has built a construction out of a bed frame that he says will come crashing down if the sinkhole continues to get any larger and come towards their home. He says he got the idea from living in Cuba, where they sometimes will construct things in front of the front door to alert them of intruders. He also says they have to-go back packs ready. They have water and food and they'll go to a hotel tonight, if necessary, and then make sure they can get their kids to school tomorrow.

"I've never seen anything like this before in my life. I just tried to put some noise in the night to wake us up because we won't realize what is there", says Perez.

According to the Public Works Department, because the sinkhole is on private property, the homeowner is responsible for filling the hole. Rojas says the landlord has come by and said he will fill it with concrete, but in the mean time, the family is left building homemade barriers to keep their children and pets out of the holes.

Mrs. Rojas says her family was told today that a sinkhole actually opened in the road right in front of their home shortly before they moved in. She says if their landlord had told them that, they never would have moved there in the first place.

The 3.5m wide sinkhole which closed the Bruce Highway in both directions for almost 14 hours has been filled in.

The Mains Roads Department says the highway has now re-opened and there are no delays.

Earlier, it was reported a sinkhole that opened up south of Bowen has forced the closure of the Bruce Highway.

The sinkhole was intially reported to be 2m wide but authorities this morning said it was now about 3.5m wide and 1.5m deep.

Main Roads engineers are assessing the damage where a large section of the northbound lane collapsed about 20km south of Bowen.

A new kind of bird flu has been detected for the first time in Adelie penguins in Antarctica, though the virus does not seem to make them sick, researchers said Tuesday.

The virus is unlike any other avian flu known to science, said the report in mBio, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

"It raises a lot of unanswered questions," said study author Aeron Hurt, senior research scientist at the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne, Australia.

The findings show that "avian influenza viruses can get down to Antarctica and be maintained in penguin populations," he said.

The study is the first to report on live avian influenza virus in penguins, though previous research has found evidence of influenza antibodies in penguin blood.

Check out this image of a fire tornado that Instagram user Janae Copelin captured near Chillicothe, Mo.

These fire tornados can form when intense heat combines with high winds.

Copelin, who goes by the Instagram user name nicejalapeno, captured the image about a mile north of 190 Highway on Saturday, May 3rd

Copelin said she was heading out for a day in St. Joseph, Mo., with her daughter and a friend when she saw the flames.

"Thanks to my love of Instagram I chose to drive by and as I stopped to take a picture the wind whipped up the fire into this funnel," Copelin said in an email to KMBC 9 News. "The sound and heat were intense and a bit scary not knowing if it would stay put, but it only lasted a couple minutes."

Event Time
2014-05-07 04:20:33 UTC
2014-05-07 14:20:33 UTC+10:00 at epicenter

Location
6.950°S 154.880°E depth=1.0km (0.6mi)

Nearby Cities
96km (60mi) SW of Panguna, Papua New Guinea
109km (68mi) SW of Arawa, Papua New Guinea
408km (254mi) SE of Kokopo, Papua New Guinea
546km (339mi) ESE of Kimbe, Papua New Guinea
622km (386mi) WNW of Honiara, Solomon Islands

Scientific details