Earth ChangesS


Hourglass

Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano erupts again, spews ash and molten rock


RT
Sat, 05 Apr 2014 09:04 UTC
Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano erupts
© Reuters / Carlos CampanaEcuador's Tungurahua volcano spews molten rocks and large clouds of gas and ashes near Banos, south of Quito, April 4, 2014.
Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano erupted on Friday, spewing a huge column of molten rock and ash which surged 10 kilometers (six miles) above the volcano's crater following two strong explosions.

Pyroclastic material, a fast-moving current of hot gas and rock, flowed out of the northern and northwestern regions of the volcano, Geophysical Insitute of Ecuador's National Polytechnic School reported. The Institute continues to monitor the situation, as tremors are ongoing.

Five moderate explosions were also registered on Friday.

The 5,023-meter volcano, referred to as the 'Throat of Fire,' is located in the Cordillera Oriental of the Andes of central Ecuador and is the one of most active volcanos in South America and Ecuador.

Tungurahua had been quiet since October 2013 before resuming eruptions in February.

The volcano has been active since 1999, with the worst eruption occurring in 2006, when it killed four people and left two others missing.
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Ambulance

Earthquake magnitude 5.3 in SW China: Over ten injured


Xinhua
Sat, 05 Apr 2014 07:13 UTC
Earthquake 5.4 in China
© USGS
At least ten people were injured after a 5.3-magnitude earthquake struck a town in southwest China early Saturday, authorities said.

Yongshan County, Yunnan Province felt the shock, with epicenter 13 km deep in Xiluodu township, at 6:40 a.m. Saturday, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center.

Two of the injured are in a serious condition, said the county government's information office. Twenty houses collapsed and two roads were blocked by fallen rocks. One road has since reopened. Communications in the area were not affected.

"We felt the quake strongly, but it did not last long," said a local resident. Some were woken up by the tremor and ran out of their houses, but returned home a few minutes later.

Authorities have sent 400 tents and quilts for displaced residents and several thousand more have been made ready.

Yongshan is home to the Xiluodu hydropower project, China's second largest hydropower station, only 15 km from the epicenter. Rumors have spread that the quake was caused by the power station.
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Bizarro Earth

Earthquake rattles southern Greece


Big Story
Fri, 04 Apr 2014 15:55 UTC
Seismogram
© DreamstimeSeismogram.


Athens - Seismologists say an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.7 rattled southern Greece and was widely felt in the capital, Athens. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey put the preliminary magnitude at 5.7, with an epicenter 25 kilometers (15 miles) east of the island of Hydra and about 78 kilometers (48 miles) south of Athens. The Web site of the Athens Geodynamic Institute put the magnitude at 5.6. Different seismology institutes often have varying magnitudes in the early hours after a quake.

The quake occurred at 11:08 p.m. local time (2008 GMT).

Greece lies in a very seismically active area. A series of strong earthquakes in January on the western island of Kefalonia damaged hundreds of homes and injured more than a dozen people.

Source: Associated Press
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Bizarro Earth

Road in Staffordshire, England is mysteriously 'bleeding' red

Belinda Hargreaves
Leek Post & Times
Sun, 30 Mar 2014 15:39 UTC
Red Stain on Road
© Leek Post and Times, UKThe red stain on the A523 Ashbourne Road.
The presence of iron from a water seepage could be the reason for a road turning red in the Staffordshire Moorlands.

Leek businessman Darron Fleming spotted that an area of the A523 Ashbourne Road entering Leek has appeared to be 'bleeding' after red colour began to blanket the highway.

Mr Fleming, who runs EcigSwag in Sheepmarket, Leek said: "So what's going on in this busy corner of Leek? Is this some kind of planetary stigmata?

"I travel this way daily and first noticed this strange phenomenon more than four weeks ago.
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Bizarro Earth

Baby volcanic island 'eats' its older neighbor as Pacific Ring of Fire continues erupting at unprecedented rate

Megan Gannon
Live Science
Fri, 04 Apr 2014 12:22 UTC
New Volcanic Island
© NASA Earth ObservatoryLandsat 8 snapped this image of Niijima and Nishinoshima, now one island, on March 30, 2014.
As a seafloor volcano continues to erupt in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean, a newborn island has swallowed its neighbor whole, images from space show.

In November 2013, a baby volcanic island rose from the sea out of a volcanic blast in the Bonin Islands about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) south of Tokyo, on the western edge of the Pacific "Ring of Fire," a hotbed of seismic activity. Named Niijima, the newcomer boiled the sea and spewed steam, ash and lava fragments into the air.

Some thought the small black cone - which sprouted just offshore of a larger volcanic island called Nishino-shima - might slip back into the sea, vanishing under pounding waves. But Niijima kept growing.
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Cloud Lightning

Baseball-sized hail, heavy rain and tornadoes pound the Midwest and Southern U.S. states

Jim Salter and Jim Suhr
news.yahoo.com
Fri, 04 Apr 2014 14:10 UTC
Image
Thunderstorms were crawling across a large swath of the Midwest and South on Thursday, spawning suspected tornadoes in Missouri and Texas, and slamming several states with large hail and heavy rain that prompted a handful of water rescues.

Four people were injured in Texas when a suspected tornado destroyed a farmhouse and a mobile home Thursday night near Merit, about 40 miles northeast of Dallas. Hunt County Sheriff Randy Meeks said the injuries weren't life-threatening, though he didn't have details.

Storms pummeled the North Texas college city of Denton with hail as large as baseballs, leading to reports of broken windows and other damage. The National Weather Service in Tulsa noted reports of hail up to the size of ping pong balls and strong wind gusts.

Image
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Bug

Beekeeper loses all his 500,000 honeybees due to long harsh winter in Holland, Michigan

Alex Shabad
wzzm13.com
Wed, 02 Apr 2014 13:18 UTC
Image
Beekeepers in West Michigan are calling it a 'crisis', which has only gotten worse from several months of extreme cold.
A local beekeeper who lost all of his honeybees this winter and he says it's happening across the state.

Anyone can look at Don Lam's beehive and see piles of dead honeybees. However, for Lam, each hive also tells the story of a struggle to survive. "They vibrate their wing muscles and that vibration is similar to shivering," says Lam, a beekeeper in Holland.

It was a fight that his nearly half a million honeybees lost to a long, harsh winter. "They had eaten there way all the way to the top, had run out of food, and they couldn't move over because it was too cold," says Lam. "In some cases they froze to death because the cluster got too small and in other cases they starved to death."

Comment: See also: The death and global extinction of honeybees

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Arrow Down

Sinkhole moves closer to Gulfport, Mississippi homes as others appear nearby

AJ Giardina
wlox.com
Thu, 03 Apr 2014 12:37 UTC
Image
Julie Dean says she is getting frustrated with the City of Gulfport in trying to get a sink hole repaired in her backyard. The hole is deep, and Dean says the sink hole swallowed her six foot gate.

"This past Friday, after the heavy rain, the hole opened up a lot larger than it has ever been before, and now it's feet from my home. I contacted the drainage department and the Mayor's office Friday when it happened," said Dean." No one came by, no one called. Monday came; I contacted the drainage department and the Mayor's office. No one came by, no one called. Finally yesterday, Tuesday April 1, someone came and put up a very large fence around our sink hole that is about to swallow two homes."

You can see that other sink holes have popped up in the neighborhood. Across the street from Dean's home there's a smaller sink hole. Next door to that, another sink hole and two more in the front yard of Jason Geddings home. He says the city filled one hole a few months ago, but two more popped up.
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Arrow Down

Large sinkhole destroys road in Licking County, Ohio

Ken Hines
myfox28columbus.com
Fri, 04 Apr 2014 11:35 UTC
Image
© ABC6
A portion of a central Ohio road will remain closed for the foreseeable future because of a large sinkhole that opened late Thursday night.

The 20 ft.-30 ft. sinkhole destroyed a chunk of S. York Road between Morse and Wesleyan Church Road near Pataskala.

A representative from the Licking County Engineer's Office began examining the damage at approximately 7 a.m. Friday, when heavy rain finally subsided after falling consistently in the area since Thursday morning.

Officials believe that rainfall, combined with wear and tear caused from winter weather as well as the road's position above a creek, likely caused the collapse.

A timetable for the repair of the road has not been established.

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Arrow Down

Three metre-wide sinkhole appears at Staffordshire B&B, UK


BBC
Fri, 04 Apr 2014 11:19 UTC
Image
The hole is expanding "all the time" Mr Tester said
A sink hole has opened up next to a bed and breakfast in north Staffordshire.

Phil Tester, owner of The Laurels, in Oakamoor, said the chasm appeared on Thursday morning and now stood at more than three metres (10 ft) wide and is expanding "all the time".

Mr Tester said experts were on site to try and find out what caused the hole to appear.

The hole followed drilling work at the property this week to check damage caused by a nearby landslide last year.

Mr Tester said: "It's been an incredibly stressful time, there have been a few tears.

"It's not just our business, it's our home and [wife] Helen's parents' home.

"We were all in guest bedrooms last night, in rooms furthest from the hole. But, as you can imagine, we didn't sleep very well."

Comment: This comes a few days after 'Road in Staffordshire, England is mysteriously 'bleeding' red'.

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