Earth ChangesS

Cloud Lightning

Slovenia on red alert as storms and flooding hit the entire country

STA
Dnevnik.si
Wed, 05 Nov 2014 21:25 UTC
Slovenia flood red alert
© 2014 EARS
It began with a period of several days of highly unstable and particularly rainy weather. Now forecasters expect the rainfall to increase, causing already-swollen rivers to flood many areas.

During the day of 5 November 2014, the strongest rain fell in the western part of the country, especially in the Soฤa Valley.

According to the Administration for Civil Protection and Disaster, firefighters were working to pump rainwater out of flooded basements and inundated primary schools.

Due to increased tides, the sea flooded the low-lying coastline in Piran. In Nova Gorica, firefighters delivered sand bags and offered assistance in setting up flood barriers on the ground floor of residential buildings.

Comment: See also: Tuscany residents saved as flooding hits Italy

And for a global view of flooding in the past 2 months alone.



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Question

A second tropical pufferfish washes up dead in Europe within a week

Euan Stretch
Daily Mirror, UK
Tue, 04 Nov 2014 22:44 UTC
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Deadly: The Oceananic pufferfish
The poisonous Oceanic pufferfish - Lagocephalus lagocephalus is a delicacy in Japan but they rarely enter British waters

A Beach walker was stunned when he found a deadly pufferfish - washed up in Dorset.

At first glance the bizarre-looking fish appeared to be a large bloated mackerel.

But it soon became apparent it was a deadly pufferfish, normally only found in sub-tropical waters.

It appears to have died while in full defensive mode, with its stomach fully inflated.

The species is well-known for ballooning in size by filling their bodies with water or air to deter predators from attacking them.

Comment: See also: Poisonous tropical puffer fish found dead on Dutch island beach

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Attention

36 stranded pilot whales die in New Zealand


BBC
Wed, 05 Nov 2014 21:39 UTC
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About 36 pilot whales that had become stranded in the Eastern Bay of Plenty in New Zealand have died.

Two whale pods beached themselves in the Ohiwa harbour on the north-east coast on Monday.

Wildlife conservationists launched a rescue operation and helped one pod to be refloated on Tuesday, while 21 more whales were successfully herded out to sea on Wednesday.

The reasons for mass pilot whale strandings are not well understood.

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Eye 2

Python emerges from toilet, bites Thai woman and tries to drag her back to its nest

Khier Casino,
Opposing Views
Wed, 05 Nov 2014 00:00 UTC
python
A Thai woman was nearly killed by a python that crawled out of her toilet Monday.
A Thai woman claims that she was nearly killed by a python that crawled out of her toilet Monday.

Rampeung Onlamai, 57, of Samkok, Thailand, was taking a shower at her apartment north of Bangkok when the huge snake sank its fangs into her right hand and attempted to drag her down the drain, Metro reports.

Rampeung grabbed a nearby broom to fend the animal off and called out for her daughter, who jumped in to save her and pull the python's head off her hand, Metro reports. The python then returned to its toilet nest.

Comment: See also: Snakes alive! Countless reports of snakes turning up in weird places

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Bizarro Earth

Another 4.9 magnitude earthquake hits Oregon/Nevada border after continuous earthquake swarms since July

Stuart Tomlinson
OregonLive.com
Wed, 05 Nov 2014 18:36 UTC
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© USGS
A magnitude 4.9 earthquake rippled beneath the desert floor about 40 miles east/southeast of Lakeview late Tuesday night on the Oregon/Nevada border, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The quake was followed by a series of smaller quakes in the same general area. Four people reported feeling it; the nearest person was in Cedarville, California, about 45 miles west.

USGS geophysicist Randy Baldwin says the Black Rock Desert area has had several minor quakes in the last few months. Seismologists with the Nevada Seismological Laboratory have been tracking swarms of earthquakes in the area since July.

Nevada is the third most seismically active state in the nation behind California and Alaska.

USGS list of earthquakes in most recent swarm
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Snowflake Cold

Maine snowstorm: 80,000+ still without power two days after a wicked Fall snowstorm knocked out electricity in Maine


Weather Channel
Wed, 05 Nov 2014 17:36 UTC
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Utility crews continued to restore power across Maine Tuesday, two days after a wicked fall snowstorm knocked out electricity to a bulk of customers along the state's mid-coast.

While the number of customers without power dropped below 50,000 by evening, the outages forced election officials to make alternative plans for several polling places for Tuesday's midterm election.

There was also one death attributed to the snowstorm. Troopers say a Lubec woman died when her pickup truck went off the road and overturned in the Washington County town of Trescott. They said 28-year-old Danielle Moores lost control of her pickup truck about 6:30 p.m. Sunday during the heavy snow from the weekend storm. The truck came to rest on its roof in a bog. Moores died at the scene.
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Cloud Lightning

Alaska's Aleutian Islands targeted from remnant of Typhoon Nuri as 'intense Sea Storm possible'

Nick Wiltgen and Jonathan Erdman
Weather Channel
Wed, 05 Nov 2014 17:31 UTC
Image
While the former Super Typhoon Nuri sent meteorological jaws dropping earlier this week, its remnant may have another impressive chapter in store in the Bering Sea and Alaska's Aleutian Islands. The remnant of Typhoon Nuri is expected to join up with the polar jet stream and a very strong disturbance in the mid-latitude belt of westerly winds, as highlighted above.

Forecasts from both the European (ECMWF) and American (GFS) computer models continue to predict an extremely powerful non-tropical storm to develop from this merger over the Bering Sea, near the western Aleutian Islands of Alaska Friday into Saturday.
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Windsock

Hurricane-force wind storm sweeps through Swiss Alps


thelocal.ch
Tue, 04 Nov 2014 15:31 UTC
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© Switzerland TourismTitlis mountain lift โ€” closed for maintenance.
Hurricane-force winds swept through the Swiss Alps early on Tuesday registering as high as 187 kilometres per hour in the canton of Obwalden, weather services reported.

This wind speed was recorded at Titlis, a 3,238-metre mountain in the Uri Alps, Meteo Group and SRF Meteo said in news releases.

The high winds are due to a Foehn storm that began battering higher elevations late on Monday.

There were no reports of substantial damage.

Titlis is home to Europe's highest suspension bridge, a 500-metre-long foot bridge at 3,041 metres above sea level, 500 metres above the ground.
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Cloud Precipitation

Tuscany residents saved as flooding hits Italy


thelocal.it
Wed, 05 Nov 2014 15:03 UTC
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© Giovanna MezzanaCivil protection agencies warned Carrara residents to avoid driving and stay on high ground if possible.
UPDATED: Two residents in Tuscany have been found after being reported missing in floods, while five others have been airlifted to safety, according to Italian media reports.

The two missing people were saved by rescuers in Carrara, the town's prefect and Mayor Mayor Angelo Zubbani told Il Tirreno. The news corrects an earlier report that one of the two people had died.

Both had been living close to a sawmill on the edge of the Carrione river, which burst its banks following hours of torrential rain.

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Cow Skull

NASA issues stark warning: California drought could threaten U.S. food supply

Mac Slavo
SHTFplan.com
Tue, 04 Nov 2014 21:27 UTC
drought
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has sounded a stark warning over California's sustained drought, publishing its latest findings where satellite surveys show a rapidly depleting groundwater supply.

And with California as the United States' most valuable agricultural state, and thus key to America's food supply (and much of the world's as well) that could mean drastic consequences for food commodity prices and potential shortages.

The Nature Climate Change journal carried the report, which Think Progress summarized:
A new Nature Climate Change piece, "The global groundwater crisis," by James Famiglietti, a leading hydrologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, warns that "most of the major aquifers in the world's arid and semi-arid zones, that is, in the dry parts of the world that rely most heavily on groundwater, are experiencing rapid rates of groundwater depletion."

The groundwater at some of the world's largest aquifers - in the U.S. High Plains, California's Central Valley, China, India, and elsewhere - is being pumped out "at far greater rates than it can be naturally replenished."

The most worrisome fact: "nearly all of these underlie the word's great agricultural regions and are primarily responsible for their high productivity."

Comment: Water is perhaps the single most critical factor to sustaining human life, and no part of any economy can function without it. Water is an essential human right, and attempts to privatize water sources are fundamentally wrong. It is completely irresponsible that no restraints have been put on corporations to keep them from sucking the water from communities and agricultural regions, but it is also unsurprising, as in this psychopathically controlled world, profits trump everything.

Flow: How privatization is accelerating the world's water crisis
Water industry, World Bank pilot new scheme to drive public water into private hands
Coca-Cola and Nestle are sucking us dry without our even knowing, effectively privatizing water supplies

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