More than 50 sperm whales emerged off the Southern California coast in an extremely rare, hours-long sighting that had whale watchers and scientists giddy with excitement.

Pods of mothers and juveniles rolled and played with dolphins Monday a few miles off Laguna Beach, the Orange County Register reported.

They later were spotted off San Diego and were heading south, said Jay Barlow, a sperm whale expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It's by far the largest group ever spotted so near to shore in Southern California, Barlow said Tuesday.

Others agreed.

This year's Atlantic hurricane season is shaping up to be one of the weakest in decades with only five named storms in the region so far this year.

That is the fewest named storms since the full Atlantic season of 1983, when there were four. The 1994 season also had only five named storms into October, then two hurricanes formed in early November of that year.

Forecasters have projected another two named Atlantic storms for the rest of this year's season that ends Nov. 30. But there are no signs of any new ones spinning off Africa's west coast during what is usually the season's peak period - mid-August to late October.

"The tropical Atlantic is just dead," said Max Mayfield, a former director of the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

A typical June-November hurricane season has 12 named storms, nine of them hurricanes and three of those major.

Several PerthNow readers have woken to a sight described as "out of this world" after spotting a puzzling UFO-shaped cloud in the sky. The unusual cloud formation even had experts baffled, with the Bureau of Meteorology taking some time to investigate what the strange phenomenon may be.

Anyone fearing an alien invasion can now have their minds put at rest as experts at the Bureau of Meteorology have confirmed their original suspicions are true - the strange phenomenon sighted in Perth skies this morning was in fact a Fallstreak Cloud.

According to the bureau's Neil Bennett, the cloud - which was sitting high above Perth Airport - contained extremely cold water particles.

A rare specimen of pygmy right whale's body found washed up on a remote Victorian beach has presented scientists worldwide with the unique opportunity to study the elusive species.

Museum Victoria marine mammal evolution expert Erich Fitzgerald said at 6.2 metres in length, it appeared the animal was the longest pygmy right whale recorded.

"This is pushing the envelope of what we know in terms of how large these animals get," he said, adding the specimen would be of interest to local and international researchers. "We have potentially the global record for total body length of the male of the species."

After washing up dead at Wilsons Promontory's Sealers Cove coast last week, the adult male was dissected at the nearby Port Anthony Marine Terminal on Tuesday.

Steven Sparrey was one of three Museum Victoria preparators who started working on the carcass at 9am on Tuesday. By lunchtime they were almost half way through the dissection.

Event Time
2014-10-09 02:14:31 UTC
2014-10-08 19:14:31 UTC-07:00 at epicenter

Location
32.154°S 110.815°W depth=10.0km (6.2mi)

Nearby Cities
570km (354mi) SSW of Hanga Roa, Chile
3428km (2130mi) W of Lebu, Chile
3434km (2134mi) W of Ancud, Chile
3444km (2140mi) W of Chonchi, Chile
2039km (1267mi) ESE of Adamstown, Pitcairn

Scientific Data

The Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation says bodies of Ebola victims have been left in the streets because of a strike by burial teams, who complain they have not been paid. Health Ministry spokesman Sidie Yahya Tunis says the situation is "very embarrassing" and said money was available to pay the teams. He promised to provide more information on Wednesday. The World Health Organization says Ebola is believed to have killed more than 600 people in Sierra Leone. In Spain, officials said a fourth person has been placed under observation for Ebola in a Madrid hospital where a nursing assistant that became infected after working with two victims from Sierra Leone and Liberia, who later died. The infected woman's husband is among those being observed. - ABC News

Bad Moon Rising:

"It's not Halloween just yet, but that doesn't mean the moon can't get a little freaky. The second blood moon of the year will light up the sky early Wednesday morning in North America, where it will be most visible from the Pacific coast, according to NASA. The Earth will position itself between the sun and the moon, creating a full lunar eclipse with a majestic red hue. The eclipse is the second in a rare series known as the tetrad, in which the moon is completely covered by the Earth's umbral shadow for four eclipses in a row, as opposed to only partial eclipses that fall in the outer penumbra. The next total lunar eclipse will be on April 4, 2015, according to NASA." - ABC News

Don't go round tonight, it's bound to take your life:

Three more people were put under quarantine for possible Ebola at a Madrid hospital where a Spanish nursing assistant became infected, authorities said Tuesday. More than 50 others were being monitored as experts tried to figure out why Spain's anti-infection practices failed. The nursing assistant, part of a special team that cared for a Spanish priest who died of Ebola last month, was the first case of Ebola being transmitted outside of West Africa, where a months-long outbreak has killed at least 3,500 people and sparked social unrest. Health authorities are investigating how she became infected. Her case highlighted the dangers health care workers face while caring for Ebola patients - officials said she had changed a diaper for the priest and collected material from his room after he died. Dead Ebola victims are highly infectious and in West Africa their bodies are collected by workers in hazmat outfits. - CBC

The eastern provinces of North Kivu and Katanga, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), have experienced severe flooding over the last 3 days after heavy rainfall fell in the region.

Three people have been killed in flood related incidents in North Kivu. Two people are still missing and around 8 have been injured. Local media report that 50 houses have been destroyed in the flooding.

In Katanga province, one person has been killed by floods that struck in the port city of Kalemie, on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika, on 05 October 2014. The torrential downpour lasted just over one hour. One person, a young girl, is also reported as being injured after floods caused a house to collapse.

Kota Kinabalu, the capital of the state of Sabah, located in East Malaysia, saw 147 mm of rain fall in the 24 hour period between 06 and 07 October 2014.

In fact the heavy rain has been falling since Saturday 04 October 2014 and has inundated low lying areas across the state.

Parts of Kota Kinabalu, Penampang, Inanam and Tuaran were said to be under 1 metre of water. Villages in Penampang district have been badly affected and many people have been evacuated to higher ground, away from the flooded areas. There are some unconfirmed reports that several houses have been swept away by flood water.

'Iraq War III' is underway, and Mother Nature is not happy about it.

Fireball meteor sightings picked up dramatically in September, with spectacular sightings over Russia, the U.S. Pacific coast, an actual impact next to a busy airport in Nicaragua, and what appeared to be multiple fireballs coming down over Lake Michigan. The U.S.'s earliest ever snowfall hit South Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado, while Calgary in Canada went from summer temperatures to 11 inches of snow overnight. Ignoring the raging wildfires across California, a monster hailstorm blanketed Napa Valley with 6 inches of hail, a feat repeated in Florence, Italy and Teruel, Spain.

Rainfall records around the world continue to be broken at an alarming rate, with deluges happening so fast in southern France, southern Italy, the Balkans and southern Spain that cars, roads, homes and people were washed away. Montpelier even recorded over a foot of rain in just two hours. Intense flooding in India, Pakistan, Thailand and China were matched by successive waves of flash-flooding from Mexico to the U.S. Northeast, with up to 10 inches of rain falling from coast to coast. Meanwhile, tornadoes made appearances in France, Germany, The Netherlands and Croatia.

There were a number of spectacular volcanic eruptions, particularly in Papua New Guinea, Iceland and Japan: the latter two countries' second-largest volcanoes erupted; the first gave plenty of warning but Mount Ontake took hundreds of climbers completely by surprise. September also saw a lot of 'high strangeness', with 'UFO lights' filmed over Hong Kong at the height of anti-Chinese protests, and plasma formations photographed above Chicago. In what could be a foreboding harbinger of plagues to come, the West African Ebola outbreak death toll passed the 3,000 mark last month... as the deadly virus reached the U.S.

These were the Signs of the Times in September 2014:

The Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority said researchers noticed a spike in the radioactivity of reindeer in a mountainous area this year.

Maybe one of them will sprout a bright red nose. Norwegian reindeer are more radioactive than they have been in recent years, possibly owing to their mushroom snacks, researchers said.

Lavrans Skuterud, a scientist at the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority, said reindeer at Vaga reinlag AS, in the central Norwegian Jotunheimen mountainous area, were found in September to have nearly eight times the amount of radioactive substance Caesium-137 in their bodies as was measured around the same time in 2012.

"This year is extreme," Skuterud told The Local.