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Over 10,000 feared dead in India floods


RIA Novosti
Sun, 30 Jun 2013 13:31 UTC
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© REUTERS/ Danish SiddiquOver 10,000 Feared Dead in India Floods
The death toll in floods and landslides, triggered by heavy rains in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, has probably exceeded 10,000 people, China's Xinhua news agency said on Sunday citing local authorities.

Previous estimates put the death toll at 6,500 people. Regional officials earlier said that nearly 3,000 people are listed as missing.
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Bizarro Earth

Texas meteorologists picked up an apocalyptic-like storm on their radar that turned out to be a huge cloud of dust, bugs, pollen and even birds


DailyMail.co.uk
Sun, 30 Jun 2013 12:01 UTC
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What's that in the sky?

What appeared to be an unusual and unexpected storm turned out to be a cloud of dirt, dust, pollen, bugs and even birds.

National Weather Service forecasters in Dallas-Forth Worth Texas picked up the strange phenomenon on their radar on Friday while the weather remained hot and dry, reaching record highs of 105 and 106 degrees in the Austin area to the south.

'It looked like it was raining,' Jennifer Dunn, a meteorologist for the weather service office that covers the Dallas-Fort Worth region, told the Austin American-Statesman.

'We thought something was wrong with the radar, but we checked our instruments and measurements. Everything was working fine.'

Dunn and her colleagues said their best guess was that the anomaly was a giant swarm of bugs.

But a meteorologist for the weather service office in New Braunfels, which includes Austin, told the Statesman that insects likely made up less than 1 per cent of the unusual matter in the air over the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
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Question

Over 1 thousand dead seagulls discovered in Kazakhstan sector of Caspian Sea


engrinews.kz
Thu, 27 Jun 2013 09:00 UTC
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Mass mortality of seagulls has been registered at Shalyga island in the northern part of the Caspian Sea, Interfax-Kazakhstan reports.

1,200 dead birds were discovered at the island in the end of last week, a special ecological prosecutor of Atyrau oblast Kairat Uteuliyev told Interfax-Kazakhstan on June 26.

According to him, several dead birds were transferred for tests to the oblast branch of the state veterinary laboratory of the Veterinary Control Commission of Kazakhstan Agriculture Ministry. "We will get the test results very soon and only then we will be able to talk about causes of the mass mortality of these birds. After that the respective authority will react to the incident and evaluation activities of the state environmental protection authorities that are responsible for controlling the fauna," Uteuliyev said.
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Snowflake

Unprecedented summer snow in Norway June 29th


BT.no
Sat, 29 Jun 2013 09:06 UTC
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In the trenches: The British couple had to call the tow truck before they could continue their holiday. - They are not so used to driving on this road conditions, says Morten Hansen from Traffic surveillance. There have been no reports of other accidents associated with snowfall.
Snow fell on highway 7 over Hardangervidda on Saturday, but the snow plow came too late for this British couple.

- They had not driven more than 400 meters before they ended up in the ditch, says Kari Varberg (50), who owns and operates Dyranut Fjellstov

She sat at the breakfast table when it started snowing on Saturday morning.

Shortly after, she was called upon to take care of the two British campers who ended up in the ditch.

- They had woken up and seen that it was snowing, so they wanted to get out quickly on the fells, she says.
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Fireball 2

Meteorite fragment from Chelyabinsk explosion located in Urals lake


Space Daily
Wed, 26 Jun 2013 00:00 UTC
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© RIA NovostiChebarkul Lake
A huge fragment of meteorite that slammed into Russia's Urals region in February was located on the bottom of Chebarkul Lake in the Chelyabinsk Region, a scientist said on Friday.

On February 15, a meteorite landed with a massive boom that blew out windows and damaged thousands of buildings around the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, injuring 1,200 people in the area.

The meteorite broke into approximately seven large fragments and one of them is believed to have fallen into Chebarkul Lake, forming a hole in the ice about eight meters in diameter. In late March, a radar probe of the bottom of the lake has revealed a crater possibly created by a fragment of a meteorite.

Viktor Grokhovsky, a senior researcher with the Urals Federal University was among scientists who measured the magnetic field in the area where a meteorite chunk has presumably fallen. He said that the measurements indicated that an object, most likely a meteorite fragment about 60 centimeters (about two feet) in diameter and weighting approximately 300 kilograms (over 661 lbs), is lying on the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake.

He added that an eyewitness caught on camera how the meteorite exploded above the lake and apparently crashed through the ice, sending a massive jet of water into the air.
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Fireball 4

Russian meteor shockwave so powerful it circled globe twice

Simon Redfern
BBC News
Thu, 27 Jun 2013 20:29 UTC
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© apod.nasa.gov
The shock wave from an asteroid that burned up over Russia in February was so powerful that it travelled twice around the globe, scientists say.

They used a system of sensors set up to detect evidence of nuclear tests and said it was the most powerful event ever recorded by the network.

More than 1,000 people were injured when a 17m, 10,000-tonne space rock burned up above Chelyabinsk.

The study appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The researchers studied data from the International Monitoring System (IMS) network operated by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO).

The detection stations look out for ultra-low frequency acoustic waves, known as infrasound, that could come from nuclear test explosions. But the system can also detect large blasts from other sources, such as the Chelyabinsk fireball.

Alexis Le Pichon, from the Atomic Energy Commission in France and colleagues report that the explosive energy of the impact was equivalent to 460 kilotonnes of TNT. This makes it the most energetic event reported since the 1908 Tunguska meteor in Siberia.
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Fish

Pink dolphin dazzles in Brazil


Caters News via Yahoo News
Fri, 28 Jun 2013 15:36 UTC
Tourist Michel Watson found this pink dolphin making a splash in Brazil. The unusual creature, which hides deep in the Rio Negro river, was spotted leaping out of the Amazonian water brandishing its bizarre bright bubblegum color. Weighing in at nearly 300 pounds, the curious animal, known as an Amazon Pink River Dolphin, looked unusually agile as it rose above the waves.
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© MICHEL WATSON / ARDEA / CATERS NEWSA pink dolphin shows off for the camera in Brazil.
Additional images
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Attention

Millions of krill wash up on Oregon and California beaches

Jeff Barnard
kirotv.com
Fri, 28 Jun 2013 14:46 UTC
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© AP Photo/NOAA, Jaime Gomez GutierrezThis undated photo from NOAA Fisheries Service shows a species of Pacific krill. Millions of the inch-long shrimp-like animals have been washing up on beaches between Eureka, Calif., and Newport, Ore., and scientists don't exactly know why. Strong winds may have pushed them ashore while they were mating near the surface, or they may have run into an area of low oxygen
Grants Pass, Ore. - Millions of krill - a tiny shrimp-like animal that is a cornerstone of the ocean food web - have been washing up on beaches in Southern Oregon and Northern California for the past few weeks.

Scientists are not sure why

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oceanographer Bill Peterson says they may have been blown into the surf by strong winds while mating near the surface, and then been dashed on the beach.

The species is Thysanoessa spinifera. They are about an inch long and live in shallower water along the Continental Shelf. They have been seen in swaths 5 feet wide, stretching for miles on beaches from Eureka, Calif., to Newport, Ore. Some were still alive.

"There has definitely been something going on," Peterson said from Newport. "People have sent us specimens. In both cases, the females had just been fertilized. That suggests they were involved, maybe, in a mating swarm. But we've had a lot of onshore wind the last two weeks. If they were on the surface for some reason and the wind blows them toward the beach and they are trapped in the surf, that is the end of them."

Or, they may have fallen victim to low levels of oxygen in the water, said Joe Tyburczy, a scientist with California Sea Grant Extension in Eureka. A recent ocean survey showed lower than normal oxygen levels in some locations. If the krill went to the surface to get oxygen, they could have been blown on shore, he said.
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Cloud Precipitation

Southern Ontario under flood watch as storms bring month's worth of rain in a day

Scott Sutherland
Yahoo! News
Fri, 28 Jun 2013 13:10 UTC
Cars were up to their doors in water after flooding covered Toronto's Don Valley Parkway in May.
© Unknown
After days of recurring storms, as much as a month's worth of rain is expected to fall over southwestern Ontario today, and much of southern part of the province is under a flood watch as a result.

The situation isn't as grave as it was in southern Alberta just a week ago, mainly because there's no Rocky Mountains for this weather system to try to climb. However, forecasters are calling for up to 50 mm of rainfall today from this slow-moving weather system (which is about as much as the city of Kitchener-Waterloo typically gets for the entire month of June), with rainfall warnings issued from the central shores of Lake Erie up to the Bruce Peninsula. The rest of the province will be seeing rain as well, but so far the amounts aren't expected to get up to that warning threshold.

Comment: No reason to panic? Pack an umbrella?! True, there's no reason to panic, but there's every reason to wake up to what is going on with the weather all over the globe... and nearby:

22 June 2013: Calgary, Alberta devastated in deluge of biblical proportions

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Sun

'It's brutal out there': Weekend heat wave to bake western U.S.

Michelle Rindels
NBCNews.com
Thu, 27 Jun 2013 13:51 UTC
High temperatures have been baking Nevada, Arizona and parts of California, where thermometer hit 126 in Death Valley. Meanwhile, storms are rolling through the mid-Atlantic. NBC's Brian Williams reports.


Las Vegas - A high pressure system hanging over the West this weekend is expected to bring temperatures extreme even in a region used to baking during the summer.

Notoriously hot Death Valley's forecast could touch 129 degrees, not far off the world-record high of 134 logged there July 10, 1913. The National Weather Service called for 118 in Phoenix, and 117 in Las Vegas on Sunday - a mark reached only twice in Sin City.

"It's brutal out there," said Leslie Carmine, spokeswoman for Catholic Charities, which runs a daytime shelter in Las Vegas to draw homeless people out of the dangerous heat and equip them with sunscreen and bottled water.

While the Southwest boasts the most shocking temperatures, the heat wave is driving up the mercury all over the West. Western Washington - better known for rainy coffee shop weather - should break the 90s early next week, according to the weather service.

Dry southern Utah is forecast to reach higher than 110 degrees, and northern Utah - which markets "the greatest snow on Earth" - is also expected to see triple digits.

The heat wave is "a huge one," National Weather Service specialist Stuart Seto said. "We haven't seen one like this for several years, probably the mid- to late 2000s."
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