Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

At least 18 killed in China rainstorms


English.news.cn
Wed, 16 Jul 2014 23:36 UTC
china flooding
© Xinhua/Peng BiaoRescuers evacuate people trapped in flood water in Jishou, central China's Hunan Province, July 16, 2014.
Continuous rainstorms have battered several provinces in China this week, killing at least 18 people and affecting several million.

In southwest China's Guizhou Province alone, 7 people were killed in floods, when their homes collapsed or by lightning strikes, the provincial civil affairs bureau said in a press release Wednesday. Three others were reported missing and more than 91,000 were relocated.H Heavy rain, which began on Sunday night and lasted through Wednesday, destroyed 5,800 homes and damaged another 16,300 in Guizhou.

In Tongren City, the Jinjiang River overflowed into many downtown streets, flooding homes and stores. Firefighters were mobilized to pump the floodwater from downtown areas.

Power supplies were cut off in nearly 300,000 homes in Tongren, Zunyi and Bijie. As of Wednesday night, about 100,000 homes were still without power.
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Cloud Lightning

Family of four struck by one lightning bolt during unusually high numbers of "fierce thunderstorms" in Norway


thelocal.no
Tue, 15 Jul 2014 10:33 UTC
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© ShutterstockLarge lightning bolt at night
Four members of the same family were all struck by a lightning bolt on Saturday in Rennebu, South Trøndelag.

Around 5pm on Saturday, a married couple, both 57 years old, and their son, 24, and daughter, 23, were all admitted to St Olav's Hospital.

The couple and their daughter suffered only minor injuries from the lightning attack, but the young man was seriously injured. He was taken to intensive care at the hospital where his condition is said to be stable. He received vital heart and lung rescue at the scene of the incident after having a heart attack.

Tore Kyllo, operation leader with the local police, confirmed to NTB: "It is a family of four that is struck. One of them got a cardiac arrest, but resuscitation made his heart beat again."
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Attention

Deep water melon-headed whale was sick before it stranded on Perdido Key, Florida

Kimberly Blair
Pensacola News Journal
Wed, 16 Jul 2014 10:12 UTC
Image
© Ben TwingleyWorkers take the dead melon-headed whale off the Perdido Key beach Tuesday afternoon.
A melon-headed whale that died Tuesday on Perdido Key was sick, and NOAA scientists will try to determine if it died from the same illness being blamed on a mass die-off of dolphins.

The small melon-headed whale that died Tuesday after stranding on Gulf Islands National Seashore's Perdido Key beach showed clear signs of suffering from some type of illness, initial findings from a necropsy revealed.

Exactly what made it sick won't be known for weeks or months, after pathologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service analyze tissue, blood samples and other data collected by Steve Shippee, stranding coordinator for Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge in Fort Walton Beach.

"Our dolphin, which we continue to believe is a melon-headed whale (Peponocephala electra), most likely had a chronic illness that should be detectable by pathology and lab analysis," he said. "On gross necropsy exam, we are able to describe lesions and injuries that an animal sustained, but the findings of the tissue analysis will take a while to be returned. Sadly, the animal was in the prime of life as a mature breeding age member of his species."
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Snowflake

Russian scientists: Forget global warming

Translated from Russian
ITAR-TASS
Thu, 17 Jul 2014 08:29 UTC
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Kazan Federal University: intense cold snap is to replace a long period of intense warming.

According to Russian scientists of Kazan Federal University (Republic of Tatarstan, Russia), air temperatures increase in the Northern Hemisphere registered during the past 37 years has slowed down.

"We analyzed the average long-term values and fluctuation of air temperatures, barometric pressure and wind speed in the Northern Hemisphere in 1948-2013 respectively, and found that after a long period of intense warming, a period of intense cold snap began" told Yuri Perevedentsev, staff member of the Meteorology Department at Kazan Federal University, to ITAR-TASS reporter. He explained that this data does not support the hypothesis of global warming, but rather reflects cyclical climatic processes.

The scientists also found that "the temperature curve resembles wind speed curve, only with some delay", and in some regions "the contribution of wind component to temperature fluctuation reaches 60 percent."

In recent years, said Yuri Perevedentsev, the wind speed started slowing down, and with a lag of about 8 years the average air temperature also went down. Analysis of a large array of meteorological data revealed uneven temperature changes in the midland, tropics and circumpolar regions. During the temperature increase amounting to more than 30 years in the mid-latitudes (30-70° N), the temperatures grew by 0.75 degrees, in the tropics the increase was less: by 0.54 degrees only, and the highest temperature increase (2.38 degrees) was registered in the circumpolar regions.

Comment: Read the following articles to learn more: Also, watch Habibullo Abdusomatov's speech:

Part 1


Part 2



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Alarm Clock

USGS: Earthquake Magnitude 6.0 - 95km NNW of Yakutat, Alaska


U.S. Geological Survey
Thu, 17 Jul 2014 07:23 UTC
Earthquake in Yakutat Alaska
© USGS
Event Time
2014-07-17 11:49:37 UTC
2014-07-17 04:49:37 UTC-07:00 at epicenter

Location
60.217°N 140.550°W depth=14.8km (9.2mi)

Nearby Cities
95km (59mi) NNW of Yakutat, Alaska
300km (186mi) W of Whitehorse, Canada
411km (255mi) NW of Juneau, Alaska
512km (318mi) E of Knik-Fairview, Alaska
523km (325mi) E of Anchorage, Alaska

Scientific data
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Cloud Lightning

Typhoon Rammasun kills 38 in Philippines, millions without power


BBC News
Thu, 17 Jul 2014 06:50 UTC
Typhoon Rammasun
© APThe typhoon ripped off tin roofs and felled trees as it swept through provinces south of the Philippines
A powerful storm that battered the central Philippines has killed 38 people and left millions without power.

Ten more people were injured by Typhoon Rammasun and another eight remain missing, according to authorities.

The typhoon swept through the country on Tuesday night before making a shift away from Manila on Wednesday.

More than 530,000 people took refuge in evacuation centres. Many of those who died were killed while outdoors by falling trees and flying debris.

Millions living in provinces southeast of the capital still have no power, according to news agencies.

Officials have managed to restore power to only half of Luzon, which has 17 million people.

Much of the eastern region of Bicol, which was hit first by the storm and is home to five million, is also without electricity.

Manila was hit by widespread blackouts as well, but most of the city's power has since been restored.

Officials said more than one million people were affected by the storm. Most of them were from Bicol.

The storm is now heading westwards towards China's Hainan island. The Tropical Storm Risk website is predicting it will gain in strength to Category 2 - one grade below its strength in the Philippines - within 24 hours.
Typhoon Rammasun
© ReutersOfficials estimate the typhoon caused about $1 million (£580,000) in damage to infrastructure
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Eagle

Heavy symbolism: Internet famous eagle in Iowa gets electrocuted, dies

Mike Kilen
USA Today
Thu, 10 Jul 2014 15:35 UTC
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© Mary Chind, The Des Moines RegisterThe eagles made famous by live, streaming video tend to three hatchlings in April 2011 in their nest south of Decorah, Iowa.
A bald eagle viewed from hatch to first flight by thousands online met a cruel fate Tuesday morning in Iowa. It was most likely electrocuted after coming in contact with a high-voltage electrical transmission line.

Nearly 3,800 comments of sadness and outrage flooded the Raptor Resource Project's Facebook page in the next 24 hours. One woman posted that she was so heartbroken she took to the piano to play "Wind Beneath My Wings," which she also played at her mother's funeral.

"People loved this bird," said Bob Anderson, the raptor researcher from Decorah, Iowa who made the Decorah eagles world-famous by first mounting a nest camera in 2008. "I'm trying to keep people calm."

Some questioned what can be done about the bird-zapping problem of electrical lines that has occurred since the first telegraph pole was erected in the mid-19th century.

Power poles are attractive to raptors as high perching spots, and eagles are the most commonly electrocuted birds - 4,300 between 1960 and 1995, according to a federal study cited in a 2005 report by biologist Albert Manville. Electrocution was the fourth-leading cause of death among bald eagles, behind accidental trauma, poisoning and shooting.


Comment: See also: One of America's Oldest Bald Eagles Gets Electrocuted

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Rainbow

'Heaven and Earth', Part 6 - May, June, July 2014

Last Messages
YouTube
Sat, 12 Jul 2014 14:43 UTC
Image
This is part 6 of my series for 2014, which includes strange phenomena of all kinds and awesome natural events or beautiful phenomena reported around the world in the last couple of months.

These videos try to make people aware of the might of the world we are living in, and the times we are living in. It's but a fraction of recent impressive events - I'm far from covering all the amazing stuff going on out there!

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Phoenix

Wildfires prompt evacuations in British Columbia and Alberta


ctvnews.ca
Wed, 16 Jul 2014 14:34 UTC
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© THE CANADIAN PRESSAn aerial view of the Red Deer Creek wildfire near the B.C./Alberta boundary is shown in a government of British Columbia handout photo.
Aggressive wildfires in British Columbia and Alberta have prompted evacuation orders in both provinces as crews struggle to contain the flames.

A remote Alberta community was ordered to evacuate as a raging wildfire in B.C. approached the border.

A state of local emergency and evacuation order were declared Tuesday evening for the Municipal District of Greenview No. 16.

The evacuation order applies to a remote part of northwestern Alberta south of the Wapiti River, west of Nose Creek and the Two Lakes Road and north of Township 61.

Residents in the area were advised to immediately leave their homes with their personal belongings.
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Cloud Lightning

Freak "The Day After Tomorrow" hail storm hits Siberian beach in mid-summer - extraordinary pictures and video

Anna Liesowska
The Siberian Times
Sun, 13 Jul 2014 07:37 UTC
'If we die, I love you,' says one bather struck by bullet-like giant hail stones.
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© Ruslan SokolovSwimmers waded out of the water covering their heads.
Swimmers on the popular river beach say there was no warning on a sunny day before the downpour of hailstones, some the size of golf balls and hen eggs.

Temperatures on Saturday 12 July were as hot as 37C - or 99F - in Siberia's largest city, Novosibirsk, the day the hail cloudburst struck.

Suddenly in late afternoon heavy winds hit the sandy beach between two bridges across the Ob River, the fifth longest in the world.
Image
© Ruslan Sokolov
Swimmers waded out of the water covering their heads. They shielded themselves under parasols and blow-up sun beds to stay clear of the giant hailstones.

Some children were in tears, sheltering under trees, as the hail bombardment struck the beach vicinity.

'It was like being hit by raining bullets from the sky,' said one sunbather.

'My husband was protecting my young daughter but his back was exposed to the hailstones and he has bruising all over it,' said one woman.

Comment: Take a look at some of the big storm reports from the beginning of this month:



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