Earth ChangesS


Snowflake

Summer snowfall in another European country: Snow in June raises eyebrows in Estonia


focus-fen.net
Tue, 17 Jun 2014 03:25 UTC
Image
© AFP
Living with sub-zero temperatures for several months a year, Estonians are no strangers to a little snow, AFP reported.

But residents of the Baltic nation were baffled on Tuesday when flurries of the white stuff fell in June for the first time in more than three decades.

"We last recorded snow in June 32 years ago and it was on exactly the same date: June 17, 1982," Estonian meteorologist Helve Meitern told AFP.

"Tonight, we could see temperatures fall below zero degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit)," she added.

The wintry weather follows a heatwave over the last month that saw temperatures spike to a toasty 30 degrees Celsius across this EU state of three million, where average June daytime temperatures range from 18-20 degrees Celsius.

The mercury soared to a searing 35.6 Celsius in August 1992, the hottest day ever recorded in Estonia.

Source: AFP
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Phoenix

Wildfire sparks evacuations on Navajo Nation, 11,000 acres burned


Indian Country Today Media Network
Tue, 17 Jun 2014 22:47 UTC
Assayii Lake Fire
© UnknownThe Assayii Lake Fire had consumed 11,000 acres on the Navajo Nation and caused the evacuation of two communities.
Two communities have been evacuated on the Navajo Nation as firefighters struggle to get a blaze under control, hampered by "high winds and extreme fire behavior," according to KOB News out of New Mexico.

The Assayii Lake Fire had burned 11,000 acres in the Chuska Mountains as of Monday June 16, and by nightfall the Sheep Springs and Naschitti communities were being evacuated. About 50 residences were threatened, four structures destroyed, and damage was still being assessed on Monday night into Tuesday morning, according to a press release from Southwest Incident Management Team 3.

"For safety reasons, the general public is encouraged not to travel on access roads leading to the Bowl Canyon Recreation Area," the news release said. "Road closures in the area are Rt. 134 at Sheep Springs to Crystal Boarding School and Rt. 30 at Mexican Springs."

The human-caused fire was sparked on June 13, 10 miles northeast of Navajo, New Mexico, the Incident Management Team said. The fire was being fought by 23 crews, 15 engines, six helicopters, two bulldozers and 593 personnel. About 700 firefighters were due to arrive on Monday evening, reported NBC affiliate KOB News out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Wind conditions were expected to continue through Tuesday.
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Bizarro Earth

The great Pacific garbage patch: We are literally filling up the Pacific ocean with plastic

Michael Snyder
The American Dream
Mon, 16 Jun 2014 18:16 UTC
Image
© thehigherlearning.com
We are starting to see that there are very serious consequences for filling up our oceans with massive amounts of plastic that never biodegrades. In fact, this is one of the greatest environmental disasters of all time and yet you rarely hear it talked about. Virtually every molecule of plastic ever created still exists somewhere, and we all use things made out of plastic every single day. But have you ever stopped to think about what happens to all of that plastic? Well, the truth is that a lot of it ends up in our oceans. In fact, humanity produces approximately 200 billion pounds of plastic every year, and about 10 percent of that total ends up in our oceans. In other words, we are slowly but steadily filling up our oceans with our garbage. In the North Pacific Ocean, there is a vast area where so much plastic has collected that it has become known as "the Great Pacific Garbage Patch" and as "the Pacific Trash Vortex". This "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" stretches from Hawaii to Japan, and it has been estimated to be larger than the entire continental United States. It contains more than 100 million tons of plastic, and every single year it gets even larger.

When people hear the term "Great Pacific Garbage Patch", they expect to find millions of plastic bottles floating around out there. But that is not what we are dealing with. You see, when plastic gets into the ocean it never biodegrades, but it does photodegrade. So what we end up with is a "plastic soup" of billions upon billions of microscopic pieces of plastic. Some are approximately the size of your pinkie fingernail, but most of the pieces are much smaller.

Comment: Additional reading about the Plague of Plastic killing the world's oceans: Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all rubbish floating in the oceans. The UN Environment Program estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, said:
"The slowly rotating mass of rubbish-laden water poses a risk to human health, too. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles - the raw materials for the plastic industry - are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple"


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Music

Mystery bangs and shaking in Auckland

Ian Steward
Stuff.co.nz
Wed, 18 Jun 2014 14:46 UTC
Strange Sounds
© Blogger
A series of mysterious "explosions" have been reported across west and north Auckland, but police are mystified.

Reports of loud ''bangs'' followed by houses shaking began about 5pm, in the Hibiscus Coast area.

Inspector Tony Edwards of police northern communications said police received reports of the bangs from the Herald Island - Greenhithe area about the same time.

More reports came in a while later from the Ranui - Scenic Drive area in West Auckland.

A Fire Service worker came in to work later and confirmed they had heard the noises in the Red Beach area, which is on the Hibiscus Coast.

Edwards said people had variously described the noises as sounding like gun-shots and loud explosions.

Police had checked with the Air Force, which has a base in Whenuapai, but turned out not to be not responsible, and neither was Paremoremo prison.

Lines companies had not reported any electrical disturbances and Geonet is not showing any tectonic activity in the Auckland area.

Arkles Bay resident Will Trayes said he heard the noises about 4pm.

His house shook with a "sudden, quick vibration" for two or three seconds and he heard a slight rumble similar to thunder.

Comment: Strange sounds recorded world wide in the last year.



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Cloud Lightning

Tornado destroys up to 100 homes in Essa in Canada's Ontario province


Voice of Russia
Wed, 18 Jun 2014 13:12 UTC
Ontario tornado
© East News/AP Photo/Tulsa World, Gary Crow
A tornado Tuesday afternoon destroyed or badly damaged up to 100 homes in Canada's Ontario province, authorities said Wednesday after surveying the devastation.

"It's pretty bad," government Minister Kellie Leitch told a nationally-televised press conference, adding that the twister destroyed "up to 100 homes."

"Some houses have almost the entire roofs off, some half the roofs off, some the back of the house is collapsed. And it's pretty devastating," she said, AFP reports.

A state of emergency has been declared in the township of Essa, north of Toronto, after Environment Canada reported an "EF-2" twister on the 0-6 Enhanced Fujita scale.

The tornado touched down at 5:20 pm Tuesday in Angus and tracked east for 15 minutes, with winds of up to 180 kilometers (111 miles) per hour.

"The (accompanying) thunderstorms did bring sudden very heavy downpours, gusty winds, and frequent lightning," the government agency said.

The tornado flipped vehicles and scattered debris.

Some 6,000 area homes remained without power Wednesday morning and an emergency shelter has been set up at a nearby military base for as many as 300 people.

There were no reports of serious injuries.
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Cloud Lightning

Nebraska town devastated: How rare are double tornadoes?


Yahoo News
Wed, 18 Jun 2014 10:09 UTC
Twin Tornadoes
© Matt CokerEmerging pattern: fewer tornado days in U.S. - but more tornados!
Twin tornadoes destroyed almost three-quarters of Pilger, a small Nebraska town. According to one expert, the last powerful double tornado on record occurred in 1999.

Residents of a small Nebraska town are returning to what is left of their homes Tuesday after a pair of tornadoes flattened nearly every brick structure in its path. Two people are dead.

"It was flatness," homeowner Jerry Meyer told the Omaha World-Herald. "There was nothing on my whole block."

The twin tornadoes on Monday are blamed for destroying almost three-quarters of Pilger, Neb., a town of 350 people located 60 miles southwest of Sioux City, Iowa. In all, four tornadoes struck the region that includes the nearby towns of Wisner, Stanton, and Pender.

The two tornadoes hitting Pilger so hard touched down within a mile of each other and then merged south of Pilger over the Elkhorn River, the National Weather Service reports. While it is not uncommon for one tornado to emerge following the dissipation of a first, it is rare for two tornadoes to operate simultaneously, meteorologists say.

Comment: Also see: Freak thunderstorm spawns twin tornadoes as severe outbreak hits U.S.

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Question

Unexplainable seabird deaths puzzle scientists in Iceland

Paul Fontaine
grapevine.is
Mon, 16 Jun 2014 11:12 UTC
Image
© Diliff/Wikimedia CommonsEider
Dozens of seabirds have been found dead in a region of Snæfellsnes, and the cause eludes the experts.

Vísir reports that since last month, over 50 common eiders have been found dead near a nesting area in Fróðárrif, located on the Snæfellsnes peninsula in west Iceland. However, no apparent cause of death could be found. This prompted the West-Iceland Centre of Natural History (NSV) to conduct further investigations.

Menja von Schmalensee told attendees at an NSV meeting last Wednesday that, in the course of these investigations, an additional 70 dead birds were found in the area. These birds included kittiwakes, cormorants and more eiders. Even more inexplicably, many dead flounders were also found near the area, having washed up on the shores nearby.

Jón Einar Jónsson, the director of the Institute of Research Centres at the University of Iceland, visited the area with NSV employees. Although scavenging creatures had picked apart many of the dead birds, a few specimens were still intact, and newly dead. Some of these specimens have been sent to the US, to be examined by experts in bird diseases there.

Jón points out that the eider and the kittiwake have little in common with each other, apart from the fact that they both drink fresh water around this time of year. This could point to ponds in the area as being a possible source of the deadly culprit.
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Fish

Cold Antarctic water likely cause behind thousands of dead fish found on Ninety Mile Beach, Victoria, Australia


abc.net.au
Tue, 17 Jun 2014 10:43 UTC
Image
Dead fish washed up onshore at Seaspray in Gippsland
Thousands of dead fish washed up on Victoria's Ninety Mile Beach were probably killed by cold Antarctic water, according to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA).

Many beachgoers had reported the dead fish between Seaspray and Marlo in Gippsland, identifying mainly the leather jacket species and also trevally.

The EPA said it was investigating but test results did not indicate water pollution was the cause.

It said the fish were most likely killed by cold Antarctic waters moving up the east coast.

The fish prefer warmer waters.

Large numbers of dead fish have also washed up on Tasmania's east coast.

Image
Beachgoers reported the dead fish found along Ninety Mile Beach.

Comment: See also: Tens of thousands of fish wash up on the east coast of Tasmania

Mass of spider crab shells wash up on Tasmania's east coast

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Ice Cube

More East Coast icebergs than usual: some almost close enough to touch

Jesse Tahirali
CTVNews.ca
Mon, 16 Jun 2014 14:44 UTC
Image
© UnknownMassive blocks of ice float closer to shore in Newfoundland, Sunday, June 15
Just off the coast of Newfoundland float humongous slabs of bright, white ice -- almost close enough to touch.

Over the weekend, a large berg floated within metres of the shoreline in St. John's harbour, attracting a crowd of onlookers.

It's just the latest in what's been a banner year for icebergs in Canada's eastern-most province. Tourists are taking in the spectacular sights from the beaches or on guided boat tours. Some are even hopping in the frigid waters to get a closer view.
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Question

Alaska shaken by mysterious series of quakes in low-seismic area


RT
Tue, 17 Jun 2014 16:24 UTC
Noatak area Alaska, mountains, water
© godfreydaily.comBrooks Range near Noatak, Alaska, epicenter of one of several recent earthquakes.
A swarm of identical earthquakes has hit Alaska - taking place in the same low-seismicity area in the northwest, all at the same 5.7 magnitude. The fifth and latest event took place on Monday, leaving scientists puzzled.

The eerily similar tremors, which have been taking place regularly since April 18, woke people up at around 4 am. No one in the Inuit Eskimo community in Noatak is used to earthquakes - there are no major active fault lines and the latest such incident took place back in 1981.

The area is about 100km north of the Arctic Circle. The April swarm struck about 30km from Noatak at a depth of about 16km. Just as with previous temblors, there were no injuries, apart from minor structural cracks in Noatak.

The latest tremor epicenter was located northeast of the village, the Alaska Earthquake Center reported.

Herbert Walton told the Arctic Sounder that "the whole house shook... we're concerned."

While many slept through the quake, locals still fear "there's going to be a bigger one, because every time it happens, they seem to be getting bigger," Walton said.

The regularity is a little bit offset. While the first two events happened in rapid succession on April 18, the third event did not happen until May 3. But all four were about the same magnitude, which is part of the reason the events are being treated as a group and called a "swarm" by Mike West, with the Earthquake Center.

Comment: According to USGS, there were six M5+ quakes around Noatak since April 18, 2014: M 5.6 @ 23.4 km and M 5.3 @ 33 km on April 18; M 5.5 @ 0.9 km on May 3; M 5.5 @ 16.4 km on June 7; M 5.8 @ 15.7 km and M 5.7 @ 16 km on June 16. Swarms are more common around volcanoes and geothermal sites, but neither of these are known to be in the area of the swarm, nor do the seismologists know what faults are activating. Recent swarms include the 2008 Mogul earthquake sequence near Reno, Nevada, and a swarm that affected a Spanish island in the eastern Atlantic during the 2011-2012 eruption of a submarine volcano, causing magma to move beneath the island. This Alaskan swarm may be an indicator of greater Pacific Rim activity in the near future, as pressures continue to build between tectonic plates and electromagnetic anomalies increase.

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