Earth ChangesS


Question

Explosion investigation comes up empty

Barrington, R.I. -- While authorities still do not know the source, residents are sticking to their story saying they heard a large explosion coming from Narragansett Bay Monday night.

Reports of the phantom boom kept crews busy in both Barrington and Warwick after residents reported hearing the strange disruption around 11:30 p.m.

"I was downstairs in my basement, I have small windows, and I was able to see a flash of light and it was basically the biggest explosion I've ever heard in my whole life," said Mark Etheridge, an eyewitness who lives near Narragansett Bay in Barrington.

"It shook the windows and made my neighbors alert too. The only way to describe it was like a single loud 'boom' noise that sounded somewhat like an explosion," said an Eyewitness News viewer via ReportIt.

Comet 2

Two very loud booms heard across Verde Valley, Arizona

Loud Noise
© Verde Independent
(U.S.) - Just before 5 p.m. Tuesday, a loud boom followed by a second blast that shook windows from Cornville to Jerome, rocked the Verde Valley.

By Wednesday, the noises, whatever they were, were all the buzz.

"There was a boom and I thought, thunder. But as I was looking around for clouds I heard a second one that sounded like it came from Mingus Mountain. Then I went to see if the spring on my garage door opener had broke," says Camp Verde resident John Stephens.

Kristi Gagnon, fire marshal for the Camp Verde Fire District, said she and fire Chief Clayton Young were in the administrative offices when they heard the noises. Having grown up in California, Gagnon thought it was an earthquake.

"It had that similar sound but nothing was shaking and the ground wasn't moving. It was interesting for sure," said Gagnon.

Gagnon said she did get a report from a resident living near the Camp Verde Library who said the noise actually "shook stuff off the shelf."

Their curiosity eventually drove them outside the building, believing something had hit the roof, but found nothing there.

Chief Joe Moore with the Clarkdale Fire District heard it, too, and reported that it sounded just like dynamite.

Whatever it was, it did not appear to be isolated to the Verde Valley.

Igloo

Summer snow storm at Falls Creek, Australia

Summer Snow
© ABC/Audience submittedZoe 9, of Mt Beauty, makes the most of the summer snow at Falls Creek.
It is officially the fifth day of summer, but it snowed overnight at Falls Creek, in Victoria's north-east.

The ski resort received up to six centimetres of snow.

Resident photographer Chris Hocking says the wind chill took apparent temperatures to minus 6 degrees Celsius at times and the ground has turned white.

"We've probably seen four to six centimetres on the ground [and] a little more up high," he said.

"Temps are in sort of mid-winter chill and [it's] just amazing to see the ground turn pretty much white all around the resort."

Mount Baw Baw and Mount Hotham have also had snow. Gina Woodward from Mount Hotham says it is surprising, given temperatures in the north of the state broke heat records last week.

"[It's] pretty cold, minus 1.6C right now," she said.

Bizarro Earth

USGS: Earthquake Magnitude 5.6 - 42km ESE of Qayen, Iran

Image
© USGS
Event Time
2012-12-05 20:38:12 UTC+03:30 at epicenter

Location
33.520°N 59.570°E depth=5.4km (3.3mi)

Nearby Cities
42km (26mi) ESE of Qayen, Iran
79km (49mi) NNE of Birjand, Iran
123km (76mi) SE of Gonabad, Iran
175km (109mi) SW of Taybad, Iran
503km (313mi) SSE of Ashgabat, Turkmenistan

Cloud Lightning

Updated Philippine death toll from Typhoon Bopha rises: 100 feared dead

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The death toll from a powerful storm that hit the southern Philippines is continuing to rise, as rescue teams headed for affected areas. More than 100 people are now thought to have died after Typhoon Bopha struck Mindanao island on Tuesday, bringing rain and high winds. Tens of thousands were evacuated ahead of the storm, which is now passing over the western island of Palawan. One other person was reported missing on the central island of Leyte after Bopha made landfall on Mindanao's east coast at dawn, bringing driving rain and packing gusts of up to 210 kilometres (130 miles) an hour, he said. In Andap village in east Mindanao, at least 43 were killed in flash floods. Water and mud rushed down mountainous slopes to engulf a school and a village hall serving as evacuation centers. Heavy rain caused rivers to burst their banks in some places.

"They thought that they were already secure in a safe area, but they didn't know the torrents of water would go their way," Compostela Valley Provincial Governor Arturo Uy told local media. A road into the town was blocked by debris, reports said, but the military said it was hoping to get helicopters into the area to assess the situation. Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said body bags and other emergency supplies would be rushed to affected areas. "The bodies are left lying on the ground in the open in New Bataan and we don't want to risk the spread of disease," she told Agence-France Presse news agency.

Bizarro Earth

Seismic swarm of 2000 micro-earthquakes near the island of Nisyros - Eruption imminent?

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A seismic swarm of 2000 micro-earthquakes near the island of Nisyros since 24 November could indicate a start of a or coming of a volcanic eruption near Nisyros. The quakes are located between the area of Simi Island (Greece) and the Bozburun peninsula of SW of Turkey. Information is still scanty, but seismic signals from this possible eruption are very similar to those recorded from current volcanic eruptions. If an eruption is taking place, it would form a new submarine volcano near Nisyros. No proof has yet been found to prove that an eruption may be taking place. Some sources think the swarm may be tectonic (as the Aegean sea is very seismically active).

The Volcano Discovery alert will be kept at Green until further evidence is found. The island has a 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) to 4 kilometers (2.5 mi) wide caldera, and was constructed within the past 150,000 years, with 3 separate eruptive stages, ranging from explosive and effusive andesitic eruptions to effusive and extrusive dacitic and rhyolitic activity.

Bizarro Earth

'Black swan' cyclone could hit northern Australia

Black Swan Cyclone
© Bill Bradley / WikimediaCyclone Tracy, which hit Darwin, Australia, on Christmas Day 1974, killed 65 people and destroyed 70% of the city's homes, but is a "mere kitten" compared to a 'black swan' cyclone that could hit the city – and others – in the future.
San Francisco: There is a small but real chance, scientists say, that super cyclones with freak 10-metre storm surges could hit cities such as Darwin, Australia, Tampa, Florida and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Such a storm is an example of what Ning Lin, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Princeton University in New Jersey, USA, calls a "black swan" cyclone. Something similar, she says, could hit the Persian Gulf, inundating unprepared cities like Dubai - which has never seen a cyclone - with similarly enormous storm surges.

"A black swan is a surprise with huge impact," she said yesterday at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, California. "For this study, we defined [it] as an event which cannot reasonably be anticipated based on historical records alone."

Attention

Best of the Web: Connecting the global cooling dots

"The sun is the primary source of heat for the Earth... This is worth keeping in mind when the Secretary General of the United Nations or any other lying politician or alleged scientist tell you otherwise."
ice age
Winter doesn't officially begin until December 21, but winter has a mind of its own as does all of nature. While the United Nations charlatans gathered in Doha, Qatar to try to save its global warming hoax by first calling it "climate change" and then by fashioning a funding mechanism to transfer the wealth of developed countries to those who are not, winter has arrived "early" around the world.

That might just have something to do with the cooling cycle that has been active for the past sixteen years, "inconveniently" blowing a big hole in the global warming lies we've been hearing and reading since the late 1980s.

From IceAgeNow.info, a site by Robert W. Felix, the author of a book about ice ages (the Earth has been through quite a few in its 4.5 billion years), here are some recent news stories:

Cloud Precipitation

40 dead or missing as 160-mph typhoon hits Philippines

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© Agence France Presse/Getty ImagesResidents brave heavy wind and rains during Typhoon Bopha on the southern island of Mindanao on Tuesday.
The strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines this year pounded the southern island of Mindanao on Tuesday and about 40 people were dead or missing, media said, after the storm destroyed homes and brought down power and communication lines.

Typhoon Bopha made landfall at dawn, uprooting trees and tearing off roofs. The Weather Channel said the storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 160 mph and was the equivalent of a category five hurricane.

About 40 people were killed or missing in flash floods and landslides near a mining area on Mindanao, ABS-CBN television reported, saying waters and soil had swept through an army post.

A television reporter said she saw numerous bodies lined up near the army base. A military spokesman earlier said about 20 people, including six soldiers, were missing.

Arrow Down

Two enormous sinkholes swallow roads in Bay Area, California

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© CBS

A storm caused a 20-foot sinkhole to form along Mountain View Drive in Lafayette on December 2, 2012.
Two giant sinkholes formed in separate Bay Area communities during the heavy rain from a powerful storm that passed through the Bay Area over the weekend.

In one instance, a giant sinkhole swallowed two lanes of a street in a residential neighborhood in Lafayette Sunday.

High water levels and a clogged storm drain in Lafayette Creek destroyed a portion of Mountain View Drive Sunday, creating a sinkhole where the road once was, Lafayette City Manager Steven Falk said.

Comment: Here's a video of the other sinkhole in Santa Cruz (more of a landslide really):