Albuquerque, N.M. - Wildlife managers at one of the nation's premiere bird-watching spots have a mystery on their hands. A strange-looking bird with dark plumage showed up at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge earlier this month to join the tens of thousands of cranes and geese that spend the winter in the Rio Grande Valley.

The problem: No one knows exactly what kind of bird it is.

The debate has spread from the refuge's fields and wetlands onto Facebook, where guesses have ranged from some kind of mutant to a Thanksgiving turkey disguised as a crane for self-preservation. Birding experts from New York to California continued studying photographs of the bird Thursday, spurring even more theories.

The refuge posted a photograph of the bird on its Facebook page this week, sparking dozens of comments. Aside from the disguised turkey and oil-slicked bird theories, some suggested it could be a hybridization between a crane and an emu or a trumpeter, which are native to South America.

It could be a sandhill crane that has come down with a feather-staining fungal infection. Or maybe he - or she - has a genetic disorder that results in too much melanin production.

"It's different. It's got to be a hybrid-cross more than likely, but what, we don't know," Refuge Manager Aaron Mize told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

Members of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Team Sapsucker - known as some of the best birders anywhere, they hold the U.S. record for finding the most bird species in 24 hours - say it's a sandhill crane. "We can't say why it's colored so differently, but we can be certain about species anyway," said Pat Leonard, a spokesman for the Cornell lab.

Other bird-watchers have reported seeing birds with similar coloring in wintering areas in California and along the Platte River in Nebraska. Some experts have said breeding birds have been known to preen mud into their feathers, resulting in the unusual colors.

When oil began gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, it was universally seen as an environmental disaster. Oil company British Petroleum, or BP, has been asked to pay a record $4.5 billion fine for their role in the three-month long spill, which some sources say may still be leaking. However, it seems that was just the tip of the iceberg.

A study conducted by researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States and the Universidad Autonoma de Aguascalientes (UAA) in Mexico has found that the clean-up mission appears to have made the disaster even worse - 52 times worse, to be exact.

Over the course of the three months that oil was leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, 4.9 billion gallons of oil spilled into the gulf. In order to clean it up, two million gallons of oil dispersant were used. According to the study, the mixture of oil and dispersant made the spill 52 times more toxic.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Pollution, came to this conclusion by looking at rotifers, microscopic organisms at the bottom of the Gulf's food chain. The five types of rotifers were used for this experiment because rotifers are very sensitive to toxicity and react quickly to changes in environment.

If anyone lived on the summit of California's Mount Shasta, they'd need a mighty big shovel to dig out of the snowstorm that will bury the mountain in astronomical amounts of snow through the weekend -- amounts that could flirt with world records. The Thursday morning National Weather Service summit forecast for Shasta predicted an incredible 33 to 39 inches of snow -- just for Thursday alone. (By comparison, Atlanta, Ga., has reported 38.9 inches of snow since March 1, 1989 -- a period of over 23 years.)

But it gets crazier.

Add in another 37 to 43 inches of snow Thursday night, and additional amounts ranging from 21 to 35 inches every 12 hours through Saturday night, plus a light dusting of 11 to 17 inches on Sunday... ...and you get a storm total of 176 inches. On the low end. Add up the high end of the numbers and you get a forecast maximum of 218 inches of snow in four days!

A record-breaking snowfall in Moscow has disrupted flights, created havoc on the roads, and forecasters say the storm will rage until Friday morning. Moscow's city hall said the Russian capital hasn't seen a bigger snowfall in November in about 50 years. The weather forecast service said on Thursday that a third of November's typical amount of snow had fallen in the past 24 hours, creating a 12 centimeter (4.7 inches) cover.

The roads in the capital were clogged up and about 70 flights from Moscow's largest Domodedovo airport were disrupter overnight. On Thursday, all three of the capital's airports are working normally.

Times-Reporter, Nov 28, 2012:

A section of land the length of four football fields collapsed Wednesday afternoon leaving a gaping hole [...]

The collapse left about 70 to 80 feet of a 4-inch natural gas line exposed, and hanging [...]

[...] an Ohio Department of Natural Resources geologist was at the scene to assist in determining the cause of the collapse.

© WOIOSink hole at SR 516 in Dover

Moscow has recorded its heaviest November snowfall for half a century with a 24-hour snowstorm that has blanketed the city in more than four inches of cover.

Officials in the Russian capital have called in 12,000 snow-removal vehicles to help combat the effects of the snow on the city's transport system but, in spite of lengthy efforts to minimise disruption, traffic jams have been reported to stretch back several kilometres on Moscow's roads.

"I was speaking with the forecasters, and it's been more than 50 years since Moscow's seen something like this," said Deputy Mayor Pyotr Biryukov on a television interview.

Further to gridlock in the city, flights from Moscow's airports have also faced major delays overnight. The capital's largest airport, Domodedovo, experienced over 70 flight delays, but was back to regular service by 5 a.m.

A freak twister rips through Europe's largest steel plant in the Italian city of Taranto, leaving one person missing and dozens injured. The tornado rolled off the sea and hit the Ilva steel works on Wednesday. The video was filmed by a university student in southern Italy.

Meteorologists use the term "atmospheric river" to describe a long, narrow plume piping deep moisture from the tropics into the mid-latitudes. One type of atmospheric river (hereafter, AR) you may have heard of is the "Pineapple Express", a pronounced plume tapping moisture from the Hawaiian Islands to the U.S. West Coast.

Amazingly, according to NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL), a strong AR can transport as water vapor up to 15 times the average flow of liquid water at the mouth of the Mississippi River!
Suffice to say, if an AR stalls over a particular area, significant flooding can be the result. In fact, a study by Ralph et al. (2006) found ARs responsible for every flood of northern Calfornia's Russian River in a 7-year period.

That said, they're also important for western water supply considerations. According to NOAA/ESRL, 30-50% of the average annual precipitation in the West Coast states typically occurs in just a few AR events. With that in mind, one such AR is poised to soak parts of the West Coast this week. Let's get to the forecast details