Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

South Dakota's cattle cataclysm: Why isn't this horror news?

Carrie Mess
The Guardian, UK
Mon, 14 Oct 2013 15:41 UTC
Dead Cattle
© Lacey WeissA dead cow is lifted from flooding in the aftermath of winter storm Atlas in South Dakota.
If you aren't in the ag world, you most likely haven't heard about the devastating loss that ranchers in western South Dakota are struggling with after being hit by winter storm Atlas.

For some reason the news stations aren't covering this story. I don't understand why they wouldn't. This story has heartbreak, tragedy and even a convenient tie into the current government shutdown. Isn't that what the news is all about these days?

But the news isn't covering this story. Instead, it is spreading around on social media, and bloggers are writing from their ranches in South Dakota. Bloggers are trying to explain how the horrible happened. And now I am going to join them to tell you the part of the story that I know, and I am going to ask you to help these people, because if you are here reading this, I know you give a crap about these people.

Last weekend western South Dakota and parts of the surrounding states got their butts handed to them by Mother Nature. A blizzard isn't unusual in South Dakota, the cattle are tough and can handle some snow. They have for hundreds of years.

Unlike on our dairy farm in Wisconsin, beef cattle don't live in climate controlled barns. Beef cows and calves spend the majority of their lives out on pasture. They graze the grass in the spring, summer and fall and eat baled hay in the winter.
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Cloud Lightning

'Once in a decade' Typhoon Wipha threatens Japan; precautions at Fukushima nuclear plant

Aaron Sheldrick
Reuters via Yahoo News
Tue, 15 Oct 2013 15:40 UTC
A once-in-a-decade typhoon threatened Japan on Tuesday, disrupting travel and shipping and forcing precautions to be taken at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant. Typhoon Wipha is moving across the Pacific straight towards the capital, Tokyo, and is expected to make landfall during the morning rush hour on Wednesday, bringing hurricane-force winds to the metropolitan area of 30 million people.

The center of the storm was 860 km (535 miles) southwest of Tokyo at 0800 GMT, the Japan Meteorological Agency said on its website. It was moving north-northeast at 35 kph (22 mph). The storm had weakened as it headed north over the sea but was still packing sustained winds of about 140 kph (87 mph) with gusts as high as 194 kph (120 mph), the agency said.
Image
Typhoon Nari knocked down trees and damaged hundreds of houses in central Vietnam early on Tuesday, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people, state media said.
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Question

18-foot oarfish caught by Catalina marine science instructor in California

Nadra Nittle
Press-Telegram
Mon, 14 Oct 2013 13:35 UTC
Image
In the late afternoon of Sunday October 13th, 2013, Catalina Island Marine Institute instructors returned home to find an 18-foot-long oarfish in the crystal waters of Toyon Bay
A marine science instructor has made what's being called the discovery of a lifetime: She found an 18-foot-long oarfish Sunday in Toyon Bay on Catalina Island.

Image
The head of the 18-foot-long oarfish found by Catalina Island Marine Institute instructors in Toyon Bay in the late afternoon of Sunday October 13th, 2013.
While snorkeling, Jasmine Santana of the Catalina Island Marine Institute discovered the obscure fish, which had evidently died of natural causes. When she reached the bottom of the bay, she spotted a silver creature with eyes the size of half-dollars.

Santana's colleagues saw her struggling to move the dead animal and came to her aid, ultimately discovering that it would take 15 people to move the animal to the beach.

Mark Johnson, a longtime CIMI staffer, said in a statement that he'd yet to witness such a sight during his tenure at the institute.

"In 32 years here, I have never seen anything like this," he said.

Because oarfish dive more than 3,000 feet deep, sightings of the creatures are rare, according to CIMI. Oarfish have the distinction of being the longest bony fish species, CIMI reports.

Officials from the institute sent tissue samples and footage of the oarfish to an expert at UC Santa Barbara, where the species of the creature will be determined.

Comment: See also.

Something amiss deep down? Bizarre-looking oarfish washes ashore on Cabo San Lucas beach

Appearance of "Earthquake fish" spook Japanese

Rare "King of Herrings" Found off Swedish Coast

England: Monster of deep washes up on beach

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Alarm Clock

Moose die-off: 100,000 ticks on just one moose, is Lyme disease culprit?


Examiner
Tue, 15 Oct 2013 12:32 UTC
ticks, moose
© Wikimedia Commons
Moose die-off, this is a term that is not going away anytime soon as moose are disappearing at an alarming rate across North America. This moose-die off is seen in several northern states where ticks are prevalent and according to the N.Y. Times on Oct. 14, moose have been found with over 100,000 ticks on them.

According to the Northern Wild website, moose are testing positive for Lyme disease.While climate change is considered a variable in the moose-die off, it is also a factor in the amount of ticks you will find during any given year. Ticks thrive when the weather is warmer.

The winter tick is one of several types of ticks found on animals in the wild, and according to the website, Moose in Minnesota, this state is one of the states seeing the moose die-off, the moose population are visibly suffering from the ticks.

This is seen with moose that are missing massive spots of fur, as they have tried to remove the ticks from their bodies by rubbing up against trees. While a few ticks sucking the blood of a moose doesn't lead to much blood loss, but a hundred thousand ticks sucking blood can leave the moose with substantial blood loss.

The winter tick, found on moose, take their final blood meal in the spring, a time when the moose are at their weakest from a winter of very little food. According to Lymedisease.org, a moose calf can lose their entire blood supply from ticks, killing them.

Lymedisease.org reports researchers blaming climate change for the population explosion in ticks. This is because ticks live longer when it is warmer and "reproduce in greater numbers if there's less snow on the ground by spring."
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Cloud Lightning

Strong typhoon Wipha heads for Japan and crippled Fukushima nuclear plant


RT
Tue, 15 Oct 2013 10:17 UTC
Typhoon Danas
© AFP/NASANASA Terra satellite image shows a Typhoon off Japan.
A powerful typhoon is bearing down on Japan - and its path is set to go through the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant. It's less than 24 hours until the storm is due to hit. The storm has been branded a "once in a decade event".

The country's weather agency has issued warnings of torrential rain and strong winds ahead of the coming typhoon, Wipha.

450 flights have been canceled across Japan in measures against the coming typhoon. The combined cancelations will affect 60,850 passengers, Japan Airlines Co said.

East Japan Railway Co said it had canceled 31 bullet trains going north and west from Tokyo, Reuters reported.

The typhoon is moving towards the country at a speed of 35 kilometers per hour, and is currently to the south of the country in the Pacific ocean.

Near its center, the speed of the typhoon can exceed 144 kilometers per hour.

"Wipha will remain a strong and expansive extra-tropical system as it tracks along the eastern coast of Japan," the US-based Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported on its website.

The exact track of Wipha is crucial: if its center passes just west of Tokyo, a large storm surge would affect the city of more than 35 million people and potentially bring major flooding.
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Info

Philippines earthquake kills 32, injures 100s


Press TV
Tue, 15 Oct 2013 02:59 UTC
Philippines earthquake
© UnknownRescuers come to the aid of a wounded person in Cebu City, the Philippines, after a major 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck the region on October 15, 2013.
At least 32 people have been killed and hundreds others injured following a powerful earthquake in central Philippines.

A temblor measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale struck early on Tuesday, crumbling a number of buildings and cracking roads on Bohol Island and the Cebu Island, near Balilihan region, the US Geological Survey (USGS) announced.

According to the Philippines Office of Civil Defense, at least 15 people have been killed in the city of Cebu, 16 in the province of Bohol, and one in the province of Siquijor, following the powerful quake.

Hundreds more have been wounded and at least 33 others are reported missing.

The quake has also destroyed centuries-old monuments and modern buildings in and around Balilihan, one of the Philippines' major tourist hubs.

The officials warned that the death toll could rise, though they expressed relief that the quake occurred on a public holiday.
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Cloud Precipitation

Typhoon Nari kills five, causes major damage in Vietnam


AFP
Tue, 15 Oct 2013 02:44 UTC
Typhoon Nari in Vietnam
© Unknown
Typhoon Nari slammed into central Vietnam early Tuesday killing five people, ripping roofs of homes and damaging roads, state media reported. The storm, which claimed 13 lives in the Philippines over the weekend, tore through the communist country's central region -- from the tourist town of Hue to Quang Ngai to the south, Vietnam Television reported.

Trees were uprooted and thousands of houses had their roofs ripped off while many roads became impassable due to torrential rain, footage showed.

Schools were closed Tuesday in Danang city, which bore the brunt of the typhoon when it hit packing winds of up to 133 kilometers (82 miles) an hour, state media said.

Before Nari hit, Vietnam evacuated more than 120,000 people to makeshift shelters in public buildings away from vulnerable coastal areas, according to the country's disaster authorities.

Vietnamese weather forecasters said the typhoon had crossed the border to Laos by midday Tuesday.

Nari is the 11th tropical storm to hit Vietnam so far this year.

Last month Typhoon Wutip left a trail of destruction in the communist state, damaging nearly 200,000 houses and killing several people.

Forty people have been killed in flooding in Vietnam since early September, according to official figures.
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Bizarro Earth

USGS: Earthquake Magnitude 7.2 - 5km E of Balilihan, Philippines


US Geological Survey
Mon, 14 Oct 2013 19:50 UTC
Balilihan Quake_151013
© USGS
Event Time
2013-10-15 00:12:37 UTC
2013-10-15 08:12:37 UTC+08:00 at epicenter

Location
9.765°N 124.022°E depth=56.8km (35.3mi)

Nearby Cities
5km (3mi) E of Balilihan, Philippines
21km (13mi) SSE of Tibigan, Philippines
22km (14mi) NE of Tagbilaran, Philippines
35km (22mi) NE of Danao, Philippines
629km (391mi) SSE of Manila, Philippines

Technical Details
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Newspaper

Volcanic activity worldwide, 12 October 2013: Klyuchevskoy, Kamchatka - Soufriere Hills, Montserrat - Jebel Zubair, Red Sea


volcanodiscovery.com
Sun, 13 Oct 2013 18:51 UTC
Klyuchevskoy (Kamchatka): (11 Oct) We posted the following time-lapse video of the eruption this morning (or evening, in Kamchatka time). At 08:30 UTC (17:30 local time), a new vent opened in the saddle between Klyuchevskoy and neighboring Kamen volcano, producing a fountain of lava and ash rising to about 7 km altitude. The KVERT webcam even captured lightning during this eruption:


Comment: The Jebel Zubair volcano also erupted in December 2011, resulting in the formation of a new island.

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Eye 2

Man finds 2ft snake in bathroom of Bideford,UK property

E Glanfield
North Devon Journal
Mon, 14 Oct 2013 14:03 UTC
A man had the shock of his life when he found a 2ft snake in the bathroom of his Bideford home yesterday morning.

Police were called to the house in Pitt Lane at around 6am after the man said he found the 2ft snake, believed to be a python, on the radiator.

Officers said the man went into the bathroom for a shower and discovered the snake when he lifted his towel off the radiator.

A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall Police said the man initially thought the animal was a toy but realised it was real when it started to slither around.

Response officers from the town were sent to the house and were forced to collect the python, which was described as brownish in colour.

They took the animal to Torbridge Veterinary Centre, situated in Caddsdown Industrial Park, for examination.

The man who discovered the snake told the Journal it was a pet snake but said it was not owned by him. He did not wish to comment further.

Police said the RSCPA were informed of the discovery.
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