Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Strong magnitude 6.2 earthquake rocks Russia near North Korea border


Herald Sun
Fri, 05 Apr 2013 10:21 UTC
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© USGS
A powerful 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck early in eastern Russia near the border with China and North Korea, the US Geological Survey said. The epicentre of the quake, which struck at 1300 GMT Friday, was southwest of Vladivostok, around nine kilometers from the Russian border town of Zarubino, at a depth of 561 kilometres, the USGS said.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from the quake, which struck seconds after 12am Saturday local time. A 6.1-magnitude quake struck Russia's far east last month, and a 6.9 quake rocked the region in February. Neither caused significant damage.

USGS data
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Cloud Lightning

Houston's super lightning storm mapped out

Eric Berger
Houston Chronicle
Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:57 UTC
Houston lightning
© KHOU
Houston had one of its most intense lightning storms in some time late Tuesday night.

How intense? For the answer I turned to Dick Orville, a professor of meteorology at Texas A&M University who helped establish a network that tracks lightning in Houston.

For Tuesday night's event you can see an hourly map here showing lightning strikes - both cloud-to-ground and within clouds - within 100 miles of Houston.
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Cloud Lightning

Residents amazed by severe hail storm damage in Hitchcook, Texas

Vicente Arenas
KHOU 11 News
Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:46 UTC
People in Hitchcock spent the day patching up windows on their homes and cars after an intense hail storm pounded the community Tuesday night.

People said the hail was the size of softballs.


"I didn't know what to think," Betty Whittington said.

Hail busted out the rear window of her SUV.

Surveillance video captured images of the hail falling at the Bostonian Inn on Highway 6.

The storm also had strong winds.

"It sounded like the house was fixing to fly away," said Hardy Whittington.
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Snowflake

Record April snow: 10.5 inches falls in Syracuse, New York State

Brent McGrady
Examiner
Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:20 UTC
New York snow
© Tami Galesky via WKTVLake effect snow fell across central New York on Tuesday, including here in the Town of Grant, NY.
According to the National Weather Service office in Binghamton, New York, a record daily maximum snowfall was set in Syracuse, New York on Tuesday. Measurements indicate that a record snowfall of 10.5 inches fell at Syracuse Hancock Field yesterday. This crushes the old record for April 2nd of 1.4 inches, set in 1991.

In addition, the 10.5 inches also breaks the one-day calendar day record for the entire month of April in Syracuse. The previous record was 7.1 inches on April 4, 1975.
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Magic Hat

Syngenta and Bayer's answer to bee decline: Just plant more flowers

Heather Callaghan
Activist Post
Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:13 UTC
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Putting the pesticides industry in charge of protecting bees, is like putting a fox in charge of a henhouse. - Alice Jay, campaign director, Avaaz.org

The heat is on Syngenta and Bayer CropScience, makers of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are heavily indicated in sharp bee decline as each new study proves. The EU is still discussing a ban and the EPA is being sued for allowing the manufacturers conditional registration of their class of chemicals which include clothianidin and imidacloprid - also acutely deadly to bees. Both governmental authorities appear to have catered to corporate influence at the expense of the bee population and the future of crops.

Alice Jay of Avaaz activist group said:
No one knows for certain what's killing our bees, but leading scientists have powerful evidence pointing to these pesticides. Protecting bees and our countryside must come before the profits of the pesticide industry.
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Attention

Update: 'Tsunami of rain' hits Buenos Aires - Death toll rises to 54 as millions left without power and water - Event was 'deluge without historical precedent'


MercoPress
Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:39 UTC
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Record-breaking flash-flooding has drowned countless people in Buenos Aires, Argentina
The death toll from the heavy rains and flash floods that have pounded Buenos Aires City and La Plata, capital of the Buenos Aires province have climbed to at least 54, and could increase, Argentine authorities said on Wednesday.

The "tsunami of rain," as it has been called, has forced thousands of people to be evacuated and caused significant damage to homes and infrastructure. An estimated 600,000 people in the area have no power, drinking water or working phone lines.

The Argentine government is working with provincial and local authorities to evacuate homes which in some La Plata neighborhoods were flooded with more than 1.5 meters of water.

Of the 48 confirmed fatalities in La Plata, 60 kilometers south of the national capital, only 24 have been identified, said Buenos Aires provincial security minister Ricardo Casal, adding that among the identified dead there was just one young person, a 21-year-old man, and all the rest were people over age 50.

Comment: Keep in mind that 'the worst flooding in over a half-century' hit Buenos Aires just four months ago in December 2012...

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Bizarro Earth

Massive seafloor craters found in waters off New Zealand


The Extinction Protocol
Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:42 UTC
The New Zealand, German and U.S. scientists found the pockmarks at a depth of about 1,000 meters on the seafloor of the Chatham Rise, about 500 km east of Christchurch. The three giant pockmarks, the largest measuring 11 km by 6 km in diameter and 100 meters deep, were possibly twice the size of the largest pockmarks recorded in scientific literature, said a statement from New Zealand's Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS Science). The craters were part of a much larger field of thousands of smaller pockmarks that extended eastward along the Chatham Rise for several hundred kilometers. "Some of the pockmarks on the Chatham Rise are huge compared to similar structures observed elsewhere in the world," GNS Science marine geophysicist Bryan Davy said in the statement.
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"They are big enough to enclose the Wellington city urban area, or (New York's) lower Manhattan." Gas release from the larger pockmarks could have been sudden and possibly even violent, with a massive volume expelled into the ocean and atmosphere within hours or days. Scientists could not rule out volcanic activity having caused the release of gas, but another possibility was the release of sub- seafloor hydrocarbon gas, which would have coincided with drops in the sea level of about 100 meters during ice ages and subsequent warming of sea temperatures.
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Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: Extreme weather events and Earth Changes in March 2013

fidockave213
YouTube
Tue, 02 Apr 2013 06:50 UTC
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Snow hit much of the UK this March, with 12 foot snow drifts burying thousands of cattle alive
Extreme weather events and Earth Changes in March 2013: more mass animal die-offs, on land and in the sea - visits from comets - more asteroid fly-bys - fireballs and meteorites raining from the sky - pestilence and plagues of locusts - strong earthquakes - record flooding - record snowfall - sinkholes swallowing people alive - hail storms with baseball-sized hail - devastating tornadoes - massive landslides... all synchronised with ever-crazier human behavior as war theaters expand and rumors of yet more wars grow louder...

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Question

Tremors at Bayou Corne, Lousiana salt dome halt work again Friday

David J. Mitchell
The Advocate
Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:55 UTC
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Screen shot from Louisiana State Police video shot on March 21, 2013, of the Assumption Parish sinkhole.
The head of Louisiana's Department of Natural Resources named 13 scientists and other experts Friday to serve on a blue-ribbon commission tasked with determining the long-term stability of the area around northern Assumption Parish's sinkhole.

The 13-acre sinkhole and consequences of its emergence and continued growth, such as methane trapped under the Bayou Corne area, have forced the evacuation of 350 residents for more than seven months.

The sinkhole, found in swamps between Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou on Aug. 3, is believed to have been caused by a failed Texas Brine Co. LLC cavern mined into the Napoleonville Dome.

Members of the new panel are being asked to set up scientifically based benchmarks in regard to the sinkhole and then determine when they have been met in order to give assurances that the Bayou Corne area is safe for the return of evacuated residents.

"The work of this commission is crucial to the future of public safety in the Bayou Corne area," DNR Secretary Stephen Chustz said in a prepared statement announcing the 13 appointments.
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Bizarro Earth

Iceland earthquake swarm (Grimsey area) - 484 earthquakes in less than 48 hours

Ashish Khanal
Earthquake Report
Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:39 UTC
Update 10:49 UTC : The swarm continues and the most recently listed earthquakes had a Magnitude of M4.3 and M4.2. The number of earthquakes during the last 48 hours has risen to 484 ! The hypocenter depth is mainly varying in 3 layers, one at only a few hundred meter, another at 1.1 km and the last one at 20 km.

Most of the epicenters are located in an area of 15 to 30 km from Grimsey.

There have been earthquakes cycles of a similar nature in 1969, 1974, 1980, 1986, 1994 and 2002. The cycles were all from a few days up to several weeks.
Iceland Quake Swarm_1
© Earthquake Report
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