Earth ChangesS


Phoenix

Mexico's Popocatepetl Volcano Erupts


The Telegraph, UK
Sat, 04 Jun 2011 08:23 UTC
Popocatepetl volcano has erupted sending columns of ash into the sky.


The 5,400-metre volcano erupted with a plume of ash after shaking for several minutes early on Friday. Civil protection authorities reported that the cloud drifted west before turning back eat towards Puebla City.

Lying j37 miles southeast of Mexico city and its 18 million inhabitants it remains to be seen how the ash cloud will effect the megalopolis.

The volcano's activity has been reported as stable and there is no threat to populated areas. However, authorities have urged people to stay at least seven miles from the area and to await further information from Mexico's national disaster prevention agency.

The gas cloud is the largest in many years with authorities eagerly keeping watch over any potential change in activity.

Popocatepetl has had more than 15 major eruptions since the arrival of the Spanish in 1519.
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Umbrella

Drought-Hit Chinese Provinces to See Heavy Rains: Xinhua


Reuters
Fri, 03 Jun 2011 12:19 UTC
Image
© unknownA Chinese farmer shows the dried vegetable seeds at his drought-striken fields in Zhouping, east China's Shandong province in January 2011.
Several Chinese provinces that have been hit by a months-long dry spell are expected to receive heavy rains soon, helping to ease the drought along the country's biggest river, the Yangtze, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.

Citing the China Meteorological Administration, Xinhua said rainstorm alerts had been issued Friday evening for part of Chongqing municipality, as well as the provinces of Guizhou, Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangxi and Zhejiang.

Xinhua cited unnamed experts as saying the rains should ease central China's worst drought in decades, which has hurt crops and cut power from hydroelectric dams.
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Cloud Lightning

US: Rare twisters stun Massachusetts survivors

John Pape
Disaster News Network
Sat, 04 Jun 2011 19:58 UTC
Image
© Elise Amendola/Associated PressTony Esposito surveys the rubble of his home in Monson, Mass., on Thursday, one day after it was destroyed by a tornado. Esposito said no one was injured at his home.
First tornado fatality in more than 60 years for New England state as survivors assess damages

Massachusetts remained under a state of emergency Thursday after the state was hit by a rare tornado outbreak that left four dead and more than 200 injured.

They were the first tornado deaths in the state in more than 60 years.

In all, as many as 19 different communities sustained damage as the storm front moved across the state late Wednesday afternoon, according to Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick.

Patrick declared a state of emergency Wednesday evening, only hours after the storm system tore though the central and western parts of the state. In response to the disaster declaration, the National Guard called up approximately 1,000 troops to assist in rescue and response efforts.
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Fish

US: Thousands lose power in Midlands storm

Clif LeBlanc
The (Columbia) State
Sat, 04 Jun 2011 19:44 UTC
South Carolina--The vegetable refrigeration units were off, the greenhouse was dank and warm, and hundreds of tilapia were belly-up Friday morning when City Roots urban farm co-owner Eric McClam discovered his new business had no electricity.

An overnight storm with winds gusting to 60 mph ripped tree branches and popped transformers across the Columbia area, leaving up to 53,000 SCE&G customers in the dark, a utility company spokesman said Friday.

That peak of discomfort had eased by late Friday afternoon to 11,300 customers in Richland and Lexington, including McClam's three-acre farm in the Rosewood neighborhood near Jim Hamilton-L.B. Owens Airport. About 1,100 were in apartment complexes off I-20 and Broad River Road, according to a South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. website that tracks outages.
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Alarm Clock

Bariloche (Argentina) and Southern Chile on Alert After Volcano Eruption


Buenos Aires Herald
Sun, 05 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
CHilean Volcano Puyehue
© Constanza YañezThe Puyehue volcano eruption, as seen from the Chilean side.
The entire city of San Carlos de Bariloche turned dark as ash spewed by the nearby Chilean volcano Puyehue began falling all over town. Meanwhile, the Civil Defence Municipal Board called an emergency meeting to decide on how to proceed.

Authorities told the population to remain calm, to keep their water reserves and to remain home at all times in order to avoid the falling ash. In case of an emergency, officials have suggested the use of face masks in order to avoid it.

As an orange alert was declared, authorities shut down the airport.

Earlier, five quakes ranging between 4.6 and 4.8 in the Richter scale had been registered in the south of the Neuquén province, while a few kilometres away, across the border with Chile, some 600 people were evacuated due to the sudden eruption.
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Attention

Chile's Puyehue volcano explodes, unleashing massive ash cloud


theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com
Sat, 04 Jun 2011 15:39 UTC
Puyehue Volcano Chile
A huge plume of smoke and ash from Puyehue volcano that is visible from Entre Lagos. The neighbors of that community have spotted the onset of eruptive activity conducted by the Sernageomin. The government issued an emergency Red Alert for the area surrounding the volcano. 600 people have been evacuated so far.
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Phoenix

US: Transformer Explosion Knocks Out University of Maryland Power

Bruce Goldfarb
Elkridge Patch
Fri, 03 Jun 2011 14:37 UTC
Image
© Bruce Goldfarb
A transformer explosion at UMBC knocked out power to the campus and threw a massive fireball into the sky Thursday evening. As a result, UMBC was closed on Friday.

Around 8:40 p.m., one of several transformers adjacent to the campus police headquarters exploded, causing several small grass fires nearby.

A huge orange fireball rose above the police station.

Image
© Bruce Goldfarb

Comment: Another case of transformer explosion, this time in Maryland, US.

Read Exploding Transformers - More than meets the eye?, an article that connects the dots of the recent electrical and other disturbances.

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Phoenix

The Earth opens up? New Zealand: Source and the type of deadly gas in tunnel a mystery

Susan Pepperell
Sunday Star Times
Sat, 04 Jun 2011 12:54 UTC
Image
© Phil Doyle/Fairfax MediaSpeaking at a Onehunga explosion press conference (front left) Derrick Adams, CEO of HEB Contractors, Mark Ford, CEO of Watercare Services and Auckland mayor Len Brown
Emergency services are mystified at how an explosive gas came to be present at the site of yesterday's fatal blast in Auckland.

The type of gas and its origin are unknown.

Gas levels were still at an explosive level late last night following the early morning tragedy in Onehunga.

A police spokeswoman said emergency services were continuously pumping air into the tunnel but the site was too dangerous to enter for closer inspection.

The spokeswoman said the type of gas remained unidentified and no one knew how it had come to be in the pipe. "It is a mystery to everybody," she said.

Fire Service staff would remain at the scene until it was safe, and nearby residents were able to stay in their homes because the gas is not toxic.
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Bizarro Earth

US: Earthworm Plague Sweeps Cincinnati, Ohio

WLWT.com
MSNBC
Thu, 02 Jun 2011 01:27 UTC
dead earthworms + bird
© WLWT
People across the Tri-State awoke to an unusual sight Thursday - thousands of earthworms lying dead on sidewalks and porches.

WLWT was first alerted to the issue by Rick in West Chester.

"This appears to have started sometime yesterday afternoon, as I do not remember seeing them yesterday morning," Rick wrote.

Shortly after Rick's email, WLWT reporter Brian Hamrick began taking photos from his home in Florence, where thousands of worms coated the sidewalks of his neighborhood.

After one post on FB, more than 90 people said they had seen the same thing, from Fairfield, to Mount Airy, Pleasant Ridge, Independence and Sardinia. We even got confirmation from our sister TV station in Louisville that they had a few hundred dead worms on their sidewalk.
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Nuke

Arnie Gundersen Interview: The Dangers of Fukushima Are Worse and Longer-lived Than We Think

Chris Martenson / Arnie Gundersen
chrismartenson.com
Fri, 03 Jun 2011 23:55 UTC
fukushima workers
© n/a
Transcript of Part 1 of interview with Arnie Gundersen conducted by Chris Martenson

Chris Martenson: Let's just briefly review - if we could just synopsize - I know you can do this better than anybody. What happened at Fukushima - what happened and I really would like to take the opportunity to talk about this kind of specifically, like where we are with each one of the reactors. So first of all, this disaster - how did it happen? Was it just bad engineering, was it really bad luck with the tsunami? How did this even initiate - something we were told again and again - something that couldn't happen seems to have happened?

Arnie Gundersen: Well the little bit of physics here is that even when a reactor shuts down; it continues to churn out heat. Now, only five percent of the original amount of heat, but when you are cranking out millions of horsepower of heat, five percent is still a lot. So you have to keep a nuclear reactor cool after it shuts down. Now, what happened at Fukushima was it went into what is called a "station blackout," and people plan for that. That means there is no power to anything except for batteries. And batteries can't turn the massive motors that are required to cool the nuclear reactor. So the plan is in a station blackout is that somehow or another you get power back in four or five hours. That didn't happen at Fukushima because the tidal wave, the tsunami, was so great that it overwhelmed their diesels and it overwhelmed something called "service water 2" But in any event, they couldn't get any power to the big pumps.
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