The drought ruining crops, shrinking water supplies and exacerbating wildfires intensified dramatically over the last week, U.S. forecasters reported Thursday.

The weekly Drought Monitor shows "widespread intensification" in the central U.S., the National Drought Mitigation Center said in a statement.

Across the contiguous U.S., the total area under all kinds of drought grew only slightly but the most severe categories -- extreme and exceptional -- rose from 13.5 percent to 20.5 percent, the monitor showed.

The jump "this week was the largest since we started the U.S. Drought Monitor" 12 years ago, Brian Fuchs, a climatologist and Drought Monitor author, told NBC News. "This is really showing the rapid intensification of the drought due to the heat/dryness over the region with little relief for anyone."

The 20.5 five percent in extreme/exceptional drought is the most since 2003, he added.

"We've seen tremendous intensification of drought through Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Arkansas, Kansas and Nebraska, and into part of Wyoming and South Dakota in the last week," Fuchs said in the center's statement.

An Omaha man is desperate to move out of his home after an army of venomous spiders have invaded.

Dylan Baumann is cautiously moving around his small apartment after seeing at least forty brown recluse spiders crawling up the walls and across the floors.

A single bite from a brown recluse can hospitalise victims. Baumann has not yet been bitten after taking special precautions.

He has moved his bed away from the wall and pulled up the skirt of the bed to try and avoid being attacked in his sleep.

Every day he shakes out his clothes before putting them on and makes sure none of the dangerous arachnids are hiding in his shoes. After a shower, he shakes his towel before drying off.

A severe-weather outbreak could arrive on New York City's doorstep Thursday evening, in an event that might prompt comparisons to the meteorological conditions prior to Washington D.C.'s derecho last month.

According to the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., there is "potential for a widespread damaging wind event/derecho" on Thursday afternoon and evening stretching from roughly Cincinnati to Hartford. Some 32 million people will be in the path of the storm, including those in and around New York City. Derechos can pack straight-line winds of hurricane force (74 mph) or greater, causing extensive damage and lingering power outages.

Forecasters upgraded the entire tri-state to a "moderate risk" of severe weather Thursday, specifically noting that the New York City area will also have an unusually high chance of tornadoes as well. At the moment, the city itself has about a 45% chance of experiencing winds stronger than hurricane force in the evening.

Date-Time
Thursday, July 26, 2012 at 05:33:31 UTC

Thursday, July 26, 2012 at 09:33:31 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location
17.593°S, 66.363°E

Depth
9.8 km (6.1 miles)

Region
MAURITIUS - REUNION REGION

Distances
387 km (240 miles) NE of Port Mathurin, Mauritius

388 km (241 miles) NE of Ile Rodrigues, Northern Mariana Islands

954 km (592 miles) ENE of Bel Air, Mauritius

955 km (593 miles) ENE of Centre de Flacq, Mauritius

Environment Canada says four tornadoes have been confirmed in Saskatchewan Tuesday afternoon by trained spotters.

Officials said one twister hit an area west of the town of Assiniboia, a second touched down near the village of Fillmore, a third hit an area southwest of the town of Grenfell and the fourth was caught on tape by a storm chaser just east of Regina near the Town of Balgonie.

Greg Johnson, a dedicated tornado hunter, was following a late afternoon storm that roared through southern Saskatchewan Tuesday.

He said the twister touched ground for about six or seven minutes on a farm property about 10 kilometres south of the Trans-Canada Highway near Balgonie.

"We watched it rip through a farmyard," Johnson said. "[It] kicked up a lot of debris. We stopped in at the home and fortunately everything was OK. The house was spared but a number of the outbuildings were destroyed."

Copenhagen - The greatest climate change ever recorded by the world over the last 100,000 years has been the transition from the ice age to the warm interglacial period.

New research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen indicates that, contrary to previous opinion, the rise in temperature and the rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) follow each other closely in terms of time.

In the warmer climate, the atmospheric content of CO2 is naturally higher. CO2 is a green-house gas that absorbs heat radiation from the Earth and thus keeps the planet warm. In the shift between ice ages and interglacial periods the atmospheric content of CO2 helps to intensify the natural climate variations, the journal Climate of the Past reports.


It had previously been thought that as the temperature began to rise at the end of the ice age approximately 19,000 years ago, an increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere followed with a delay of up to 1,000 years, according to a Copenhagen statement.

A strong earthquake with a magnitude of 6.6 struck off northern Sumatra in Indonesia on Wednesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, but authorities said there was little chance of a tsunami.

The quake was felt by residents on the island of Simeulue off Sumatra's northwest coast but there were no
immediate reports of damage or injuries.

"The quake has no tsunami potential," said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency. "Some people ran away from their houses. We don't have any house damage."

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no threat of a widespread, destructive tsunami after the quake, about 330 km (205 miles) southeast of Indonesia's Banda Aceh. It said there was a "very small possibility" of a local tsunami.

Rescue workers in central Nigeria continue to search for survivors of flooding that has killed at least 35 people and destroyed hundreds of homes.

Rescue workers say dozens of residents are missing after a flash flood early Monday left hundreds homeless and at least 35 dead in the central Nigerian city of Jos.

The flood waters are receding, but residents said the tragedy is far from over. Families searched their homes for salvageable belongings on Tuesday, while others mourned the loss of loved ones.

Abdullhamid Useni lost seven of his children. He says the family was sleeping when the flood waters came. He says they tried, but could not get everyone out. He says he has recovered six of the children's bodies, but the house collapsed Monday before he could reach the last one. The family is hungry, he says, and needs food.

A magnitude-5.2 earthquake rocked southern Mexico early Tuesday, but there are no damage or injury reports, the U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, said.

The quake's epicenter, which was located at a depth of 13.2 kilometers (8.2 miles), was 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) south-southeast of San Juan de Cacahuatepec, a town in Oaxaca state, and 24 kilometers (14.9 miles) north of Santiago Pinotepa Nacional, another town on the southern state's Pacific coast.

The earthquake occurred at 12:25 a.m, the USGS said.

Mexico's National Seismological Service confirmed the temblor on its Twitter and estimated the magnitude at 5.62.

The earthquake was felt in Mexico City, but officials have not reported any injuries or damage, media outlets said.

A magnitude-7.4 earthquake on March 20 killed two people in southern Mexico and was followed by dozens of strong aftershocks.

On April 2, a magnitude-6.0 earthquake rocked an area between the southern states of Guerrero and Oaxaca.

Mexico, one of the countries with the highest levels of seismic activity in the world, sits on the North American tectonic plate and is surrounded by three other plates in the Pacific: the Rivera microplate, at the mouth of the Gulf of California; the Pacific plate; and the Cocos plate.

That last tectonic plate stretches from Colima state south and has the potential to cause the most damage since it affects Mexico City, which has a population of 20 million and was constructed over what was once Lake Texcoco.

The magnitude-8.1 earthquake that hit Mexico City on Sept. 19, 1985, was the most destructive to ever hit Mexico, killing some 10,000 people, injuring more than 40,000 others and leaving 80,000 people homeless.

The most recent powerful quake to hit Mexico was a magnitude-7.6 temblor that rocked Colima on Jan. 21, 2003.

Fairview, Tennessee. - Last week's heavy rains may be responsible for opening a 9-foot wide, 50-foot deep sinkhole along the edge of Dean and Trisha Parker's yard in Fairview.

Steven Brison, 26, a family friend, knows it's that deep because he rappelled to the bottom and measured it. He found 30 feet down, off to the side, was a 10 x 10-foot "room" with 12-foot ceilings. At 50 feet down, in the opposite direction, is a 20 x 20-foot "room" with 8-foot ceilings. From there is a 6-foot tunnel that heads toward Cumberland Drive, which runs in front of the homes, he said.

"Mother Nature made it Thursday night when she poured 4 inches of rain on us," Brison said.

Experts at the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation's Division of Archaeology agree with Brison's assessment, saying they "believe this is a natural phenomenon that occurs around sinkholes and caves; it's more geological in nature and not archaeological," said TDEC communications director Meg Lockhart.