Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

Tornado Confirmed on Ground near Wausau, Wisconsin


nbc15.com
Fri, 25 May 2012 06:49 UTC
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Weather officials have confirmed a tornado touched down about two miles south of Marathon City in Marathon County, and was on the ground intermittently for about five minutes.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or major structural damage.

Jeff Last is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. He says that at about 7 p.m. Thursday, a Wisconsin State Patrol officer saw the tornado touch down. It was on the ground off and on for several miles as it moved northeast.

Last says the tornado lifted off the ground about two miles northwest of Rib Mountain State Park.

He says the storm was fast-moving.

Local authorities are surveying the area. So far, they have seen several downed trees.

Streamline winds also downed trees as storms moved across the state.

Source: The Associated Press
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Snowflake

Late-season storm could bring summer snow to Sierra, California

Cathy Locke
Sacramento Bee
Fri, 25 May 2012 06:41 UTC
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© Randy PenchA skier walks toward the lift at Alpine Meadows where green grass contrasts with snow. While the valley bakes under an unrelenting sun, some head up the hill for a ski weekend on the Fourth of July. Sunday, July 3, 2011.
The advice this Memorial Day weekend, particularly for folks heading into the Sierra, is "Be prepared."

National Weather Service and state transportation officials say travelers can expect everything from snow showers and accumulations of up to 6 inches in the high country today and Saturday to temperatures in the 80s in the Sacramento Valley on Sunday and Monday.

"We have a cool-weather system dropping down from British Columbia and washing over Northern California," said Karl Swanberg, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

A high of 69 degrees is forecast for the Sacramento area today, 15 degrees below the average high of 84 for this time of year. The drop in temperature will be accompanied by a 30 percent chance of rain and a slight chance of afternoon thunder-showers.

In the mountains, a winter weather advisory is in effect from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. today, and snow levels are expected to drop to about the 5,500-foot elevation, with some accumulation above 6,000 feet.

"The road surface is warm this time of year," Swanberg said, which should help keep snow from accumulating on the roadway. "But there could be enough to cause slippery conditions."
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Igloo

'Scientific experts' confounded by increasing snow cover on Mount Kilimanjaro

Apolinari Tairo
eTN Tanzania
Thu, 24 May 2012 06:45 UTC
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© worldtopjourneys.com
Constituting the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro is slowly building up its snow cover, allaying the fears of prominent scientists who had predicted witnessing the eminence lose its famous white hat. The drifts are slowly thickening on the top point of this summit, giving new hopes to Mount Kilimanjaro environmental watchdogs and tourists that the peak may not lose its beautiful snowy cap, as scientific experts have long been warning.

Covered in mist for most of the day, Mount Kilimanjaro is the most tourist-attractive site in Tanzania, pulling in tens of thousands of foreigners and locals each year. The snow, which once had disappeared on some parts of the mountain, is piling up again gradually, making a beautiful picture out of the Kibo peak.

Sources from Kilimanjaro environmental groups said this precipitation could rise to cover most areas of the mountain, but the effects of climate change and global warming could still affect the peak's snow layers, which have been becoming thinner and thinner.

Environmentalists had warned that this highest peak in Africa could lose its ice cover and glaciers between 2018 and 2020 unless global campaigns to save the mountain's ecology were taken and a stop put to rampant tree-felling and unchecked agricultural activity on its slopes.
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Cloud Lightning

Tornado damages 15 homes in North Port, Florida


Herald Tribune
Fri, 25 May 2012 06:37 UTC
A possible tornado damaged 15 homes in North Port on Thursday evening, leaving one family homeless,

According to a news release from the City of North Port:

At about 6:30 pm Firefighters received a call of structural damage to a home from a tornado. When firefighters arrived on scene they discovered roof damage to a mobile home in the Holiday Park community. A flurry of calls came in from the Highland Ridge community nearby, and that is where several more homes received damage.

Three fire engines, three ambulances and three command cars responded to assess the damage to the neighborhood. While firefighters conducted a ground survey, the Sarasota Sheriff's helicopter surveyed from the air.

"The damage was relatively minor and there were no injuries to citizens or first responders," said Battalion Chief James Woods, "that's the outcome we want".
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Camera

Tornado steals scene in Kansas couple's wedding photos

Heather Hollingsworth
Seattle Times
Fri, 25 May 2012 06:31 UTC
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© Cate EighmeyCaleb and Candra Pence pose for a wedding photo as a tornado swirls in the background after they were married in Harper County, Kansas
For people living outside Tornado Alley, Caleb and Candra Pence's wedding last Saturday is generating the kind of buzz usually reserved for celebrity nuptials.

Kansas City, Missouri - In the plains of central Kansas, tornadoes are so unremarkable that guests barely flinched as a barrel-racing bride wed her bull-riding groom with a twister dropping from the sky just miles away.

But for people living outside Tornado Alley, Caleb and Candra Pence's wedding last Saturday is generating the kind of buzz usually reserved for celebrity nuptials. The video of the service has gone viral, garnering more than 20,000 views on YouTube and a flurry of media coverage.

"It is amazing how fast it has taken off," said the groom's uncle, Lee Pence, who shot the video.

After Saturday's outdoor service on the groom's family farm near the small south-central Kansas town of Harper, the couple posed for photos with the twister visible behind them. The pictures capture them smiling serenely - the 21-year-old bride in a white gown and the 22-year-old groom in a cowboy hat and jeans.

Comment:
As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away.
~ Matthew 24;37

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Bizarro Earth

60,000 to 100,000 dead fish wash up eastern shores of U.S. near Chesapeake Bay

Timothy B. Wheeler
The Baltimore Sun
Wed, 23 May 2012 19:59 UTC
Mass-Die Off
© Gene Sweeney Jr., Baltimore SunThe state Department of Environment investigated a fish kill by the boat ramp in Merritt Point Park.
Something's rotten on the Baltimore area waterfront. Fish are washing ashore by the thousands in a mass die-off that officials say appears to be caused by a weather-driven worsening of the pollution that chronically plagues the Chesapeake Bay.

State investigators expanded their probe Wednesday into what they believe are algae-related fish kills in Marley, Furnace and Curtis creeks in Glen Burnie, raising the estimated death toll there tenfold, while finding a new batch of finny carcasses in a Dundalk creek.

Jay Apperson, spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment, said the agency's fish-kill investigators estimated anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 fish of several species dead in the three creeks in northern Anne Arundel County. Only a day before, Apperson had said investigators figured there were about 6,000 dead.

"You could smell it through the neighborhood," said Rob Rogers, 45, who took a break from work at the Point Pleasant Beach Tavern to describe what he called "unbelievable" conditions on the creeks. Rogers said boaters reported dead fish floating in the water so thick they couldn't avoid hitting them.

The state investigators also found about 300 dead fish in Bullneck Creek in eastern Baltimore County, Apperson said, where residents on Tuesday had reported seeing fish and crabs thrashing on the water's surface in apparent distress. The investigators measured little oxygen in the creek's deepest water for fish to breathe.
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Bizarro Earth

USGS: Earthquake Magnitude 6.2 - Norwegian Sea


US Geological Survey
Thu, 24 May 2012 18:51 UTC
Norwegian Quake_240512
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time
Thursday, May 24, 2012 at 22:47:46 UTC

Thursday, May 24, 2012 at 10:47:46 PM at epicenterTime of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location
72.994°N, 5.651°E

Depth
8.8 km (5.5 miles)

Region
NORWEGIAN SEA

Distances
601 km (373 miles) NW of Tromso, Norway

676 km (420 miles) WNW of Hammerfest, Norway

716 km (444 miles) NNW of Bodo, Norway

1472 km (914 miles) NE of REYKJAVIK, Iceland
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Bizarro Earth

Residents evacuated near Costa Rica's Turrialba volcano after gas emission


The Hindu
Thu, 24 May 2012 08:48 UTC
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© NASATurrialba
Emergency officials in Costa Rica say they have moved some residents away from a volcano outside the capital after it spewed toxic gas and ash, signs of a potentially imminent eruption.

The Turrialba volcano located about 40 miles (65 kilometers) outside San Jose began a series of eruptions in 2007. Several nearby villages were evacuated and a surrounding national park closed in 2010.

Costa Rica's National Emergency Commission said its volcano warning level was at green on Wednesday, the lowest of three warning levels, but that it had alerted residents about the possibility of an evacuation and already moved some villagers away from the populated areas closest to the volcano so they would not be harmed by erupting gases.
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Blackbox

In less than 24 hours, Lake Cachet II in Chile's southern Patagonia vanished


Agence France-Presse
Thu, 24 May 2012 08:45 UTC
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© AFP/File, StrThe lake's water comes from ice melting from the Colonia Glacier, located in the Northern Patagonian ice field
In less than 24 hours Lake Cachet II in Chile's southern Patagonia vanished, leaving behind just some large puddles and chunks of ice in the vast lake bed.

The lake's water comes from ice melting from the Colonia Glacier, located in the Northern Patagonian ice field, some 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) south of the capital, Santiago.

The glacier normally acts as a dam containing the water, but rising temperatures have weakened its wall. Twice this year, on January 27 and March 31, water from the lake bore a tunnel between the rocks and the glacier wall.

The result: Lake Cachet II's 200 million cubic liters of water gushed out into the Baker river, tripling its volume in a matter of hours, and emptying the five square kilometer (two square miles) lake bed.

Cachet II has drained 11 times since 2008 -- and with global temperatures climbing, experts believe this will increase in frequency.

"Climate models predict that as temperatures rise, this phenomenon, known as GLOFs (Glacial Lake Outburst Floods), will become more frequent," said glaciologist Gino Casassa from the Center for Scientific Studies (CES).
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Cloud Lightning

Hurricane Bud could bring life-threatening conditions to Mexico


CNN
Thu, 24 May 2012 08:37 UTC
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© UnknownHurricane Bud is expected to approach the Mexico coast late Friday evening.
Hurricane Bud quickly strengthened early Thursday after forming off the southwestern coast of Mexico just hours before, the National Hurricane Center in Miami reported.

The Category 1 storm with 90 mph winds was about 350 miles (560 kilometers) southwest of Manzanillo, and was tracking to the north at 7 mph.

Some additional strengthening is expected Thursday, the hurricane center said. "Gradual weakening is expected to begin by Friday."

The forecast map shows the storm approaching the coast late Friday before slipping off to the southwest and away from land.

Bud is the second named tropical storm of the East Pacific hurricane season.
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