Earth ChangesS


Phoenix

US: Giant Dust Storm Moves Through Phoenix, Arizona Area

Nick Oza
Globegazette.com
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 21:53 UTC
A dust storm rolls into the Phoenix area
© AP Photo/The Arizona Republic, Nick OzaA dust storm rolls into the Phoenix area Monday evening, July 18, 2011. The dust wall was about 3,000 feet (900 meters) high and created winds of 25 to 30 mph (40 to 48 kph), with gusts of up to 40 mph (64 kph), said Austin Jamison, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
A giant wall of dust rolled through the Phoenix area on Monday, turning the sky brown, creating dangerous driving conditions and delaying some airline flights.

The dust, also known as a haboob in Arabic and around Arizona, formed in Pinal County and headed northeast, reaching Phoenix at about 5:30 p.m.

The dust wall was about 3,000 feet high and created winds of 25 to 30 mph, with gusts of up to 40 mph, said Austin Jamison, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Visibility was down to less than a quarter-mile in some areas, he said.

"You have suddenly very poor visibilities that come on with all the dense dust in the air," he said. "With poor visibilities, that makes for dangerous driving conditions and that's arguably the biggest impact."

There were no immediate reports of accidents on roadways because of the storm, which began to clear within an hour of moving in. The Arizona Department of Public Safety did not immediately return a request for information about road conditions.

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Sun

US: Heat Wave Hardest on Nation's Poorest Communities

Juan Carlos Llorca
The Associated Press
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:40 UTC
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© AP Photo/Jim MoneAn unidentified fan wipes his head as another covers his with a sign between innings of the Minnesota Twins baseball game against the Cleveland Indians, during the first of a doubleheader Monday, July 18, 2011 in Minneapolis. As a heat wave consumed the Midwest Monday, the heat index midday was at 106-degrees.
The cinderblocks that make up Maria Teresa Escamilla's new home will do little to shield her from the triple-digit heat that has been scorching West Texas. She has no electricity yet, and the roof is not properly attached, leaving the interior exposed to the elements.

Escamilla has been living in an air-conditioned apartment that she can no longer afford. But when the lease ends in two weeks, she has to move - a day she dreads because it means she'll have no escape from the searing temperatures.

"This is what I have to look forward to," she said. There will be no air conditioning and an unbearable number of mosquitoes at night.

With much of the nation in the grip of a broiling heat wave, few people are hit as hard as the poor, and few places are poorer than the ramshackle communities along the Texas-Mexico border known as "colonias."

The misery was widespread Monday, with the worst conditions blanketing a broad band from Texas to Minnesota and Dakotas. Seventeen states issued heat watches, warnings or advisories. And the heat index easily surpassed 100 degrees in many places: 126 in Newton, Iowa; 120 in Mitchell, S.D.; and 119 in Madison, Minn.
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Bizarro Earth

Eight Dead In Northeast Brazil Floods From Mudslides


Agence France-Presse
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:31 UTC
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© UnknownIllustration only
Torrential rains drenching the northeast Brazilian state of Pernambuco caused at least eight deaths, mostly people carried away in mudslides, civil defense officials said Monday.

In one incident Sunday, a house outside the state capital Recife was buried in a mudslide, killing four members of one family.

An estimated 500 families were left homeless, and officials ordered evacuations in many areas.

Weather officials said that the Monday forecast called for more heavy rains, which have also cut off many roads in the state.

Elsewhere in Latin America, two people died and three were missing in floods in Guatemala, officials said.
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Cloud Lightning

Scotland hit by floods after 24 hours of torrential rain and thunderstorms

Lachlan Mackinnon
DailyRecord.co.uk
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:14 UTC
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© Unknown
Flash flooding caused misery across Scotland yesterday.

Homes were hit as streets turned into rivers after more than 24 hours of torrential rainfall and thunderstorms.

And the rain is expected to continue to fall across the country throughout this week.

Properties in the Culloden, Balloch and Smithton areas, near Inverness, were affected by flood waters.

Police closed Murray Road and Murray Terrace in Smithton, and Barn Church Road, Culloden, and said the A96 Balloch junction was "badly flooded".

There were also flash floods in Perth and Balerno, Edinburgh, where there were lightning strikes during a storm.

The Met Office's Dave Clark said: "The winds are so light that it creates convergence zones, where the wind comes from several directions to one spot.
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Bizarro Earth

US: How hot is it? Triple-digit heat buckles roads in Oklahoma


MSNBC / Associated Press
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:33 UTC
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© Billy Hefton / Enid News & Eagle via APA city employee in Enid, Okla., talks on the phone as he describes the road buckling along U.S. 412 on Saturday. Both west bound lanes were shut down.
Poultry farmers deploy fans; heat wave to reach East Coast later this week

The Upper Midwest was feeling some unaccustomed heat on Monday, but folks in Oklahoma were having it even worse: roads buckled, damaging cars, while poultry farmers were taking precautions like fans and watered rooftops to protect flocks.

In Oklahoma City, where a 28th day of triple-digit heat is expected, two lanes of a major interstate in downtown were closed Monday morning after buckling on a bridge caused steel expansion joints to rise, damaging cars as they passed over.

The city, which is forecast to reach 103 degrees on Monday, is on pace to break its record for days at 100 or above - 50 set in 1980 - with triple-digit heat possible through September.

In Tulsa, a hole opened in the pavement of a highway bridge and a section of U.S. 75 in a nearby town buckled.

It's even worse in western Oklahoma, where temperatures at 110 or above have been common in recent weeks. In Enid, asphalt at a major intersection along U.S. Highway 412 buckled Saturday night from the intense heat.
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Newspaper

WWII Shipwrecks Could Threaten U.S. Coast

Frank D. Roylance
The Baltimore Sun
Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:00 UTC
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© Baltimore Sun/AP PhotoStandard Oil Tanker W.L.Steed was torpedoed in 1942.
Fuel, cargo tanks corroding

On the evening of Feb. 2, 1942, an unarmed tanker with 66,000 barrels of crude oil on board was steaming in the Atlantic, about 90 miles off Ocean City. Without warning, it was struck by German torpedoes. The attack set the W.L. Steed ablaze, and sank it; only a handful of the crew of 38 survived.

As World War II unfolded, the Germans had moved part of their sub pack west to attack shipping along the coast. By the time the Nazis withdrew the subs in July to focus on convoys crossing the North Atlantic, they had sunk 397 ships in U.S. coastal waters.

That wartime legacy has become a new environmental problem, raising concern about leaks from the W.L. Steed's sunken fuel bunkers and cargo - and from many others like it.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is taking an inventory of more than 30,000 coastal shipwrecks - some of them casualties of the 1942 Battle of the Atlantic - and identifying those that pose the most significant threat.
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Sun

US: Oklahoma Hit by Relentless Heatwave

Nick Allen
The Telegraph, UK
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 11:31 UTC
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© AP PhotoA man cools his horse with a large fan in Illinois last week. Across the central and southern United States six cities have recorded their highest ever temperatures
The Governor of Oklahoma has asked for divine intervention and called for a day of prayer as a relentless heatwave bakes the central part of the United States.

Mary Fallin urged people across her state to pray as thermometers in Oklahoma City topped 90F (32.2C) for 47 days in a row.

She said: "I think if we have a lot of people praying, it moves the heart of God. I encourage Oklahomans of all faiths to join me in offering their prayers for rain.

"The power of prayer is a wonderful thing, and I would ask every Oklahoman to look to a greater power and ask for rain." In Oklahoma the heatwave has seen only one day below 100F (37.8C) this month and there have been more than 100 wild fires.

Across the central and southern United States six cities have recorded their highest ever temperatures including Gage, Oklahoma, which hit 113F (45C) and Childress, Texas where it was 117F (47.2C.)
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Wolf

BP Reports New Pipeline Leak at Lisburne Oilfield in Alaska


The Guardian, UK
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 07:38 UTC
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© UnknownBP Oil Spill in Alaska
Latest leak is likely to do nothing to mend oil giant's reputation in US after 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster

BP reported yet another pipeline leak at its Alaskan oilfields, frustrating the oil giant's attempts to rebuild its reputation after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. BP has said that a pipeline at its 30,000 barrel per day Lisburne field, which is currently closed for maintenance, ruptured during testing and spilled a mixture of methanol and oily water onto the tundra.

The company has a long history of oil spills at its Alaskan pipelines - accidents which have hurt its public image in the US, where around 40% of its assets are based.

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said the spill occurred on Saturday and amounted to 2,100 to 4,200 gallons. A BP spokesman said the cleanup was under way and the company would determine the cause "in due course."
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Bizarro Earth

Pacific-based earthquake triggers in the spotlight


CORDIS News
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 11:55 UTC
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© CORDIS
An international team of researchers is unearthing the triggering mechanisms behind large, destructive earthquakes like the Tohoku earthquake that hit Japan last March. Led by the University of Florence in Italy, the researchers collected new samples of rock and sediment from the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

The team retrieved almost 1 500 metres of core from the ocean floor not far from the coast of Costa Rica in South America. Supported by the scientific drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution during the latest Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Costa Rica Seismogenesis Project (CRISP) Expedition, the samples provide key information in relation to 2 million years of tectonic activity along a seismic plate boundary.

The scientists say they will use the samples to fuel our understanding of the processes that control the components that set off large earthquakes at subduction zones, where one plate slides beneath another.

'We know that there are different factors that contribute to seismic activity,' says Professor Paola Vannucchi of the University of Florence, who co-led the expedition with Dr Kohtaro Ujiie of the University of Tsukuba in Japan. 'These include rock type and composition, temperature differences, and how water moves within the Earth's crust, but what we don't fully understand is how these factors interact with one another and if one may be more important than another in leading up to different magnitudes of earthquakes. This expedition provided us with crucial samples for answering some of these fundamental questions.'
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Bizarro Earth

Double Eruption at Indonesia Volcano


Agence France-Presse
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 11:21 UTC
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© ReutersResidents reacting as Mount Lokon spews volcanic ash during an eruption in Tomohon, North Sulawesi, on Sunday. Mount Lokon continued to erupt on Sunday, prompting panicked villagers racing back to crowded government shelters.
An Indonesian volcano erupted twice on Monday following its biggest eruption in weeks over the weekend, a government volcanologist said, forcing people to remain in safety shelters.

"The two eruptions happened within ten minutes which sent a column of ash and smoke up to 600 meters into the air," government vulcanologist Freddy Korompis said from a monitoring post.

[Incredible Images of this Event]

The 1,580-meter-tall Mount Lokon experienced its biggest eruption on Sunday with huge clouds of ash propelled 3,500 meters into the sky.

More than 5,200 people have been evacuated to temporary shelters since the volcano erupted on Thursday and its alert status was placed on the highest level.
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