Earth ChangesS


Igloo

US Southerners struggle to dig out from heavy snow

Dorie Turner
Associated Press
Mon, 10 Jan 2011 19:22 UTC
Image
© Chuck Burton/Associated PressA police officer examines the wreckage of a car after it slid into a power pole during a snowstorm in Charlotte, N.C., Monday, Jan. 10, 2011.
Atlanta - Temperatures plummeted late Monday, turning slushy streets into sheets of ice across Southern states that are more accustomed to sunshine than snow. The wintry blast has grounded flights, cut power to thousands of homes and even forced Auburn University to cancel viewing parties for the national championship bowl game.

Snow ranging from several inches to more than a foot blanketed states from Louisiana to the Carolinas - a region where many cities have only a handful of snow plows, if any. In many areas, the snow began turning to freezing rain, making roads even more treacherous.

"If you're off the main roads, it's a skating rink," said Tim Loucks, manager of the Pilot Truck Stop in Haughton, La.

The storm shut down most cities and towns, closed many businesses, and canceled most flights at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the world's busiest. At least nine people were killed in weather-related traffic accidents.
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Black Cat

US: Sonoma County mystery: What killed 100 birds near Geyserville?

Randi Rossmann
The Press Democrat
Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:01 UTC
dead birds
© naAn warden with California Fish and Game inspects the area where about 100 birds were found dead Saturday.
While scientists and specialists are investigating why massive numbers of birds have dropped dead from the sky elsewhere in the country, Sonoma County now has its own bird deaths mystery to solve, reported the CHP.

More than 100 birds were found dead Saturday afternoon clustered on the ground off of Highway 101, south of Geyserville, Officer Jon Sloat reported Monday. Officers responded to Independence Lane at about 2:30 p.m. Saturday and found dozens of birds dead on and around the roadway.

The California Department of Fish and Game was notified and a local warden responded. He took several of the birds away to be identified and tested by a biologist, Sloat said.

The birds all appeared to be the same type, small with feathers in brown and black, according to photos taken by officers. The birds hadn't been shot and most were intact, officers reported.

What caused the deaths wasn't clear Saturday.
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Magnet

Magnetic North Has Shifted 10 Degrees, A Full Magnetic Flip Is Overdue


NBC
Fri, 07 Jan 2011 18:38 UTC
Following up on The Tampa Tribune's report that the Tampa, Florida airport authority had its runway landing sights repainted to reflect Magnetic North's lurch into Siberia, mainstream TV news has picked up on the story and ponders whether the planet is due a complete polar reversal.

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Igloo

Winter weather slams US South with snow, icy roads

Dorie Turner
Associated Press
Mon, 10 Jan 2011 17:53 UTC
Several inches of snow and freezing rain were expected to make the Monday morning commute for those forced to venture out nearly impossible in parts of the South, including Atlanta, where countless cars were stuck on impassable highways and roads while the world's busiest airport canceled thousands of flights.

The winter blast rolled across the South on Sunday, coating bridges and roads with snow, sleet and freezing rain and causing at least one death in Louisiana. The governors of Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee declared emergencies and schools and colleges called off classes. Snow and ice had blanketed several cities, including up to 3 inches in parts of Atlanta, which rarely gets so much.

"We don't have weather events like this," Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said in an on-air interview with CNN. "I think the amount of snow we're getting is probably a 10-year event for the city of Atlanta."

Despite officials imploring people to stay off the roads, interstates around Atlanta were clogged with cars early Monday.
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Bizarro Earth

German cities threatened by flooding after winter thaw


BBC News
Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:37 UTC
Image
© UnknownA boat was the only form of transport in Zell in southern Germany
Rivers in many parts of Germany have burst their banks, flooding several cities, because of melting winter snow.

In the west, the Rhine has overflowed in Bonn and Cologne and levels are set to peak in Koblenz where it meets the River Mosel.

Firefighters are searching for a man whose car was found abandoned in the central state of Thuringia beside the swollen River Unstrut.

The body of a kayaker was pulled from the River Enz in the south.

Experts are blaming the high river levels on the record amounts of snow that fell in December and the sharp rise in temperatures that has brought about a fast thaw.

Up to 30 villages in the wine-growing area south of Koblenz on the River Mosel have been flooded but the centre of attention appears to be Koblenz itself, where the Mosel flows into the Rhine at Deutsches Eck.

Some low-lying areas of Koblenz are already under water and officials expect the waters to reach 7.7m (25ft) on Monday afternoon. The normal level is around 2.4m, reports say.

In Cologne, river levels are not expected to reach their peak until Tuesday, although two districts have already been affected.
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Hourglass

Australia: Queensland Residents On Edge As Floodwaters Rise


ABC News
Mon, 10 Jan 2011 05:19 UTC
Queensland Floods 1
© Tomas GuerinA car is engulfed by floodwaters in Toowoomba
Sodden Queensland continues to battle its week-long flood crisis, with one town facing its second inundation since Christmas, residents forced to evacuate in several areas and waters receding ever so slowly in other drenched cities.

Toowoomba in the state's south-east is currently in shock after a raging torrent of water swept through the city this afternoon, claiming the lives of at least two people and leaving enormous damage across the city.

Elsewhere in the south-east, emergency services are focused on Dalby and Gympie, which are both on flood alert.

Comment: Here is a sample of what took place in Toowoomba earlier today. A deadly torrent of water unleashed its force with unbelievable fury - it was gone as quickly as it appeared.



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Better Earth

Switzerland hit by three minor quakes


Independent Online
Sun, 09 Jan 2011 04:43 UTC
Three small earthquakes shook the west of Switzerland overnight but there were no reports of damage, Swiss police said on Sunday.

The quakes, which registered between 2.8 and 3.3 on the open-ended Richter scale, were recorded in the Valais canton.
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Bizarro Earth

Triple Punch Hole Clouds


Spaceweather
Sun, 09 Jan 2011 17:12 UTC
Hole Punch Clouds
© Wesley TylerHole punch clouds over Myrtle Beach.

"I've lived by the sea for many years, but never seen anything like this," reports Wesley Tyler of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. "On Friday, Jan. 7th, there were three punch hole clouds in the same place." He grabbed his camera and recorded the phenomenon.

Considered a mystery for many years, punch hole clouds appear on rare occasions all over the world, sometimes attracting widespread attention, e.g., the famous Moscow UFO cloud of 2009. Recently meteorologists have penetrated the mystery: punch holes form when airplanes fly through thin layers of high altitude clouds. If water droplets in the cloud are supercooled (below freezing but still liquid), they can suddenly turn to snow when shocked by the passage of the plane. This mini-snowstorm occurs over a circular area much wider than the airplane itself.
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Igloo

The Met Office Fries While the Rest of the World Freezes

Christopher Booker
The Telegraph, UK
Sat, 08 Jan 2011 14:00 UTC
Russian icebreaker Krasin
© Getty ImagesThe Russian icebreaker Krasin is sailing to the relief of fishermen trapped in the Sea of Okhotsk
As the Met Office desperately tries to salvage its reputation, another of this 'warm' winter's ice disasters is unfolding in the Sea of Okhotsk.

First it was a national joke. Then its professional failings became a national disaster. Now, the dishonesty of its attempts to fight off a barrage of criticism has become a real national scandal. I am talking yet again of that sad organisation the UK Met Office, as it now defends its bizarre record with claims as embarrassingly absurd as any which can ever have been made by highly-paid government officials.

Let us begin with last week's astonishing claim that, far from failing to predict the coldest November and December since records began, the Met Office had secretly warned the Cabinet Office in October that Britain was facing an early and extremely cold winter. In what looked like a concerted effort at damage limitation, this was revealed by the BBC's environmental correspondent, Roger Harrabin, a leading evangelist for man-made climate change. But the Met Office website - as reported by the blog Autonomous Mind - still contains a chart it published in October, predicting that UK temperatures between December and February would be up to 2C warmer than average.

So if the Met Office told the Government in October the opposite of what it told the public, it seems to be admitting that its information was false and misleading. But we have no evidence of what it did tell the Government other than its own latest account. And on the model of the famous Cretan Paradox, how can we now trust that statement?
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Bad Guys

Biggest Cover-up in US History


Press TV
Sat, 08 Jan 2011 13:01 UTC
oiled pelican/gulf
© unknown
Months after the US government declared the waters in the Gulf of Mexico safe, thick layers of oil have been found along Louisiana coastal marshes, prompting local officials to accuse relevant authorities of 'cover-up.'

Louisiana officials say parts of the state's coastline are still being fouled more than eight months after British Petroleum's (BP) Deepwater Horizon rig caused the biggest oil disaster in the United States.

"This is the biggest cover-up in the history of America,'' Associated Press quoted Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser as saying.

On Friday, Robert Barham, secretary of Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, joined Nungesser on a tour of the area.

"It has been eight months since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, and five months since the well was capped. While workers along the coast dedicated themselves to cleaning up our shores there is still so much to be done," Barham said in a statement.

The heavily saturated area that reporters saw was 30 feet (9 meters) to 100 feet (30 meters) wide in sections.

"There's been no mechanism to clean that up thus far," the parish president said.

"Every day, this shoreline is moving inland," lessening flood protection for residents, Nungesser added.
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