Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

US: For families of tornadoes' missing, a long torment

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© Dave Martin/APGeorge Thomas, 71, walks through the debris of the Rosedale Community where his brother-in-law lives in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Thursday, May 5. Authorities are continuing the search for victims over a week after killer tornadoes swept across the state.
Tuscaloosa, Ala. - Where is Johnnie Brown's sister? Or the friend Billie Sue Hall talked to every day? A week after tornadoes ripped neighborhoods to shreds across the South, there still are no answers.

It's unclear how many people are missing across the seven states where 329 deaths have been reported. There are 25 unaccounted for in Tuscaloosa alone, the mayor says, but that number could be off because of the chaos the storm left behind.

Cadaver dog teams across the region are scouring the debris to uncover whatever tragedies may remain, and even bad news would be comforting to anguished families.

Tracy Sargent's dog team took just minutes to do what humans searching for hours could not: Locate the body of a University of Alabama student in a maze of twisted trees and debris. The young man's father was there when the body was found in Tuscaloosa this week.

"(The father) went over there and bent over and touched his son and started talking to him," Sargent said. "And he hugged him, started crying, and told him that he loved him and that he would miss him."

Phoenix

Montana, US: Firefighters warn new fires burn in mysterious ways

Fire officials in a tri-county area said they're seeing extreme fire behavior in areas with trees killed by the mountain pine beetle.

Sonny Stiger, a fire behavior analyst, told a group gathered in Helena Wednesday for a forum on the impact of the rice-size beetles, that he's seeing flame lengths of 200 to 300 feet in places they wouldn't expect it; they're experiencing unusual embers being thrown farther ahead of fires and groups of treetops torching; and ponderosa pines' low-hanging dead branches are creating ladder fuels that allow blazes to spread more rapidly than in the past.

"The kind of things we're dealing with is one fire grew to three acres in two minutes, 10 to 15 acres in the next eight minutes - that's moving - and over 100 acres in the first hour," Stiger said. "So we are experiencing unusual, extreme fire behavior now."

During the past decade, mountain pine beetles have devoured about 9 million acres of forest in the Rocky Mountains from Colorado to Montana, and about 40 million acres in British Columbia. They kill mainly lodgepole and ponderosa pine trees by burrowing into them to lay eggs; when the eggs hatch, the young "girdle" the tree by eating around it in horizontal circles, cutting off the flow of nutrients, before they fly to new trees and re-create the deadly cycle.

Evil Rays

Earthquake shakes wide area of southern Mexico

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© Unknown
A moderately strong earthquake shook Mexico's Pacific coast resort of Acapulco on Wednesday, sending people fleeing into the streets. No damages or injuries were reported.

The magnitude-5.8 quake occurred at 8:24 a.m. local time (1324 GMT) and was centered about 85 miles (138 kilometers) east of Acapulco, the U.S. Geological Survey reported on its website.

The quake occurred at a depth of nearly 6 miles (10 kilometers).

Sherlock

Canada: The mystery of the disappearing salmon

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© Unknown
The disappearance of millions of sockeye salmon from the Fraser River has been compared to Murder on the Orient Express by two scientists helping a federal inquiry solve an environmental mystery.

Andrew Trites and Villy Christensen, both professors at the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre, made the comparison to the Agatha Christie whodunit as they testified Wednesday at the Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River.

Led by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen, the commission has been given more than two years and a $25-million budget to figure out why sockeye salmon stocks have been in decline for the past two decades, and why only about one million fish returned to spawn in 2009, when 10 million were expected.

Igloo

Czech Republic: February is back - lowlands report 3 and mountains 15 cm of snow

spring snow CZ
© Aktualne.czPolice nad Metují, Eastern Bohemia
Tuesday May 3 shortly after midday
[Translated by Sott.net]

Czech Republic
- Although it is May, the weather is more like in February.

Not only mountain tops were covered by a layer of snow during the night. In regions of Liberec, Karlovy Vary, Hradec Králove, Pardubice and Ústí snow fell even at lower elevations.

In the morning hours a layer of up to three centimeters lay on the ground. Also at midday it occasionally snowed even in the lowlands, Prague-Ruzyně reported sleet.

The midday air temperature on the Czech territory ranged from 0.2 °C in Liberec to 6.5 °C in the Brno area. At the top of Jeseník the temperature fell to -4.4 °C

Info

Cosmic Snake Star Pattern Now Slithering Across Night Sky

Hydra
© Starry Night SoftwareThis sky map shows the location of the huge snake constellation Hydra in the southern sky at around 9 pm ET as seen from the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

A giant celestial snake is slithering into view in our current night sky this spring.

We can look to the south to trace it during the early evening hours. In fact, the snake is one of the most extensive of all star patterns: the long and mostly faint constellation of Hydra, the female water snake.

Interestingly, there is also a much shorter, male snake bearing the name Hydrus that is visible only in Southern Hemisphere skies.This sky map of the Hydra constellation shows where to look in the southern sky to spot the cosmic snake.

A long stream of stars

Hydra begins just below Cancer with a boxy shape of five stars representing the snake's head, between Procyon and Regulus, and south of the faint Cancer, the Crab.

Hydra's scraggly stream of dim stars then wriggles southeastward past its lone bright star - ruddy second magnitude Alphard - which appears brighter than it is because it has no competition star (hence it's sometimes called the "Solitary One").

Bizarro Earth

US: Hawaii Lightning Strikes Total 20,000...Again


A wicked storm that brought hail, waterspouts and torrential rain to the islands Monday night, also packed an electrical punch that rocked Oahu and Kauai.

Apparently lightning can strike twice.

"Yeah lightning can strike twice, it can strike 10-15 times in the same location," said Warning Coordinator Meteorologist Michael Cantin.

For the second time this year, Hawaii has experienced a spectacular electric show. In late February we saw nearly 21,000 lightning strikes in a five-hour window when a storm system stalled over Hawaii.

Monday night, Mother Nature was at it again.

"Each individual point represents a strike and what's kind of striking about this image right is here's the Big Island, Maui county, and then Oahu and Kauai are basically absorbed under the lightning strikes gives you an idea of how many we saw," said Cantin.

According to the Worldwide Lightning Detection system, the skies were busiest between 5 and 10 p.m.

"In total about 15,000 between that time period if you include that hour before from 4 p.m. it's almost 20,000," said Cantin.

Fish

U.S. DNR investigates large fish kill on Lake Du Bay

Wausau - The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is investigating a large fish kill on Lake Du Bay and the Stevens Point Flowage.

The kill involved mainly black crappie, 3 to 4 years old, and was reported to DNR fisheries staff on April 25.

DNR biologists and fisheries technicians determined that the cause appears to be a virus primarily affecting 3-year-old black crappie.

Cloud Lightning

US: Double waterspouts form off Hawaii shore

Two tall and skinny waterspouts appeared off the south shore of Oahu, Hawaii yesterday, as some of the bad weather that has lately assailed the U.S. mainland has now alighted on the Pacific island.

The Star Advertiser reports that the waterspouts appeared during a hail and lightning storm that had reportedly knocked out power for at least 60,000 East Honolulu and Windward Oahu residents Monday evening. The spouts lasted for about 12 minutes. Waterspouts can become twisters if they reach land, but are usually weak.

You can watch the video below:




Arrow Up

Canada: 2,000 homes flooded in southern Quebec

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© CBC NewsThousands of homes are affected by flooding south of Montreal.
Emergency officials in Quebec are closely watching water levels in the Champlain Lake and Richelieu River.

Several towns and villages in the Montérégie region have experienced flooding, evacuations and damages in recent weeks.

The weather forecast calls for heavy rain overnight, leaving emergency officials worried.

"We have 2,000 houses flooded right now, and we have more than 300 people evacuated, mostly in Henryville, St-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Ste-Anne-de-Sabrevois," said Yvan Leroux, head of emergency preparedness for the region.

The Richelieu River could rise another 20 centimetres by Wednesday morning, he warned.

Evacuations are voluntary, and about half of residents in the area have refused to leave their homes.