Earth Changes
The first, stronger quake struck 81 kilometers (50 miles) west of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Sakhalin and 205 kilometers north of Wakkanai in Hokkaido at 1:37 p.m. local time, the USGS said on its Web site. The quake's depth was 5 kilometers. The second quake, of magnitude 6.1, occurred at 4:22 p.m. eastern Russian time in the same area with a depth of 21 kilometers.
Post-tropical storm Chantal dumped up to 150 millimetres of rain in places on the eastern third of the Island, flooding towns and and washing out dozens of roads.
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©Tom O'Keefe/CanWest News Service |
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©Tom O'Keefe/CanWest News Service |
Onlookers survey the damage in Dunville, Newfoundland. |
On average, said senior government climatologist David Phillips, Toronto gets four 30-plus days every August; this year, we appear to be getting two of them in the month's first two days.
It's the sixth year the water, known as a dead zone, has formed.
''It does, indeed, appear to be the new normal,'' said Jane Lubchenco, professor of marine biology at Oregon State University. ''The fact that we are seeing six in a row now tells us that something pretty fundamental has changed about conditions off of our coast.''
Professor Balzter said "Last century a typical forest in Siberia had about 100 years after a fire to recover before it burned again. But new observations by Russian scientist Dr Kharuk have shown that fire now returns more frequently, about every 65 years. At the same time annual temperatures in Siberia have risen by almost two degrees Celsius, about twice as fast as the global average. And since 1990 the warming of Siberia has become even faster than before."
'The situation has turned devastating overnight, drowning five more people in separate incidents and displacing another three million in 15 districts,' Bhumidhar Barman, relief and rehabilitation minister of Assam state, told Agence France-Presse.
Temperatures were forecast to reach as high as 38 C in Manitoba Monday, with humidex values in the mid-40s.
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©stuff.co.nz |
Motorists drive through floodwater on State Highway 1 in southern New Zealand. |
MetService readings show a record 177mm has pelted the island at the South West Cape since Wednesday, while further north in Oban, 118mm has fallen.
High winds and heavy seas also played havoc, pulling roads into the sea and causing landslips 30m wide.