Earth ChangesS


Igloo

'Brace for more snow': Groundhog Day Storm to affect 100 million people next week

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Groundhog Day Storm: Weather experts have predicted a severe snow storm will affect 100 million people leading up to and on February 2
* Weather experts predicts a massive winter storm to hit on February 2

* The severe conditions will affect the South, Midwest and Northeast

* Big Apple deluged by snowiest January in history

A massive winter storm forecast for February 2 is set to adversely affect more than 100 million people weather exports reported today.

The Groundhog Day snowstorm is expected to hit the South, Midwest and Northeast of the country, building from early next week.

The storm is likely to severely impact ground travel, cancellation of flights and school closures according to AccuWeather.

Cloud Lightning

Winter Storm: East Coast Battles Another Record Breaking Snowstorm

The East Coast is gradually digging out from the record-breaking snowstorm that battered the East Coast Wednesday night, causing power outages and leaving travelers and commuters stranded.

It was the sixth snowstorm to slam into the region in the last 30 days.

Overnight, thundersnow -- the rare phenomenon in which thunder and lightning strike even in the dead of winter -- shocked residents in Sellersville, Pennsylvania, and as far away as central New Jersey. Philadelphia was hit with 17 inches of snow, totals in the Washington D.C. area ranged from 3 to 7 inches and, according to the National Weather Service, parts of New Jersey had to dig out from 19 inches.

Bizarro Earth

A Day of Night-Shining Clouds

Mesospheric Clouds
© Robert SimmonPolar mesospheric clouds acquired June 20, 2007.

Scientists have a good reason to track noctilucent or polar mesospheric clouds: they are a pretty good gauge of even the tiniest changes in the atmosphere. These "night-shining clouds," as they are sometimes called, are thin, wavy ice clouds that form at very high altitudes and reflect sunlight long after the Sun has dropped below the horizon.

To look for changes in the atmosphere, scientist Matthew DeLand (of Science Systems and Applications Inc. and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center) has been monitoring polar mesospheric clouds with instruments that were actually designed to study ozone, including the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA's Aura satellite. OMI provides more detailed and frequent observations than previous instruments, giving DeLand a way to refine his previous measurements of a long-term trend towards more and brighter noctilucent clouds linked to rising greenhouse gases.

These images show OMI measurements of polar mesospheric clouds on July 10, 2007. The clouds, detectable because they are the only things that reflect light in this part of the atmosphere, are shown in white and pink. The Aura satellite travels in a polar orbit, circling from south to north as the Earth turns beneath it. As a result, the satellite gets several opportunities to image the poles every day. This series of images shows the clouds over six consecutive orbits between 7:16 and 15:52 Universal Time. Throughout the day, a wide area of polar mesospheric clouds developed over northern Greenland and Canada, peaking around 10:30 UTC (the third orbit).

Bizarro Earth

V-Topped Light Pillars

Light pillars are a common sight around cities in winter. Urban lights bounce off ice crystals in the air, producing tall luminous columns sometimes mistaken for auroras. But the light pillars Mike Hollingshead saw last night near a corn mill in Nebraska were decidely uncommon. "They had V-shaped tops," he explains, "and some of the Vs were nested." Here is what he saw:

Light Pillars
© Mike Hollingshead
"These light pillars are not just rare, they are exceptional!" declares atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. "Ordinary pillars are produced by plate-shaped ice crystals roughly half way between you and the light source. These ones are different. Their rarely seen flared tops show that they were made by column-shaped crystals drifting slowly downwards and aligned horizontal by air resistance."

Bizarro Earth

Ghostly Figure Appears in the Clouds

Brocken Spectre
© Caters News AgencyPhenomenon: The Brocken Spectre figure was captured in the Chatyr-Dag, a mountainous region in Crimea near the Ukraine by university lecturer Mikhail Baevsky.

At first glance it may look like a ghostly shape silhouetted against a rainbow.

But this is the Brocken Spectre phenomenon, an optical illusion created when low sun shines behind someone looking down into fog from a ridge.

The atmospheric conditions throw the person's shadow forward, creating this spectral apparition.

On this occasion, the image was captured by 59-year-old Mikhail Baevsky. Handily, he teaches Organic Chemistry at a university and realised the phenomenon was probably caused by the weather.

Mr Baevsky was in the Chatyr-Dag, a mountainous region in Crimea near the Ukraine, when he took the shot.

'I had only read about this phenomenon before in books but had never seen it before myself,' he said.

'I was scanning the horizon for a good shot and while turning my head I noticed the dark ghostly figure - so I quickly reached for my camera.

'I took as many shots as possible before it disappeared. It does look amazing.'

Black Cat

Over 200 Pelicans Wash Up Dead at Topsail Beach, NC - Preliminary Necropsies Inconclusive

Preliminary necropsies by the University of Georgia on some of the more than 200 Brown Pelicans that have washed up on the shores of Topsail Beach on the coast of southeastern North Carolina are inconclusive and do not yet support concerns that foul play was responsible. Complete toxicology and pathology reports are expected to be available soon.

A taskforce including officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as state officials, has been formed and has been meeting to investigate the deaths, but so far has not determined a cause. The first dead birds began washing up on shore in November.

pelican
© Mike RichardsonBrown Pelican, from the surfbirds galleries.

Bizarro Earth

Large Taupo earthquake felt across North Island

A magnitude 5.9 earthquake early Friday morning was felt widely across the North Island, causing some people to leap out of bed.

GNS Science said the quake was located 30 km north of Taupo at a depth of 150 km.

It struck at 4:02 am and was felt widely felt across the North Island.

There were reports on social media that some people could hear it coming.

The quake was strong enough to get people out of bed and lots of comments were flowing on sites such as Twitter.

"Someone's just had a sizable quake. Felt strongly in Napier. Anyone else get the shakes?" wrote one Twitter user, with plenty of replies that it had been felt.

Bizarro Earth

Lightning and fire: Japan on alert after volcano's biggest eruption in 50 years

A one-mile cordon has been established around a volcano on Mount Kirishima after it erupted scattering rocks and ash across southern Japan and sending smoke billowing 5,000ft into the air.

The Meteorological Agency raised the volcanic alert to level 3 as ash today continued to spew from Shinmoedake on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu, and residents have been banned from going within a mile of the volcano following its worst eruption in 50 years.

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© ReutersForce of nature: Lightning strikes as Shinmoedake erupts, scattering ash and rocks across a wide swathe of southern Japa
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© ReutersVolcanic lightning or a dirty thunderstorm is seen above Shinmoedake peak as it erupts

Bizarro Earth

Southeastern Iran: Earthquake Magnitude 6.0

Iran Quake_270111
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time
Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 08:38:28 UTC

Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 12:08:28 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location
28.185°N, 58.968°E

Depth
10.7 km (6.6 miles) set by location program

Region
SOUTHEASTERN IRAN

Distances
241 km (150 miles) SW (232°) from Zahedan, Iran

287 km (178 miles) ENE (67°) from Bandar-e Abbas, Iran

296 km (184 miles) SE (141°) from Kerman, Iran

509 km (316 miles) N (4°) from MUSCAT, Oman

Igloo

Another Storm Batters Northeast

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© Steve Berman/The New York TimesA limousine, unable to drive uphill going west on 57th Street in Manhattan, was pushed back onto 6th Avenue by passersby.
For at least the fifth time this season, a major snowstorm crawled up the eastern seaboard and swept across the Northeast early Thursday, dumping fresh snow on top of streets already covered in icy slush and disrupting the commutes of millions of people.

The powerful storm, appearing as a giant white smudge over the Northeast on radar maps, arrived in two parts, coating the region with rain and several inches of snow early Wednesday and then dumping up to an additional foot of snow in some places overnight Thursday.

In New York City, the wintry one-two punch caused all non-emergency city government offices to close on Thursday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced through Twitter. The Department of Education said that all public schools across the five boroughs would be closed for the day.

Across the New York region, hundreds of flights were canceled, and the Port Authority later closed Newark, Teterboro, and John F. Kennedy Airports. The Metropolitan Transit Authority suspended all of its bus services across New York City and Long Island early Thursday. The Long Island Rail Road said it would operate a reduced weekday morning schedule, while the Metro-North Railroad said its Harlem and Hudson lines would run on a Saturday schedule. The Nor'easter created a fresh sense of snow fatigue in a region that has been unusually battered by storms. Trying to prevent a repeat of the problems associated with a late December blizzard, when streets went unplowed for days, New York City sent out more than 2,000 salt spreaders, snow plows and other vehicles to clear the streets.