This is fairly important news given the sun is strongly a magnetic entity, moreover this might be in line with some predictions about a kind of magnetic collapse.

US honey bees have been dying by the tens of millions, with annual death rates of about 30 percent. With fewer bees to pollinate fruits and vegetables each year, 'beemageddon' may soon cause the collapse of the agriculture industry.

Honey bees pollinate more than 100 US crops, including apples, zucchinis, avocados and plums, that are worth more than $200 billion a year. Since 2006, about 10 million bee hives at an average value of $200 each have been lost in what scientists call the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), according to a new report by the US Department of Agriculture.

There are currently about 2.5 million honey bee colonies in the US, which is a drastic decrease from the 6 million that existed in 1947 and the 3 million that existed in 1990. Last winter alone, the honey bee population declined by 31.1 percent, with some beekeepers reporting losses of 90 to 100 percent. In the previous two winters, beekeepers lost about 22 percent of their populations.

"Currently, the survivorship of honey bee colonies is too low for us to be confident in our ability to meet the pollination demands of US agricultural crops," the USDA report states.

There was an old man from the Freedman's town of Joppa named Bad Leg Fred who once ran a private fishing concession here in the 70s and 80s. For a buck or two, he'd let you drown worms for an afternoon in the pond the locals called Bad Leg Fred Lake. Stocked with bass, crappie, perch, catfish and carp the place was popular with locals who wanted a cheap place to fish.

Old Fred has most likely passed away. Unfortunately so has his lake and the fish in it.

That old pond sits inside River Oaks Park, part of Joppa Preserve and one of the trailheads for the Trinity River concrete trail at 4800 River Oaks Road.

The Corps of Engineers calls the place West Pond. North of River Oaks Road and about 5 acres in size this body of water is most likely an old gravel pit excavated for dam construction and improvement of Lemmon Lake which sits due east. An archeological site was identified there in the 1940s and is noted on the inset map as 41DL78. The pond was most likely used in the 50s and 60s to draw water for cement manufacturing.

The Ministry of Environment (MoE) has concluded its investigation into the deaths of thousands of small fish in a large detention pond in Willband Creek Park in Abbotsford, and the incident remains a mystery.

MoE spokesman David Karn said an emergency response officer tested the water temperature, pH levels, conductivity and dissolved oxygen, and determined none of those were connected to the deaths.

Contamination of the water was also ruled out.

"There was no obvious source of contamination and no physical sign that the fish were exposed to a chemical contaminant," Karn said.

The city's environmental team was also notified. Rhonda Livingstone, spokesperson for the City of Abbotsford, said the fish kill is being considered an "unfortunate mystery."

"City staff will be closely monitoring the ponds to see if any new issues crop up, but the hope is that we won't have any similar incidents and we can chalk this up to a one-time, unusual event," she said.

The dead fish were discovered on Sunday, May 12 by Abbotsford resident Gary Stewart while he was out for a walk.

Stewart immediately informed the ministry, which sent out an environmental emergency response officer that afternoon.

Volunteers with the Ravine Park Salmon Enhancement Society were also notified, and they determined that the fish were three-spined stickleback. No other fish appeared to have been impacted.

Doug Gosling, a member of the Stoney Creek Salmon Stalkers, which is affiliated with RPSES, said he is disappointed that the MoE is not investigating the incident further.

"Thousands of fish showing up on the shores of one of our local waterways seems to me to be important enough to garner a fairly significant investigation ... by doing nothing much more than a little snoop-around and shrugging our shoulders won't help in preventing another similar event."

He said the MoE should be pushed to provide answers.

"I think they need to know there are lots of people interested in this event and something needs to be done to prevent it happening again."

Willband Creek Park is located in east Abbotsford at Highway 11 and Bateman Road.

The cause of the death of numerous fish at the pond in East Park is a mystery.

The City of El Dorado has investigating the cause after received the report of dead fish Wednesday.

After inspecting the pond, they found a lot of big and little fish dead.

"The first thing we did was start adding new water," said Herb Llewellyn, city manager. "The solution to pollution is dilution. We have been cleaning up and adding water ever since."

They first suspected it was due to waste from the geese and ducks, which had taken all the dissolved oxygen out of the water, but when they checked, there was a lot of oxygen.

"We then started looking for other things," Llewellyn said.

They have been in contact with Randy Just, from the El Dorado State Park, and Craig Johnson, Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism fisheries biologist for El Dorado, to try to determine the cause.

Kurt Bookout, public utilities director, said he had talked to Johnson and they both were stumped as to the cause.

"We've run all the tests we know to run in our lab and didn't find a cause," Bookout said.

He said they are continuing to flush fresh water through the pond.

A slow moving thunderstorm brought torrential rain and flash flooding in southern Springfield, Mo. suburbs late Saturday morning into early Saturday afternoon. A similar risk will persist across southwest Missouri through early Saturday night.

A nearly stationary thunderstorm unleashed 9 inches of rainfall since 10 a.m. CDT about 7 miles south-southwest of downtown Springfield. Just north of there, four feet of water was reported flowing over a roadway in a Springfield suburb. More reports of up to three feet of water came in from the Galloway, Mo. area.

Heavy showers and thunderstorms brought flooding rains to portions of the Rio Grande Valley Friday night, threatening area residents and forcing evacuations.

An upper-level disturbance over Texas is responsible for the slow-moving and heavy thunderstorm activity.

Eagle Pass, Texas, and the neighboring Piedras Negras, Mexico, have seen over 10.88 inches of rain over 7 hours.

The massive amount of rain quickly raised the water level of the Rio Grande River Valley from around 3 feet at the Eagle Pass Water Level Gauge, to a raging torrent over 17 feet high, all in less than 24 hours time.

After 10 days of almost no activity, the volcano has woken up violently with 3 powerful explosions last night (at 22:05 and 23:58 UTC, ash plumes to 10-13,000 ft) and this morning at 04:26. The eruption this morning appears to be one of the largest explosions for a long time, producing an ash plume rising to 16-20,000 ft (5-6 km) altitude. An SO2 plume is also visible on satellite data.

Tokyo VAAC issued a warning of an ash plume drifting SE at flight level 200 (20,000 ft altitude), s. graphic.

Event Time
2013-06-15 16:11:00 UTC
2013-06-15 18:11:00 UTC+02:00 at epicenter


Location
34.449°N 25.044°E depth=10.0km (6.2mi)

Nearby Cities
61km (38mi) S of Pirgos, Greece
88km (55mi) SW of Ierapetra, Greece
97km (60mi) S of Irakleion, Greece
98km (61mi) S of Nea Alikarnassos, Greece
409km (254mi) SSE of Athens, Greece

Technical Details

Event Time
2013-06-15 17:34:29 UTC
2013-06-15 11:34:29 UTC-06:00 at epicenter

Location
11.725°N 86.975°W depth=35.8km (22.3mi)

Nearby Cities
50km (31mi) W of Masachapa, Nicaragua
60km (37mi) WSW of San Rafael del Sur, Nicaragua
74km (46mi) SW of Nagarote, Nicaragua
75km (47mi) SSW of La Paz Centro, Nicaragua
90km (56mi) WSW of Managua, Nicaragua

Technical Details