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Avalanche kills skier in Wyoming national park - at least 32 avalanche deaths in US this 2020-2021 season

Joe Sutton and Kaylene Chassie,
CNN
Tue, 23 Feb 2021 13:46 UTC
Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center shared this photo on Monday announcing there had been a fatality

Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center shared this photo on Monday announcing there had been a fatality "in very extreme terrain."
A skier was killed after getting swept up in an avalanche Monday in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, the National Park Service said in a news release.

Matthew Brien, a 33-year-old resident of Jackson, Wyoming, had been leading a small group of locals who wanted to ski the Broken Thumb Couloir when the avalanche was triggered, the park service said.
His is the latest of at least 32 avalanche deaths in the US in this 2020-2021 season, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. Twenty-three fatalities were recorded last season, with 25 deaths tallied in each of the two seasons before that.
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Cloud Precipitation

South Africa and Zimbabwe - Flash floods in border towns of Musina and Beitbridge

Richard Davies
Floodlist
Tue, 23 Feb 2021 13:33 UTC
Floods in Musina, Limpopo, South Africa,
© Musina Local Municipality
Floods in Musina, Limpopo, South Africa, February 202.
Flash floods were reported in towns close to the South Africa and Zimbabwe border after a thunderstorm brought heavy rain from 21 to 22 February 2021.

In South Africa, flooding affected parts of Vhembe District, Limpopo Proince, in particular the town of Musina, where roads and homes were damaged along with electricity and water infrastructure. Images shared on Social Media showed a flooded hospital.

Flooding also affected areas the border town of Beitbridge in Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe, damaging roads and some buildings.

Meteorological Services Department of Zimbabwe said Beitbridge recorded 76mm of rain in 24 hours to 22 February. Heavy rainfall was also reported further north in Nyanga, close to the border with Mozambique.

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Boat

Thousands of homes damaged by floods in Madre De Dios, Peru

Richard Davies
Floodlist
Tue, 23 Feb 2021 13:20 UTC
Floods in Madre de Dios, Peru, February 2021.
© Floods in Madre de Dios, Peru, February 2021. Photo: Minam Peru
Floods in Madre de Dios, Peru, February 2021.
Flooding in Madre de Dios Region of Peru has affected at least 15,000 people and damaged thousands of homes. The government has declared a State of Emergency for 60 days for the region.

After visiting affected areas, Peru's Environment Minister Gabriel Quijandria said that floods had damaged about 4,000 homes along with several schools and health facilities. Water and electricity services have been interrupted and around 3,000 hectares of crops damaged. Affected areas include Pueblo Viejo, Las Piedras, Laberinto and Boca Colorado.

"We have flown over the areas near and far from Puerto Maldonado and the truth is that the situation is worrying," the minister said. "There is significant damage in several towns, such as Laberinto," he added.

Armed forces are working with Peru's National Civil Defense Institute (INDECI) to distribute relief supplies including mattresses, sheets, kitchen utensils, mosquito nets and personal hygiene and cleaning products.

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Fire

More than 110 plant species in Australia had their entire ranges burned in the 2019-2020 megafires

AuthorBill Gabbert
Wildfire Today
Sun, 21 Feb 2021 13:06 UTC
Bushfire in Victoria, December, 2020

Bushfire in Victoria, December, 2020
Most are resilient to fire, however the scope of the blazes may leave some ecosystems susceptible to landscape-scale failure

More than 19 million acres in Australia burned in the bushfires of the 2019-2020 season, with seven individual fires exceeding 1 million acres. Researchers who have studied the impacts on the vegetation have determined that the entire ranges of 116 plant species burned along with 90 percent of the ranges of 173 species.

Most of the affected species are are resilient to fire. However, the massive scope of the megafires may leave some ecosystems, particularly the rainforests, susceptible to regeneration failure and landscape-scale decline.

Below are excerpts from a study by Robert C. Godfree, Nunzio Knerr, and Francisco Encinas-Viso, et al., published in Nature Communications February 15, 2021.
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Attention

Rare pygmy sperm whale washes up on Sonoma Coast beach in California

Julie Johnson
The Press Democrat
Sun, 21 Feb 2021 14:40 UTC
dead whale
A dead pygmy sperm whale washed ashore on a Sonoma Coast beach over the weekend, giving marine mammal experts a rare chance to examine a creature that normally spends its life out in the ocean deep.

The intact body of the nine-foot-long pregnant whale beached Saturday on the sand at Salmon Creek, with no clear signs of trauma, said Barbie Halaska, necropsy manager with the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito.

Pygmy sperm whales are pelagic, meaning they live in deeper waters beyond the continental shelf. They are far less likely to wash ashore than other species, such as gray and humpback whales.

"Even if one dies, they don't necessarily strand on land," Halaska said. "Getting to see one is really rare for us."

Halaska and a team of about a half-dozen veterinary technicians, lab assistants and pathology experts went to the beach Sunday and collected the whale's internal organs and head to be more fully examined at the center's Marin County marine mammal hospital.
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Attention

Astonishing discovery: First-ever 'space hurricane' was observed in upper atmosphere above North Pole in 2014

Arve Aksnes
Birkeland Centre for Space Science
Mon, 22 Feb 2021 22:24 UTC
Space hurricane
© Birkeland Centre for Space Science
Illustration of a space hurricane by Shandong University at Weihai in China.
In a new study in Nature Communications by Zhang et al. [2021], the first observations of a space hurricane over the Earth's polar ionosphere is shown.

Co-author and professor at the Birkeland Centre for Space Science, Kjellmar Oksavik, finds the new results remarkable: "Hurricanes are well-known in the Earth's lower atmosphere, causing destruction and harm to people and infrastructure. We had no idea that a similar phenomenon could be found in the upper polar atmosphere, several hundred kilometers above the ground".

The space hurricane was observed on August 20, 2014, when four DMSP (Defense Meteorological Satellite Program) satellites detected a cyclone-like auroral spot around the north magnetic pole, having a diameter over 1000 km with multiple arms and anti-clockwise rotation. After showing its presence for nearly 8 hours, the space hurricane gradually decayed and merged into the duskside auroral oval.


Comment: WOW!


Comment: This happened 7 years ago, but was carefully kept under wraps.

We wonder if it has happened since.

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Cloud Precipitation

Floods worsen in Greater Jakarta Region, Indonesia 5 people reported dead, over 30,000 displaced

Richard Davies
Floodlist
Mon, 22 Feb 2021 19:30 UTC
Floods in Karawang, West Java, Indonesia
© BNPB
Floods in Karawang, West Java, Indonesia, February 2021.
The flood situation in Greater Jakarta, Indonesia, has worsened over the last 2 days. As of 22 February as many as 5 people have died, 2 are missing and over 30,000 people displaced.

As reported here, flooding struck in Greater Jakarta from 19 February, prompting 1,300 evacuations mostly in South and East Jakarta and also affecting parts of West Jakarta.

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Arrow Up

Bermuda's hurricanes are twice as strong as they were six decades ago

Harry Baker
LiveScience
Wed, 17 Feb 2021 00:00 UTC
Hurricane Florence
© Shutterstock
Hurricane Florence off US Coast in 2018
Ocean warming is fueling stronger hurricanes.

Hurricanes are blasting Bermuda with wind speeds that have more than doubled in strength over the last 66 years, due to rising ocean temperatures in the region as a result of climate change, according to a new study.

Within a 62-mile (100 kilometers) radius of Bermuda, the average maximum wind speed of hurricanes increased from 35 to 73 mph (56 to 117 km/h) between 1955 and 2019, the researchers found. This is the equivalent of a 6 mph (10 km/h) increase every decade.

During this time, sea-surface temperatures in the region also increased by up to two degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius), according to the Bermuda Atlantic Time Series (BATS), a long-running dataset collected by the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences.

Scientists already knew that higher sea surface temperatures fuel stronger tropical cyclones. But the new findings show that temperatures below the sea surface also play a key role in how these storms form.

Comment: See also:

Bad news: Study claims hurricanes' translational speed is slowing down, potentially increasing damage

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Attention

Pod of 49 long-finned pilot whales strand on beach in New Zealand - 9 die


WION
Mon, 22 Feb 2021 14:07 UTC
The worst danger to stranded whales is overheating in the sun, as their dark skin and layers of blubber work to trap heat.
© NINA HINDMARSH
The worst danger to stranded whales is overheating in the sun, as their dark skin and layers of blubber work to trap heat.
Rescuers in New Zealand had to race against time to save dozens of pilot whales that were stranded on the beachside in New Zealand on Monday.

The Department of Conservation (DOC) reported that a pod of 49 long-finned pilot whales was discovered at Farewell Spit, which is nearly 90 kilometres (55 metres) north of Nelson.

As soon as the pod was discovered, more than 60 people set to work to rescue the whales and bring them back to a healthy life. However, by mid-afternoon nine of the whales from the pod were declared dead.


Comment: This comes just 3 days after 52 short-finned pilot whales died after stranding on a beach in Java, Indonesia.

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Boat

Over 100,000 hit by floods as rivers overflow in Acre, Brazil

Richard Davies
Floodlist
Mon, 22 Feb 2021 13:39 UTC
Flooding of the Juruá River at Cruzeiro do Sul,
© Marcos Vicentti / Secom
Flooding of the Juruá River at Cruzeiro do Sul, State of Acre, Brazil, February 2021.
Over 100,000 people have been affected by flooding in the state of Acre, northwestern Brazil, after several rivers in the state broke their banks fin the last week.

The State has declared an emergency situation. Governor Gladson Cameli said Acre is facing one of the most challenging times in its history, dealing with the worsening of the coronavirus pandemic, dengue outbreak, migratory crisis on the border with Peru and the overflow of rivers which has affected several municipalities across the state, including the capital Rio Branco.

Around 33,000 people have been affected in Cruzeiro do Sul municipality after the Juruá River reached record levels of 14.31 metres on 19 February, beating the previous high of 14.24 set in February 2017.

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