Weather services issued multiple alerts Saturday for Cincinnati and several other Midwest cities Saturday as the Ohio River rose toward its highest level in nearly two decades. Rains could push the river just a few feet short of the levels seen in the 1997 flood that marked one the river's most severe on record. Local communities have evacuated residents from high-risk areas.
The Ohio River Forecast Center predicts the river could crest at 58 feet -- six feet above minimum flood levels -- by Sunday, according to local reports. The river reached 64 feet in 1997, marking one of the most serious floods the area had seen in decades. The 1997 flood resulted in power cuts for thousands of Ohioans and an estimated $180 million in damage, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.
The strongest tropical cyclone on record in the South Pacific, Tropical Cyclone Pam, a Category 5 super storm, hit Vanuatu last night causing deaths and destruction. This morning Pam had a central pressure as low as 899hPa and was gusting up to 335km per hour at its centre.
It is one of four cyclones unusually affecting the South Pacific at the same time.
The Vanuatu Meteorological Services warned very destructive hurricane-force winds of 250 kilometres per hour continued to affect the country's southern provinces this morning. It said the central pressure of the system was estimated at 900 hectopascals, which is among the strongest tropical cyclones on record.
Furthermore, at 8:00 am today, Saturday, the Fiji Meteorological Service reported that Severe Tropical Cyclone Pam (Category 5) was located about 890km West of Nadi.
"It has a central pressure of 899hPa and average wind speeds of 250km per hour close to the centre with gusts up to 335km per hour. It is currently moving South 20km per hour. It is gradually turning southeasterly," Fiji Met stated.
The first estimate of the number of whales killed during the 2oth century is set to be published in the next edition of Marine Fisheries Review. Researchers hunted through the records and found that between 1900 and 1999 a total of 2.9 million whales were killed.
The scale of modern industrial whaling that took hold in the early and mid 1900's is astonishing. The researchers, Robert C. Rocha, Jr., Phillip J. Clapham, and Yulia Ivashchenko , found that between 1900 and 1962 the number of sperm whales killed equalled the total estimated to have been killed over the previous 200 years.
But the height of the whaling industry was only just beginning. In the following 10 years between 1962 and 1972 the industry managed to repeat the scale of killing.
The researchers estimated that between 1712 and 1899 whaler in small sailing boats managed to kill 300,000 sperm whales. Modern techniques and improved shipping meant whalers killed 300,000 sperm whales between 1900 and 1962. Then the big factory ships were launched and in just 10 years another 300,000 sperm whales were caught.
By the time the International Whaling Commission had effectively banned whaling in 1982 they estimate that at least 2,870,291 had been killed since the start of the century.
A sinkhole has opened on Arrowood Dr. in Clarksville.
Arrowood Dr. will be closed from the back entrance of Wal-Mart to Jordan Dr. off Purple Heart Parkway until further notice.
Officer Natalie Hall with the Clarksville Police Department says any drivers who go around the barricades in place to enter the blocked roadway will be cited.
"The roadway is blocked off in order to keep those in the immediate area safe from injury and to prevent further damage created by the sinkhole," she said.
A large sinkhole opened on the same stretch of road last September.
Aerial photo by West Virginia National Guard shows the extent of the landslide that’s closed Keystone Drive. Yeager Airport said about a third of the engineered fill beneath its main runway overrun area has collapsed
A worst-case scenario became reality Thursday when a large portion of the Yeager Airport hillside — which began experiencing some disturbing slippage over the weekend — collapsed into the valley along Keystone Drive, destroying at least one house, damaging a church, blocking a creek and forcing the evacuation of dozens of residents.
Now officials are scrambling to mitigate damage as they wait on a man-made mountain to finish its bow to gravity.
"It's a bad situation," said Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper. "This is a very serious event."
Airport officials initially sounded an alarm Wednesday when they evacuated six people from two houses along Keystone Drive as a precaution when a portion of the hillside underneath the main runway's emergency overrun area slipped about 6 feet over the weekend. Most of the overrun area, known officially as the Engineered Material Arresting System, or EMAS area, was built about eight years ago atop an engineered fill containing about 1.5 million cubic yards of dirt. It was the back portion of that area that began shifting significantly over the weekend.
During an emergency airport board meeting Wednesday, airport officials and representatives from the airport's consulting firm Triad Engineering said the chance of a landslide was slight, but they couldn't discount the possibility.
"The likelihood of a catastrophic failure and it being down in those houses or on that church is slight, but if there is a risk, you're talking about people's lives and I could never live with myself if we didn't strongly encourage them (to relocate)," airport executive director Rick Atkinson said at the time.
However, that remote possibility became a stark reality a short time after noon Thursday when about a third of the engineered fill area began collapsing into the valley below.
NASA's top water scientist says California only has about one year's worth of water left in storage, and its groundwater - often used as a backup for reservoirs and other reserves - is rapidly depleting. He suggests immediately rationing water.
California just had the driest January since record-keeping began in 1895, with groundwater and snowpack levels at all-time lows, NASA scientist Jay Familglietti wrote in a column for the Los Angeles Times. He said the state has been running out of water since before the current years-long drought and storage levels have been falling since at least 2002, according to NASA satellite data.
"California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain," said Familglietti. "In short, we have no paddle to navigate this crisis."
Comment: Access to water is a basic human right, and is essential for sustaining human life. With extreme weather increasing, will we begin to see people migrating as drought conditions worsen in some areas?
Corporations have been systematically 'sucking dry' this valuable resource, with no meaningful restraints or considerations in place, consumed only by their insatiable thirst for profit.
Comfort, the prevailing word for Progress, in its many different aspects and to varying degrees, forms a sufficient aim for the majority of civilized men of our era. Under these conditions of our times, man is only open to divine values in carefully measured doses, kept within limits so that they do not trouble his bourgeois conscience or threaten the material well-being he has acquired.
- Boris Mouravieff
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Under de Blasio's directive, city employees have until 5 p.m. Friday to get their first shot — and collect a $500 bonus — or be placed on leave...
Comment: Access to water is a basic human right, and is essential for sustaining human life. With extreme weather increasing, will we begin to see people migrating as drought conditions worsen in some areas?
Corporations have been systematically 'sucking dry' this valuable resource, with no meaningful restraints or considerations in place, consumed only by their insatiable thirst for profit.
See also:
Flow: How privatization is accelerating the world's water crisis
Water industry, World Bank pilot new scheme to drive public water into private hands
Coca-Cola and Nestle are sucking us dry without our even knowing, effectively privatizing water supplies