Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

US: Thousands in Memphis told to evacuate as flood waters close in

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© My 5Flood waters near Riverside Drive Friday morning in Memphis.
Memphis, Tennessee - Teams from Shelby County and the city of Memphis conducted a door-to-door operation Friday to tell thousands of residents it is time to evacuate.

Meanwhile, the parking lot of the Raleigh Springs mall was an oasis Friday for Shelby County residents being targeted by flood waters.

Elizabeth Benson checked in to see if her house off Thomas and Frayser Boulevard was in danger. The news wasn't good.

"I need to prepare for the possibility of being flooded out," she said.

Local authorities were uncertain whether they had legal authority to order evacuations, and hoped the fliers would persuade people to leave. Bob Nations, director of emergency management for Shelby County, which includes Memphis, said there was still time to get out. The river is not expected to crest until Wednesday.

Radar

US: Coast Guard reopens part of Mississippi River

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© Associated Press/Rogelio V. SolisA sightseer drives down from the levee road in Greenville, Miss., May 5, 2011.
River monitoring will continue and navigation will be restricted when necessary, says Coast Guard captain

From Illinois to Mississippi, record flooding is getting worse everyday, causing river communities to evacuate. Mark Strassmann reports from Finley, Tenn. on the disaster in slow motion.

Memphis - Children played in front yards and neighbors chatted under a cloudless sky Friday in a south Memphis neighborhood, yards away from the rising water of the Nonconnah Creek.

The unforgiving creek has soaked Johnny Harris' house as the rest of Memphis awaits flood waters from the Mississippi River. Harris estimated he had more than 3 feet of water in his small, rented house on a low-lying section of Hazelwood Street.

"It's like an ocean," he said.

Bizarro Earth

US: Great white zeroes in on whale off Vineyard

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© Jeff Lynch / Boston HeraldPhoto of a great white shark spotted near the carcass of a dead minke whale off Martha’s Vineyard.
Buddies out mackerel fishing today came upon a giant great white shark like they've never seen before "bumping" and "nudging" a dead whale and then circling their boat off Martha's Vineyard.

The line from the seminal shark flick "Jaws" quickly came to mind for the crew -- "We're gonna need a bigger boat."

The monster of the sea was "20 feet" long, said captain Jeff Lynch of Chilmark. "To see something that big was crazy. It was as big as my boat."

The shark had zeroed in on a dead minke whale that was tangled in lobster gear and died. The shark, he said, kept at the whale but never chomped down - possibly sensing it was long dead.

"I was very surprised to see it," Lynch told the Herald.

Bizarro Earth

US: Mysterious Maine Earthquakes Caused by Ice Age Rebound

Mid Coast Earthquakes
© Wire.comMid coast earthquakes.
On the last day of April and first five days of May, dozens of tiny earthquakes caused Maine's eastern coast to tremble. What could have shaken this geologically quiet region, located in the middle of a tectonic plate, far from any active faults?

The last ice age, say geologists. Like a trampoline's surface after liftoff, Earth's crust along the eastern seaboard is still springing back from the pressing weight of a massive ice sheet that has since melted. The earthquakes are a present-time reminder of processes that are prehistoric at a human scale, but from a geological perspective still ongoing.

"This action is still taking place," said Robert Marvinney, director of Maine's Bureau of Geology. "Five or ten thousand feet of ice weighs a lot."

Bizarro Earth

Close Call: Ozone Hole Nearly Opens Over Arctic

Polar Clouds
© Markus Rex, Alfred Wegener InstituteThese polar clouds, which are composed of frozen nitric acid and sulfuric acid, form when temperatures in the stratosphere fall below minus 108 F (minus 78 C). This is currently the case in vast sections of the Arctic. Chemical processes on the surface of the cloud particles transform the initially harmless chemicals from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) into aggressive ozone-depleting substances.
The loss of ozone over Antarctica has been well-known since the late 1970s, when a major report exposed the crisis happening on the continent. But this spring, an Arctic hole in the ozone nearly opened up over the northern United Kingdom, Scandinavia and Russia.

Unusually cold temperatures in the stratosphere, the second layer of Earth's atmosphere, caused the Arctic near-miss, according to a statement by Jonathan Shanklin, the head of meteorology and ozone monitoring for the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). Most years, Shanklin wrote, the Arctic stratosphere is too warm for ozone-depleting chemical reactions to take place. This year, however, temperatures dove enough to destroy more than 40 percent of Arctic ozone.

Without the protective sheeting of ozone, more ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaches the Earth's surface. That makes ozone levels important for public health, said Ross Salawitch, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Maryland who studies atmospheric chemistry.

Fish

US: Hundreds of fish die in Wichita park's pond

dead fish
© Mike Hutmacher/The Wichita EagleHundreds of fish have died at Buffalo Park pond in west Wichita because of lack of water, and the city expects the toll to climb to about 1,000.
Hundreds of fish have died at Buffalo Park pond in west Wichita because of lack of water, and the city expects the toll to climb to about 1,000.

A combination of three factors have contributed to the kill, said Doug Kupper, the city's parks and recreation director.

The pond, near Central and Maize Road, has been leaking from the bottom and suffering from an invasive plant that has been removing oxygen from the water for a couple of years. Recent hot weather has evaporated more of the water, he said.

Better Earth

US: Memphis eyes crest; New Orleans gets some flood help

Mississippi swamps some areas of Tenn. city; spillway opened to ease La. danger

Memphis, Tenn. - The city of Memphis braced for the Mississippi River to peak on Monday at a near record level, and downstream the U.S. government opened a spillway to relieve flooding pressure on low-lying New Orleans.

The Army Corps of Engineers began opening the Bonnet Carre spillway 28 miles north of New Orleans Monday morning to divert part of the river flow to Lake Pontchartrain. Opening the spillway has no impact on homes or businesses.

"We are not going to open it up full bore immediately," said Victor Landry, the Corps' Bonnet Carre operations manager. "It will be a slow release."

The spillway has been opened nine previous times, most recently in 2008. The Corps expects to have about half of the spillway's 350 bays open by later this week and it could be fully opened before the flood season ends, Landry said.


Attention

US: The Mississippi Nightmare Scenario

Mississippi 1927 flood map
© wiki commons
As the Mississippi River continues to rise and more residents are forced to evacuate, the great flood of 1927 is on a lot of Southern minds and questions of what's next on just as many lips.

According to reports in the Nashville Tennessean, history could be on the verge of repeating itself. To give a little perspective: in the Great Flood, the levees broke in 145 places, flooded 27,000 square miles in up to 30 feet of water over a stretch of land 100 miles long. At some points more than double the volume of Niagara Falls poured through as levees broke, nine states were affected and 246 people died.

Cloud Lightning

US: Mississippi, Winners and Losers as Army Corps Opens Floodgates

Mississippi River flooding
© Jeff Roberson/APWhen the Army Corps of Engineers blasted part of a levee holding back the Mississippi River last week, floodwater poured over Missouri farmland and surrounded this farm near New Madrid, Mo.
To handle all of the water flowing down the Mississippi River, the Army Corps of Engineers is opening the floodgates on a spillway north of New Orleans.

Opening the Bonnet Carre spillway diverts some of the floodwaters into Lake Pontchartrain and from there to the Gulf of Mexico. But nearly every flood control action taken by the Corps draws some controversy.

Attention

Quake Shifted Japan; Towns Now Flood at High Tide

japan Ishinomaki tidal flooding
© Associated PressResidents stroll in a flooded street in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. The area in this part of the city sunk nearly 2 feet 7 inches (0.8 meter) following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
When water begins to trickle down the streets of her coastal neighborhood, Yoshiko Takahashi knows it is time to hurry home.

Twice a day, the flow steadily increases until it is knee-deep, carrying fish and debris by her front door and trapping people in their homes. Those still on the streets slosh through the sea water in rubber boots or on bicycle.

"I look out the window, and it's like our houses are in the middle of the ocean," says Takahashi, who moved in three years ago.