Earth ChangesS


Alarm Clock

Everett, Washington: Land Crack Appears, Neighborhood is Sinking


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EVERETT, Wash. -- People living in the Valley View neighborhood of southeast Everett are waiting and watching. A two story house on their block is tilted at a 20 degree angle and could collapse at any moment.

A crack in the earth that first appeared six weeks ago is now threatening about four homes. The City of Everett has "red tagged" the home on Burl which is collapsing. That means no one is allowed near the property.

A "yellow tag" was posted on two other properties where the land is giving way.

A surface slide in the area of Rob and Margaret Lund's house caused their deck and cement patio to completely collapse.

"There is nothing to stop this from happening again and again," said Rob Lund.

Recent heavy rains has caused the sliding to accelerate in the neighborhood. Neighbors said the problem appears to be getting much worse.

"If that house goes, the land will go with it," said Steve Mosman, who lives right next door to the collapsing home. "It would pull our land down with it. We just don't know what is going to happen."

Alarm Clock

Best of the Web: Geologist Predicts Major N. America Earthquake Imminent

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Retired USGS geologist Jim Berkland, who is credited with predicting (four days in advance) the 1989 San Francisco Bay area 6.9 magnitude earthquake, has stated that North America looks to be next for a major quake. Berkland says that the months of October March and April are historically the months on which the most powerful earthquakes have struck the San Francisco Bay area. He also links the upcoming 'supermoon' on the 19th and, the next day, the equinoctial tides. A 'top seismic window', according to Berkland, is developing between the 19th and 26th of March. Berkland also implies that massive recent fish kills at Redondo beach and Acapulco are not a result of the Japan quake or its aftermath, but rather signs (changes in magnetic field) of a coming quake on the Western seaboard of North America.


Bizarro Earth

US: Did the Earth Shake in St. Augustine this Morning?

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© First Coast News

St. Augustine, Florida -- The ground shook briefly this morning, but nobody seems quite sure why.

First Coast News has received several calls, as has the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office, about two tremors felt this morning around 9:30.

Sheriff's deputies are among those who reported feeling the shaking, and the Associated Press reported the tremors were felt in Flagler County as well.

A geologist at the University of Florida said nothing showed up on any earthquake detecting equipment.

The cause of the shaking is speculation at this point, but the sheriff's office said the sensation was stronger near the ocean.

No damage has been reported.

Did you feel the tremor this morning?

Bizarro Earth

Two Koreas May Collaborate on Baekdu Volcano

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/Newsis
Seoul has agreed to consider a request by Pyongyang on Thursday to discuss joint cooperation on a possible eruption of Mount Baekdu, a volcano straddling the North Korea-China border that hasn't erupted since 1903.

Thursday's request from Pyongyang said the discussions would be on joint research of Mount Baekdu, visits to the mountain and academic debates.

It was sent from the North's authority for earthquakes and addressed to the head of the Korea Meteorological Administration, said the South's Ministry of Unification.

"The South Korean government realizes that cooperation between the South and North is necessary over natural disasters like volcanic eruptions or earthquakes," said Chun Hae-sung, Unification Ministry spokesman, yesterday. "We will look over the North's request from this point of view. I would like to say that discussions among related bureaus within the government are now taking place."

The spokesman said that Seoul believes that preparations should be made for large-scale natural disasters following last Friday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake in Japan.

Cloud Lightning

US: Storm Slams Into Bay Area; Winds Batter Santa Rosa

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A blast of high wind slammed into a Santa Rosa neighborhood early Friday, damaging a landscape company while a rare tornado warning was issued for San Mateo County as a winter storm ravaged the Bay Area.

The gust struck Santa Rosa's Sequoia Landscape Materials on Pacific Avenue and King Street, ripping off the roof. Witnesses said they saw a funnel cloud moments before the gust hit the neighborhood.

However, the National Weather Service could not confirm the winds were caused by a tornado until investigating the scene.

Owner Sue Minnigerode said she looked outside her business at 1330 King St. when she heard the wind howling around 9:45 a.m. and saw pieces of the 100-foot long shed fly onto nearby Pacific Avenue.

Debris from the shed landed in nearby power lines and on properties three houses away, she said.

"I saw the wind just pick up the roof and blow it up into the air," Minnigerode told the Press Democrat.

At around 11 a.m., the NWS Doppler radio indicated a tornado cloud had been spotted over Belmont moving northeast at 40 mph.

A tornado was in effect for San Mateo County until at least 11:30 a.m.

Attention

Alert Level at Indonesia Volcano Raised to Highest

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© Getty ImagesMount Karangetang
Indonesia has raised the alert level at one of its most active volcanos to the highest after it repeatedly sent hot clouds of gas down its slopes.

Volcanology hazard mitigation chief Surono says authorities have been ordered to evacuate people living along Mount Karangetang's slopes.

He says the 5,853-foot (1,784-meter) mountain on Siau, part of the Sulawesi island chain, spewed hot clouds of gas at least seven times Friday. There were no reports of injuries or damage.

It last erupted in August, killing four people.

Cloud Lightning

US: Spring Flooding Underway, Expected to Worsen Through April

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U.S. Spring Flood Risk Map for 2011.
With spring flooding already underway over portions of the U.S., NOAA forecasters are warning the worst is yet to come. Almost half the country - from the North Central U.S. through the Midwest and the Northeast - has an above-average risk of flooding over the next few weeks, according to the annual spring outlook released today by NOAA's National Weather Service. This week is also national Flood Safety Awareness Week, and NOAA has partnered with FEMA to encourage residents to prepare for this imminent threat.

The highest spring flood risk areas include the Red River of the North, which forms the state line between eastern North Dakota and northwest Minnesota, the Milk River in eastern Montana, the James and Big Sioux Rivers in South Dakota, the Minnesota River, the upper Mississippi River basin from Minneapolis southward to St. Louis, and a portion of lower New York, eastern Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey. Many metropolitan areas have a greater than 95 percent chance of major flooding, including Fargo, Grand Forks, St. Paul, Davenport, Rock Island, Sioux Falls and Huron. Devils Lake in North Dakota has an 80 percent chance of reaching two feet above last year's record of 1452.1 feet.

"For the third consecutive year, the stage is set for potential widespread, record flooding in the North Central United States," said Jack Hayes, Ph.D., director of NOAA's National Weather Service. "We've been coordinating with federal and state partners and high risk communities since December to raise awareness and help them prepare. All the ingredients are in place for major flooding so this situation should be taken very seriously. We're asking citizens to stay informed and be prepared."

Meteor

Kiawah Island, South Carolina, US: Booms revive an old mystery

The first boom sounded like thunder. The second shook windows. The third shook an entire house. Then they quieted, mysteriously.

The series of booms were reported Monday afternoon by people on Kiawah and Johns islands and Isle of Palms. At least three booms, each more intense than the last, occurred within 15 minutes starting about 3:30 p.m.

"There's another one. The third one, just now. It's like thunder getting closer to us, only there's no rumble, just a blast. Have you ever been around dynamite? A pretty good charge when they're blowing up stumps, that's what it's like," said Dwight Ives, who was on Kiawah Island during the booms.

"We felt the house shake," said Art Morgenstern, an island resident.

Attention

The Scariest Earthquake Is Yet to Come

The tsunami that struck Japan was the third in a series of events that now put California at risk.

All of those broken bones in northern Japan, all of those broken lives and those broken homes prompt us to remember what in calmer times we are invariably minded to forget: the most stern and chilling of mantras, which holds, quite simply, that mankind inhabits this earth subject to geological consent - which can be withdrawn at any time.

For hundreds, maybe for thousands of people, this consent was withdrawn with shocking suddenness - all geological events are sudden, and all are unexpected if not necessarily entirely unanticipated - at 2:46 on this past clear, cool spring Friday afternoon. One moment all were going about their quotidian business - in offices, on trains, in rice fields, in stores, in schools, in warehouses, in shrines - and then the ground began to shake. At first, the shock was merely a much stronger and longer version of the temblors to which most Japanese are well accustomed. There came a stunned silence, as there always does. But then, the difference: a few minutes later a low rumble from the east, and in a horrifying replay of the Indian Ocean tragedy of just some six years before, the imagery of which is still hauntingly in all the world's mind, the coastal waters off the northern Honshu vanished, sucked mysteriously out to sea.

Radar

USA: Tiny amounts of Japan's radiation reach California

Vienna - Japan's radioactive fallout has reached Southern California but first readings are "about a billion times beneath levels that would be health threatening," a diplomat with access to United Nations' radiation tracking said Friday.

The diplomat, who asked for anonymity Friday because the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization does not make its data public, cited readings Friday from one of the U.N.'s California-based measuring station.

IAEA officials and independent experts have emphasized that the radiation level was already low outside of the immediate vicinity of the crippled reactor.

They said it would dissipate so strongly by the time it reached the U.S. coastlines that it would pose no health risk whatsoever to residents there.

Any detectable radiation on Friday "could be coming from your own reactors in California," said physics Prof. Paddy Regan at the University of Surrey at Guildford in Britain.

A senior IAEA official who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media, noted that even in Tokyo, "radiation was at background levels."