Earth ChangesS


Attention

Spring storm dumps snow on northeastern US

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© Toby Talbot, APA horse is seen through a snow-covered fence in a pasture in Calais, Vt., Wednesday, April 28. A spring snowstorm dumped 12 to 18 inches of snow in some areas of Vermont, according to the National Weather Service.
Montpelier, Vermont - A late-season snowstorm dumped up to 2 feet of heavy, wet snow on northern New York, Vermont and New Hampshire by Wednesday morning, cutting off power to thousands, closing some schools and leaving roads slippery.

"It definitely caught people off guard, considering we had 80 degrees back in March. It's a problem because some people swapped their (snow) tires out already," said Vermont highway dispatcher Greg Fox.

About 30,000 customers were without power in Vermont, New Hampshire and northern New York at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday. Utility officials said it could be Thursday before power is fully restored.

"We've been hammered all night," said New York State Police Trooper Eric LaValley of the Ray Brook barracks, in the Adirondack Mountains.

Large storms so late in the season are rare. On April 23, 1993, 22 inches of snow was reported in Malone, N.Y., and on April 27, 1874, 24 inches of snow was reported in Bellows Falls, Vt., said Mark Breen, the senior meteorologist at the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in St. Johnsbury.

Attention

Hail, sleet and snow slams southern California

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© Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles TimesNorthbound Interstate 5 is gridlocked as inclement weather conditions shut down parts of the freeway Thursday morning.
High winds, low temperatures and snow in some mountain areas forced closure of Interstate 5 over the Grapevine on Thursday morning as forecasters warned of gusts of up to 50 mph in parts of Southern California.

[Update at 10:45 a.m.: As of 9:30 a.m., lanes in both directions of Interstate 5 were reopened to traffic.]

Shortly after 7:30 a.m., the California Highway Patrol closed the southbound lanes of Interstate 5, and then about 8:15 a.m. shut down the northbound lanes at Vista del Lago.

"We've got icy roadway, hail, snow, black ice. You name it, it's up there," said CHP Officer Robert Rodriguez.

Officers were called out on about 20 crashes on the northern slope of the Grapevine early Thursday, including one in which a car ran into the back of a big rig, Rodriguez said. One motorist suffered moderate injuries.

Bad Guys

Whistleblower: BP Risks More Massive Catastrophes in Gulf

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© Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: futureatlas.com, US Coast Guard
A former contractor who worked for British Petroleum (BP) claims the oil conglomerate broke federal laws and violated its own internal procedures by failing to maintain crucial safety and engineering documents related to one of the firms other deepwater production projects in the Gulf of Mexico, according to internal emails and other documents obtained by Truthout.

The whistleblower, whose name has been withheld at the person's request because the whistleblower still works in the oil industry and fears retaliation, first raised concerns about safety issues related to BP Atlantis, the world's largest and deepest semi-submersible oil and natural gas platform, located about 200 miles south of New Orleans, in November 2008. Atlantis, which began production in October 2007, has the capacity to produce about 8.4 million gallons of oil and 180 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

Bizarro Earth

US government fears Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

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© AP Photo/Pablo Martinez MonsivaisHomeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano uses a map of the Gulf of Mexico during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, Thursday, April 29, 2010. A leaked memorandum obtained by the Press-Register on the unfolding spill disaster in the Gulf makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the Deepwater Horizon well site could be on the verge of becoming an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf.
A confidential government report on the unfolding spill disaster in the Gulf makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the well could become an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf.

"The following is not public," reads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Emergency Response document dated April 28. "Two additional release points were found today in the tangled riser. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought."

Asked Friday to comment on the document, NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen said that the additional leaks described were reported to the public late Wednesday night. Regarding the possibility of the spill becoming an order of magnitude larger, Smullen said, "I'm letting the document you have speak for itself."

In scientific circles, an order of magnitude means something is 10 times larger. In this case, an order of magnitude higher would mean the volume of oil coming from the well could be 10 times higher than the 5,000 barrels a day coming out now. That would mean 50,000 barrels a day, or 2.1 million gallons a day. It appears the new leaks mentioned in the Wednesday release are the leaks reported to the public late Wednesday night.

"There is no official change in the volume released but the USCG is no longer stating that the release rate is 1,000 barrels a day," continues the document, referred to as report No. 12. "Instead they are saying that they are preparing for a worst-case release and bringing all assets to bear."

The emergency document also states that the spill has grown in size so quickly that only 1 to 2 percent of it has been sprayed with dispersants.

Bizarro Earth

So Big It's Visible From Space - Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

Over the weekend, BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico more than tripled in size to 4000+ square miles--about the same size as Chesapeake Bay. The slick is so big, it is visible from space:

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© NASA
NASA's Terra satellite captured this natural-color image of the expanding slick near the Mississippi Delta on May 1st. The outskirts of the spill are now reaching sensitive Gulf shore wetlands where the ecological impact could be severe. According to some estimates, as much as 210,000 gallons of crude oil a day are leaking into the Gulf, so the slick is only going to grow larger. Satellite images of Earth are usually beautiful. This is a rare exception. Check NASA's Earth Observatory for updates from orbit.

Eye 2

Mother of all gushers could kill Earth's oceans

mexico oil well blowout
© Unknown
Imagine a pipe 5 feet wide spewing crude oil like a fire hose from what could be the planets' largest, high-pressure oil and gas reserve. With the best technology available to man, the Deepwater Horizon rig popped a hole into that reserve and was overwhelmed. If this isn't contained, it could poison all the oceans of the world.
"Well if you say the fire hose has a 70,000 psi pump on the other end yes! No comparison here. The volume out rises geometrically with pressure. Its a squares function. Two times the pressure is 4 times the push. The Alaska pipeline is 4 feet in diameter and pushes with a lot less pressure. This situation in the Gulf of Mexico is stunning dangerous." -- Paul Noel (May 2, 2010)
Last night we received the following text in an email, author not identified. I passed it by Paul Noel, who is an expert in the field. His response follows thereafter. In calculating the gallons required to kill the oceans, remember that oil goes to the surface, where life is concentrated.

Comment: Cure a disaster with another disaster? Things are rapidly spinning out of control. Or not. What further clamp-downs and controls will this event spawn?


MIB

C'mon, How Big is the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, Really?

gulf oil spill boat
© NewscomA boat drifts along one of the booms placed to block oil at the mouth of the Southeast Pass of the Mississippi River near Venice, Louisiana, where it enters the Gulf of Mexico.
Official estimates for the flow of oil out of the Deepwater Horizon well may be just a drop in the bucket. Critics call for release of worst-case scenario data to describe the oil spill disaster.

Calculating the exact flow of crude out of the bent Deepwater Horizon oil rig "riser" pipe on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is difficult. But it's now likely that the actual amount of the oil spill dwarfs the Coast Guard's figure of 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, a day.

Independent scientists estimate that the renegade wellhead at the bottom of the Gulf could be spewing up to 25,000 barrels a day. If chokeholds on the riser pipe break down further, up to 50,000 barrels a day could be released, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration memo obtained by the Mobile, Ala., Press-Register.

Cloud Lightning

Update: Violent storms kill 11 in US Tennessee

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A car is stranded on a flooded street in Nashville, Tennessee.
Heavy thunderstorms and flooding have struck the US state of Tennessee, leaving at least eleven people dead and prompting major evacuations.

The unrelenting downpours, which continue to fall after 24 hours, have lifted levels of the Cumberland River in Nashville.

This has led to the closure of inter-state highways and caused dam failures.

The rains have also left some 36,000 houses without power.

The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency has asked the state's Army National Guard for assistance in rescue operations.

Bizarro Earth

Weekend Storms Kill 6 in Tennessee, 3 in Mississippi

Six people were killed in Tennessee and three in northern Mississippi by a line of storms that brought heavy flooding and tornados to the region over the weekend. More rain and storms loomed Sunday as emergency officials in Tennessee sought help from the state's Army National Guard, and urged people to stay off roads and interstate highways turned into raging rivers.

The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency revised the death toll downward about an hour after announcing that eight people had been killed. On Sunday morning, the agency asked for the state's National Guard to help with rescue operations and Gov. Phil Bredesen was getting hourly updates on the storm.

TEMA spokesman Jeremy Heidt confirmed that one person died around 4 a.m. Sunday in a tornado near Pocahontas, about 70 miles east of Memphis. The other deaths in Tennessee were all due to flooding, TEMA said.

Bizarro Earth

Fears for crops as shock figures from America show scale of bee catastrophe

The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter

Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.

The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.

The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global economy.