Storm Dumped Record Rainfall On Philly: MyFoxPHILLY.com

Philadelphia - The same storm system that spawned more than 240 tornadoes to the South brought record rainfall to Philadelphia and other areas.

The rain caused widespread flooding and power outages, and spawning high winds and prompted tornado warnings.

The earthquake that launched a series of disasters in Japan in March triggered micro-quakes and tremors around the world, scientists find.

The catastrophic magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck off the coast of the Tohoku region of Japan March 11 set off tremors mostly in places of past seismic activity, including southwest Japan, Taiwan, the Aleutians and mainland Alaska, Vancouver Island in Canada, Washington state, Oregon, central California and the central United States. It was unlikely that any of these events exceeded magnitude 3.

Researchers noted, however, that temblors also were detected in Cuba. "Seismologists had never seen tremor in Cuba, so this is an exciting new observation," Justin Rubinstein, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at Menlo Park, Calif., told OurAmazingPlanet.

Part of the excitement of the find is the insight it could add into the inner workings of earthquakes.

"Studying long-range triggering may help us to better understand the underlying physics of how earthquakes start," explained seismologist Zhigang Peng at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

North Carolina - Following a Saturday night tornado that tore through Camp Lejeune's Tarawa Terrace, residents of the base family housing area wandered around in the sunlight Sunday morning examining the devastation.

The storm's aftermath was astonishing: Roofs were ripped cleanly off of brand-new base houses while other adjoining homes were left unscathed. Gaping holes in apartments left dining rooms and breakfast nooks exposed, and in one cul-de-sac, three cars were stacked against each other like fallen dominoes, with another flipped on its side only yards away.

According to Lejeune officials, upwards of 130 homes aboard Tarawa Terrace I and II were affected, between 40 and 60 of them heavily damaged in the storm and at least 10 effectively destroyed.

While southeast Wisconsin saw a few flakes Monday, central Wisconsin could see a shovel-worthy winter storm Tuesday.

Forecasters don't have a clear picture of where the storm will go, but if the system targets central Wisconsin, it could bring 6 to 10 inches of snow to the area, according to the National Weather Service.

The weather service forecast calls for possible snow at the beginning of Tuesday in the south. The precipitation should turn to rain in southeast Wisconsin later in the day and could switch back to snow at the end of the system.That storm system, which is organizing in the West, could reach Wisconsin by Tuesday night.

The total accumulation in southeast Wisconsin could reach 1 or 2 inches.

"We'll be dealing with a good chance of precipitation through Wednesday," weather service meteorologist Penny Zabel said.

Fast-moving storms ripped through the Southeast over the weekend, spawning tornadoes that flattened parts of North Carolina. The storm killed at least 45 people in six states, including Virginia, Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas.

In today's Gotta Watch, we're looking at the aftermath of the devastating weather system that crippled the region.

Inside the storm - Get an inside look of the storm that killed 22 people in North Carolina and leveled parts of that state. The damage was so severe, it nearly wiped out an entire rural town.

For Immediate Release: April 18, 2011

One Year Later, Gulf Still Suffering from Environmental, Health Consequences of Unprecedented Dispersant Use

Food & Water Watch Critical of President's Proposed Budget for NOAA's Gulf of Mexico Spill Recovery Efforts

Washington, DC - Approximately one year after the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, national consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch released a report detailing the public health and environmental fallout from the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico, and called attention to skewed budget priorities for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the President's 2012 budget proposal.

According to the report, the administration's 2012 budget for NOAA - the agency tasked with conserving and managing living marine resources - would include $2.9 million on oil spill recovery efforts in the Gulf of Mexico, while allocating almost $60 million to promote policies that would further harm many fishermen and the Gulf environment.

"NOAA seeks to give tens of millions to push controversial fisheries management plans and promote ecologically damaging industrialization of our seafood. Gulf recovery efforts, on the other hand, don't seem to be the agency's priority," said Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch. "These policies NOAA is promoting - catch and trade and factory fish farming - would further devastate the Gulf economy and the marine environment," Hauter said.

High up in the sky near the poles some 50 miles above the ground, silvery blue clouds sometimes appear, shining brightly in the night. First noticed in 1885, these clouds are known as noctilucent, or "night shining," clouds. Their discovery spawned over a century of research into what conditions causes them to form and vary - questions that still tantalize scientists to this day. Since 2007, a NASA mission called Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) has shown that the cloud formation is changing year to year, a process they believe is intimately tied to the weather and climate of the whole globe.

"The formation of the clouds requires both water and incredibly low temperatures," says Charles Jackman, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who is NASA's project scientist for AIM. "The temperatures turn out to be one of the prime driving factors for when the clouds appear."

So the appearance of the noctilucent clouds, also known as polar mesospheric clouds or PMCs since they occur in a layer of the atmosphere called the mesosphere, can provide information about the temperature and other characteristics of the atmosphere. This in turn, helps researchers understand more about Earth's low altitude weather systems, and they've discovered that events in one hemisphere can have a sizable effect in another.

Since these mysterious clouds were first spotted, researchers have learned much about them. They light up because they're so high that they reflect sunlight from over the horizon. They are formed of ice water crystals most likely created on meteoric dust. And they are exclusively a summertime phenomenon.

"The question people usually ask is why do clouds which require such cold temperatures form in the summer?" says James Russell, an atmospheric scientist at Hampton University in Hampton, Va., who is the Principal Investigator for AIM. "It's because of the dynamics of the atmosphere. You actually get the coldest temperatures of the year near the poles in summer at that height in the mesosphere."

Date-Time:
Monday, April 18, 2011 at 13:03:03 UTC

Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 01:03:03 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
34.349°S, 179.854°E

Depth:
90.7 km (56.4 miles) set by location program

Region:
SOUTH OF THE KERMADEC ISLANDS

Distances:
323 km (200 miles) SSW of L'Esperance Rock, Kermadec Islands

527 km (327 miles) NNE of Gisborne, New Zealand

552 km (342 miles) ENE of Auckland, New Zealand

910 km (565 miles) NNE of WELLINGTON, New Zealand

Seventeen people have been killed, more than 150 injured and many millions affected by strong storms in southern China.

Driving rain, gales and hailstorms have caused havoc in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.

China Central Television has already estimated economic losses of around $8 million.

The strong storms dumped more than 50 millimetres of rain on China's industrial belt known as the "factory of the world".

Swarms of caterpillars which can cause skin rashes have invaded the Indonesian holiday island of Bali, an official said Wednesday, but tourist areas have not been affected so far.

The dark, wriggly insects were first sighted in a village on Friday and the swarms have since spread to six districts, including the provincial capital of Denpasar, Bali agricultural chief Made Putra Suryawan told AFP.

"The situation is under control. Since Friday, workers have been spraying insecticide and burning garbage in affected areas to stop the spread," he said.

"Tourists need not be alarmed. The caterpillars have not spread to tourist areas yet. The threat to tourists is minimal," he added.

Thousands of caterpillars have reportedly descended on parts of neighbouring Java island in the last two weeks, attacking fruit farms and invading residential areas.