Earth ChangesS


Cloud Precipitation

Floods close Lourdes pilgrimage site in Pyrenees

Bob Edme
boston.com
Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:37 UTC
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© AP Photo/Bob EdmeThe sanctuary of Lourdes flooded, in Lourdes, southwestern France, Tuesday, June 18, 2013. French rescue services and police are evacuating hundreds of pilgrims from hotels threatened by floodwaters from a rain-swollen river in the Roman Catholic shrine town of Lourdes.
Heavy floods in southwest France have left two dead and forced the closure of the Catholic pilgrimage site in Lourdes and the evacuation of pilgrims from nearby hotels.

Muddy floodwaters swirled Wednesday in the grotto where nearly 6 million believers from around the world, many gravely ill, come every year seeking miracles and healing. It has been a major pilgrimage site since a French girl's vision of the Virgin Mary there in 1858.

Heavy rains around the region inundated town centers and swelled the Gave de Pau river, forcing road closures.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls said on BFM television that a man in his seventies died Wednesday, swept away by the river. The Interior Ministry says it is the second person who has died in this week's rains.

The spokesman for the Lourdes pilgrimage complex, Mathias Terrier said that the site in the foothills of the Pyrenees wasn't likely to reopen before the end of the week.

Rescue services evacuated hundreds of people from nearby hotels. Authorities were particularly concerned with bringing weak and sick pilgrims to safety.
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Bizarro Earth

Largest methane seep in the world found off the eastern coast of U.S.


The Extinction Protocol
Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:57 UTC
On the seafloor just off of the U.S. East Coast lies a barely known world, explorations of which bring continual surprises. As recently as the mid-2000s, practically zero methane seeps - spots on the seafloor where gas leaks from the Earth's crust - were thought to exist off the East Coast; while one had been reported more than a decade ago, it was thought to be one of a kind. But in the past two years, additional studies have revealed a host of new areas of seafloor rich in seeps, said Laura Brothers, a research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. New technologies have allowed scientists to keep locating new seeps, including one that may be the largest in the world. The findings have changed geologists' understanding of the processes taking place beneath the seafloor. "These newly discovered [seafloor] communities show that there is much more seafloor methane venting then we previously thought, and suggests that there are many more seeps out there that we don't know about," Brothers said.
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An even larger, previously unknown vent was found off the coast of Virginia, in research by Steve Ross, a scientist at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and Sandra Brooke, a scientist at Florida State University. Discovered near the Norfolk submarine canyon, the vent is the largest in the Atlantic, and possibly in all of the world's oceans, Ross told LiveScience. North America's continental shelf, the underwater edge of the continent that borders the Atlantic Ocean basin, is littered with underwater canyons etched by rivers thousands of years ago when the region was above sea level.
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Bizarro Earth

Scientists fear tension building on dangerous fault near Istanbul, Turkey


The Extinction Protocol
Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:53 UTC
German and Turkish scientists on Tuesday said they had pinpointed an extremely dangerous seismic zone less than 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the historic heart of Istanbul. Running under the Sea of Marmara just south of the city of some 15 million people, this segment of the notorious North Anatolian fault has been worryingly quiet in recent years, which may point to a buildup in tension, they wrote. "The block we identified reaches 10 kilometers (about six miles) deep along the fault zone and has displayed no seismic activity since measurements began over four years ago," said Marco Bohnhoff, a professor at the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam, near Berlin. "This could be an indication that the expected Marmara earthquake could originate there."
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The North Anatolian fault, created by the collision of the Anatolia Plate with the Eurasia Plate, runs 1,500 kilometers (950 miles) along northern Turkey. At the western tip of the fault, an earthquake took place in 1912 at Ganos near the Aegean Sea. On its eastern side, a domino series of earthquakes in 1939, 1942, 1951, 1967 and 1999 displaced the stress progressively westwards, bringing it ever closer to Istanbul. What is left now is a so-called earthquake gap under the Sea of Marmara, lying between the two fault stretches whose stress has been eased by the quakes. The "gap" itself, however, has not been relieved by an earthquake since 1766. Seeking a more precise view of the gap, the GFZ and Istanbul's Kandilli Earthquake Observatory set up a network of seismic monitors in the eastern part of the sea. They calculate that the Anatolian fault normally has a westward motion of between 25 and 30 millimeters (one to 1.2 inches) per year.
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Sun

Baked Alaska - Unusual heat wave hits 49th state

Rachel D'Oro
Associated Press via Yahoo News
Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:38 UTC
A heat wave hitting Alaska may not rival the blazing heat of Phoenix or Las Vegas, but to residents of the 49th state, the days of hot weather feel like a stifling oven - or a tropical paradise. With temperatures topping 80 degrees in Anchorage, and higher in other parts of the state, people have been sweltering in a place where few homes have air conditioning.

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© Associated PressThis photo taken Monday, June 17, 2013, shows people sunning at Goose Lake in Anchorage, Alaska.
They're sunbathing and swimming at local lakes, hosing down their dogs and cleaning out supplies of fans in at least one local hardware store. Mid-June normally brings high temperatures in the 60s in Anchorage, and just a month ago, it was still snowing. The weather feels like anywhere but Alaska to 18-year-old Jordan Rollison, who was sunbathing with three friends and several hundred others lolling at the beach of Anchorage's Goose Lake.

"I love it, I love it," Rollison said. "I've never seen a summer like this, ever." State health officials even took the unusual step of posting a Facebook message reminding people to slather on the sunscreen. Some people aren't so thrilled, complaining that it's just too hot. "It's almost unbearable to me," said Lorraine Roehl, who has lived in Anchorage for two years after moving here from the community of Sand Point in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. "I don't like being hot. I'm used to cool ocean breeze."
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Cloud Grey

Tornado touches down at Denver International Airport

P. Solomon Banda
Associated Press via Yahoo News
Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:00 UTC
denver airport tornado
© AP Photo/Scott MorlanThis Tuesday, June 18, 2013 image provided by Scott Morlan shows a tornado that touched down near Denver International Airport.
Radar indicated a tornado briefly touched down Tuesday over the east runways of Denver International Airport, where thousands of people took shelter in bathrooms, stairwells and other safe spots until the dangerous weather passed, officials said.

Airport spokeswoman Laura Coale reported no damage. Nine flights were diverted elsewhere during a tornado warning that lasted about 40 minutes, she said.

A 97 mph wind gust was measured at the airport before communication with instruments there was briefly knocked out, said National Weather Service meteorologist Kyle Fredin.

Chris Polk, a construction foreman, was working on a renovation project just outside the airport's main concourse when he got the tornado warning at 2:15 p.m., looked up and saw a funnel cloud. He and his crew ran inside and took shelter with some 100 people, including luggage-toting passengers, inside a basement break room as tornado sirens sounded.

"It got pretty crazy around here," Polk said.

Asked whether he was nervous when he spotted the funnel cloud, he shrugged. "No, I'm from Missouri," he said.

Everyone inside the break room was calm, Polk added.
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Arrow Down

Huge 'dead zone' predicted in Gulf of Mexico

Douglas Main
LiveScience
Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:26 UTC
Dead Zone
© NOAAAreas with low levels of oxygen are referred to as dead zones. Red areas correspond to less oxygen.
A very large dead zone, an area of water with no or very little oxygen, is expected to form in the Gulf of Mexico this year - a trend in recent years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Computer models put together by scientists predict that the zone will cover an area between 7,286 and 8,561 square miles (18,871 to 22,173 square kilometers) this summer, the typical time for such zones to form. The large end of the estimate is roughly the size of the state of New Jersey, and would be the largest dead zone ever recorded. The biggest one recorded to date, in 2002, reached 8,481 square miles (21,966 square km).

Meanwhile, models predict the dead zone in the Chesapeake Bay will be smaller than usual.
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Bizarro Earth

Manam volcano erupts in Papua New Guinea


The Extinction Protocol
Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:07 UTC
An eruption with a small ash plume was reported this morning and VAAC Darwin issued an advisory. A low level ash plume was also visible on Nasa's Aqua Modis image at 15:45 UTC. This is the volcano's second eruption this year. The volcano unleashed an ash cloud in early January. - Volcano Discovery
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Bizarro Earth

5.6 magnitude quake shakes Peru's capital


Reuters via Yahoo News
Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:31 UTC
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© USGS
A 5.6 magnitude earthquake shook buildings in Peru's capital on Tuesday, Peru's geological survey and Reuters witnesses said.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damages from the quake centered in the Pacific Ocean about 73 kilometers (45 miles) west of the city.

USGS data ranks it at 4.6 magnitude
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Question

Yet another mysterious mass fish die-off in North America - Temple, Texas


kcentv.com
Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:38 UTC
Temple Community Puzzled Over Dead Fish Pond

kcentv.com - KCEN HD - Waco, Temple, and Killeen

It's a mystery that has people in Central Texas scratching their heads.

Hundreds of fish turning up dead in a Temple pond this weekend.

When lifelong Temple angler Eloy Machuca came to Miller Park today he saw something he didn't expect.

"I come down here to release some fish, usually little ones so kids can catch them, but I've never seen this many," Machua said.

What he saw were dead catfish hundreds of them.

"I would say 90 percent of them are dead."
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Question

Florida: Indian River Lagoon mystery ailment killing dolphins, manatees, pelicans

Craig Pittman
Tampa Bay Times
Sun, 16 Jun 2013 09:55 UTC

The Indian River Lagoon on Florida's east coast has long been known as the most diverse ecosystem in North America.

Its 156 miles of water boast more than 600 species of fish and more than 300 kinds of birds.

The lagoon is not just an ecological treasure. To the towns along its edge - Titusville, Cocoa, Melbourne, Vero Beach and Stuart, among others - it accounts for hundreds of millions in revenue from angling, boating, bird-watching, tourism and other waterfront activities.

But these days the Indian River Lagoon has become known as a killing zone.

Algae blooms wiped out more than 47,000 acres of its sea grass beds, which one scientist compared to losing an entire rainforest in one fell swoop.

Then, beginning last summer, manatees began dying. As of last week, 111 manatees from Indian River Lagoon had died under mysterious circumstances. Soon pelicans and dolphins began showing up dead too - more than 300 pelicans and 46 dolphins so far.
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