Earth Changes
Emergency officials sifted through damage and debris scattered across roadways Saturday after a line of fast-moving storms and high winds swept through northwestern Wisconsin the night before, leaving at least one person dead and 39 others injured.
Three people were critically injured and a second person died, though not as a result of the storm, Burnett County spokeswoman Dawn Sargent said.
The storms also contributed to "widespread power outages" in a county with a population that normally swells to more than 80,000 people during the Fourth of July weekend.
Burnett County's typical population is about 17,000.
Rio De Janeiro - The southern parts of Brazil, a tropical country, have been stricken by cold snaps since Monday, driving down temperatures to record-low levels and bringing snow in some areas, a local weather service has reported.
The weather monitoring department of Santa Catarina state said the temperature fell to 8.8 Celsius degrees below zero in the small town of Urupema on Tuesday, while in Cambara do Sul, in Rio Grande do Sul state, along the southern border, the temperature dropped to minus 6.2 degrees.
The weather monitoring department of Santa Catarina state said the temperature fell to 8.8 Celsius degrees below zero in the small town of Urupema on Tuesday, while in Cambara do Sul, in Rio Grande do Sul state, along the southern border, the temperature dropped to minus 6.2 degrees.
Last night, a bank of rippling electric-blue noctilucent clouds spilled across the Canadian border into the lower United States. In doing so, the clouds made their farthest excursion of the year away from the Arctic, their usual environment. "These were the most brilliant NLCs I have ever witnessed!" reports Steven Rosenow, who sends this picture from Washington state:
"I took my camera to a spot along Washington's Hood Canal for a panoramic view," says Rosenow. "It was a visually stunning display that stretched as far as the eye could see." NLC reports are also coming in from Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, and Minnesota, and in Europe as far south as Belgium and France. (Stay tuned for updates.)
Back in the 19th century, these mysterious clouds were confined to polar regions. In recent years, however, NLCs have spread toward the equator, appearing in places such as Utah, Colorado, and perhaps even Virginia. Is this a sign of climate change? Some researchers think so. Sky watchers at all latitudes are encouraged to be alert for electric blue just after sunset or before sunrise; observing tips may be found in the 2011 NLC gallery.
© Steven Rosenow
Back in the 19th century, these mysterious clouds were confined to polar regions. In recent years, however, NLCs have spread toward the equator, appearing in places such as Utah, Colorado, and perhaps even Virginia. Is this a sign of climate change? Some researchers think so. Sky watchers at all latitudes are encouraged to be alert for electric blue just after sunset or before sunrise; observing tips may be found in the 2011 NLC gallery.
© n/a
As for the Japanese situation, after months of claims by both the Japanese and American "authorities," as well as the mainstream media that the situation in Japan was not as serious as "conspiracy theorists" were making it out to be, the Japanese Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters has finally been forced to admit that at least three of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had, indeed, melted down.
Of course, these admissions came well after the mainstream media had long since stopped reporting on the Japanese crisis. But the fact that the Japanese reactors had melted down is not news to those of us who no longer follow the mainstream media. Indeed, most readers of the independent media were well aware of the nuclear meltdowns in what was virtually real time.
© AP
Rescuers scrambled to reach the miners at the Niupeng coal mine in the county of Pingtang in Guizhou province on Saturday morning, according to a staffer from the Pingtang work safety bureau. The staffer would only give her surname, Chen, as is typical for officials.
Chen confirmed rescuers were at the mine and the cause of the flood was under investigation, but did not have any details about the rescue.
Imagine your favorite fishing lake suddenly losing 60 percent of its bass and 80 percent of its bream to a massive die-off and not knowing the cause. That's the situation facing Ogeechee River anglers.
Five weeks after one of the most devastating fish kills in Georgia history decimated the Ogeechee River, state officials aren't sure why it happened, but attention centers on a wastewater discharge pipe at King America Finishing. The textile plant near Sylvania has 175 employees and processes more than 50 million yards of fabric annually, applying finishes like fire retardant and water-resistant coatings.
The Ogeechee River death zone stretches for 70 miles and begins just below the wastewater discharge pipe.
© The Associated Press / Rich Pedroncelli
Local resident Jeff Cole, makes his way across a snow covered field as he goes for a ski run at Alpine Meadows Ski Resort near Tahoe City, Calif., Thursday, June 30, 2011. An unusually cold and wet year, which continues to bring snow to California's mountains, is enabling Alpine Meadows to be open for the Fourth of July weekend for the first time since 1995 and for just the second time in its 50-year history. Neighboring Squaw Valley USA also plans to be open for skiing over the weekend
Local resident Jeff Cole, makes his way across a snow covered field as he goes for a ski run at Alpine Meadows Ski Resort near Tahoe City, Calif., Thursday, June 30, 2011. An unusually cold and wet year, which continues to bring snow to California's mountains, is enabling Alpine Meadows to be open for the Fourth of July weekend for the first time since 1995 and for just the second time in its 50-year history. Neighboring Squaw Valley USA also plans to be open for skiing over the weekend
Ski poles are replacing fishing poles at popular hiking and camping spots where late-winter snowstorms blanketed Western mountains from the Rockies to the Sierra Nevada.
"A lot of people are calling it the trifecta day, where they're going to ski in the morning, mountain bike in the afternoon, maybe do something on the lake in the evening," said Julie Mauer, a spokeswoman at Sierra ski resort Squaw Valley, which saw record-breaking snowfall this season. The resort plans to open four ski lifts on the upper mountain and promises free commemorative July 4 t-shirts to the first 5,000 guests who show up on Monday.
At Crystal Mountain, south of Seattle, spokeswoman Justus Harris said she expected to see "a lot of bikini tops" out on the slopes. The National Weather Service is predicting mostly sunny skies on the mountain on July 4, with a high near 59 degrees. The mountain hasn't been open this late in the year since 1999.
An unseasonably strong low-pressure system has brought above-average rainfall to California's Central Valley and the Sierra earlier this week, and the National Weather Service on Thursday issued a flood warning for much of the region, cautioning that warming temperatures leading into the weekend will accelerate snowmelt and cause rising water levels in rivers and streams.
It was the day that many residents in the northwest corner of Platte County were fearing, after heavy rains overnight proved to be the final straw for levees already struggling to hold back the flooded Missouri River.
Waters from a broken levee washed through the town of Rushville, Missouri, across the river from Atchison, Kansas, after an inch-and-a-half of rain overnight. Rushville resident Diana Stanton and her brothers spent Monday working to save their nearly-century old farmhouse.
"We've been hanging on by our teeth last night. We had an inch and half of rain here, the big storm, so we knew this morning we were going to have problems," said Stanton, who spent the day pulling up carpets and cleaning out furniture.
Brother Keith Stanton says that last week they laid out sandbags to stop the rising water, but it wasn't enough.
"We probably laid 30,000 sand bags," he said.
At nearby Sugar Lake, the water is rising fast. Area resident Tammy Christgen and her family emptied their house on the front lawn on Monday, as trucks haul belongings to higher ground. But Christgen says that they will be back.
© Photo by Rich Wisniewski/KMOT-TV
Floodwaters inundate a street in Burlington, N.D., a town a mile east of Minot. Burlington was one of the first towns to get hit by the historic floods in North Dakota, according to Rich Wisniewski, a Gloucester County native who works for a TV station in Minot.
Floodwaters inundate a street in Burlington, N.D., a town a mile east of Minot. Burlington was one of the first towns to get hit by the historic floods in North Dakota, according to Rich Wisniewski, a Gloucester County native who works for a TV station in Minot.
Up until recently, that's all Minot, North Dakota, was to Rich Wisniewski. A number.
For about eight years, he'd wanted to be a TV reporter, so, following the advice of his boss at NBC 10 in Bala Cynwyd - where he'd been interning for a year and a half - Wisniewski last year Googled the top 210 television markets in the country, started at 150, and worked his way down through Montana, Wyoming, upstate New York, Florida.
KMOT-TV, the Minot-Bismarck-Dickinson market that ranked 158, was just one of 70 small market stations Wisniewski, a Rowan University graduate, sent his résumé tape to.
Today, seven months after KMOT hired him, Minot is Wisniewski's adopted home.
He watched last week as the worst flooding in the city's history swept through town, swallowing up homes, streets and businesses. He watched, not with the cool, detached eye of someone paid to cover and report the news, but as a resident of the ravaged town, as a neighbor, as a person.
© Barbara Jones
Open Billed Storks at Sunset, Botswana, Africa
Open Billed Storks at Sunset, Botswana, Africa
The former Director of Meteorological Services, David Lesolle, told Mmegi in an interview this week that climate change is manifesting itself in climate variability and excessive rainfall that came even in winter, making its utilisation difficult.
Lesolle said though the developing countries are adversely affected by this climate change phenomenon, they are not its cause. Developed countries caused it. He said, "We cannot stop climate change but adapt it. We can only stop our emissions."
Comment: While it is true that the climate is changing and will have devastating consequences for societies, greenhouse emissions have little to do with this. For a more realistic assessment of what's going on here on the BBM read Forget About Global Warming: We're One Step From Extinction!
He said signs of the vulnerability of developing countries in Africa happened a few years ago when the cyclones occurred in Madagascar and the Indian Ocean. This was in 2000 when the Eline cyclone brought vast rainfalls into Botswana and South Africa where dams were filled beyond capacity. Both countries opened their dams so that their walls would not be damaged. The excessive waters flowed into Mozambique.
Comment: Editor's note: So far, we have seen no evidence to support the idea that HAARP technology is capable of causing earthquakes.