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Snow and rain causes chaos across South Africa


IOL News
Sat, 14 Jul 2012 14:56 UTC
Several serious incidents have been reported as the rain and snowfall gripped some parts of the country, the Road Traffic Management Centre (RTMC) said on Saturday.

RTMC spokesman Ashraf Ismail said three people were killed and two others injured in an accident on the N6 between Jamestown and Queenstown.

In the Western Cape, a search party for an ambulanc
Image
© Bongiwe Mchunu
e that had gone missing was launched.

"The ambulance left Beaufort West earlier today and was on route to Loxton. It's unclear what became of it," said Ismail.

Rescue workers were also trying to get to a bus that was stuck in the snow in the Three Sisters area. The bus was carrying 60 passengers.

The RTMC has called on motorists to exercise caution on the roads and delay their trips until the troubling weather subsides.
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Snowflake

Snowfall in South Africa blocks main highways


The Voice of Russia
Sat, 14 Jul 2012 13:07 UTC
snow south africa
© EPA
Heavy snow in South Africa has triggered the closure of two of its main highways which link the capital Pretoria and nearby Johannesburg in the country's north to Cape Town in the south, the local Road Traffic Management reports.

According to the officials, there are no alternative bypass routes.

Forecasters have warned that the snowfall is likely to continue throughout the day.

Source: Agence France-Presse
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Bizarro Earth

Torrential rains kill 20 and displace 3 million in China


Indian Express
Sat, 14 Jul 2012 10:58 UTC
Heavy storms battered many parts of China over the last two days, killing 20 people and affecting more than 3 million others, officials have said. The storms swept across 15 counties and cities, causing floods and landslides. In eastern province of Shandong, four people have died, and more than 100,000 forced to evacuate from low lying areas, Xinhua reported. More than 3 million people have been affected in the province.

Floods have inundated crops, damaged houses and killed livestock. The disaster has caused an economic loss of more than 1.5 billion yuan (around USD 240 million). Eight people were killed on Friday after rainstorms triggered landslides in the city of Liupanshui in southwest China's Guizhou Province, the city government said.

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Bizarro Earth

Search resumes for 4 missing in massive landslide in southeastern British Columbia - hope languishing


CBC
Sat, 14 Jul 2012 10:55 UTC

Canada - The search for four people assumed caught in Thursday's landslide in southeastern B.C. resumed Friday afternoon and was to continue until dark, and then resume at first light Saturday morning, officials say.

More landslides earlier Friday had delayed the ground search for a father, his two adult daughters and a German woman believed to be trapped by a landslide that roared down a mountainside in southeastern B.C.

RCMP said there had been further slides in the area, and because of that searchers had to wait for geotechnicians to assess the safety of the terrain before they went in.

Bill Macpherson, spokesman for the Central Kootenay Regional District, said engineers gave the go-ahead, although there was no certainty the danger had passed.

"In spite of ongoing debris movement and continued slope instability, the search of the landslide at Johnsons Landing has resumed this afternoon at approximately14:15 hours [PT]," Macpherson said in a statement Friday afternoon.
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Bizarro Earth

500 dead penguins wash up on beaches in Brazil


BBC News
Sat, 14 Jul 2012 10:51 UTC
Brazilian biologists are investigating the deaths of more than 500 penguins found washed up on the beaches of Rio Grande do Sul state.

Autopsies are being conducted on some of the birds to determine the cause of death.

Researchers said the penguins appeared to have been well-fed, with no apparent injuries and no oil on their bodies.

Similar incidents in the past have been blamed on shifting ocean currents and colder temperatures.

Magellanic Penguins migrate to southern Brazil from Patagonia every year during the southern winter.

Last week dozens of young penguins were rescued from beaches in Rio de Janeiro after straying far beyond their normal range.

The birds delighted beach-goers, but scientists said their health was suffering in the tropical waters.
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Igloo

Brutal Bering Sea Ice Blocking Arctic Supply Ships


Alaska Dispatch
Thu, 12 Jul 2012 15:54 UTC
Stuck in Ice
© Alaska Dispatch
Brutal sea ice conditions that northwest Alaska battled all winter haven't receded in parts of northern Canada. Two resupply ships are stuck waiting at the mouth of Frobisher Bay in Iqaluit because of tough ice conditions. Frobisher Bay is an inlet of the Labrador Sea.

In June, winds and currents pushed heavy ice in to the area, CBC News reported on Wednesday.

Now, two Canadian Coast Guard icebreakers are trying to punch a path through for the resupply vessels. However, the ice is so thick that it's closing in around the icebreakers before the other ships can follow.

"Thirty miles of heavy ice to get to Pike Risser channel. And from Iqaluit you can see out your window ... basically open water, but it's ice out of Pike Risser channel. Outside of that, that is where the heavy ice is," said Andy Maillet of the Coast Guard's Arctic Operations Centre.

Maillet doesn't expect the ice conditions to improve until mid-July. Rain and drizzle have made navigation even harder, cutting visibility.
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Question

Raccoon Attack Sends Woman to Hospital

Molly Maddock
ABC News
Wed, 11 Jul 2012 16:48 UTC
Michaela Lee
© ABCNews.go

A Washington state woman suffered 16 puncture wounds and over 100 lacerations after being attacked by a pack of raccoons.

Twenty-eight-year-old Michaela Lee was jogging on a trail near her Lakewood home when her dog spotted two raccoons and chased them up a tree.

"I went over to pick up the leash and head home when three other raccoons just charged out of the grass straight for me. I decided to run, but they were chasing me and clawing at the back of my legs," Lee said.

She had just gotten to her neighbor's yard when she tripped over them. As soon as she fell, the raccoons began to viciously attack, biting her arms and legs as she lay trapped under them. Seconds later, Lee's dog ran up and began biting and growling at them, scaring several of them off and giving Lee enough time to get on her feet.

"I'm so thankful that my dog is so loyal," said Lee, who believes it was the actions of her dog, Madison, that saved her from further injury.
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Cow

Ranchers ravaged by fires, drought and scarce alfalfa

Laura Zuckerman
Reuters
Fri, 13 Jul 2012 14:15 UTC
'We're going to run out of grass. It's shaping up to be scary,' says expert
Image
© George Frey/Reuters
Ranchers herd cattle through Fairview, Utah, in order to get them away from a nearby wildfire on June 26.
It took less than an hour last month for a Montana wildfire to reduce Scott McRae's ranch to thousands of blackened acres devoid of the grasses that were to sustain hundreds of cattle.

"That is 500 mouths to feed with nothing to eat in sight," said McRae, 53, co-owner of a family ranch founded in the 1880s in southeastern Montana.

McRae is among scores of ranchers across the West whose grazing lands have been charred by blazes or ravaged by drought amid a regional shortfall of the alfalfa hay that could stave off starvation.

With drought affecting more than half the contiguous United States and less than a quarter of the nation's pasture and range rated good to excellent, cattle producers from Montana to Nevada are bracing for a rough season.

While some ranchers like McRae use private lands for grazing, many others pay modest fees to graze herds on acreage managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service under decades-old laws governing grazing on the West's vast federal lands.

Comment: Largest natural disaster area ever declared in U.S., over half the country in drought
Global food crisis looms as grain prices soar

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Umbrella

5-mile-long landslide in Alaska national park

Miguel Llanos
MSNBC
Fri, 13 Jul 2012 11:05 UTC
Image
© Glacier Bay National Park
Rock and debris from a landslide lie along five miles of what had been an ice-white glacier inside Glacier Bay National Park.
A massive landslide sent tons of rock and debris tumbling more than five miles down a glacier in Alaska, the National Park Service reported in an event that could be yet another sign of a warming world.

Located in a remote area of Glacier Bay National Park, the slide was so big it registered on earthquake monitors as a magnitude 3.4 event.

Officials noticed the monitor blip on June 11 but it wasn't until July 2 that a pilot passing over the site took photos that showed just how large it was, Glacier Bay National Park announced on its Facebook page.

Larger landslides have happened over geologic history, Marten Geertsema, a natural hazards researcher for the Forest Service in nearby British Columbia, told msnbc.com, but it certainly was "one of the longest runout landslides on a glacier in Alaska and Canada in recent times."
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Cow Skull

Largest natural disaster area ever declared in U.S., over half the country in drought

Dylan Stableford
Yahoo! News
Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:55 UTC
US drought map
© USDA
The United States Department of Agriculture has declared natural disaster areas in more than 1,000 counties and 26 drought-stricken states, making it the largest natural disaster in America ever.

The declaration - which covers roughly half of the country - gives farmers and ranchers devastated by drought access to federal aid, including low-interest emergency loans.
      Read More...
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