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6 killed, 1 injured in landslide in Myanmar's northernmost state

Xiaoxia
Xinhua
Tue, 12 Feb 2019 12:35 UTC
Six Jade Scavengers Killed in Myanmar Cliff Collapse in Kachin State 2019-02-11
© Zaw Moe Htet
People watch rescuers remove the bodies of six jade scavengers who died when a cliff collapsed at a jade mine near Spot village of Sate Mu village tract in Hpakant township, northern Myanmar's Kachin state, Feb. 10, 2019.
Six people were killed with one injured in a landslide in Myanmar's northern mining region, said the Home Affairs Ministry on Tuesday.

The landslide occurred at a jade mining site near a village in Hpakant in Kachin state on Sunday.

The 30.5-meter high cliff wall collapsed, killing six jade scavengers and injuring a man, who was in a six-wheeled truck buried in the landslide at 01:15 p.m. local time, the release said.

The bodies of the jade scavengers were recovered in the evening on that day and the injured was brought to the Hpakant General Hospital.
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Windsock

Historic winter storm hits Hawaii with record-high waves, flooding, extreme winds and rare snow


The Province
Mon, 11 Feb 2019 20:40 UTC
Hawaii winter storm
© NASA/NOAA Suomi NPP/VIIRS
Kona low affecting Hawaii on February 10, 2019.

An extremely powerful winter storm is pulling away from Hawaii after unleashing damaging winds, massive waves, coastal flooding, and snow in unusual places.

The storm, which the National Weather Service office in Honolulu described as "historic," first began pounding the islands Friday. Hawaii News Now reported a 66-year old California man died in the rough surf off northwest Maui on Friday.

"(Forecasters) are calling this an unprecedented event and we concur that we rarely if ever have seen the combination of record high on-shore waves, coupled with gale force winds," said Sam Lemmo, administrator of Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR).

The storm's most extreme blow was generated on the Big Island's towering peak of Mauna Kea where a 191-mph wind gust blasted the mountain summit at 4:40 p.m. local time Sunday.

"That's the strongest wind gust I've ever seen up there," said Jon Jelsema, senior forecaster at the Weather Service office in Honolulu. "We tend to get a gust maybe to 150 mph once a winter or so, but never 191 mph."

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Bug

Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten global collapse of nature'

Damian Carrington
Guardian
Mon, 11 Feb 2019 18:00 UTC
insect
© Entomologisher Verein Krefeld
The rate of insect extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles.
The world's insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a "catastrophic collapse of nature's ecosystems", according to the first global scientific review.

More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.

The planet is at the start of a sixth mass extinction in its history, with huge losses already reported in larger animals that are easier to study. But insects are by far the most varied and abundant animals, outweighing humanity by 17 times. They are "essential" for the proper functioning of all ecosystems, the researchers say, as food for other creatures, pollinators and recyclers of nutrients.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?

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Arrow Up

Chimpanzees build ladder to escape from Belfast zoo

Tim Sandle
Digital Journal
Mon, 11 Feb 2019 21:14 UTC
Female chimpanzee
© NELSON ALMEIDA, AFP
A female chimpanzee holds her baby at the Great Apes Project (GAP), a sanctuary for apes in Sorocaba, some 100km west of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Most of us would wish to escape from captivity and a group of abstract thinking chimpanzees temporarily managed this feat by building a makeshift ladder to escape from Belfast Zoo.

In February 2019, a group of enterprising chimpanzees managed to get out of their enclosure at Belfast Zoo (Northern Ireland) by propping a tree branch against the wall to enable their improvised escape. Video footage provided by NPR (see below) shows two chimpanzees making it it to the top of the wall with one of the chimpanzees scurrying away. In all, five chimpanzees left their enclosure.

The escaped chimpanzee was later seen striding down an embankment and onto a roadway. However, later all of the chimpanzees returned home, apparently not caring much for human habitats. Speaking with The Guardian, Zookeeper Alyn Cairns states that the trees in the enclosure had been weakened by the storms (such as the recent Storm Eric), providing structures for the chimps to break and use as ladders to escape.

He adds, about the chimps returning home: "They're intelligent primates and know they're not supposed to be out of their enclosure, so got back in themselves."
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Fire

New Zealand is battling its worst wildfire in more than 60 years

Casey Quackenbush
TIME
Mon, 11 Feb 2019 09:34 UTC
wildfire on New Zealand’s South Island
© Reuters
A firefighter puts out a blaze during a week-long wildfire on New Zealand’s South Island.
A massive bushfire has churned through more than 5,600 acres on New Zealand's South Island in what is believed to be the country's worst forest fire since 1955, BBC reports.

A state of emergency was declared on Feb. 6, two days after the Pigeon Valley Fire began near the city of Nelson. As of Monday, the blaze was still scorching the island's arid countryside, but as firefighting conditions improved, around 3,000 evacuated residents were allowed to return home.

Local MP Nick Smith described the region as a "tinderbox" and said 70,000 residents in the fire's range remain "on edge."

Twenty-three helicopters and two planes have reportedly been deployed to combat the blaze in the nation's largest aerial firefight on record, according to the New Zealand Herald.

Fire chiefs have warned that the flames could continue until March.

The bushfire follows a heatwave that saw some areas of New Zealand sweating out 90°F days last month. The New Zealand Drought Index reports "extremely dry" conditions in the Nelson area, which has reportedly been parched since November 2018.

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Snowflake Cold

Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Global warming = All time record cold


Adapt 2030
Mon, 11 Feb 2019 14:15 UTC
Global warming boiling frog
© YouTube/Adapt 2030 (screen capture)
New articles out trying to explain away the recent record cold in N. America and record snow in Europe. I break down how the article forgets to include discussions of Earths weakening magnetic field, polar wander or solar activity as a reason jet streams are wandering into the wrong locations across the globe and with it extreme weather. The only reason I bring it up is that it is a cycle and irregular harvests mean global food instability.


Comment: 'Experts' attribute EVERY kind of weather to 'global warming' in attempts to validate it

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Snowflake

Heavy snowfall across the Alps again - nearly 2 feet in 24 hours

Patrick Thorne
Inthesnow.com
Mon, 11 Feb 2019 16:15 UTC
snow
The latest heavy snowfall is impacting ski areas across the Alps with skiers and boarders waking up to deep fresh snow outside.

More than 150 ski areas have reported 20cm+ accumulations in the past 24 hours with some as much as 56cm (almost two feet) overnight.

Switzerland has reported the biggest accumulations so far with several resorts in the Bernese Oberland, Valais and Central Switzerland reporting more than 50cm of snow since Sunday.


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Attention

Poás Volcano in Costa Rica registers overnight eruption, National Park closed

Alejandro Zúñiga
The Tico Times
Mon, 11 Feb 2019 15:58 UTC
volcano
Poás Volcano erupted early Monday morning, prompting the closure of its national park.

According to the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica (OVSICORI), the eruption began at 1:50 a.m. Monday and sent a column of ash 200 meters above the crater.

OVSICORI shared a time-lapse video of the volcanic activity:

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Cloud Precipitation

Burst dam kills 3 in West Java, Indonesia following heavy rainfall

Arya Dipa
The Jakarta Post
Sun, 10 Feb 2019 15:30 UTC
A man checks out the condition of his housing
© JP/Arya Dipa
A man checks out the condition of his housing complex in Pasir Jati, Bandung regency, West Java, on Sunday, following heavy rains on Saturday.
Heavy rains in Bandung, West Java and its surrounding areas on Saturday night caused the dam holding the Cinambo River in Pasar Jati, Bandung regency to burst, resulting in flooding that claimed three lives.

The flooding hit residential areas in Cigending subdistrict, Ujungberung district and several houses in the Endah regency complex, where eight people were dragged away by the strong currents.

The Bandung search and rescue (SAR) office said three people, including a baby, had been declared dead, while five people had been rescued.

The victims were identified as Phida, 40, Hani, 25 and Raifan, 1.

"The joint SAR team has moved all residents affected by the flooding to a safer location," Bandung SAR spokesperson Joshua Banjarnahor said on Sunday.
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Cow

Up to 500,000 cattle die due to flooding caused by record rainfall in Queensland, Australia (UPDATE - with video)

Ben Smee and AAP
The Guardian
Fri, 08 Feb 2019 12:53 UTC
Dead cattle at Eddington Station in western Queenand. Photograph: Rachael Anderson
© Rachael Anderson
Dead cattle at Eddington Station in western Queensland.
The Queensland government has announced an inquiry into the historic flooding in Townsville, as evidence mounts that local authorities failed to anticipate the extreme nature of the recent record rainfall.

The independent inquiry will look into "key preparedness and response elements" to the storms that dumped more than one metre of rain on Townsville in less than a week.

In the west of the state, graziers have been confronted with scenes described by one mayor as "hell", as it became clear up to 300,000 cattle had died in the floods. The premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, said the sight so many cattle that had died agonising deaths made her "sick in the stomach".


Comment: Update: The Guardian reports on the 11th of January:
In north-west Queensland it hadn't rained, any decent rain, for more than five years.

When the downpour finally came last week, graziers were elated. Now it's feared up to 500,000 cattle, mostly from severely drought-stressed herds, have been killed in widespread flood waters.

The full extent of the losses won't be known for weeks; some properties remain underwater and the flood waters are moving south. But the agricultural industry's peak body says the situation has already become "a massive humanitarian crisis", affecting an area twice the size of Victoria.

After a prolonged drought, some rural parts of Queensland received three years' worth of average rainfall in a week.


Dead cattle at Eddington station 20km west of Julia Creek, Queensland.
© Rachael Anderson
Dead cattle at Eddington station 20km west of Julia Creek, Queensland.


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