Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Indonesia lifts tsunami warning after Sumatra quake

A powerful magnitude 7.1 earthquake jolted the Indian Ocean off Indonesia's Sumatra island early on Thursday, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties and a brief tsunami alert was lifted.

©REUTERS/Graphics

Bizarro Earth

Volcanic activity seen as cause of earthquakes in British Columbia

Volcanic activity appears to be the cause of the earthquakes 150 kilometres southwest of Prince George, volcanologist Catherine Hickson said Wednesday, but is stressing that the potential for an actual eruption remains low.

Scientists are continuing to monitor the situation and five seismographs have been moved into the location about 20 km. west of Nazko Cone, a small dormant volcano that last erupted 7,200 years ago.

Cloud Lightning

Record Breaking Temps In NYC For 5th Time In Oct.

City On Brink Of Warmest October Ever

For the fifth time this month, a record high temperature was set at LaGuardia Airport on Tuesday, and it's the seventh record high to be set in the last six weeks.

The temperature Tuesday topped out at 80-degrees, breaking the old record set back in 1995.

Bizarro Earth

California wildfires force historic evacuation

Fierce wildfires raged across Southern California on Tuesday, threatening more than 60,000 homes as night fell and forcing half a million people to flee in the state's largest evacuation.

©Reuters

Bizarro Earth

Geologists: Collier Glacier in Oregon is shrinking

Between the North Sister and Middle Sister in Oregon's Cascade Range, Collier Glacier has advanced and receded for hundreds of thousands of years. But like many glaciers, it is headed in one direction these days: backward.

It is in serious peril, says geologist Ellen Morris Bishop of the Fossil-based Oregon Paleo Lands Institute. "We have basically a really sad picture of Collier Glacier today."

©Glaciers Online

Red Flag

Raging Calif. Wildfires Force 1M to Flee

SAN DIEGO - Faced with unrelenting winds whipping wildfires into a frenzy across Southern California, firefighters all but conceded defeat Tuesday to an unstoppable force that has chased an estimated 1 million people away.

Cloud Lightning

No relief in sight for Maryland drought

With a near-record drought parching the state, the coming winter will be critical in determining whether Maryland faces even more disastrous crop failures for farmers and strict watering curbs for suburban homeowners in 2008.

And while there may be showers Tuesday, the prospects for real drought relief in the coming months appear slim.

©photo by Elizabeth Malby
Low water levels at Prettyboy Reservoir are the result of the current drought. "We're looking at the second-driest May-to-September on record, and the records go back to 1895 -- 113 years," said Richard Heim of the USGS.

Cloud Lightning

Heavy rains flood parts of New Orleans still recovering from Katrina

Residents in areas only now recovering from hurricane Katrina have been soaked by more than 20 centimetres of rain, flooding streets, forcing the closure of schools and leaving businesses sitting in waist-high water.

The city's drainage pumps were working properly Monday but were unable to keep up with the intense rain, emergency preparedness officials said. They urged motorists to stay off roads.

©AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Lauren Robinson from New Orleans walks through the water in the uptown area of New Orleans on her way to study in a coffeehouse Monday, Oct. 22, 2007.

Cloud Lightning

Flood displaces 120,000 villagers in Nigeria

No fewer than 60 communities have either been submerged or ravaged by a charging flood in four states of the Niger-Delta, specifically, Delta, Edo, Bayelsa and Ondo states in the past few weeks with more than 120,000 persons reportedly dislodged following the overflow of the River Niger and the bordering tributaries Vanguard learnt that the kind of flooding that was experienced, this year, has never been experienced in the riverside communities of the Niger-Delta in the past five decades and the situation was not helped by the fact that most of the communities do not have foreshore protective walls and there was no piling or concrete measures taken to prevent flood disaster.

©APA - Vienna

Cloud Lightning

250,000 flee raging wildfires in California

A quarter-million people fled their homes amid wildfires that had burned 100,000 acres around San Diego County, officials said Monday.

©NASA
This photograph from space shows smoke rising from the wildfires in Southern California.