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Stantonsburg, North Carolina hit hard by tornado

Jon Jimison and Olivia Neeley
The Wilson Times
Sat, 11 Aug 2012 13:55 UTC
Image
© Brad Coville, Wilson Times
Stantonsburg took a hard strike from an apparent tornado late Saturday afternoon.

About seven houses along R.B. Avenue and Moyton Drive received major damage and some are beyond repair.

The Stantonsburg Police Department, Wilson County Emergency Management, firefighters, the Wilson County Sheriff's Office and the American Red Cross all responded to the emergency scene.

Judy Watson helped guide customers to the back of the Piggly Wiggly store in town as the storm approached. Her husband, Robert, who owns the store with her, was at their home on Saratoga Street when the storm hit.

"I saw the funnel cloud as it was leaving the area," Robert said. "It was an intense moment."

Their carport has been ripped away from their home. The whole end of their home's roof was lifted up by winds. You can spot cracks of daylight from inside the house where the ceiling became unhinged from the wall. Housing insulation litters the area where the carport used to stand. The carport itself has been reduced to dozens of shredded boards.
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Arrow Up

Sulphur smell across lower North Island, New Zealand

Paloma Migone
stuff.co.nz
Wed, 15 Aug 2012 13:40 UTC
Image
The smell of sulphur from Mt Tongariro has crept back to the lower North Island, with some residents complaining about irritation to their skin and eyes.

The smell has become common since the volcano erupted at 11.50pm on August 6 with residents as far as Blenheim noticing it.

The Horizon Regional Council today received "multiple complaints" about the smell being back and some residents said the sulphur had become an irritant.

Council emergency manager Shane Bayley said the smell was the result of wind drift from the mountain and was not a cause for concern.

"Our air quality monitoring sites in Taumarunui and Taihape are not showing any elevated presence of fine air particles.
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Bug

Armyworm outbreak threatens China grain output


The Extinction Protocol
Wed, 15 Aug 2012 10:17 UTC
Image
The armyworm outbreak in China's key grain producing areas has posed a major threat to the corn and rice crops this year, authorities said Tuesday. The agriculture ministry has warned the local governments to heed to its pest control advice to ensure grain security, the China Daily reported. "We haven't seen such a pest plague in so many places in almost a decade," a spokesman for the ministry's crop production department said.

To date, at least two million hectares of autumn crops nationwide have been affected. The areas include Hebei, Jilin, Liaoning, Heilongjiang and Shanxi provinces, the Inner Mongolia region and Beijing and Tianjin municipalities. The government will allocate 200 million yuan ($3.5 million) to fight the pests, the official added. - NY Daily
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Bizarro Earth

Simmering giant: 38 gas emissions reported from Mexico's Popocatepetl volcano


The Extinction Protocol
Wed, 15 Aug 2012 10:15 UTC
The Popocatepetl volcano registered 38 exhalations in the last 24 hours and one on the morning of Tuesday, was accompanied by slight amount of ash, as reported by the National Center for Disaster Prevention (Cenapred). In his report at 11:00 hours, indicated that all the exhalations of the last 24 hours were of low intensity, of which the most important were: one at 15:47 hours on Monday, another at 3:23 and most recently at 8:29, which was accompanied by ash. Bad weather conditions that prevailed during the Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning has obstructed visibility and, therefore, it is unclear which direction dispersed emissions from the volcano traveled.

From the morning until the time of writing this report there is a plume of water vapor and gas that rises a few meters above the crater, due to strong wind that goes to the northwest. The report makes no reference to seismic activity associated with the volcano or possible ashfall in neighboring towns.
- Noticieros Televisa
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Blackbox

'Crazy': Dozens of dead birds fall from the sky in New Jersey

Dan Stamm
NBC10
Wed, 15 Aug 2012 09:37 UTC
Residents in a Cumberland County, N.J., community were left wondering what caused dozens of birds to drop dead from the sky earlier this week.


Comment: Pesticides or not, SOTT has been reporting on the mysterious birds deaths for several years. Here are just a couple of articles:
Meteoric Deja-vu: Exactly one year later, dead blackbirds fall again in Beebe, Arkansas,
A Sign for the New Year: 1,000 Birds Fall From the Sky in Beebe, Arkansas

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Bizarro Earth

Hundreds of Thousands of Dead Fish in Texas Linked to Toxic Concentrations of Algae

Greg Barr
Houston Business Journal
Tue, 14 Aug 2012 09:41 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/The Daily News, Jennifer Reynolds
Dana Self, right, and friends Lisa Patton and Debra Coody relax among massive fish kill at Sunny Beach in Galveston, Texas, on Sunday, Aug. 12, 2012.

Increased concentrations of red tide algae likely left hundreds of thousands of dead fish washed up over the weekend on Galveston beaches, the Galveston County Daily News reports.

Low to moderate concentrations of the neurotoxic algal bloom were the probable cause of the fish kill that left the huge numbers of dead shad - also known as Gulf menhaden - on the island's West End beaches, an official told the newspaper, after testing revealed the presence of red tide.

The Galveston Island Park Board of Trustees brought in extra workers to deal with the fish kill and said it would clear the fish away by Wednesday if there were no more fish kills.

The presence of the algae prompted the Texas Department of State Health Services on Monday to close what little oyster harvesting was ongoing by public lease holders in Galveston Bay, department spokesman Chris Van Deusen told the newspaper.
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Bizarro Earth

Flooding in central Nigeria kills at least 28 people


Terra Daily
Tue, 14 Aug 2012 08:59 UTC
Image
© AFP
Make-shift homes of cattle dealers are submerged in floods at the Kara slum on Lagos -Ibadan highway, October 23, 2011.
Flooding caused by heavy rains in central Nigeria has killed at least 28 people, with many others still missing, while also destroying homes, bridges and farmland, officials said Tuesday.

"I have counted 28 bodies and many people are still missing after the flood," said Kemi Nshe, local government chairman for the Shendam district in central Nigeria's Plateau state.

He said some 1,500 people were displaced from the rains, the worst of which occurred Sunday.

A Red Cross official in the area said relief workers were having difficulties accessing flooded areas, which he said included around five communities. He said heavy rain began Saturday night and continued into Sunday.
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Igloo

Ice Age Cometh? Big Snow Forecast For Eastern U.S. Cities


Terra Daily
Wed, 15 Aug 2012 08:33 UTC
Image
After a 2011-2012 winter that saw little snow, the mid-Atlantic and southern New England states will get a snow dump this winter, forecasters say. Above-normal snowfall during winter 2012-2013 is forecast for the major I-95 cities including New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, AccuWeather.com reported Wednesday.

"The I-95 cities could get hit pretty good," forecaster Paul Pastelok said. "It's a matter of getting the cold to phase in with the huge systems that we are going to see coming out of the southern branch of the jet stream this year."
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Sun

Little Ice Age Thermometers- Historic Variations in Temperatures Confirms Extended Period of Warming Before Rapid Cooling

Tony Brown
Watts Up With That?
Tue, 14 Aug 2012 20:15 UTC
This short paper is a preliminary examination of BEST data to 1753, as compared to the Central England Temperature Record (CET) to 1660 (instrumental record) and 1538 (Extended by Tony Brown using thousands of contemporary observations).

CET extended and BEST temp graph
This extension to 1538 was a central part of my article 'The Long Slow Thaw,' which also examined historic temperature reconstructions by Dr Michael Mann and Hubert Lamb.

In the article, warming from the start of the CET instrumental record in 1660 to the present day was noted, albeit with numerous advances and reverses.

The extended CET record coincides well with a 2000 year reconstruction by Craig Loehle here.

And one by M. V. SHABALOVA and A. F. V. VAN ENGELEN : 'Evaluation of a reconstruction of winter and summer temperatures in the Low Countries, ad 764 - 1998' here.

According to studies made by a number of climate scientists, CET is a reasonable proxy for Northern Hemisphere -and to some extent global temperatures- as documented in 'The Long Slow Thaw'. However, as Hubert Lamb observed, it can 'show us the tendency but not the precision'. In that light there are a number of comments that can be made about the Combined CET/BEST graph which are shown above in two versions that, viewed together, provide the opportunity to follow the ups and down of the ever changing climate over the 350 years of instrumental records.

(Note; The BEST extension to 1538 and the extension to both trend lines after 2012 in the first graphic are merely a graphing feature.)
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Bizarro Earth

Alert Level Raised for Sotará Volcano in Columbia


Volcano Discovery
Thu, 09 Aug 2012 21:11 UTC
Sotarà Volcano
© INGEOMINAS
The summit of Sotarà volcano on an INGEOMINAS photo from Oct 2011.
The recent increase in seismic activity under Sotarà volcano prompted INGEOMINAS to raise the alert level from yellow (unrest) to orange (eruption warning) yesterday afternoon.

The increase had been detected on June 24, 2012 and since that date, 6891 earthquakes have been recorded, i.e. an average of 150 quakes per day. Most of them (5177) are of very small magnitude, but the remaining 1714 quakes were of significant energy (local magnitudes 0.1-2.2) and concentrated in an area between 0.1 and 5 km northeast of the volcanic summit at depths between 2 and 6 km.

None of these events were felt by inhabitants of the communities surrounding the volcano Sotará.

The deformation network shows a possible inflation process towards the northeast sector of the volcano, which correlates with the epicentral zone of seismicity reported and suggest that magma is rising there, and might (or might not) lead to an eruption in a near to medium future.

During the month of July, geochemical surveys showed no significant changes in temperatures of hot springs in the area.

INGEOMINAS stresses that this activity does not pose any immediate danger to the communities aroud the volcano. However, it should be said as well that this could change quickly.
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