Earth Changes

First Time Ever in South Africa: Snow in All 9 Provinces

News24
Thu, 09 Aug 2012 20:41 UTC

© News24
Much of SA is covered in a blanket of snow as the latest cold front sinks its teeth into the country. Share your snow photos with us.

Johannesburg - It is probably the first time ever that snow has fallen in all nine of South Africa's provinces on the same day.

Kenosi Machepa from the SA Weather Service said this when referring to the vast cold front that brought snow to Pretoria for the first time since the late 1960s, reported Beeld .

In the Western Cape, snow fell on mountains in the Boland as well as in towns like Richmond and Touws River while snow was lying thick on the Matroosberg in Ceres.

In Johannesburg, snow was lying up to 20cm deep in some areas while Golden Gate in the Free State got the most snow in six years.

In Bethlehem, snow was up to 70cm deep and schools were closed due to the weather. There was also snow in Mpumalanga and Limpopo while light snow fell in the North West.

The weather office said the cold would continue for another day or two.

Livestock Farmers Suffering from Drought Feed Cost Increases Still Waiting for Obama to Stop Ethanol Production

IBJ.com
Thu, 09 Aug 2012 00:00 UTC

Livestock farmers and ranchers seeing their feed costs rise because of the worst drought in a quarter-century are demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency waive production requirements for corn-based ethanol.

The Obama administration sees no need for a waiver, siding with corn growers - many of them in presidential election battleground states Iowa and Ohio - who continue to support the mandate.

"If not now, when?" Randy Spronk, a Minnesota pork farmer, said of the EPA's authority to defer the ethanol production requirement when it threatens to severely harm the economy of a state or region. "Everyone should feel the pain of rationing."

Spronk, who is president-elect of the National Pork Producers Council, said livestock producers will have to reduce their herds and flocks because feed is becoming scarce and too expensive. Cattlemen and chicken farmers have the same concern.

'Inconvenient Result' - July 2012 NOT a Record Breaker

Anthony Watts
Watts up With That?
Wed, 08 Aug 2012 00:00 UTC

I decided to do myself something that so far NOAA has refused to do: give a CONUS average temperature for the United States from the new 'state of the art' United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN). After spending millions of dollars to put in this new network from 2002 to 2008, they are still giving us data from the old one when they report a U.S. national average temperature. As readers may recall, I have demonstrated that old COOP/USHCN network used to monitor U.S. climate is a mishmash of urban, semi-urban, rural, airport and non-airport stations, some of which are sited precariously in observers backyards, parking lots, near air conditioner vents, airport tarmac, and in urban heat islands. This is backed up by the 2011 GAO report spurred by my work.

Weird Weather Rains Seaweed Over Gloucestershire Village

The Telegraph, UK
Thu, 09 Aug 2012 14:01 UTC

© SWNS
Naomi Sheldon with some of the seaweed deposited in the front garden of her neighbour's house in Berkeley, Gloucestershire.

They were stunned to find their homes, gardens and cars littered with the smelly marine algae after a stormy weather spout swept up the debris from a beach 20 miles away.

Weather experts believe the seaweed was picked up from Clevedon Beach in North Somerset by a twister during freak weather conditions on the coast.

It was then carried through the air - before being deposited on the quiet street in Berkeley, near Cheltenham, Glos.

Stunned engineer Dr Richard Overton, 55, and his wife Kay, collected an entire bucket full of the green slime from their front garden.

He said: "I looked out of the window after a very big storm finished and to my amazement there were lots of flakes of seaweed scattered over the garden.

"I've heard stories of fish being picked up and dumped by storms but never seaweed. I was just so surprised."

Other residents on 'The Common', an up-market lane which overlooks acres of fields, also found seaweed in their gardens.

Giant sinkholes in Brooklyn worry residents

Ellyn Marks
Pix 11
Thu, 09 Aug 2012 06:24 UTC

It's not the sky that's falling, but the earth opening up in a couple of spots in Bay Ridge, that has some of its residents rattled.

Mimi Carroll lives near the giant sinkhole on 79th Street that came close to swallowing a car last Wednesday.

"Thank God there wasn't a car going down the street at the time," she said. "So then it's not just damage to the street, and property, it's people."

But the mother of all sinkholes in the neighborhood was the cave-in at 92nd Street and Third Avenue at the end of June. Workers have yet to reach the damaged portion of the sewer main 70 feet below street level. It's expected to be weeks before the work is completed and the street reopened.

"We have to deal with keeping the hole structurally sound. We have to deal with buildings around us being shaken, and we have a lot of concerns from gas lines to electric," said construction worker George Aragona.

Update: Los Angeles rattled by two 4.5 magnitude earthquakes within 10 hours

Steve Gorman
Reuters
Wed, 08 Aug 2012 14:01 UTC

A magnitude 4.5 earthquake struck near the Southern California town of Yorba Linda for the second time in just over 10 hours on Wednesday, rattling the Los Angeles area, but no damage or injuries were immediately reported. The latest quake was recorded shortly after 9:30 a.m. (12:30 p.m. EDT) 2 miles (3 km) northeast of Yorba Linda, an affluent Orange County community southeast of Los Angeles that was the birthplace of the late former President Richard Nixon and houses his presidential library and museum.

It was centered about 5.5 miles (9 km) beneath the surface. The earlier temblor occurred at about 9:20 p.m. on Tuesday in about the same area at about the same depth, and was followed by more than a dozen smaller aftershocks overnight, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The two 4.5-magnitude quakes were both felt as far away as downtown Los Angeles, about 35 miles (56 km) away, where rattling and rumbling was felt for several seconds at a time.

USGS Data

USGS: Earthquake Magnitude 5.6 - Alaska Peninsula

US Geological Survey
Wed, 08 Aug 2012 13:19 UTC

Date-Time
Wednesday, August 08, 2012 at 14:05:19 UTC
Wednesday, August 08, 2012 at 06:05:19 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location
54.980°N, 161.222°W
Depth
55.5 km (34.5 miles)
Region
ALASKA PENINSULA

Distances
71 km (44 miles) SW of Sand Point, Alaska
972 km (603 miles) SW of Anchorage, Alaska
1006 km (625 miles) SW of Knik-Fairview, Alaska
1338 km (831 miles) SW of College, Alaska

4.4 Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Greater Los Angeles area, subsequent aftershocks

Washingtonpost.com
Wed, 08 Aug 2012 11:36 UTC

There are no reports of damage from a late-night moderate earthquake widely felt in Southern California. The U.S. Geological Survey says the magnitude-4.4 quake struck at 11:23 p.m. Tuesday and was centered two miles east of Yorba Linda in northern Orange County.

There was a magnitude-2.7 aftershock about a minute later. The quake was felt throughout the Los Angeles area, including the San Fernando Valley some 50 miles from the epicenter. Los Angeles firefighters found no damage after a citywide assessment completed early Wednesday. The epicenter is about 35 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

USGS data

Climate change and the Tooth Fairy

Sam Outcalt
Daily Camera
Mon, 06 Aug 2012 05:46 UTC

Within Boulder County there is a strong and widespread belief that the current extreme weather events are produced by anthropogenic global warming. Without considering the scientific merits of this theory or religion a simple consideration of the implications of its validity might be instructive.

If true, the vast expenditure of global, national, state, county and municipal funds to attenuate its effects have failed.

If false, the current climate shift is the result of natural processes over which mankind has no control.

These options suggest that the current efforts to regulate the global climate are either ineffective or misdirected.

I doubt that this short note will diminish the strongly held belief within the county that these efforts are effective. Redirection of some funds spent in Boulder County on the study and regulation of the Earth's climate might be better spent on an Annual Tooth Fairy Festival, as the Tooth Fairy is a much cheaper abstraction based on similar logic.

The remainder of the funding should be terminated to aid in balancing the city, county, state and federal budgets.

Two dead as storms wreck havoc in Austria and northern Italy

Agence France Presse
Sun, 05 Aug 2012 02:52 UTC

Storms wreaked havoc in Austria and northern Italy over the weekend, causing landslides that killed two people, authorities said Sunday.

An 84-year-old woman was killed when a landslide hit a farm in Afens, on the Italian side of the border with Austria.

In nearby Tulfer, the body of another woman who had been declared missing after her house was struck by a mud flow, was uncovered on Sunday morning.

Major storms lashed much of Austria and German-speaking northern Italy late Saturday, causing flooding and power cuts, and disrupting rail and road connections.

About 1,000 homes were without electricity Sunday morning in the Virgental valley in southern Austria.

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Earth Changes

First Time Ever in South Africa: Snow in All 9 Provinces

Livestock Farmers Suffering from Drought Feed Cost Increases Still Waiting for Obama to Stop Ethanol Production

'Inconvenient Result' - July 2012 NOT a Record Breaker

Weird Weather Rains Seaweed Over Gloucestershire Village

Giant sinkholes in Brooklyn worry residents

Update: Los Angeles rattled by two 4.5 magnitude earthquakes within 10 hours

USGS: Earthquake Magnitude 5.6 - Alaska Peninsula

4.4 Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Greater Los Angeles area, subsequent aftershocks

Climate change and the Tooth Fairy

Two dead as storms wreck havoc in Austria and northern Italy

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