Earth Changes
Hurricane Odile is moving northwestward in the eastern Pacific with maximum sustained winds at this post of 130mph. It drastically strengthened late Saturday and early Sunday to become another major player along the Mexican west coast. Now it appears to be heading straight for Cabo San Lucas. This storm is a monster with high winds, very heavy rain, and an estimated storm surge to top 15 feet.
The current forecast track has the hurricane running up the coast of the California Peninsula, coming within 50 miles of the coast as it treks quickly northward. This would be a pretty devastating scenario for much of the southern Peninsula because the right front quadrant of any hurricane is the most destructive. For those that have never been to that part of the world, Cabo is a resort town that sits on the far southern tip of the landmass. There is little hope of the storm missing the city; however the current forecast track is both good and puzzling.
The track is good because the more landmass the storm crosses, the weaker it will become. But I'm troubled by the overall track. Because of the rules of friction (the more objects that interact with winds, the weaker they become) the storm isn't likely to hover along the coast for that long. As the storm moves northwest with one side of it over land and the other over water, the winds on the eastern side begin to fade while the winds on the western side continue to blow uninterrupted. This can often upset the balance in the hurricane, and force it to change direction toward and onto shore. This would obviously play a huge role in where this storm ends up
Balkan nations are again being hit by severe flooding
Heavy rain has been falling since Wednesday, causing rivers to rise, closing roads and threatening houses and factories. No deaths or injuries have been reported so far.
The biggest threat is in flooded areas around the central towns of Sisak, Hrvatska Kostajnica and Karlovac. Several villages have been evacuated and a state of emergency has been declared in the northern municipality of Nedelisce.
The Croatian army has sent hundreds of troops to help local residents build the protective dams along river banks.
Seven people were killed and three others remain missing after severe downpours battered Linshui County in southwest China's Sichuan Province Saturday, said the county government on Sunday.
Heavy rainfall hit Linshui, a county in Sichuan's Guangyuan City, from 3 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday, causing disasters in 45 townships, said the county government.
As of Sunday, local governments had relocated more than 23,300 people to safer places and rescued 604 people.
The rain has affected about 2,694 hectares of farmland and thousands of livestock in the region. Search work is under way.
Agency spokesman Steve Robinson says the unusually wet August was most evident at gauges on the Heart, Knife and Green rivers.
There are 140 USGS-operated stations in North Dakota that measure water levels, stream flow, rainfall and water-quality. Most of the USGS stations are real-time sites where data are updated every one to four hours.
The USGS says it shares its data with the National Weather Service for flood forecasts and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for flood control management. State and local agencies also use the data for flood response efforts.
A native of Madhya Pradesh, Janu was sleeping outside a makeshift tenement in a farm on the outskirts of the village when the wild cat attacked her at around 2am.
Her father Indra Singh, who was irrigating the farm, rushed to the spot on hearing the noise to see the leopard carrying away his daughter. He threw an iron equipment at the leopard to save his daughter following which the animal dropped the child and fled.
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Kamla Devi suffered several injuries after she fought off a leopard.
Kamla Devi suffered several injuries after she fought off a leopard.
A 56-year-old Indian woman is recovering in hospital after killing a leopard that attacked her, as she tended her fields armed only with a sickle.
The woman told Indian broadcaster CNN-IBN that she battled with the leopard for half an hour on Sunday morning before finally delivering a killer blow with her sickle.
"The leopard lunged at me many times and we fought for a long time," she told the channel from her hospital bed in the northern state of Uttarakhand, her arms bandaged and a big scar across her right cheek.
"I got hold of my sickle and fought with it. That's when the leopard was killed," said the woman, named as Kamla Devi.
Devi, who was widowed a few years ago, told the Hindustan Times she was terrified when the leopard attacked, but was determined not to succumb.
The labourers were working in a banana farm when the leopard suddenly appeared from behind some bushes and bit one of them on his thigh, police said.
The other man screamed and tried to rescue his friend but was also attacked by the feline, which bit him on his abdomen and leg, they said.
Other workers raised an alarm following which the leopard retreated into the forest, police said.
Both workers have been admitted to a government hospital in Gudalur, police added.
Source: Press Trust of India
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Man-eater: The leopard has claimed 13 victims over the past 30 months
Man-eater: The leopard has claimed 13 victims over the past 30 months
A man-eating leopard has claimed more than a dozen victims as villagers fear it is targeting drunk men returning home after boozing sessions.
The jungle cat has spread its reign of terror over the past two-and-a-half years, in the Didihat region of the Kumoan hills in Himalayan India.
Repeated attempts have been made to shoot the elusive leopard after the Uttarakhand Forest Department declared it as a man-eater.
The beast began its killing spree in January 2012, attacking a 46-year-old man from the Simar village.
And the spotted killer went on to claim five more victims that year and five in 2013.
So far in 2014, two more victims have perished, the latest one a 44-year-old on August 1.
Villagers have voiced fears that the animal is preying on men stumbling home drunk after dark.
Source: NNIS
