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Cloud Precipitation

Tropical storm Barbara nears hurricane strength near Mexican coast


Reuters
Wed, 29 May 2013 12:12 UTC
Tropical Storm Barbara gained strength on its approach to Mexico's southern coast, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on Wednesday. The center reported that the storm was nearing hurricane strength with maximum sustained winds of 65 miles (105 km) per hour and was located about 70 miles (112 km) south of the port of Salina Cruz in southern Oaxaca state.
Image
Salina Cruz is home to Mexican state oil monopoly Pemex's largest refinery. Barbara churned northeast at about eight miles per hour, and is expected to swing through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico's narrowest point, once it makes landfall later on Wednesday.

The center issued a hurricane warning from Oaxaca's Puerto Angel to Barra de Tonala, and a tropical storm warming from Barra de Tonala to Boca de Pijijiapan in Chiapas state.

Barbara is forecast to reach hurricane strength before it hits Mexico's southern coast, the center added.

Between 4 and 12 inches (10 to 30 cm) of rain is expected over eastern Oaxaca through western Chiapas once Barbara reaches land, along with a storm surge of between 3 to 5 feet (1 to 1.5 meters) above normal tide levels.
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Popcorn

Massive sinkhole to keep central Washington D.C. streets closed for another week

Mark Berman
Washington Post
Wed, 29 May 2013 10:40 UTC
Image
© Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post
A large sinkhole opened on 14th Street, D.C. last week.
The sinkhole in downtown Washington will continue to block lanes and impede traffic until the end of the work week, officials said Tuesday.

Authorities shut down parts of 14th and F streets in Northwest Washington last week after a pit opened at the intersection, which is blocks from the White House and in an area full of restaurants and hotels.

The work is taking so long because workers digging down to the sewer line have to navigate a complex thicket of utility lines and old trolley tracks, according to George S. Hawkins, general manager of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority.

"It's been the most complicated street repair I've seen since I've been on the job," Hawkins said at a news conference in front of the sinkhole.

Work at the pit could cost nearly $2 million, Hawkins said.

Comment: "That's our best hypothesis..." Oh dear, authorities everywhere are soon gonna have to do better than that to explain the global
explosion in sinkholes to a population going "HUH?!"

The planet is opening up...

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Bizarro Earth

USGS: Shallow Earthquake Magnitude 3.9 - 48km W of Nefyn, United Kingdom


US Geological Survey
Wed, 29 May 2013 10:23 UTC
Image
© USGS
Event Time:
2013-05-29 03:16:23 UTC
2013-05-29 03:16:23 UTC+00:00 at epicenter

Location:
52.995°N 5.220°W depth=9.9km (6.2mi)

Nearby Cities:
48km (30mi) W of Nefyn, United Kingdom
52km (32mi) SW of Holyhead, United Kingdom
55km (34mi) E of Wicklow, Ireland
58km (36mi) ESE of Greystones, Ireland
80km (50mi) ESE of Dublin, Ireland

Technical Data

Comment: See:Strong tremor hits Wales: Initially reported at 4.3 magnitude, but was it really an earthquake? The 'Technical Data' link from USGS shows that the depth of this earthquake was at 10km +/- 3km.

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Bizarro Earth

USGS: Shallow Earthquake Magnitude 4.6 - 5km W of Isla Vista, California


US Geological Survey
Wed, 29 May 2013 10:19 UTC
Image
© USGS
Event Time:
2013-05-29 14:38:03 UTC
2013-05-29 07:38:03 UTC-07:00 at epicenter

Location:
34.414°N 119.921°W depth=7.4km (4.6mi)

Nearby Cities:
5km (3mi) W of Isla Vista, California
8km (5mi) WSW of Goleta, California
20km (12mi) W of Santa Barbara, California
37km (23mi) W of Carpinteria, California
483km (300mi) SSE of Sacramento, California

Technical Data
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Alarm Clock

Strong tremor hits Wales: Initially reported at 4.3 magnitude, but was it really an earthquake?


BBC
Wed, 29 May 2013 04:03 UTC
A small earthquake measuring 3.8 in magnitude has hit north Wales in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Image
The tremor centred on the Llyn peninsula in Gwynedd.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) said the centre point was between the seaside towns of Aberdaron and Nefyn.

People living as far away as Southport in Merseyside, Dublin in Ireland and on the Isle of Man reported "intense shaking" at 04:16 BST but there were no reports of damage or injury.

More than 100 reports from people who felt the earthquake have been made to the BGS, who said the majority were within a 100km radius.

Dr Brian Baptie, Head of Seismology at the BGS, said the size of the tremor was not unusual for the UK.

"We get an earthquake of this size in the UK maybe once or twice every couple of years," he told BBC Radio Wales.

Comment: This 'quake' was reported by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre to have been magnitude 4.3.

The following eyewitness report has some interesting additional information:
"People have reported hearing an initial loud banging, followed by rumbling and intense shaking."
And here:
Peter Wilkinson, owner of the Penrallt Coastal Campsite, about a mile from the epicentre, said he was woken by what felt like a thud and thought that the corner of his house had fallen off. [...]
"I got up to see if something had fallen over in the room and went to check all of the rooms, but there wasn't any sign.

I would describe it as like hearing a large thud - like a wardrobe falling over."
Loud bangs followed by rumbling suggests that it might have been another overhead cometary explosion. In addition, the sound can often seem very close because of the electrophonic nature of meteors. Objects that are close by will transduce the meteor shockwave into an audible sound.

There was another fireball significant event over the UK and Ireland just five days previously, and it does appear to be raining fireballs the world over...

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Snowman

Are we in for a 'year without Summer'? Memorial Day weekend snowfall smashes 1816 record

Robert
Ice Age now
Tue, 28 May 2013 20:14 UTC
snow
© Youtube
"The last time we had snow this late (Memorial Day weekend) was back in 1816 - the year without the summer," says reader Kenneth Lund. "And that was only 1 inch of snow. Here we're talking 34 inches !"

"Even though 1816 happened in early June, this event in 2013 was far more significant. You could subtract maybe 15 inches if it had happened on June 6th - but even then it would still be unprecedented - still over a foot at least. (considering that it was 11 days later in the season)

To figure out how unusual this weekend's snowfall was, Weather Underground had to go back to 1816, the infamous 'Year without Summer.'
In 1815, Mt. Tambora of Indonesia exploded with such strength (the greatest volcanic eruption in perhaps the past 60,000 years) that the entire northern hemisphere was encircled with ash. By the summer of 1816 freak cold waves and snow enveloped much of North America, Europe, and Asia, along with snowfall in the eastern U.S. and and Canada.

Between June 6th and June 8th accumulating snow was observed as far south as the Catskills in New York (where one inch was reported) and highlands of central and northwest Pennsylvania. Snowflakes were seen at sea level as far south as ten miles north of tidewater on the Hudson River just above New York City."

The deepest accumulations were reported in the mountains of Vermont where snowfalls of 12-18" were measured at 1,000-3,000' elevations (Cabot, Vermont with an elevation of 1,300' reported 18" although it isn't clear if this was a level or drift measurement). Quebec City in Canada reported 12" on level with drifts up to two feet deep.
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Bizarro Earth

Landslide kills seven in Hidalgo State, central Mexico


Press TV
Tue, 28 May 2013 16:55 UTC
Seven people have died in a landslide on a road in Mexico's central state of Hidalgo, the federal police say. The deadly incident took place on Sunday, burying a number of cars under mud and trees. Local residents of the nearby town of Tepeji del Rio warned officials that they had noticed the land above the road appeared to be unstable.
Image
Hidalgo governor Jose Francisco Olvera said that the deaths could have been prevented, although assessing the state of the hill when the warning was made would have been difficult because of heavy rainfall. Tepeji del Rio residents say a hailstorm on May 26 also caused at least 22 cars to be dragged into a canyon.

Officials say the hailstorm in Tepeji del Rio caused the deadly landslide late Sunday.
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Extinguisher

Southern California fire burns 1,000 acres; thousands flee

Ed Payne and AnneClaire Stapleton
CNN
Tue, 28 May 2013 16:52 UTC
Image
© Valerie Walston, Santa Barbara County Search And Rescue
This photo released by the Santa Barbara County Search and Rescue taken on Monday May 27,2013 showing smoke from a wildfire burning long the mountains north of Santa Barbara, Calif.
Crews in Southern California struggled to get the upper hand on a fast-moving wildfire in Santa Barbara County early Tuesday.

Known as the White Fire, the blaze had already charred some 1,000 acres after getting its start Monday afternoon, U.S. Forest Service spokesman Andrew Madsen said. The flames were 5% contained.

The Forest Service expects to have 700 personnel in place Tuesday morning.
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Red Flag

The Big One: Preparing for mid-America earthquake

Michael Fitzgerald
Dalton Daily Citizen
Mon, 27 May 2013 16:46 UTC
Image

This map shows earthquakes in the New Madrid and Wabash Valley seismic zones as circles. Red circles indicate earthquakes that occurred from 1974 to 2002, with magnitudes larger than 2.5. Green circles show earthquakes that occurred prior to 1974. Larger circles represent larger earthquakes.
It's a bleak scenario. A massive earthquake along the New Madrid fault kills or injures 60,000 people in Tennessee. A quarter of a million people are homeless. The Memphis airport - the country's biggest air terminal for packages - goes off-line. Major oil and gas pipelines across Tennessee rupture, causing shortages in the Northeast. In Missouri, another 15,000 people are hurt or dead. Cities and towns throughout the central U.S. lose power and water for months. Losses stack up to hundreds of billions of dollars.

Fortunately, this magnitude 7.7 temblor is not real but rather a scenario imagined by the Mid-America Earthquake Center and the Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at George Washington University. The goal of their 2008 analysis was to plan for a modern recurrence of quakes that happened along the New Madrid fault more than 200 years ago, in 1811 and 1812.

No one alive has experienced a major earthquake in the Midwest, yet geologists say it's only a matter of time. That puts a lot of uncertainty on disaster officials. Their earthquake precautions - quake-resistant building codes, for example - have never been reality tested. Some question if enough has been done to strengthen existing buildings, schools and other infrastructure. It is difficult to prepare for a geological catastrophe the public cannot see and has never experienced.

"We mostly react to disasters, and it's been extremely rare that we get ahead of things," said Claire Rubin, a disaster response specialist in Arlington, Va. "A lot of hard problems don't get solved. They get moved around and passed along."
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Cloud Precipitation

Rain further delays historically slow U.S. corn, soybean planting

Sam Nelson
Reuters
Tue, 28 May 2013 16:00 UTC
Rain over the weekend and this week will drag out late season plantings of corn and soybeans in the United States that are already at a historically slow pace, an agricultural meteorologist said on Tuesday.

John Dee, meteorologist for Global Weather Monitoring said from 1.0 to 3.0 inches or more of rain fell over the weekend in the central Midwest and 0.5 inch to 1.5 inches is expected at midweek in the northern Midwest.

"The only planting that will take place will be in the southern two-thirds of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio the next couple of days," he said. "If it were all planted this would be perfect, there was pretty good planting progress last week but not like the week before."

Farmers have been scrambling to plant corn and soybeans through mid and late May in an attempt to catch up from weather delays in April and early May.

In its weekly crop progress report released on May 20, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said corn planting was 71 percent complete, up from 28 percent a week ago but still behind the 79 percent five-year average seeding pace.

USDA has projected U.S. 2013 corn plantings at 97.3 million acres, the largest land area devoted to its production since the 1930s.

Soybean planting progress rose to 24 percent from 6 percent a week earlier, USDA said.

USDA will release updated planting data in its weekly crop progress report late on Tuesday.
      Read More...
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