Earth ChangesS


Better Earth

Shift of Earth's Magnetic North Pole Impacts Tampa Airport

Tampa Airport
© Tampa Bay OnlineRunway changes are needed to account for the moving magnetic pole, which is nearing Russia at 40 miles per year.

Scientists say the magnetic north pole is moving toward Russia and the fallout has reached -- of all places -- Tampa International Airport.

The airport has closed its primary runway until Jan. 13 to repaint the numeric designators at each end and change taxiway signage to account for the shift in location of the Earth's magnetic north.

The closure of the west parallel runway will result in more activity on the east parallel runway and more noise for residential areas of south Tampa.

The busiest runway will be re-designated 19R/1L on aviation charts. It's been 18R/36L, indicating its alignment along the 180-degree approach from the north and the 360-degree approach from the south.

Later this month, the airport's east parallel runway and the seldom used east-west runway will be closed to change signage to their new designations.

The Federal Aviation Administration required the runway designation change to account for what a National Geographic News report described as a gradual shift of the Earth's magnetic pole at nearly 40 miles a year toward Russia because of magnetic changes in the core of the planet.


Bizarro Earth

Faenza Italy: The Rain of Death Turns Blue - Thousands of Doves Dying

dead dove
Translation by Sott editors

There are certainly many hundreds, probably thousands, of collared dove who are dying at this moment in Faenza. They are in heaps in the flower beds, crushed by machinery in the streets, horribly hung from trees like Christmas balls. And many, many more, as told by the well-informed, are found in industrial-fenced zones.

The WWF has collected more of these birds, not all already dead. A dozen, in fact, have been sent to the Center of Recovery 'Il Pettirosso' in Modena, where those arriving are still alive but died shortly after. Overall, a mystery. Inside the beak, in some animals, the staining was of a strange blue.

What could have caused it? Both the doves collected by the Forestry and those sent by the WWF to the Center of Modena, have been delivered to the 'Istituto Zooprofilattico' of Emilia Romagna and Lombardy. Nobody, however, likes to deliver an opinion on this issue and for the analysis may take a week. Is it possible that the Collared doves... have been dying of stomachache? So someone would have argued (see article, GeaPress). In general, blue is a sign of hypoxia, caused for example by suffocation. The bluish tint, however, is also typical of potassium cyanide, a deadly poison used, for example, from poachers. Cyanide, however, also causes hypoxia, .... maybe a dove with an upset stomach would die suffocated. Another poison appears bluish in some types of rat poison grains. However, believing that the doves have died choking could be a faulty guess. And why only them? On the site there are only doves, but the pigeons in other places are likely to eat the same seed mesh that certain industries stack up around Faenza? So why they do not die from choking too?

Black Cat

Flock of Dead Blackbirds Found In Wilson County Tennessee

dead,birds,tennessee
© wsmv
Now, more that 100 dead birds were recently found in Wilson County, causing the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency to investigate.

A resident notified the agency Tuesday afternoon after he spotted dozens of dead birds along Highway 70 north in Lebanon a few days ago.

"It's kind of a strange, odd thing. It plays into some of the things that have been happening in other places," said Lt. Jim Hooper of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.

TWRA officials found 120 dead blackbirds in the Spring Creek area when they investigated the situation on Wednesday.

"We searched the adjoining fields and everywhere else, and there are no other birds except in this one very localized area," said Hooper. "The birds have definitely been dead 5 or 6 days."

Bizarro Earth

Cold weather kills dozens in northern India

cold,india
© Unknown
Lucknow, India - Near-freezing temperatures and icy Himalayan winds have killed dozens of people in northern India over the past two weeks and forced schools to close in the capital, officials said Wednesday.

A spokesman for worst-hit Uttar Pradesh state said five people died from the cold overnight, pushing the number of deaths there to 41.

Uttar Pradesh is one of India's poorest states and nearly a fifth of its 180 million people are homeless.

In New Delhi, at least 10 homeless people died from the cold weather over the past two weeks despite a drive by police and welfare officials to persuade people living on the streets to sleep in 80 city-run shelters.

Attention

Is The New Madrid Fault Earthquake Zone Coming To Life?

New Madrid fault line
What in the world is happening in the middle of the United States right now? Thousands of birds are falling dead from the skies, tens of thousands of fish are washing up on shore dead, earthquakes are popping up in weird and unexpected places and people are starting to get really freaked out about all of this. Well, one theory is that the New Madrid fault zone is coming to life. The New Madrid fault zone is six times bigger than the San Andreas fault zone in California and it covers portions of Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi. The biggest earthquakes in the history of the United States were caused by the New Madrid fault. Now there are fears that the New Madrid fault zone could be coming to life again, and if a "killer earthquake" does strike it could change all of our lives forever.

Fish

SOTT Focus: Procession of the Damned: Mass Bird and Fish Deaths Turning Up Everywhere

Image
Triste hallazgo: El Dr Alasdair Bruce, uno de los expertos que estudia los cangrejos muertos. Es el segundo año seguido que las playas han quedado colmadas de cangrejos
And the Procession of Damned Data continues...

Yesterday, January 4th, RyanX discussed the recent mysterious deaths of blackbirds and fish in Arkansas. As reports about mass deaths of birds and sea creatures continue to pour in from all over the world, perhaps it's time to, how should I put it... "open up the field" ?

January 4th: Canada: Hundreds of Dead Fish 'A Natural Occurrence'
Sarnia, Ontario - Hundreds of dead fish that washed up on shore in the north end of the St. Clair River is a natural occurrence and not the result of a chemical spill, a government officials say.

Only one species was affected, further supporting the idea it was a natural occurrence, she said.

"There was nothing to indicate that it was man-made."
January 4th: US: Thousands Of Fish Dead In Spruce Creek, Florida
Thousands of dead fish are floating in Volusia County Tuesday. They were all in Spruce Creek in Port Orange. The fish kill is unusual, according to people who live along the creek, because it's warm.

It's been a week since there were freezing temperatures, but there are fish lining the banks. Some said it's the worst kill they've ever seen; thousands of fish lined the twists and turns of Spruce Creek.

The sheer number of fish and the smell were both overwhelming.

Most of the fish were mullet, ladyfish and catfish, and not the valuable sporting fish called snook that died in mass during a cold spell last year.

Comment: To see the staggering number of 'die-offs' around the world depicted on the world map (with links to the news stories) click here


Radar

Bird deaths: Did NWS Radar Capture Startled Flock?

Radar Beebe
© Plymouth State Weather Center
Weather radar in Little Rock, Ark. may have captured an image of a flock of birds as they rose from nighttime roosts near Beebe, Ark. on New Year's Eve. Thousands of redwing blackbirds were later found dead on the ground nearby.

Such radar images of bird flocks are not unusual. Weather radar sites near the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Delaware sometimes capture the radar reflections of flocks of birds as they rise into the sky at sunrise on summer mornings.

Last night, Steve Zubrick, the science officer out at the National Weather Service forecast office in Sterling, Virginia, sent me a link to a radar image recorded beginning at 10:21 p.m. Central Time in Little Rock. That's about a half hour before reports began coming in about dead birds falling from the sky in Beebe.

The loop shows rainstorms moving away to the north and east of the radar. But at a spot about 25 nautical miles northeast of the radar, an unusual reflection appears, expands and moves off to the southeast with the prevailing winds. It's the green blob on the still radar image above.

"Could these returns be birds disturbed from the nightly roosting sites?" Steve asks.

Comment: So what are the chances they actually captured a meteor explosion on radar? See the article below for details:

And They March! The Strange Tale of the Beebe Blackbirds


Black Cat

Mass Bird and Fish Deaths Becoming Worldwide Phenomenon

birds flying
© Agence France-Presse
The mysterious deaths of thousands of birds and fish is no longer confined to the US.

About 50 to 100 dead birds were discovered on a highway in central Sweden Tuesday. Scientists don't know what killed the jackdaws but one veterinarian suspects they may have been frightened by fireworks and then run over by a car.

"We have received information from local residents last night," County veterinarian Robert ter Horst told the Swedish site The Local. "Our main theory is that the birds were scared away because of the fireworks and landed on the road, but couldn't fly away from the stress and were hit by a car."

"We will continue to look at whether there are other theories, but then we have to do an autopsy on the birds. The birds just now are in a car on the way to a laboratory in Uppsala. We don't know exactly what happened yet, but we will continue the investigation," he added.

The Brazillian site Paraná-Online noted that 100 tons of fish have turned up dead off the coast of Paraná since last Thursday.

According to Google Translate, the site reported that the fish included sardine, croaker and catfish.

"On Thursday we began to realize very dead fish," Edmir Manoel Ferreira, president of the Federation of Fishermen's Colony of Parana, said. "Only one community came to bury 15 tons. We are experiencing a very sad situation on the coast."

"We will wait to see what happened, but speculations suggest that fish may have died due to an environmental imbalance, dropping a fishing boat or leakage of chemicals," Captain Edson Oliveira Avila, regional coordinator of Civil Defense in the Paraná region, told Paraná-Online.

Attention

More birds fall out of the sky, this time in Sweden

Christer Olofsson
© Björn Larsson Rosvall/ScanpixChrister Olofsson, rescue preparedness director, with dead bird in Falköping.

A county veterinarian has speculated that the birds that fell from the sky in central Sweden on Tuesday may have been frightened by fireworks, then run over by a car after landing on the road in the dark.

Shortly before midnight on Tuesday, residents found 50 to 100 jackdaws on a street in Falköping southeast of Skövde. The incident echoed a number of unexplained incidents earlier this week across the southern US.

County veterinarian Robert ter Horst believes that the birds may have been literally scared to death by fireworks set off on Tuesday night.

"We have received information from local residents last night. Our main theory is that the birds were scared away because of the fireworks and landed on the road, but couldn't fly away from the stress and were hit by a car," he explained to The Local on Wednesday.

He added that they likely had difficulty orienting themselves in the dark and although they have received one report involving a vehicular collision with the birds, ter Horst believes they may have been hit by more.

"We will continue to look at whether there are other theories, but then we have to do an autopsy on the birds. The birds just now are in a car on the way to a laboratory in Uppsala. We don't know exactly what happened yet, but we will continue the investigation," he added.

ter Horst noted that he has also received some reports about pigeons, but the incident has happened too quickly to assume that it is related to the untimely demise of the jackdaws.

Bizarro Earth

Earthquake Magnitude 6.3 - Southeast of The Loyalty Islands

Loyalty Isld Quake_050111
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time:
Wednesday, January 05, 2011 at 06:46:17 UTC

Wednesday, January 05, 2011 at 05:46:17 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
22.304°S, 171.595°E

Depth:
135.9 km (84.4 miles)

Region:
SOUTHEAST OF THE LOYALTY ISLANDS

Distances:
50 km (30 miles) WNW of Ile Hunter, Loyalty Isl., New Caledonia

315 km (195 miles) WSW of Ceva-i-Ra, Fiji

530 km (330 miles) E of NOUMEA, New Caledonia

1635 km (1020 miles) NNW of Auckland, New Zealand