A massive tornado - the deadliest single U.S. tornado since 1953 - tore through the city of Joplin on Sunday, killing at least 89 people. Amid fears the death toll could climb, a fresh round of storms lashed the town early Monday, hampering search and rescue efforts.
City manager Mark Rohr announced the number of known dead at a pre-dawn news conference outside the wreckage of a hospital that took a direct hit from Sunday's storm. Rohr said the twister cut a path nearly six miles long and more than a half-mile wide through the center of town.
Much of the city's south side was leveled, with churches, schools, businesses and homes reduced to ruins.
Fire chief Mitch Randles estimated that 25 to 30 percent of the city was damaged, and said his own home was among the buildings destroyed as the twister swept through this city of about 50,000 people some 160 miles south of Kansas City.
"It cut the city in half," Randles said.
Earth Changes
© Egill Adalsteinsson/EPA
An aerial view shows the eruption of the volcano Grimsvotn in the south-east of Iceland.
An aerial view shows the eruption of the volcano Grimsvotn in the south-east of Iceland.
Ash could reach northern Scotland by Tuesday and parts of Britain, France and Spain by Thursday or Friday if the eruption continues at the same intensity, airlines were warned on Sunday.
The warning is based on the latest 5-day weather forecasts, but is being treated cautiously because of uncertainties over the way the volcano will behave and interact with the weather.
The Grimsvotn (GREEMSH-votn) volcano, which lies beneath the ice of the uninhabited Vatnajokull glacier in southeast Iceland, began erupting Saturday for the first time since 2004, sending ash, smoke and steam 12 miles into the air.
It was the volcano's largest eruption in 100 years.
A tornado flattened buildings, snapped trees and tossed tractor-trailers like toys as it touched down in Joplin, Missouri, on Sunday night, causing an unknown number of deaths and injuries.
The twister was part of a line of severe weather that swept across the Midwest on Sunday, prompting tornado watches and warnings that stretched from Wisconsin to Texas. High winds and possible tornadoes struck Minneapolis and other parts of Minnesota, leaving at least one person dead and injuring nearly two dozen others, police said.
Authorities in Joplin were contending with multiple reports of people trapped, as well as significant structural damage to St. John's Regional Medical Center, which was hit directly by the tornado, city officials said. CNN affiliate KSHB said there were reports of fires throughout the hospital.
The twister was part of a line of severe weather that swept across the Midwest on Sunday, prompting tornado watches and warnings that stretched from Wisconsin to Texas. High winds and possible tornadoes struck Minneapolis and other parts of Minnesota, leaving at least one person dead and injuring nearly two dozen others, police said.
Authorities in Joplin were contending with multiple reports of people trapped, as well as significant structural damage to St. John's Regional Medical Center, which was hit directly by the tornado, city officials said. CNN affiliate KSHB said there were reports of fires throughout the hospital.
A pod of more than 60 pilot whales, at risk of beaching, has again left a Hebridean loch after one of them died.
The animals had left the shallow waters of Loch Carnan in South Uist on Saturday, however returned during the night when the beaching took place.
A post-mortem examination suggested the young female died from a disease, not because it was stranded on rocks.
Earthquake scientists trying to unravel the mysteries of an unfelt, weeks-long seismic phenomenon called episodic tremor and slip have discovered a strange twist. The tremor can suddenly reverse direction and travel back through areas of the fault that it had ruptured in preceding days, and do so 20 to 40 times faster than the original fault rupture.
"Regular tremor and slip goes through an area fairly slowly, breaking it. Then once it's broken and weakened an area of the fault, it can propagate back across that area much faster," said Heidi Houston, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences and lead author of a paper documenting the findings, published in Nature Geoscience.
Episodic tremor and slip, also referred to as slow slip, was documented in the Pacific Northwest a decade ago and individual events have been observed in Washington and British Columbia on a regular basis, every 12 to 15 months on average.
Slow-slip events tend to start in the southern Puget Sound region, from the Tacoma area to as far north as Bremerton, and move gradually to the northwest on the Olympic Peninsula, following the interface between the North American and Juan de Fuca tectonic plates toward Vancouver Island in Canada. The events typically last three to four weeks and release as much energy as a magnitude 6.8 earthquake, though they are not felt and cause no damage.
"Regular tremor and slip goes through an area fairly slowly, breaking it. Then once it's broken and weakened an area of the fault, it can propagate back across that area much faster," said Heidi Houston, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences and lead author of a paper documenting the findings, published in Nature Geoscience.
Episodic tremor and slip, also referred to as slow slip, was documented in the Pacific Northwest a decade ago and individual events have been observed in Washington and British Columbia on a regular basis, every 12 to 15 months on average.
Slow-slip events tend to start in the southern Puget Sound region, from the Tacoma area to as far north as Bremerton, and move gradually to the northwest on the Olympic Peninsula, following the interface between the North American and Juan de Fuca tectonic plates toward Vancouver Island in Canada. The events typically last three to four weeks and release as much energy as a magnitude 6.8 earthquake, though they are not felt and cause no damage.
With snow falling in the Highlands, heavy rain lashing the west coast and severe weather warnings for gale force winds across the entire country from Monday - it could only be summer in Scotland.
While the south of England continues to bask in a prolonged dry spell that has led to water shortages in some areas and sunbathing temperatures of over 70ºF (21ºC), people north of the border will be looking out raincoats and umbrellas for the next week at least, with the wet weather set to last into June.
While the south of England continues to bask in a prolonged dry spell that has led to water shortages in some areas and sunbathing temperatures of over 70ºF (21ºC), people north of the border will be looking out raincoats and umbrellas for the next week at least, with the wet weather set to last into June.
© Bjarni Brynjólfsson.
The current eruption in Grímsvötn is larger in scale than the eruption in Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, according to geophysicist Magnús Tumi Gudmundsson.
The current eruption in Grímsvötn is larger in scale than the eruption in Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, according to geophysicist Magnús Tumi Gudmundsson.
This morning the ash cloud was 15 to 18 kilometers high which means that the volcanic eruption is ten times more powerful than the last eruption in Grímsvötn in 2004, Gudmundsson told ruv.is.
However, it is not unique. Grímsvötn goes through phases where it erupts often in a period of 60-80 years, then there are quieter periods of equal length.
© Orlin Wagner/AP Photo
Storms clouds pass behind Buck Creek School near Lawrence, Kan., Saturday.
Storms clouds pass behind Buck Creek School near Lawrence, Kan., Saturday.
A man was pronounced dead shortly after being taken to Newman Regional Hospital in Emporia, about 20 miles from where the tornado hit Saturday night in Reading, hospital supervisor Deb Gould said. She said two other people were brought in with injuries but she had no further details.
"I'm hoping it's over for us," she told The Associated Press, noting that local authorities were still at the scene in Reading, about 50 miles south of Topeka.
About 200 homes were damaged in and around the town of about 250 people Saturday night, said Kansas Division of Emergency Management spokeswoman Sharon Watson. The local post office and volunteer fire department were damaged, and all roads in and out of the town have been closed off.
Rev. Lyle Williams, who lives in Emporia and is a pastor for about 10 worshipers at the Reading First Baptist Church, said the church suffered extensive damage.
"Yeah, it's pretty bad," he told the AP. "My daughter was out there and told me about it."
"I'm not going to be able to have church today that's for sure," he added, saying he's been a pastor at the church for 21 years.
Power had been restored in the town by early Sunday and a shelter was being set up at a local school. The tornado was reported around 9:15 p.m., Watson said.
Planning a summer vacation? How about visiting one of the biggest, meanest active volcanoes on earth? It's right in our own backyard, just a five-hour drive north, at Yellowstone.
People come to the nation's first park every year to see bear, elk and herds of bison, but most visitors never realize they're inside the mouth of a volcanic beast.
The mouth of the Yellowstone super volcano is big. The caldera -- the crater left by an eruption -- is roughly 14-hundred square miles. The southern half of the national park is swallowed by the caldera.
People come to the nation's first park every year to see bear, elk and herds of bison, but most visitors never realize they're inside the mouth of a volcanic beast.
The mouth of the Yellowstone super volcano is big. The caldera -- the crater left by an eruption -- is roughly 14-hundred square miles. The southern half of the national park is swallowed by the caldera.
© Unknown
Grimsvotn volcano
Grimsvotn volcano
Iceland's Meteorological Office confirmed that an eruption had begun at the Grimsvotn volcano, accompanied by a series of small earthquakes. Smoke could be seen rising from the volcano, which lies under the uninhabited Vatnajokull glacier in southeast Iceland.
One eyewitness, Bolli Valgardsson, said the plume rose quickly several thousand feet into the air.
Grimsvotn last erupted in 2004. Scientists have been expecting a new eruption and have said previously that this volcano's eruption will likely be small and should not lead to the air travel chaos caused in April 2010 by ash from the Eyjafjallajokul volcano.
Comment: Scotland: Fear For Mass Stranding of Whales on South Uist