Date-Time
Saturday, May 21, 2011 at 21:17:00 UTC

Sunday, May 22, 2011 at 09:17:00 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location
30.775°S, 178.133°W

Depth
19.8 km (12.3 miles)

Region
KERMADEC ISLANDS, NEW ZEALAND

Distances
103 km (64 miles) NE of L'Esperance Rock, Kermadec Islands

169 km (105 miles) S of Raoul Island, Kermadec Islands

942 km (585 miles) NE of Auckland, New Zealand

1108 km (688 miles) SSW of NUKU'ALOFA, Tonga

At least twelve people have been killed in Malaysia after a landslide hit an orphanage, near Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, police said.

White plume shoots 18,000 feet above the glacier that sits over the volcano
Reykjavik, Iceland - Iceland's most active volcano erupted Saturday, with a white plume shooting 18,000 feet into the air, scientists said.

The eruption was followed by around 50 small earthquakes, the largest of which measured 3.7 on the Richter Scale, according to Iceland's meteorological office.

There was a similar eruption at the same volcano in 2004.

Scientists don't believe this eruption will lead to air travel chaos like that caused by ash from the Eyjafjallajokul volcano in April 2010.

The Grimsvotn volcano is located underneath the Vatnajokull glacier in southeast Iceland.

Sparsely populated Iceland is one of the world's most volcanically active countries and eruptions are frequent.

They often cause local flooding from melting glacier ice, but rarely cause deaths.

Last year's Eyjafjallajokul eruption left millions of air travelers stranded after winds pushed the ash cloud toward some of the world's busiest airspace and led most northern European countries to ground all planes for five days.

In November, melted glacial ice began pouring from, signaling a possible eruption. That was a false alarm but scientists have been monitoring the volcano closely ever since.

Record rainfall hit Central Nebraska, causing the National Weather Service in Hastings to post flood warnings early Friday evening.
Heavy rain fell that afternoon and evening in Grand Island, flooding streets and closing the Eddy Street and Sycamore Street underpasses temporarily because of high water, which stranded several motorists. High water on streets throughout Grand Island made driving difficult and hazardous.

Flooding was also reported in Alda, Cushing, Dannegrog, Elba, Greely, Spalding, St. Libory, St. Paul and Wolbach.

At 5 p.m., the National Weather Service in Hastings reported that Grand Island had a record rainfall for Friday of 1.81 inches, with more rainfall expected through the evening. That broke the previous record of 1.32 inches set in 1957.

The heavy rain pushed Grand Island's precipitation to 4.81 inches for the month as of 5 p.m., but the heavy rain continued into the evening adding to that amount.

Gov. Robert Bentley has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to revise letters being sent to storm victims who have been found ineligible for FEMA grants because he believes the letters are insensitive.

Out of the 72,000 people who have applied, 20,600 have received notice that they aren't eligible for a grant -- almost twice as many as have received FEMA grants so far.

FEMA has encouraged anyone who suffered damage from the tornadoes that touched down April 27 to apply to the agency. According to the agency, many of the applicants found ineligible could still receive aid. Some were initially rejected because of incomplete information or due to pending insurance claims. FEMA cannot, by law, duplicate benefits paid by insurance companies, but in some circumstances can help with damage or expenses beyond insurance coverage.

The FEMA application process also puts the applicant in the pipeline for other federal aid, such as low-interest loans from the Small Business Administration, which are available to homeowners and businesses.

At least 37 people were killed and 27 others injured in UP as thunderstorm, accompanied by lightning and rains, hit most of north India. Winds of 75-90 km/hr lashed through the states of UP, Bihar, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana
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In Shahjahanpur district, 16 people were killed in dust storm related incidents while nine people lost their lives and 18 others were injured in Badaun, a district administration official said here on Saturday. In an unconfirmed report, two persons died in Bareilly district because of the storm.

Eight persons died in Lakhimpur Kheri, including a three-year-old girl, when a house collapsed and trees got uprooted. Three persons have been reported dead in Ghaziabad and one in Azamgarh.

Principal secretary (revenue) KK Sinha said orders had been issued to provide speedy help and compensate the families of the victims.

Windstorm in north Kashmir's Kupwara district damaged 32 houses in the past two days, officials said.

The Met department attributed the thunderstorm and rains to upper cyclonic circulations over north India and Pakistan and southwesterly winds. More thunderstorms and rains have been forecast over the next 48 hours.

Power supply was badly hit in parts of UP, trains and vehicular traffic was disrupted in Bihar and in Himachal Pradesh, apple and stone fruit crops were damaged in many parts. Heavy rains lashed West Bengal, too.

Baton Rouge, La. - Travis Morace has been running boats on the Mississippi for two decades, witnessing the mighty river's many moods. He's seen it calm and smooth as a paved road and endured rides filled with treacherous twists and bumps.

But even experienced river pilots have never seen anything like the roiling current now racing to the Gulf of Mexico. Since spring floods pushed the Mississippi to historic heights, America's busiest inland waterway has become one of its most challenging to navigate.

"If you're not scared of it, you should be, because it has a lot of ways of hurting you," Morace said this week as he slowly nudged his tugboat, the Bettye M. Jenkins, along the river bank near Vidalia, La.

Now frightening

The high water brings with it a host of hazards. Debris is everywhere, and the unusually swift current makes it difficult for pilots to go upstream. Good luck stopping if you're headed downstream. For those who make their living on the water, the river is a respected adversary in the best of times. Now it just plain frightens them.

The talk of New Orleans has centered on whether the most severe Mississippi River flood in more than a quarter-century will cause catastrophic damage to a city still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. And for good reason: the flood has carved a destructive path from from Cairo, Illinois, to Vicksburg, Mississippi, and prompted Louisiana's Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, to ask the federal government for emergency assistance. But there just might be a silver lining: the flood could actually help Louisiana's fragile wetlands.

To be sure, the Mississippi River's floodwaters are destructive. Many people along the spillways opened to alleviate the surge are likely to lose their homes. The water may also destroy oyster beds, especially in Lake Borgne, between the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. Longer-term effects won't be clear for several months. But, says Alex Kolker, a geologist at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, it may be an opportunity to let nature help resolve a man-made problem. "It's going to be a fascinating time," says Kolker.

Only a year ago, the worst oil spill in American history slathered millions of gallons of oil across Louisiana's coast. The muck covered the tall, bamboo-like cane and short grass that stitches together the vegetation that makes up the wetlands south of New Orleans, preventing them from receiving oxygen. Many experts feared it would take years for the wetlands to recover, and that Louisiana's core seafood industry - especially the oysters, which unlike shrimp and fish cannot run away from hint of oil - was imperiled. Such sediment is crucial: the loss of vegetation quickens erosion of soil and islands.

Yelllowstone National Park, Wyoming - The nation's oldest park is also one of the most studied. The interest is not just in it's amazing vistas and wildlife, but in the volcanic beast below the park.

Yellowstone sits atop one of the world's biggest, active volcanoes, one capable of laying waste to much of north America.

Scientists keep an eye on it using a network of seismic and GPS sensors.

Professor Emeritus Robert Smith of the University of Utah is one of those scientists. A geophysicist, Smith a leading expert on the Yellowstone super volcano. "We monitor it in real time for earthquake swarms and ground deformation."

He says the park is in constant motion. Visitors can't see it, but the ground at their feet is moving up and down as magma pushes against the thin crust and powers the park's many geysers.

A team of NASA and Russian scientists thinks it's found a way to predict earthquakes. If it works, it could save a lot of lives. However, not all earthquake scientists agree with these findings.

The March 11 earthquake in Japan was a magnitude 9.1. A team of scientists monitoring quakes there say they could tell it was coming because the atmosphere above the epicenter was heating up from eight days before.

Russian scientist Dimitar Ouzounov says stresses on the Earth's crust leading up to a quake cause gases like radon to escape into the atmosphere -- 100 miles above the Earth they ionize and create heat that is detectable by satellites. Ouzounov's team says out of 24 quakes in Japan of magnitude 7 or greater, all showed the same atmospheric signals beforehand.