Earth Changes

Lightning strikes kill a total of 10 cows in Udupi, India

Daiji World
Sat, 20 May 2017 09:02 UTC

During the heavy rains and lightning that took place in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts from Thursday late night to Friday evening, several cows have died and more than 300 electric poles have been damaged. Trees were seen uprooted in many parts of the district.

In Dakshina Kannada district, Mangaluru, Puttur, Sullia, Bantwal and Beltangady areas received good rains with lightning and thunder. Mulky Kinnigoli and Suratkal areas received more lightning with light rains and strong winds.

Winds caused uprooting of trees and as a result more than 300 electric poles were damaged which is unprecedented during pre-monsoon showers in Dakshina Kannada.

Several parts of the district were affected with electric supply till Friday evening.

Udupi district too witnessed the same situation like in Dakshina Kannada. All parts of the district received moderate to heavy rains. Lightning claimed 3 cows in Kukkuje near Hebri, 3 cows in Amasebail, 3 cows in Thekkatte near Kundapur and a calf at Karkala. Several houses were reportedly damaged due to rains. Losses are yet to be ascertained.

Eruption at Mexico's Popocatépetl volcano

Andrew V. Pestano
UPI.com
Fri, 19 May 2017 09:50 UTC

Mexico's National Center for Disaster Prevention said the Popocatépetl volcano launched incandescent lava fragments more than half a mile away from its crater.

The disaster prevention center, or CENAPRED, on Thursday said Popocatépetl erupted 19 times in the prior 24 hours, had 82 volcanic plumes and had five volcano tectonic earthquakes -- measuring in magnitudes 1.5, 1.6, 1.5, 1.4 and 1.3 , respectively.

CENAPRED also said it recorded 20 minutes of a low-amplitude harmonic tremor, as well as a plume mostly of water vapor and gas with low ash content that lasted nearly three hours and rose up to 1.2 miles.

Earthquake swarm continues shaking near Bremerton, Kitsap Peninsula

Tad Sooter
Kitsap Sun
Sat, 20 May 2017 14:02 UTC

Scientists say hundreds of tiny earthquakes have rumbled through the Bremerton area since the start of May— most too weak for humans to feel.

How long the shaking will continue is anyone's guess.

"Sometimes these swarms last years, sometimes they're over in an hour," Pacific Northwest Seismic Network Director John Vidale said Thursday.

The chances of a significant earthquake still remain low.

"The overwhelming odds are there is nothing damaging in our near future," Vidale said.

Though disconcerting to some residents, seismologists hope the ongoing earthquake swarm, centered between East Bremerton and Bainbridge Island, will reveal new information about the orientation of fault lines running beneath central Puget Sound.

The quakes have already offered some intriguing clues. Their depth for example — some 15 miles below the earth's surface — is below the level where the Seattle Fault is believed to lie, suggesting the activity could originate from another source.

"We just don't know," Vidale said, adding more research is needed to draw firm conclusions. "We're still figuring out what details we can decipher."

Comment: Small earthquake shakes Seattle area days after swarm near Kitsap Peninsula

Southern Hemisphere's largest wave recorded in Southern Ocean

Stuff.co.nz
Sun, 21 May 2017 03:34 UTC

A giant wave south of New Zealand earlier this weekend was the biggest ever recorded by a buoy in the Southern Hemisphere - and scientists expect even higher waves to follow over winter.

The 19.4-metre wave - higher than a five-storey building - was captured by a newly-deployed buoy in the Southern Ocean on Saturday morning.

Waves in the area are among the biggest in the world, and researchers say this one "isn't as big as it gets".

© Stuff.co.nz
The data will help the NZDF better understand conditions in the Southern Ocean to design its future vessels.

"There's a possibility we'll get something even bigger, and we are starting to get towards the biggest waves ever measured anywhere," says David Johnson, the technical director of MetOcean, which partnered with the New Zealand Defence Force to deploy the buoy in February.

Ground to sky lightning filmed across Oklahoma City

Damon Lane
KOCO
Fri, 19 May 2017 18:57 UTC

Ground to sky lightning in Oklahoma City on May 18 2017.

It's the video that you can't take your eyes off of! Storms in Oklahoma City last night produced lots of lightning. But it's this video here that has many wondering " How did it do this?"

There are 2 thoughts to this.

1- TV towers are manmade objects thus creating "unnatural" electric potential. In this case we'd call this a "ground-to-cloud" lightning strike. The towers, which likely had a positive charge to it, generated lightning that then moved toward an area in the sky that had a negative charge. Remember opposites attract.

Comment: Spectacular lightning show captured over Oklahoma (VIDEOS)

Record snow and rainfall swallows Lake Tahoe's beaches

Jennifer McGraw
sacramento.cbslocal.com
Sat, 20 May 2017 17:52 UTC

Lake Tahoe

It has been a record-breaking year with the amount of snow and rain, the lake is close to max capacity.

"The no trespassing sign was on the beach at some point," said Michelle Williams while pointing to a sign that's under water by at least 6 feet.

What used to be a vast sandy beach, Williams said was swallowed by water in front of Ski Run Marina where she's worked for 25 years.

"We had a huge beach with a lot more people out on it, so it will be kind of interesting to see how business goes," she said.

But also gone are the days of dried up docks. After four years of drought, now there's plenty of water.

Shallow magnitude 5.8 earthquake hits Pacific coast of Mexico

Sputnik
Sat, 20 May 2017 15:30 UTC

The quake was registered at 00:02 a.m. local time (06:02 GMT) some 209 kilometers (129 miles) to the south-west of the city of San Patricio at the depth of 10 kilometers.

No reports of damages or tsunami warnings have been released.

Mexico is part of the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, the most seismically active region of the Earth, where almost 90 percent of the world's earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur.

Arctic stronghold of world's seeds - not so strong - floods after permafrost melts

Damian Carrington
The Guardian
Fri, 19 May 2017 14:30 UTC

© Photograph: John Mcconnico/AP
The Svalbard ‘doomsday’ seed vault was built to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters.

No seeds were lost but the ability of the rock vault to provide failsafe protection against all disasters is now threatened by climate change

It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world's most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity's food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel.

Comment: Interesting to note the overarching arrogance of those creating a so called impregnable deep-freeze. Not so impregnable it seems, and perhaps not capable of withstanding a potential extinction event after all.

The vault is on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen and contains almost a million packets of seeds, each a variety of an important food crop. When it was opened in 2008, the deep permafrost through which the vault was sunk was expected to provide "failsafe" protection against "the challenge of natural or man-made disasters".

But soaring temperatures in the Arctic at the end of the world's hottest ever recorded year led to melting and heavy rain, when light snow should have been falling. "It was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience extreme weather like that," said Hege Njaa Aschim, from the Norwegian government, which owns the vault.

Record breaking Spring blizzard Valarie, over 3 feet of almost Summer snow, crops lost

Adapt 2030
You Tube
Sat, 20 May 2017 12:22 UTC

Unprecedented late spring blizzard / winter storm Valerie ripping across the western USA dumping more than three feet of snow. Record snow falls down to Mexican border, traffic stopped, crops being decimated again by high wind, heavy wet snow and cold temperatures. The inter-Tropical Convergence Zone is shifting due to the onset and strengthening of the Mini Ice Age, but the media won't tell you that because they don't want you to alter your lifestyle of take your cash out of savings and investments. Its here and intensifying, you have until 2019 to prepare.

Sources

Phrase 'lack of heat' employed in forecasts to hide Mini Ice Age cooling

Adapt 2030
You Tube
Fri, 19 May 2017 12:08 UTC

The new Accuweather 2017 summer forecast is out but strangely they use the words "Lack of Heat" to indicate cooler than normal conditions. Is their way of telling us that the Mini Ice Age cooling effects have begun and they are downplaying it by substituting words other than cool or cold or cooler than normal?