Earth ChangesS


Blackbox

Enormous sinkhole swallows two homes, threatens others in Dunedin, Florida


ABCNews.com
Thu, 14 Nov 2013 10:19 UTC
Image
A growing sinkhole in Florida has swallowed at least one home, caused another to begin collapsing and forced at least six homes to be evacuated. The sinkhole began opening in a neighborhood just north of downtown Dunedin, Fla., near Tampa, early this morning, according to ABC News affiliate WFTS-TV in Tampa.

By 7 a.m., the sinkhole was estimated at 80 feet wide and 40 feet deep, and still expanding, Dunedin Deputy Fire Chief Tripp Barrs told WFTS. Power and utility lines were cut off and officials evacuated at least six surrounding homes amid reports that a neighboring pool was also cracking.

Television footage also shows a boat and screened-in porch at the homeowner's property had collapsed into the hole.


The Pinellas County homeowner Michael Dupre told TV station Bay News 9 that he heard what sounded like a "sledgehammer pounding on a wall" as the sinkhole began to open up. He also told the station a sinkhole-prevention company had been at his home the past two days pouring grout to stabilize the home's foundation.
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Magnify

Deconstructing the hype on Super Typhoon Haiyan - Yolanda

Paul Homewood
Watts up with that
Thu, 14 Nov 2013 07:29 UTC
With special thanks to John Fuller and Agar012 (and Dr. Ryan Maue for review)

Now we have had a few days to reflect on the terrible events of last week, we can start to piece together some of the facts.

First of all, as it is the thing that really matters above all, fatalities. The good news, if it can be termed that, is that the death toll is likely to be around 2000 to 2500, according to the Philippine President. This is much less than the 10,000 originally feared to have died.

As far as the storm itself was concerned, the official statistics from the Philippine Met Agency, PAGASA, remain the same as those issued at the time. The table below compares these with the original satellite estimates put out by the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre, JTWC, and that were subsequently used by the media around the world to claim that Yolanda was the "strongest storm ever".

. PAGASA JTWC
Sustained Wind Speed mph 147 195
Gust mph 171 235

http://www.ndrrmc.gov.ph/attachments/article/1124/Update%20SWB%20No.6%20re%20TY%20YOLANDA%205AM.pdf

http://www.webcitation.org/6KyWsFio5

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24878801
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Cloud Grey

Another amazing Roll Cloud stretching across Texas sky

SKYE Editors
weather.aol.com
Thu, 14 Nov 2013 00:14 UTC
A roll cloud stretched across the morning sky in Timbercreek Canyon, Texas, on Monday, Nov. 4, 2013. Todd Mask captured it on video, describing the cloud as "rolling like an ocean wave" and "like a horiztonal vortex."

Roll clouds form along sea breezes, cold fronts and thunderstorms. "Sinking cold air causes warm, moist air on the planet's surface to climb to higher altitudes, where the moisture condenses into cloud form," explains LiveScience. "Winds from the storm "roll" the cloud parallel to the horizon." In this case, winds from an east-moving storm system created the distinct tube shape.

For more info on different types of cool clouds, check out the SKYE Guide to Extraordinary Clouds.

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Bizarro Earth

New explosions detected at Russian volcano on snowy Kamchatka Penninsula

Becky Oskin
LiveScience
Wed, 06 Nov 2013 22:46 UTC
Kamchatka Zhupanovksy volcano
© NASA Earth Observatory/Image by Jesse Allen and Robert SimmonOn Nov. 5, a NASA satellite spotted ash above Kamchatka's Zhupanovksy volcano.
A remote Russian volcano may be readying for a new eruption, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. On Nov. 5, NASA's Earth-Observing 1 satellite spotted ash above the 9,702-foot-tall (2,958 meters) Zhupanovksy volcano, which recently woke from a decades-long slumber. The snowy peaks also shows signs of phreatic explosions - the stupendous blasts that result from hot lava meeting snow, ice or water, the Earth Observatory reported.

Zhupanovksy's latest activity started on Oct. 23, when the volcano spewed ash 16,400 feet (5 kilometers) into the sky. It was the first explosive eruption at the volcano since 1959, according to KVERT, the Kamchatka Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, which monitors volcanic and earthquake hazards in the Russian peninsula. The initial blast of ash and volcanic gases was followed by several days of phreatic bursts and strong gas emissions from fumaroles (gas vents) at the peak, KVERT reported.

Comment: The pace of volcanic activity is ramping up around the world. Just a small sample of recent activity:

Reclus Volcano in Chile Appears to be Reawakening as Earthquakes Felt in Nearby Towns
Strong activity continues at Indonesia's Mount Lokon volcano
Alaska's Mt. Pavlof volcano is 'very, very hot'
Iceland's Hekla volcano: strong inflation suggests volcano could be close to erupting

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Bizarro Earth

USGS: Earthquake Magnitude 6.1 - Scotia Sea


US Geological Survey
Wed, 13 Nov 2013 19:04 UTC
Scotia Sea Quake_131113
© USGS
Event Time
2013-11-13 23:45:48 UTC
2013-11-13 20:45:48 UTC-03:00 at epicenter

Location
60.261°S 47.196°W depth=10.0km (6.2mi)

Nearby Cities
924km (574mi) SW of Grytviken, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
1394km (866mi) SE of Ushuaia, Argentina
1641km (1020mi) SE of Punta Arenas, Chile
1666km (1035mi) SE of Rio Gallegos, Argentina
1159km (720mi) SSE of Stanley, Falkland Islands

Technical Details
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Music

Strange sounds in Saskatoon: More unexplained noises caught on video


The Huffington Post Alberta
Wed, 13 Nov 2013 15:19 UTC

It resembles the sound of the mothership in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or the snarl of a long-dead dinosaur crawling back out of the Earth's crust, or simply the wailing of the coming apocalypse.

Whatever it was - even if completely benign - the thundering sounds over Saskatoon recently were alarming enough, and loud enough, to stir Ernie Werezak awake and compel him to grab his camera and start recording.

According to Werezak, who posted the footage on YouTube, he was jolted out of bed by the sounds, which he says seem to be 'in the air,' around 5 a.m. last Saturday.

YouTube user GTIkitty commented on the video and confirmed also hearing the sounds.
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Nuke

Fukushima and catastrophic climate change: The Earth community in hospice

Carolyn Baker
Carolynbaker.net
Wed, 06 Nov 2013 00:01 UTC
Earth in hand, blowing away
© unknown
To be in a body is to hear the heartbeat of death at every moment.

~Andrew Harvey~

As I write these words in early November, 2013, humanity is confronting an unprecedented and horrific challenge which it may or may not survive. I'm referring to two uncanny realities about which we are not being told the unmitigated truth.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant which suffered a catastrophic meltdown on March 11, 2011 is poised to inflict death and disastrous illness on millions, if not billions of people, as a result of ghastly amounts of contaminated water that is gushing daily into the Pacific Ocean and has already been detected on the West coasts of Canada and the United States. (28 Signs That The West Coast Is Being Fried By Fukushima Radiation)
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Ice Cube

Iceberg the size of Singapore could threaten shipping lanes as researchers race to track it

Lucy Kinder
The Telegraph, UK
Wed, 13 Nov 2013 14:39 UTC
An iceberg the size of Singapore is drifting away from Antarctica and may enter shipping lanes as researchers race to track its progress.

Image
© ReutersThe Pine Island Glacier ice shelf in Antarctica
An iceberg which is estimated to be around the size of Manhattan or Singapore could threaten shipping if it drifts into busy international lanes.

UK researchers have now been given an emergency grant to track the iceberg which is approximately 270 square miles in size.

The giant block of ice broke away from the Pine Island Glacier in July but it was iced-in due to the freezing winter temperatures in Antarctica.

While the iceberg could move eastwards along the Antarctic coast, it could also drift into the South Atlantic Ocean where it could potentially pose a hazard to ships if it crosses into international shipping lanes

Now the £50,000 research grant will fund a six month project which will predict the movements of the iceberg through the Southern Ocean.
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Cloud Precipitation

Haiyan of the Atlantic: Is this possible?

Larry O'Hanlon
Discovery.com
Wed, 13 Nov 2013 15:15 UTC
Hurricane
© Unknown
There have already been storms like Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Atlantic, although the jury could be out for months on the actual power of Haiyan.

"If there were instruments in its path, they didn't live through it," said Brian McNoldy, a storm researcher at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "We don't know exactly how strong the storm was, but it appears to be slightly stronger and slightly larger than Hurricane Andrew."

That would place it among the world's most powerful tropical cyclones, as only Camille (1969), Katrina (2005) and an unnamed storm that hit the Florida Keys in 1935 are known to have been more powerful than Andrew (1992), according statistics from the National Hurricane Center.
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Better Earth

Expect increasingly violent cyclones, weather experts warn


Raw Story
Mon, 11 Nov 2013 10:59 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo
Meteorologists have yet to formally link global warming to typhoons like the one that devastated the Philippines, but they expect increasingly extreme weather phenomena due to a rise in ocean temperatures.

The trail of death and destruction left in the wake of Super Typhoon Haiyan was at the forefront of a new round of United Nations climate talks that opened Monday in Poland, as Philippine authorities warned some 10,000 people may have died.

Haiyan - the most powerful typhoon to make landfall ever recorded - swept over the Philippines Friday, just days before the 12-day UN climate talks opened in Warsaw to a slew of warnings about potentially disastrous warming with increasingly extreme weather phenomena.

"There is a tendency of (oceans) warming up and an increase in the intensity of cyclones is part of the risks," said Herve Le Treut, a Paris university professor and climatologist.

Typhoons, hurricanes and cyclones are different names given to the same powerful weather phenomenon according to the region it hits, but meteorologists use the generic term "cyclone" when talking generally about these super storms.
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