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A new eruption started this week at the Zhupanovsky volcano, about 70 km northeast of the capital of Kamchatka, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which last erupted in 1959. It is a complex volcano composed of several overlapping cones aligned on a roughly east-west oriented axis. The new eruption comes from the same vent that has been also the site of all known historical eruptions, located west of the highest point of the volcanic massif.
© The Daily Caller
The Chilean Fresh Fruit Exporters Association said that freezing temperatures throughout mid-September hit the country's fruit growers with the coldest frost since 1929.
Temperatures fell to an average of 19 degrees Fahrenheit for an average of seven hours in several of the Chile's growing regions, contributing to a huge drop-off in fruit exports.
Chilean growers exported about 282 million boxes of fruit last year, and experts believe that exports will fall short of that by about 50 million boxes for this year. However, when production increases are taken into account, the total frost damage to fruit production could be closer to 60 million or 65 million boxes.
The wine industry was hit hard by the frost as well.
Best of the Web: 2013 is Strange: Extreme weather events, 'Earth Changes', and other strange phenomena in October
© AFPA handout picture from the London Fire Brigade shows firefighters standing outside three houses collapsed in a gas explosion suspected to have been caused by a gas main damaged by a falling tree in Hounslow, west London, on October 28, 2013
Four people were killed in Britain and three in Germany as heavy rain and high winds battered the region. The storm also claimed two victims in The Netherlands, one in France and one in Denmark.
Rough conditions at sea also forced rescuers to abandon the search for a 14-year-old boy who disappeared while playing in the surf on a southern English beach on Sunday.
British Prime Minister David Cameron described the loss of life as "hugely regrettable".
Winds reached 99 miles (159 kilometres) per hour on the Isle of Wight off the southern English coast, according to Britain's Met Office national weather centre, while more than 500,000 homes in Britain and France were left without power.
Heavy rain and winds of 80 mph elsewhere brought down thousands of trees and left hundreds of passengers trapped in planes at Copenhagen airport.
© Karen L. Nyberg (via Twitter as @AstroKaren)NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg snapped a picture of ash billowing from Mount Etna on Oct. 26, 2013.
She posted a photo of the phenomenon on Twitter, writing: "Our view of Mount Etna erupting. October 26."
At 10,900 feet (3,329 meters), Italy's Mount Etna is Europe's tallest volcano and one of the world's most active. Though it is almost continuously spewing gas or lava, the last major eruption at Mount Etna was in 1992.
Mount Etna's latest spurt of activity over the weekend sent a bright stream of lava shooting into the air, while ash clouds could be seen across much of eastern Sicily, according to the BBC. The haze forced the nearest airport and airspace to close temporarily, but none of the mountain towns that surround the volatile peak had to be evacuated, the BBC reported.
Earlier this year, Nyberg's Canadian colleague, astronaut Chris Hadfield, snapped a picture of ash spewing from Mount Etna while he was on board the space station after one of the volcano's paroxysms (short, violent bursts of activity).
© Paul YoungLightning produced by thunderstorms could also be generating Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes
The study in Geophysical Research Letters, suggests bursts known as terrestrial gamma ray flashes (TGF), are possibly produced by dark lightning generated by an avalanche of electrons.
TGFs were first detected by chance by NASA's Earth-orbiting Compton gamma ray telescope in 1994.
Compton was searching for gamma ray bursts from exploding stars in deep space, when it unexpectedly began detecting very strong bursts of high energy x-rays and gamma rays, coming from Earth.
"These bursts last about a thousandth of a second, so they're very short and they're very bright," says the study's lead author Professor Joseph Dwyer of the Florida Institute of Technology.
"In fact they're so bright, that they temporarily blind spacecraft."
The flashes were originally thought to be coming from the top of Earth's atmosphere, but spacecraft measurements and energy modelling show they're coming from altitudes below 20 kilometres.
"People now know they're coming from deeper down, from thunderstorms at about the same altitudes where aircraft fly," says Dwyer.
"We've been struggling to figure out how thunderstorms could generate these flashes."
Nearly 17 thousand people were left without electricity in the Sakhalin region (Russia's Far East, a big island north of Japan) as a result of wet snow on the wires that disconnected the power lines. This was reported today by the Ministry of Emergencies. Power lines are currently under emergency repair work. (10-27-2013)
Thanks to Argiris Diamantis for this link
© AFPCollapsed crane of the roof of the Cabinet office in London from high winds on October 28, 2013.
A 17-year-old girl died after a tree fell onto the static caravan where she was sleeping in Hever, southeast England, and a man in his 50s died when a tree fell on his car in Watford, north of London, police said.
The rough conditions at sea forced rescuers to suspend the search for a 14-year-old boy who was washed out to sea from a beach in East Sussex on England's south coast on Sunday.
More than 450 people were stranded for several hours on two ferries outside the port of Dover after it was closed to sea traffic, as huge waves lashed the coastline on both sides of the Channel.
At least 100 trees fell across railway lines in the south east, Network Rail said.
© Baron ServicesAn image of a mysterious blob seen in weather radar on June 4 in Huntsville, Ala.
"Our operational meteorologist spotted it on radar immediately and initially thought he was caught off-guard by a pop-up thunderstorm that wasn't in the forecast," Matthew Havin, data services manager at weather technology company Baron Services, told LiveScience in an email. "Soon after that point we had numerous people from around Huntsville (and even other meteorologists from other states) calling and e-mailing us trying to determine what was going on at the time."
And some of the theories put forth to explain the mysterious blob were doozies, from the conspiracy theory that it was the result of a top-secret ground-based transmitter to interference from a nearby utilities substation. [See Images of the Mysterious Radar Blob]
© PTIResidents of Raghunath Pur crossing a waterlogged road after torrential rain on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar on Sunday.
"All the deaths were due to wall collapse and drowning," Special Relief Commissioner P.K. Mohapatra said.
The low pressured induced rains led to fresh floods in Budhabalang river in Mayurbhanj district with water gushing into district headquarters town of Baripada and 50 villages, official source said.
In Khurda district, breaches occurred near Patapur, Manikapur, Achutarajpur and Srinibaspur of Banapur area after the Salia Dam overflowed, the sources said.
The very heavy rainfall damaged 96 distribution transformers of the Central Electricity Supply in the district.
A population of 16.50 lakh people were affected in 10 districts, as over 60 villages remained marooned in worst-hit Ganjam, the sources said.
The state government was hopeful that the situation would improve soon as the severity of the week - long rains had started declining in most areas.
"Though most parts of coastal Odisha are experiencing rain, the intensity has reduced and the situation will gradually improve," Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Surya Narayan Patro said.
In a sign of relief to the people of Ganjam, major rivers like Rusikulya, Godahada and Vansadhara were now flowing below the danger mark.
Comment: 1 lakh is 100,000, so 16.50 lakh is 1,65 million
Comment: When a mainstream source like Live Science willingly researches something that in different circumstences would vehemently criticize, we have to wonder if the real answer for the mysterious blob lies elsewhere.