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US: Several Tennessee rivers set records


United Press International
Thu, 06 May 2010 16:22 UTC
Image
© UPI
Nashville - A U.S. Geological Survey study shows many rivers in middle Tennessee set high flow records due to heavy rainfall last weekend.

Preliminary estimates released Thursday show the highest stream flows were observed from Nashville west toward Jackson, extending about 40-miles north and south of Interstate 40 and affecting major tributaries of the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers.

Flows on the Harpeth River exceeded 46,000 cubic feet per second May 3, while the Duck River near Hurricane Mills flowed at 138,000 cfs May 4, exceeding the previous high by 17,000 cfs, the USGS said.

Flood peaks on the Harpeth near Bellevue, Piney River at Vernon, and Duck River at Hurricane Mills appear to have exceeded levels expected with only a 0.2 percent probability (1 in 500 chance) in any given year.
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Gulf of Mexico oil slick: amount gushing from well 'could increase 12 fold'

Nick Allen
Telegraph UK
Thu, 06 May 2010 12:59 UTC
Telegraph uk oil slick
© Associated Press
The amount of oil gushing from BP's ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico could increase twelve fold under a worse case scenario
The amount of oil gushing from BP's ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico could increase twelve fold under a worse case scenario, executives from the company told the US Congress.

The well is currently spewing 5,000 barrels a day, or about 210,000 gallons, but that figure could reach 60,000 barrels a day, equivalent to 2.5 million gallons a day, if efforts to stop the leaks fail.

The figure was given in a briefing by executives from BP and Transocean, which owned the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig, to the Congress House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Ed Markey, a Democrat Congressman from Massachusetts on the committee, said they were told the worst case scenario could see the level of oil rise to 40,000 barrels, or even 60,000 barrels a day.
      Read More...
Arrow Up

Iran offers to help contain US oil spill


Press TV
Mon, 03 May 2010 02:13 UTC
Dead fish on Mississippi beach
© Unknown
A dead fish is seen on the Mississippi beach on May 2, 2010. While the death has not been linked to the vast oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, concerns over wildlife continue.
The National Iranian Drilling Company (NIDC) has offered to assist the US in efforts to prevent an ecological disaster caused by the spreading oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Following an explosion on a BP-operated oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico last month, at least 210,000 gallons (5,000 barrels) of crude oil are thought to be spilling into the water every day.

NIDC managing director Heidar Bahmani announced the firm's readiness to use its decades-long expertise to fight the oil slick, the company's public relations office told Press TV.

"Our oil industry experts in the field of drilling can contain the rig leakage in the Gulf of Mexico and prevent an ecological disaster in that part of the world," Bahmani said.
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Magnitude 6.2 - Southern Peru


US Geological Survey
Thu, 06 May 2010 02:29 UTC
Peru Earthquake_060510
© USGS
Earthquake Location
Date-Time:
Thursday, May 06, 2010 at 02:42:47 UTC

Wednesday, May 05, 2010 at 10:42:47 PM at epicenter

Location:
18.023°S, 70.533°W

Depth:
35 km (21.7 miles) set by location program

Distances:
30 km (20 miles) W of Tacna, Peru

55 km (35 miles) NNW of Arica, Tarapaca, Chile

100 km (65 miles) SSE of Moquegua, Peru

960 km (600 miles) SE of LIMA, Peru
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Oil Spill: BP Prepares to Place Dome Over the Leak, But Spill Continues

Bradley Blackburn
ABC News
Wed, 05 May 2010 20:00 UTC
As the wrecked wellhead at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico continued to spew oil into the water for a 16th day, BP moved forward with a plan to cap the leak and, it hoped, stop the ecological and economic disaster.

BP said that it would have a giant, 100-ton dome-like device placed over the wellhead Thursday, which could begin to collect oil as soon as next Monday. Before that can happen, the dome will have to be connected to a drill ship that can collect the polluted water and oil.
      Read More...
Umbrella

It's snowing in southern France... in May!


Times of Malta
Wed, 05 May 2010 14:44 UTC
Residents of the southwestern town of Carcassonne slipped and slid over centimetres of snow on Tuesday as an unusually late cold snap hit France.

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Attention

Under the Wrong Conditions, Oil Spills are Forever

Tom Philpott
Grist
Wed, 05 May 2010 17:15 UTC
Image
© Photo courtesy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council
The massive clean-up efforts for the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Prince William Sound.
"A senior BP executive conceded Tuesday that the ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico could conceivably spill as much as 60,000 barrels a day of oil, more than 10 times the estimate of the current flow," reports The New York Times today, about a closed-door briefing for members of Congress.

As oil gushes from the Gulf sea bottom, it's interesting to ponder what past spills have done to ecosystems. Under the right - or, better said, the wrong - conditions, oil can linger for decades and longer, causing permanent damage. How is Prince William Sound, site of the Exxon Valdez disaster, doing these days?

From MSNBC:
Twenty years after the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil in Alaska's Prince William Sound, oil persists in the region and, in some places, "is nearly as toxic as it was the first few weeks after the spill," according to the council overseeing restoration efforts.

"This Exxon Valdez oil is decreasing at a rate of 0-4 percent per year," the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council stated in a report marking Tuesday's 20th anniversary of the worst oil spill in U.S. waters. "At this rate, the remaining oil will take decades and possibly centuries to disappear entirely."

... Moreover, surveys "have documented lingering oil also on the Kenai Peninsula and the Katmai coast, over 450 miles away," according to the council.

None of that was expected "at the time of the spill or even ten years later," it added. "In 1999, beaches in the sound appeared clean on the surface. Some subsurface oil had been reported in a few places, but it was expected to decrease over time and most importantly, to have lost its toxicity due to weathering. A few species were not recovering at the expected rate in some areas, but continuing exposure to oil was not suspected as the primary cause."

It turns out that oil often got trapped in semi-enclosed bays for weeks, going up and down with the tide and some of it being pulled down into the sediment below the seabed.
      Read More...
Fish

The most kick-ass fish in the sea

Michael Marshall
New Scientist
Wed, 05 May 2010 15:51 UTC
Image
© Norbert Wu/Minden Pictures/FLPA
To die for
Species: Takifugu rubripes

Habitat: Deep in the seas around Japan, and the north-west Pacific; fish tanks in sushi restaurants, looking nervous

If you were looking for an animal to take the title of "most kick-ass fish in the sea", then the tiger puffer would have to be a strong contender.

Not only is it lethally poisonous - though that doesn't stop people trying to eat it - and able to scare off predators by inflating itself to become much larger than normal, when it is young it munches on its own brothers and sisters.

Tiger puffers attach their eggs to rocks near the bottom of the sea, often at the mouths of bays. The larvae hatch, then move to estuaries or mudflats once they have grown a little. Having put on a lot more weight, they head out to sea.

It's no innocent childhood for the pufferfish, though, as Shin Oikawa of Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, and colleagues found when they hatched tiger puffer larvae in the lab and monitored them for two months.
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Rumbles hint that Mount Fuji is getting angry


New Scientist
Wed, 05 May 2010 15:47 UTC
Image
© Japan Stock/Alamy
What's going on below?
Something is brewing under Japan's Mount Fuji. Using rocks ejected by previous eruptions, between 781 AD and 1707, geologists are figuring out what the volcano's internal plumbing looks like.

A team led by Takayuki Kaneko at the University of Tokyo's Volcano Research Center has found that over the centuries the magma's silica levels have gradually increased. High silica tends to indicate large explosions, suggesting eruptions have become more violent. Large amounts of basalt rich in aluminium oxide were also found, which can trigger an eruption when it collides with silica.

Based on the pressures required to form both materials, Kaneko believes the two mineral composites are housed in separate chambers under Fuji: one deep chamber 20 kilometres below the volcano, rich in basaltic magma, and a shallower chamber housing the silica 9 kilometres underground.

He says the deep rumble of low-frequency earthquakes beneath Fuji in 2000 and 2001 suggests movement inside the basaltic magma chamber, and adds he would not be surprised if Fuji erupts in the very near future.
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Magnitude 6.5 - Southern Sumatra, Indonesia


US Geological Survey
Wed, 05 May 2010 16:29 UTC
Indon Earthquake_050510
© USGS
Earthquake Location
Date-Time:
Wednesday, May 05, 2010 at 16:29:02 UTC

Wednesday, May 05, 2010 at 11:29:02 PM at epicenter

Location:
4.081°S, 101.069°E

Depth:
18.1 km (11.2 miles) (poorly constrained)

Distances:
135 km (85 miles) WSW of Bengkulu, Sumatra, Indonesia

215 km (135 miles) WSW of Lubuklinggau, Sumatra, Indonesia

355 km (220 miles) SSE of Padang, Sumatra, Indonesia

680 km (420 miles) WNW of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia
      Read More...
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