Mysterious booms across the US, often occuring in and around earthquakes - A series of unusual earthquakes in Australia - More 'strange sky sounds' - More meteor fireballs raining down - Massive sinkholes swallowing houses, cars and people - Storm after storm battering the UK and Western Europe, bringing massive waves, widespread flooding and landslides - Mass whale stranding in New Zealand - Polar Vortex (twice!) freezing most of the US in ice age conditions and making it colder than Mars - Major flooding in Florida, while hurricane-force winds smash into Oregon and the Carolinas - Tonga flattened by most powerful cyclone to hit the region half a century - A strong earthquake hit Puerto Rico - 100,000 people affected by major flooding in the Philippines, while another 40,000 were displaced by heavy rainfall in Indonesia - Bats falling out of the sky as wildfires rage in Australia's record heatwave - 'Winter wildfires' raging across snow-covered US - An eerily quiet Sun that hasn't been seen since the 17th Century - Several volcanic eruptions in Indonesia causing multiple deaths and the evacuation of thousands - Another strong earthquake in New Zealand - More mass animal deaths, including a whole pod of pilot whales off the coast of Florida - Record-breaking snowfall across the US...

2014 has stated with a bang, literally, with a surge of loud booms being heard and felt throughout much of North America. But then again, didn't the last few years start this way? This video includes strange and extreme weather, geological and cosmic events, covering most of the month of January. Things aren't looking good for certain few heavily populated areas...

This video compiles footages of strange phenomena of all kinds, including awesome natural events or beautiful phenomena from around the world in the last few weeks.

In just the last couple of weeks, we've seen:

Volcanic eruptions in Sicily and Indonesia and elsewhere - 'Sky trumpet sounds' in Iceland, and loud booms shaking homes all over the US - Large earthquake in New Zealand, and an ongoing heatwave in Australia - Giant boulders falling off a mountain Italy and record flooding across Europe - More 'spinning ice-river' circles, this time in Norway - Strange cloud cover producing pretty sunsets and unusual light refraction, including a spectacular sun halo over Moscow - More mass animal deaths - More meteor fireballs falling from the sky, and 'hole-punch clouds'! - More UFO sightings - Massive electrical storms, including a super-electrical storm in Rio de Janeiro that produced an interesting omen: a thunderbolt struck the giant statue of Jesus above the city!... There were also major electrical storms in Europe... and this in the middle of winter! - Tornado outbreaks in the UK, which are unusual even in the summer - Thousands of wildfires breaking out in some of the coldest places on the planet - UK's wettest January in 250 years as the island continues to be pummeled with storm after storm...


I covered events from earlier in January and late December 2013 here.

Check out the rest of this series here.

Event Time
2014-02-03 22:36:41 UTC
2014-02-04 07:36:41 UTC+09:00 at epicenter

Location
7.164°S 128.100°E depth=18.1km (11.3mi)

Nearby Cities
318km (198mi) ENE of Dili, East Timor
383km (238mi) S of Ambon, Indonesia
413km (257mi) ENE of Atambua, Indonesia
433km (269mi) SSW of Amahai, Indonesia

Technical Details

Event Time
2014-02-03 03:08:46 UTC
2014-02-03 05:08:46 UTC+02:00 at epicenter

Location
38.292°N 20.337°E depth=13.7km (8.5mi)

Nearby Cities
12km (7mi) NW of Lixourion, Greece
74km (46mi) NW of Zakynthos, Greece
81km (50mi) SSW of Preveza, Greece
95km (59mi) W of Mesolongi, Greece
298km (185mi) W of Athens, Greece

Technical Details

Event Time
2014-02-02 09:26:37 UTC
2014-02-01 21:26:37 UTC-12:00 at epicenter

Location
32.908°S 177.822°W depth=40.4km (25.1mi)

Nearby Cities
192km (119mi) SSE of L'Esperance Rock, New Zealand
732km (455mi) NE of Whakatane, New Zealand
740km (460mi) NNE of Gisborne, New Zealand
761km (473mi) NE of Tauranga, New Zealand
1138km (707mi) NE of Wellington, New Zealand

Technical Details

In our January Volcano Watch articles - Hawaii Island's fifth annual Volcano Awareness Month - we are exploring important questions about how Hawaiian volcanoes work. Last week, we discussed how Hawaiian islands grow; this week, we talk about how they fall apart.

In 1964, irregular submarine topography north of Oahu and Molokai was identified in newly available maps of the sea floor made by the U.S. Navy. James Moore, then Scientist-in-Charge at the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, suggested that this odd bathymetry might reflect massive landslides originating from those islands.

Moore's interpretation was disputed for more than 20 years until comprehensive mapping of the sea floor around the entire state of Hawaii was completed in the late 1980s. It turned out that Moore was right. Large - even catastrophic - submarine landslide structures litter the sea floor around the Hawaiian Islands. In fact, 17 major landslides have been identified off the shores of the main Hawaiian Islands. Fortunately, these slides are exceedingly rare - occurring, on average, only once every 350,000 years.

The largest landslides constitute significant portions of the islands from which they originated. Imagine if 10 percent of one of the islands suddenly collapsed into the ocean. Such an event would displace a huge amount of water and cause a large tsunami. Deposits of coral and sand have been found approximately 1,000 feet above sea level on several of the Hawaiian Islands. Catastrophic landslides are believed to have generated gigantic tsunami waves that washed ashore and left these deposits behind.

The methane gas released by 90 flatulent cows caused an explosion in a farm shed in Germany, damaging the roof and injuring one of the animals, local police said.

In a statement, the force said high levels of the methane gas had built up within the structure in the central German town of Rasdorf on Monday thanks to animals belches and flatulence, before "a static electric charge caused the gas to explode with flashes of flames."

The subsequent blast damaged the roof of the cow shed, Reuters reported. Emergency services who attended the scene took gas readings to check for any potential further blasts.

One of the cows was injured and had to be treated for burns it sustained during the incident, a police spokesman added.

The animals can emit up to 500 litres of the greenhouse gas methane each every day through belching and flatulence. Cows also release large amounts of ammonia.

Event Time
2014-01-26 13:55:42 UTC
2014-01-26 15:55:42 UTC+02:00 at epicenter

Location
38.169°N 20.431°E depth=12.3km (7.7mi)

Nearby Cities
3km (2mi) S of Lixourion, Greece
58km (36mi) NW of Zakynthos, Greece
90km (56mi) WNW of Amalias, Greece
90km (56mi) WSW of Mesolongi, Greece
289km (180mi) W of Athens, Greece

Technical Details

Event Time
2014-01-25 05:14:20 UTC
2014-01-25 12:14:20 UTC+07:00 at epicenter

Location
8.004°S 109.238°E depth=83.2km (51.7mi)

Nearby Cities
39km (24mi) SSE of Adipala, Indonesia
41km (25mi) S of Kroya, Indonesia
53km (33mi) SW of Gombong, Indonesia
54km (34mi) S of Banyumas, Indonesia
330km (205mi) SE of Jakarta, Indonesia

Technical Details

The New Madrid fault zone in the nation's midsection is active and could spawn future large earthquakes, scientists reported Thursday.

It's "not dead yet," said U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Susan Hough, who was part of the study published online by the journal Science.

Researchers have long debated just how much of a hazard New Madrid (MAD'-rihd) poses. The zone stretches 150 miles, crossing parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.

In 1811 and 1812, it unleashed a trio of powerful jolts - measuring magnitudes 7.5 to 7.7 - that rattled the central Mississippi River valley. Chimneys fell and boats capsized. Farmland sank and turned into swamps. The death toll is unknown, but experts don't believe there were mass casualties because the region was sparsely populated then.