Drought
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Fish

Thousands of fish die when California lake runs dry overnight

Walker Lake_1
© CBS SacramentoDead fish at a Northern California reservoir.
Walker Lake-- Thousands of fish are dead after a Northern California reservoir ran dry overnight, reports CBS Sacramento.

Mountain Meadows reservoir also known as Walker Lake is a popular fishing hole just west of Susanville. Now the reservoir is dry and all the fish are dead.

Residents tell CBS Sacramento that people were fishing on the lake just last Saturday. But it drained like a bathtub overnight.

Resident Eddie Bauer has lived near the lake his entire life. He says that this is the first time he has ever seen the lake run dry. He and other residents now want answers as to why and how this could have happened.

CBS Sacramento reports that Pacific Gas & Electric Company own the rights to the water and use it for hydroelectric power.

Sun

California drought crippling ancient sequoias

Image
Giant Sequoia trees
The ancient trees are losing limbs and needles at rates that scientists have never seen before. Jacob Ward reports.


Source: Al Jazeera America

Arrow Up

A step closer to the end? Syria war prompts pull from doomsday seed vault

Svalbard Global Seed Vault
© Associated Press Photo/John McConnicoSnow blows off the Svalbard Global Seed Vault before being inaugurated at sunrise.
A seed storage vault built into the side of an Arctic mountain to protect global food supplies in case of global cataclysm is being tapped by researchers in the Middle East who say the Syrian war has devastated their crops.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built in 2008 by the Norwegian government as the world's largest secure seed storage, is intended to protect thousands of varieties of essential food crops against things like nuclear disaster, disease and climate change.

Now, the devastation brought on by the war in Syria, which has raged on for four years and claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, has prompted researchers to request some of the samples they gave to the vault, as their collection of crops in Aleppo was destroyed in the fighting.

Among the samples requested by the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) crops resistant to drought that could help scientists develop and secure food supplies in the face of climate change in dry areas worldwide.

Protecting the world's biodiversity in this manner is precisely the purpose of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault," said Brian Lainoff, spokesman for the Crop Trust, which runs the underground store, located on a Norwegian island 1,300 km (800 miles) from the North Pole.

Fire

Man risks life during harrowing drive to escape Valley Fire

valley fire
© Youtube
Escaping the Valley Fire in Anderson Springs / YouTube / mulletFive575102As the catastrophic Valley Fire spread through Lake County, California, one YouTube user recorded his daring escape from his home down apocalyptic roads flanked by blazing pines. During the series of videos, he defied death on his way to safety.

The inferno ripped through 50,000 acres in just 36 hours, destroying as many as 1,000 homes and forcing more than 19,000 residents to flee the area. On Saturday night, with no warning, YouTube user mulletFive, realized he and his wife had to escape. He captured three videos of their harrowing flight to safety out of Anderson Springs.


"We are the last house at the very back of the Springs, down in a gulch. There was no smoke or ash coming our way, and there were no sirens or air support nearby, so we honestly didn't know how close it was," mulletFive wrote in a YouTube comment.

"Once we drove up out of our gulch, we realized how close it was. There were no sirens or air support because there was zero firefighting effort in Anderson Springs," he added.


"[W]e did wait way too long to get out," he wrote. "In retrospect, we should have gone out for a drive to find out what was going on, but we were a little preoccupied with packing."

On Sunday, the inferno was still 0 percent contained, and one person was reported dead due to the Valley Fire.

READ MORE: California burning: One dead, 1,000s evacuated as wildfires scorch 400 homes (PHOTOS)

MulletFive wrote that he thought that most of the houses he passed during his dangerous drive would have been consumed by fire. He and his wife are waiting to receive the all-clear to go back home to inspect the damage, but he expects that to be several more days.

"I am in the Bay Area waiting for the roads to reopen, and as soon as they do I will shoot video driving around the Springs and post it ASAP," he wrote Sunday evening.


As of 8 a.m. local time on Monday, the fire was 5 percent contained and it had burned through 61,000 acres.

"Hundreds of homes and hundreds of other structures destroyed," the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection noted on its website.

Bizarro Earth

Papua New Guinea provinces under state of emergency due to drought and crop-destroying frosts

drought papua new guinea
Papua New Guinea Highlands affected by drought.
An intensifying El Nino may bring the worst drought in 20 years to Papua New Guinea, the country's prime minister said, raising fears that production of the country's critical agricultural commodities may drop.

Dry weather has gripped much of Papua New Guinea in recent months, while frosts in the last fortnight in the country's highland regions have destroyed vital food supplies, the government said late on Monday.

The El Nino is typically linked to dryness and frosts are often an early symptom of the phenomenon, weather experts say.

Prime Minister Peter O'Neill warned of an escalation of unfavorable conditions across the rest of Papua New Guinea as the El Nino strengthens over the next few months.

Comment: Drought has been plaguing many parts of the globe - the following map shows worldwide droughts during the past year:




Sun

Europe affected by severest drought since 2003

drought europe summer 2015
© JRC-EDEA database (EDO). © EU, 2015Areas with the lowest soil moisture content since 1990 in July 2015 (in red) and in July 2003 (in blue).
Much of the European continent has been affected by severe drought in June and July 2015, one of the worst since the drought and heat wave of summer of 2003, according to the latest report by the JRC's European Drought Observatory (EDO). The drought, which particularly affects France, Benelux, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, northern Italy and northern Spain, is caused by a combination of prolonged rain shortages and exceptionally high temperatures.

Satellite imagery and modelling revealed that the drought, caused by prolonged rainfall shortage since April, had already affected soil moisture content and vegetation conditions in June. Furthermore, the areas with the largest rainfall deficits also recorded exceptionally high maximum daily temperatures: in some cases these reached record values.

Comment: Europe has been undergoing a heatwave that has set historic records and there has been a wave of extreme temperatures all over the globe recently:




Cloud Lightning

Best of the Web: Signs of Change: Extreme weather and environmental upheaval in August 2015 (VIDEO)

hawkkey davis
© HawkkeyDavisChannel/YouTubeFloods and infernos: August has seen flooding and fires in areas all over the world.
Hawkkey Davis' latest video compilation of extreme weather events (and general environmental chaos) from the past month or so.

The Solomon Islands, Alaska's Aleutian Islands, the Bay Area, Indonesia, Queensland and Maryland are rocked by earthquakes; Reunion Island (the site of the alleged MH370 'wreckage' found earlier this month) and Mexico by volcanoes. The Queensland quake was the biggest in a century. Flash floods in Arizona, northwest China, Iran, Pakistan, Florida, India, Myanmar, Colorado, and Argentina. Wildfires in France, Spain, Montana and California. The Dead Sea tourism industry is threatened by unprecedented sinkholes. All this, plus storms, tornadoes, sand, fireballs, record-breaking heat and more!


Comment: See also: SOTT Earth Changes Summary - July 2015: Extreme Weather and Planetary Upheaval


Sun

High temperature records 'shattered' in California

record heat in California
© AP Photo/Richard VogelVisitors to Echo Park Lake near downtown Los Angeles shade themselves under an umbrella as paddle boats keep close to a large fountain to keep cool on Friday, Aug. 14, 2015. The National Weather Service says Southern California’s sharp warming trend will build into the weekend, with above-normal temperatures in many areas. Forecasters say the hottest conditions will be Friday through Sunday. Valley and desert temperatures will range from 100 to108 degrees, with highs from 85 to 95 elsewhere.
After Southern California baked under record-breaking heat Saturday, the triple-digit heat wave is expected to continue through the weekend before tapering back down toward seasonal norms during the week, according to the National Weather service.

Long Beach, Burbank and Ontario all saw records for the date, Meteorologist Joe Sirard of the NWS Oxnard office said.

"It's the usual," he said. "an upper level ridge of high pressure that built in from the east, and just brought in some hot air from over the deserts and parked it over us."

In addition, a "very shallow" marine layer rising little more than 600 feet also contributed to the Southland's sweltering temperatures, which hovered at 10 or 15 degrees above normal Saturday, Sirard said.

Burbank saw a high temperature of 104 degrees Saturday, shattering the previous record of 101 degrees set in 1977, Sirard said.

Long Beach Airport recorded a high temperature of 99 degrees, topping its 1992 record of 87 degrees, he said. And in the Los Padres National Forest, Sandberg, at more than 4,500 feet elevation, a high temperature of 99 degrees bested the previous record of 95 degrees, set in 2014.

Inland, a record of 100 degrees set in 2007 in Ontario was smashed after temperatures reached 105 degrees Saturday afternoon, NWS Meteorologist Scott Sukup said.

Comment: All over the world extreme weather records are being broken!

Stay informed, see: SOTT Earth Changes Summary - July 2015: Extreme Weather and Planetary Upheaval

To understand what's going on, check out our book explaining how all these events are part of a natural climate shift, and why it's taking place now: Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.

Check out previous installments in this series - now translated into multiple languages - and more videos from SOTT Media here or here.

You can help us chronicle the Signs of the Times by sending video suggestions to sott@sott.net


Bizarro Earth

Poland's drought sinks Vistula River to lowest level in more than 200 years

drought poland, vistula river
Poland's largest river the Vistula is pictured at its lowest water level since 1789 because of a recent drought in Warsaw, on August 18, 2015
Poland's longest river, the Vistula, on Tuesday hit its lowest water level in more than 200 years because of a drought ravaging the country, a weather official said.

Its level in Warsaw fell to 50 centimetres (20 inches), the lowest since records began in 1789, according to Grzegorz Walijewski, a hydrologist at Poland's IMGW weather institute.

Attention

Cuba's drought has damaged agriculture and left a million people relying on trucked-in water

drought cuba
© Reuters/Enrique De La Osa/FilesA man carries buckets of water in Havana
Cuba put its civil defense system on alert on Monday due to a year-long drought that is forecast to worsen in the coming months and has already damaged agriculture and left more than a million people relying on trucked-in water.

From Cuba's famous cigars to sugar, vegetables, rice, coffee and beans, the drought is damaging crops. It has slowed planting and left one in 10 residents waiting for government tank trucks to survive in record summer heat.

The country's civil defense system said the drought, record heat and water leakage have led to "low levels of available water for the population, agriculture, industry and services."