Earth Changes 2013 - Daily Updates

TODAY's LINKS:
Eclipses: http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH201...
Mississippi River Flood: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD...
Hubble Sees ISON: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hub...
Midwest Flooding: http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/MediaDetail2...

Radio Anomaly: http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/maproo...
US TEC: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ustec/images...
US Windmap http://hint.fm/wind/
US Severe Weather: http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-c...
UK/EU MET Office: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/e...
NOAA: http://www.weather.gov/forecastmaps
EU Weather Alerts: http://www.meteoalarm.eu
US Weather Warnings: http://www.weather.gov

The REAL Climate Changer: https://youtu.be/_yy3YJBOw_o
Ice Age Soon? https://youtu.be/UuYTcnN7TQk
An Unlikely but Relevant Risk - The Solar Killshot: https://youtu.be/X0KJ_dxp170

REPEAT LINKS:

WORLD WEATHER:
NDBC Buoys: http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/
Tropical Storms: http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/
HurricaneZone Satellite Images: http://www.hurricanezone.net/westpaci...
Weather Channel: http://www.weather.com/
NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory: http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/Default.php
Pressure Maps: http://www.woweather.com/cgi-bin/expe...
Satellite Maps: http://www.woweather.com/cgi-app/sate...
Forecast Maps: http://www.woweather.com/weather/maps...
EL DORADO WORLD WEATHER MAP: http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/...
TORCON: http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-t... [Tornado Forecast for the day]
HURRICANE TRACKER: http://www.weather.com/weather/hurric...

US WEATHER:
Precipitation Totals: http://www.cocorahs.org/ViewData/List...
GOES Satellites: http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/goes/
THE WINDMAP: http://hint.fm/wind/
Severe Weather Threats: http://www.weather.com/news/weather-s...
Canada Weather Office Satellite Composites: http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/satell...
Temperature Delta: http://www.intellicast.com/National/T...
Records/Extremes: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/rec...

SPACEWEATHER:
Spaceweather: http://spaceweather.com
SOHO Solar Wind: http://umtof.umd.edu/pm/
HAARP Data Meters: http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/dat...
Planetary Orbital Diagram - Ceres1 JPL: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr...
SDO: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/
Helioviewer: http://www.helioviewer.org/
SOHO: http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-b...
Stereo: http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/i...
SOLARIMG: http://solarimg.org/artis/
iSWA: http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov/iswa/iSWA.html
NASA ENLIL SPIRAL: http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov:8080/IswaSy...
NOAA ENLIL SPIRAL: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/wsa-enlil/
GOES Xray: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sxi/goes15/i...
Gamma Ray Bursts: http://grb.sonoma.edu/
BARTOL Cosmic Rays: http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu//spac...
ISWA: http://iswa.ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov:8080/I...
NOAA Sunspot Classifications: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/lates...
GONG: http://gong2.nso.edu/dailyimages/
GONG Magnetic Maps: http://gong.nso.edu/data/magmap/ondem...


MISC Links:
JAPAN Radiation Map: http://jciv.iidj.net/map/
RADIATION Network: http://radiationnetwork.com/
LISS: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/monitoring...
QUAKES LIST FULL: http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/s...
RSOE: http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php [That cool alert map I use]
Moon: http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/pac...

PEORIA HEIGHTS, Ill. (AP) - More rain on Tuesday was the last thing flood fighters across the Midwest wanted to see, adding more water to swollen rivers now expected to remain high into next month. Floodwaters were rising to record levels along the Illinois River in central Illinois. In Missouri, six small levees north of St. Louis were overtopped by the surging Mississippi River, though mostly farmland was affected. The Mississippi and Illinois rivers have crested in some places, but that doesn't mean the danger is over. The National Weather Service predicts a very slow descent, thanks in part to the additional rain expected to amount to an inch or so across several Midwestern states.

http://weather.aol.com/2013/04/23/midwest-more-rain-expected-for-already-swollen-rivers/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cnetscape%7Cdl26%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D303025


April 25, 2013 – AFGHANISTAN – A powerful earthquake and flash floods which struck Afghanistan this week killed at least 38 people and damaged hundreds of homes, the presidential palace said Thursday, offering aid to victims. Wednesday’s quake killed 17 and injured 126 in the eastern province of Nangarhar while 300 homes were damaged, a statement said. In neighboring Kunar province, one person was killed, four injured and 45 homes damaged. The continuing flash floods in the northern province of Balkh have killed 20 and damaged 1,900 houses, it said. Floods had also cost lives and damaged property in Ghor and Baghlan provinces, the statement said without giving any figures. President Hamid Karzai had ordered emergency help for victims, it added. The quake centered in Nangarhar caused widespread damage in some villages because most of the houses are built of mud. Provincial government spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai put the death toll there at 16 but said it may rise. At an emergency meeting Thursday, the private sector and relief agencies agreed to provide emergency aid and the central government also offered assistance, he said. Mud-built homes were also no match for raging floodwaters in Balkh. “The badly affected areas are impoverished villages where most of the homes are mud-built and can be easily damaged when floods come,” said provincial government spokesman Munir Ahmad Farhad on Wednesday. –Alarabiya.net


April 25, 2013 – ECUADOR - A landslide swept into a village in northern Ecuador, burying homes and killing at least 14 people, authorities said Wednesday. “There were 14 people killed in a landslide in Tabete” civil defense reported on Twitter, of the town near the Colombian border. After days of heavy rain, the landslide buried homes in tonnes of earth and debris in the town located in Esmeraldas province, said Mayor Ernesto Estupinan of nearby Esmeraldas city.

Pakistani earthquake victims burnt tyres at angry protests on Friday, accusing the government of failing to provide adequate relief three days after their homes were destroyed or damaged. Tuesday's 7.8-magnitude quake, centred in southeastern Iran, killed 41 people -- all but one of whom were in Pakistan, where thousands more have been affected. One of the worst-hit areas is Mashkail, a remote community in Pakistan's southwestern province Baluchistan, where the lack of paved roads, phone coverage, immense distances and medical facilities have hampered the rescue effort. Several hundred protesters chanted slogans against the federal and provincial governments, set fire to tyres and blocked the road to vent their resentment in Mashkail, an AFP reporter said. They demanded shelter and the restoration of electricity after poles in some areas were destroyed by the earthquake. "No one has received any relief item. The FC (Frontier Corps paramilitary) have distributed 20 tents which they gave only to influential people," protester Ali Ahmad told AFP. Others said that children were sick. "Our children are having diarrhoea. When we took them to the health facility there is a shortage of medicine," said another man. Homeless families are camping out under date trees without tents or plastic sheets, although food and water is available in shops that remain open, coming from across the border with Iran. "If this earthquake had struck some other area, all the government machinery would have gone. Here only two government officials came but delivered nothing," Mohammd Khalil, a driver, told AFP. "If they cannot do it, they should allow Iran to help us," he added. On Friday, local Mashkail administration official Syed Mureed Shah put the figure at more than 35,000 out of nearly 40,000 people scattered throughout the wider district of Washuk. Thousands of homes are believed to have been damaged.

April 25, 2013 – LATVIA – In 1841, Edgar Allen Poe referred to a maelstrom, or powerful whirlpool in the ocean, as a “whole sea … lashed into ungovernable fury.” Now 172 years later, a YouTube video titled “Amazing monstrous whirlpool” gives gravity to Poe’s words, though (likely) on a slightly smaller scale. Set in Dviete, Latvia, near the banks of the Daugava River, the video depicts a mysterious whirlpool churning — and destroying — all that enters. Huge chunks of ice? Gone. Floating islands of debris? Annihilated. “Swallowing everything dragged towards its direction,” reads the description by Jānis Astičs, “this monstrous whirlpool looks as if a plug has been pulled from the ground beneath.” Astičs isn’t too far off in his analysis, actually. While most whirlpools in nature occur as a result of fast moving currents meeting one another in opposite directions (often caused by ocean tides), the phenomenon in the video shares a lot in common with a draining bathtub. Indeed, a longer version of the same video shows the mysterious “monstrous whirlpool” in Latvia has been formed by water from the swollen river flowing into an inlet on the upstream side of a bridge. All of the debris is funneled under the road on which spectators are standing and flows downstream. According to the European Federation for Rural Tourism, Latvia’s Dviete river valley, where this video was filmed, is home to a massive wetland during flooding season. The marsh serves as a critical area for birds, both for nesting and migration. -HP

April 28, 2013 – CANADA – What may have been Saskatchewan’s snowiest winter ever is being followed now by the coldest spring in more than a century. On Monday morning, cold weather records for the day were broken in at least 12 communities, according to Environment Canada. Among the colder communities was Weyburn, where it dipped to –13.6 C, shattering the old record for April 22 of –7.2. Regina dipped below -10 Monday morning and crept up to 0 C later in the day. That compares with a high of about 21 a year earlier. The temperature dropped to – 15 C overnight. For Tuesday, Environment Canada forecast a high of 3 C in Regina, compared with a normal of 15 C. It’s been the coldest March and April in 113 years, according to Environment Canada’s senior climatologist David Phillips. “You have to go back to the early 1900s to find a temperature that was as cold on this morning in both Regina and Saskatoon and I’m sure in many other parts of the province,” he said. A lack of warm air coming up from the U.S. this spring is part of the trouble, Phillips said. Another problem is the extensive snow cover, which is reflecting a lot more sunlight than usual. That’s been keeping the ground from warming up. Ten days from now, he says, Saskatchewan may start to see the temperatures inch up toward more seasonal values. In fact, May and June should be warmer than normal, Phillips said. -CBC

April 28, 2013 – NEW ENGLAND – Atlantic sea-surface temperatures off the U.S. Northeast coast during the second half of 2012 were the highest recorded in 150 years, according to a report released on April 25 by NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center. A deviation in average temperature by more than a degree is uncommon; this increase, from the average of 54.3 degrees F. over past 30 years to 57.2 degrees F. in the second half of last year is the highest jump measured. It is also an amount of warming not seen in any other ocean. Warming ocean temperatures off the Northeast have meant changing distributions of some fish populations; black sea bass and summer flounder are among the species shifting northeastward. One NOAA scientist said while it’s not yet clear what these findings will mean for the Northeast Shelf ecosystem and its marine life, that ecosystem is changing. –Sports Fishing Mag

Major Snowstorm is On its way for Denver on Wednesday May 1, 2013 and it will bring 15+ CM of snow and it will have Blowing Snow and Temperatures will be Very Cold and and People in Denver Don't Put away your Winter Tires Yet because the Roads will be Icy and lots of Snow and the Roads will also be Very Slippery and Snow Covered Especially Side Streets and People in Denver Have your Winter Boots Ready and Have your Winter Jackets and Have your Shovels, Snow Scoops, Snow Blowers and Snow Plows Ready and Do your Grocery Shopping Don't Wait until the Last Minute Do it Right Now Cars will get in the Car Accidents and Be Very Careful Driving and Take your Time and the Car will get Stuck in the Snow and Order your Pizzas and Chinese Food and Buy Cases of Pepsi and Coke just Before the Snowstorm in Denver and Don't Put away your Winter Gear Just Yet and Don't Put away your Winter Tires Yet because it will be a lot of snow in Denver on Wednesday and the Temperatures will be Very Cold and Freezing too.

Freakish cold has U.S. asking: 'Where's spring?'
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/04/29/cold-snowy-spring-weather/2121737/

Another snowstorm taking aim at Denver...
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/another-spring-snowstorm-for-d-1/11220168

Back to Winter in Midwest... Where Temperatures Will Drop 60 Degrees
http://www.weather.com/news/weather-forecast/extreme-temperature-drops-this-week-20130429

Chill Map... http://vortex.plymouth.edu/uschill.gif

May 12, 2013 – CANADA - A local state of emergency has been declared in a western Manitoba municipality after homes in Ochre Beach were destroyed and seriously damaged by a wave of lake ice. Area officials told CBC News the wind pushed built-up ice off Dauphin Lake on Friday evening and caused it to pile up in the community, located on the lake’s southern shore. The piles of ice, which were more than nine meters tall in some cases, destroyed at least six homes and cottages, according to the Rural Municipality of Ochre River. Another 14 homes suffered extensive damage, with some structures knocked off their foundations. Clayton Watts, Ochre River’s deputy reeve, said it’s a miracle no one was hurt. He told CBC News one minute people were watching hockey in their living rooms, the next they heard something that sounded like a freight train near their homes. “It happened so quick,” said Watts. “And you can’t predict it — not like water that slowly comes up.” Watts said there are several cabins that were completely flattened by the wall of ice that came at them. “The ice is over top of them, they’ve been crushed, there’s nothing left,” he said. “There are other cabins that have been knocked right off their footings,” he continued. “There’s ice right over top of some of the cabins, coming over the roof on the other side.” According to Environment Canada winds were registered at about 80 km/h in the area Friday night. There is no insurance coverage for ice damage. Dennis Stykalo, who’s cottage is full of ice after Friday night’s wind storm, told CBC News his insurance does not cover damage done by ice. He said he’s devastated after the event — he can’t even get inside to recover his valuables. “You know you’ve got cement, concrete blocks, and steel and the ice goes through it like its just a toothpick,” said Stykalo. “t just shows the power. There is nothing you can do, you just get out of the way and just watch.” CBC News also contacted an insurance company in Winnipeg who said generally coverage is not provided for damage to homes caused by shoreline ice build-up or water-borne ice. The damage is even more traumatic for some, he added, as many of the homes in the area were ruined by flooding in 2011. Dozens of properties in Ochre Beach and Dauphin Beach were evacuated due to extremely high lake levels that spring. “They’re devastated. Most of these people were hit pretty hard during the flood,” said Watts. “Most of them were just back to the stage where they were back living in their homes again. And now this has happened. So they’re pretty devastated right now.” Ochre Beach is about 300 kilometers northwest of Winnipeg and 20 kilometers east of Dauphin. –MSN.ca

Given all of the recent outgassing of Kilauea and how incredibly voggy it's been... along with numerous other volcanic eruptions outgassing water vapor, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide ( sulfur compounds can lead to "acid rain") into the atomosphere, I'm not surprised.

May 14, 2013 – CHINA – Something very strange started oozing out of the streets in the Chinese city of Nanjing on Saturday night. Generally, when weird things start erupting from the ground in Asian countries it’s in the form of a giant b-movie monster, but this invasion was a whole lot realer, and a whole lot smellier. At around 9PM, pedestrians began to notice the pavement at the Wende Baiyun Lane cross intersection started to crack and split open, and before long, a foamy white substance was spewing from the cracks, brimming with it a foul-smelling stench. Within a short time, the foam had spread to a 50 meter radius and stood a foot high. According to the Chinese news outlet Longhoo, firefighters and police rushed to rope off the scene, evacuating civilians and helping redirect the flow of traffic from the flow of ooze. A short time later, the strange substance stopped leaking and the remnants that weren’t quickly washed into the sewers retreated back into the one centimeter wide cracks in the road, leaving authorities baffled as to what the stinking foam could have been. An investigation has been started into the case of the smelly ooze, but so far, the only rational explanation that officials can come to is that the ‘Godzilla barf’ might be related to nearby subway construction, though even that theory hasn’t answered many questions. What do you think of the weird stinking foam? Did some subterranean monster used a bit too much detergent? -WFB

May 14, 2013 – GRAY, TN (WJHL) - A Tri-Cities man has video of what appears to be a large chunk of ice that he says fell from the sky on Wednesday (May and landed in a yard in Gray, TN. Andy Miller says his children were playing outside along Keeview Drive off Hales Chapel Road around 4 p.m. when they heard what sounded like a rocket. “They ran into the house shaking,” Miller said. He used his phone to record video of the children inspecting the pile of pure white ice sitting in a gouged out hole in the ground near where they were playing. Miller did a quick web search and found information that lead him to believe it’s a megacryometeor. For what it’s worth, here’s a quick definition we found on line: “A megacryometeor is a very large chunk of ice which, despite sharing many textural, hydro-chemical and isotopic features detected in large hailstones, is formed under unusual atmospheric conditions which clearly differ from those of the cumulonimbus cloud scenario (i.e. clear-sky conditions). They are sometimes called huge hailstones, but do not need to form in thunderstorms.” -WBTW

May 12, 2013 – CANADA - A local state of emergency has been declared in a western Manitoba municipality after homes in Ochre Beach were destroyed and seriously damaged by a wave of lake ice. Area officials told CBC News the wind pushed built-up ice off Dauphin Lake on Friday evening and caused it to pile up in the community, located on the lake’s southern shore. The piles of ice, which were more than nine meters tall in some cases, destroyed at least six homes and cottages, according to the Rural Municipality of Ochre River. Another 14 homes suffered extensive damage, with some structures knocked off their foundations. Clayton Watts, Ochre River’s deputy reeve, said it’s a miracle no one was hurt. He told CBC News one minute people were watching hockey in their living rooms, the next they heard something that sounded like a freight train near their homes. “It happened so quick,” said Watts. “And you can’t predict it — not like water that slowly comes up.” Watts said there are several cabins that were completely flattened by the wall of ice that came at them. “The ice is over top of them, they’ve been crushed, there’s nothing left,” he said. “There are other cabins that have been knocked right off their footings,” he continued. “There’s ice right over top of some of the cabins, coming over the roof on the other side.” According to Environment Canada winds were registered at about 80 km/h in the area Friday night. There is no insurance coverage for ice damage. Dennis Stykalo, who’s cottage is full of ice after Friday night’s wind storm, told CBC News his insurance does not cover damage done by ice. He said he’s devastated after the event — he can’t even get inside to recover his valuables. “You know you’ve got cement, concrete blocks, and steel and the ice goes through it like its just a toothpick,” said Stykalo. “t just shows the power. There is nothing you can do, you just get out of the way and just watch.” CBC News also contacted an insurance company in Winnipeg who said generally coverage is not provided for damage to homes caused by shoreline ice build-up or water-borne ice. The damage is even more traumatic for some, he added, as many of the homes in the area were ruined by flooding in 2011. Dozens of properties in Ochre Beach and Dauphin Beach were evacuated due to extremely high lake levels that spring. “They’re devastated. Most of these people were hit pretty hard during the flood,” said Watts. “Most of them were just back to the stage where they were back living in their homes again. And now this has happened. So they’re pretty devastated right now.” Ochre Beach is about 300 kilometers northwest of Winnipeg and 20 kilometers east of Dauphin. –MSN.ca

April 30, 2013 – MINNESOTA – April has been a freakishly cold month across much of the northern USA, bringing misery to millions of sun-starved and winter-weary residents from the Rockies to the Midwest. “The weather map … looks like something out of The Twilight Zone,” Minneapolis meteorologist Paul Douglas of WeatherNation TV wrote on his blog last week. Record cold and snow has been reported in dozens of cities, with the worst of the chill in the Rockies, upper Midwest and northern Plains. Several baseball games have been snowed out in both Denver and Minneapolis. Cities such as Rapid City, S.D.; Duluth, Minn.; and Boulder, Colo., have all endured their snowiest month ever recorded. (In all three locations, weather records go back more than 100 years.) In fact, more than 1,100 snowfall records and 3,400 cold records have been set across the nation so far in April, according to the National Climatic Data Center. Unfortunately for warm-weather lovers, after some mild temperatures the past few days, the chill is forecast to return as the calendar turns to May: Accumulating snow is forecast overnight Tuesday night and Wednesday in Denver and in Minneapolis-St.Paul by Wednesday night and Thursday, said AccuWeather meteorologist Mark Paquette. And across much of the central USA, temperatures will be from 25 to 45 degrees colder on Wednesday than they were Monday, according to AccuWeather. For instance, Denver should see a high of 35 degrees Wednesday, after a high near 80 on Monday. As for the cause of the ongoing cold? A stuck weather pattern that’s continued to funnel frigid air into the central USA from Canada for the past few months. Specifically, the troublemaker is what’s known as a “blocking” area of high pressure over Greenland, eastern Canada and the North Atlantic Ocean, which favors a cold northwest flow of air over the central and eastern USA, Paquette said. If you want warmth, he said, head west: Hot, dry, windy conditions will prevail this week in much of southern California and Arizona, where highs will top out in the 90s. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, the snow, rain and sleet that has dragged well into April means money lost for golf courses that have been unable to open. Territory Golf Club director Doug Stang in St. Cloud was asked last week if he’ll ever see anything like this spring again: “I don’t think so,” he said. “This is just too bizarre.” –US Today

Jet Stream in chaos: Spring has gotten off to a colder- and snowier-than-average start in parts of the United States, particularly in the eastern Rockies and Upper Midwest. Duluth, Minn., for example, has seen 51 inches (130 centimeters) of snow this April. That’s not only the most snow the town has seen in any April — breaking the old mark of 31.6 inches (80 cm) — but the most snow the town has received in any month, ever, according to government records. As of Monday (April 22), a total of 995 snowfall records have also been broken so far this month, according to AccuWeather. Over the same time period last year, 195 snowfall records had been broken. More than 91 percent of the upper Midwest also has snow on the ground as of today (April 24), meteorologist Jason Samenow wrote at the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang blog. “Snow cover in the previous 10 years on this date hasn’t even come close to reaching this extent (ranging from 19 percent to much lower),” he wrote. So why has spring failed to take hold? Blame the jet stream. The record snow and below-average cold is due to a trough or dip in the jet stream, which has brought blasts of freezing air as far south as the Mexican border, said Jeff Weber, a scientist with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. This dip in the jet stream has also brought moisture from the Pacific to the Eastern Rockies. Boulder, Colo., for example, saw 47 inches (119 cm) of snow in April, breaking the old record of 44 inches (112 cm). From the dip, the jet stream then swoops up to the north toward Minnesota, bringing new moisture with it from the Gulf of Mexico, Weber said. That has made for snowy conditions throughout the region. This persistent trough has largely stayed in place during much of April, due in part to a stubborn mass of warm air over Greenland and the North Atlantic, Weber said. A similar system was also responsible for the record cold seen in March throughout much of the Eastern United States. This mass of air has blocked the normal eastward progression of the jet stream, which normally brings warm air from the south and west into the central United States. Instead, this “buckled” jet stream has been stuck in place, bathing the Rockies and Upper Midwest in cold, and often moist, air, Weber said. –Live Science

Published on May 7, 2013 - Over the past year the world has experienced unprecedented and bizarre weather phenomena - from record breaking heat and cold to increasing earthquake activity worldwide. It's not just global warming, but rather, a system wide surge of strange weather activity.

This video compiles extreme earth changes and weather events, with footage including meteors entering the atmosphere, sinkholes opening up worldwide, the discovery of dark lightning, increasing volcano activity, and a uniquely unusual UFO sighting in Ireland.

While this video does NOT imply extreme weather is a result of human activity - it does suggest that climate change is real and occurring all around us. Whatever the source, one may ask - will extreme weather define our world's history for decades to come?




'Dark lightning': the unseen energy of thunderstorms
Scientists believe invisible storm flashes of gamma and x-rays may be caused by super-fast cosmic electrons hitting earth

[. . .] scientists recently discovered something mind-bending about lightning: sometimes its flashes are invisible, just sudden pulses of unexpectedly powerful radiation. It's what Joseph Dwyer, a lightning researcher at the Florida Institute of Technology, has termed dark lightning.

Unknown to Franklin but now clear to a growing roster of lightning researchers and astronomers is that along with bright thunderbolts, thunderstorms unleash sprays of x-rays and even intense bursts of gamma rays, a form of radiation normally associated with such cosmic spectacles as collapsing stars. The radiation in these invisible blasts can carry a million times as much energy as the radiation in visible lightning, but that energy dissipates quickly in all directions rather than remaining in a stiletto-like lightning bolt.
www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/apr/23/d...hunderstorms-weather


A more scientific review of dark lightning: Measurements and implications of the relationship between lightning and terrestrial gamma ray flashes, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 32

Climate change is shifting Earth's poles. According to a study in Geophysical Research Letters, the Earth’s geographic poles are shifting as a result of global warming. The University of Texas at Austin researchers identified the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet as the primary cause of the North Pole’s centimeters-per-year increased movement since 2005.Prior to that year, starting in 1982, the pole drifted southeast towards Labrador, Canada at a rate of 2 milliarcseconds – about 6 centimeters - per year. Since 2005 it’s changed speed and direction, moving at 7 milliarcseconds per year on an eastbound path towards Greenland. The movement that caught the attention of the lead author wasn’t the typical season-driven polar drift, it was a change in the underlying year-long continental drift pattern. He and his colleagues, with the help of some of NASA’s extensive data, concluded that the change was overwhelmingly attributable to ice loss and the rising sea levels it brings. The melting of ice in the Arctic has increased at such a rapid rate that some experts believe there could be iceless seasons in the area in as little as 10 to 30 years. http://on.aol.com/video/climate-change-shifting-north-pole-517781963?hp=1&playlist=127173&icid=maing-grid7%7Cnetscape%7Cdl27%7Csec3_lnk1%26pLid%3D314038


May 15, 2013 – UNITED KINGDOM – It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas – so it’s rather odd that we find ourselves in mid-May. Snow fell across parts of Britain last night while another area had a month’s rain in just 24 hours as winds of up to 65mph battered the country’s coastlines in unusual weather for the month. Up to 3in of snow fell in Princetown in Dartmoor, Devon, Rhayader in Powys, and Newcastle-on-Clun in Shropshire – while Pembrey, Carmarthenshire, had 3in of rain in the 24 hours until 7am today. Local woman Sheila Coates told BBC Radio Devon: ‘It’s crazy. Last night I couldn’t see out of my front window for the snow. I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve never known weather like it at this time of year.’ Up to 3in of snow also fell on high ground in the rural county of Shropshire last night – sparking fears of flooding in the rest of the region, as two local rivers were given flood warnings. Mike Steedman, owner of the Anchor Inn in the hills above Newcastle-on-Clun, near the Welsh border, said. ‘It started at about 11pm and it came in wet and heavy. It’s beginning to go now. And ramblers and cyclists got more than they bargained for when snow lashed the Pennines in Cumbria as sunny May weather suddenly turned into something you would expect in January. The southern coast was hit hardest last night with police in Devon and Cornwall reporting slates coming off roofs and trees blocking roads, as rain lashed across much of the country. In Devon and Cornwall hundreds of homes were left without electricity. Residents were also bracing themselves for floods – with 14 separate alerts in place across the two counties. The Isles of Scilly bore the brunt of the Atlantic gales but freak snow flurries were reported in Exmoor and Dartmoor, where residents said the conditions were more like mid-winter than May. –Daily Mail


May 14, 2013 – BRITAIN – Dark, menacing and bubbly – these images show the outstanding phenomenon which materialized over the skies in Shropshire. The skies above Telford formed into dark clouds which turned into grey and imposing bubbles and resembled the advent of an alien landing. The imposing clouds left onlookers questioning their existence and how they had formed. In fact, the clouds, known as the lesser-spotted mammatus – appeared as a lobe and were packed full of ice and rain. According to local forecasters, the clouds created a large thunderstorm which drenched much of Britain over the weekend. The clouds are associated with the powerful storms which can sometimes occur in the summer and are a sign of massive quantities of water vapour. Phil Spencer, a 39-year-old truck driver from Telford, was left baffled by the sudden change in the weather. He said: “I went to Morrisons and looked up and noticed all these weird and wonderful shapes in the sky. It was only there for five or 10 minutes and then just literally went as quickly as it came in.” –Express UK

May 23, 2013 – CHINA - Steady deterioration of water bodies is one of the most pressing problems facing the world today. In Asia, degradation of water quality and the problems it spawns are so extensive and serious that they are threatening to harm economic growth and affect the health and quality of life of billions of people. China’s high economic growth has had an adverse impact in terms of access, volume and quality of water as well as equity, management and investment requirements. While the magnitude of the water quality problem has steadily widened, planning, management and institutional capacities have not improved commensurately and thus complicated matters further. Water scarcity and pollution of water sources are two of the most serious problems for China. Pollution has now spread from the coastal region to inland water bodies, affecting both surface water and groundwater. More than 53 billion tons of (untreated or inadequately treated) wastewater is discharged into China’s water bodies every year. And as early as 2006, water in a stretch of more than 25,000 km of rivers failed to meet the quality standards for aquatic life and about 90 percent sections of rivers in and around urban areas were seriously polluted. The World Bank estimates that water scarcity and pollution are costing China about 2.3 percent of GDP – 1.3 percent due to water scarcity and the rest as a direct impact of water pollution. Water quality is a bigger problem in North China, where shortage of water prevents pollutant discharges from being diluted. In the northern region, about 40 percent of the rivers have the two worst water quality standards: grades V and VI. This means water is so highly polluted that it is not only unsafe to drink (a serious health issue in itself), but also very difficult and expensive to treat. Pollution is a serious problem in rural areas, too. Ministry of Water Resources data show that more than 300 million people don’t have access to safe drinking water. While in terms of money the cost is a staggering 66 billion yuan ($10.72 billion), the main cost is in terms of human life as diseases like diarrhea, cholera and cancer continue to afflict people. Although the impact of water pollution on health is very serious, it cannot be quantified because of lack of reliable data both on the pollutants and the households that use poor quality water. Water pollution is also harming China’s south-to-north water transfer project. Along the “East Route,” for example, industrial pollution has affected many of the poorer areas of northern Jiangsu and western Shandong provinces, delaying the construction of the project. Speaking at a forum in September 2000, Zhu Rongji, then premier, said the initial stage of the project should follow the principle, “first save water, then transfer it; first clean up pollution, then let the water flow; first protect the environment, then use water.” Unfortunately, more than a decade later, pollution problems along the East Route have still not been fully solved. In addition, industrial accidents and illegal dumping of wastes often worsen the quality of water in rivers and lakes. Such incidents include the Songhua River toxic chemical spill in 2005, the algae bloom in Taihu Lake which polluted the source of drinking water for people of the surrounding areas in 2007 and the dumping of more than 13,000 pig carcasses in the Huangpu River earlier this year. –China Daily

May 23, 2013 – CHINA – Five people have died after a 10-metre wide sinkhole opened up at the gates of an industrial estate in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese boom town neighboring Hong Kong. The Shenzhen Longgang district government said on its verified page on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter that five people had died and added that it was investigating the incident. The sinkhole formed just outside the Huamao Industrial Park in Shenzhen on Monday evening, at a time when many factory workers would have been changing shifts, according to the website of Beijing-based newspaper the Guangming Daily. The state-run Shanghai Daily newspaper said that rescuers saved one man. Reports said it was unclear how many people had fallen into the hole in total, but the search was continuing on Tuesday. Sinkholes in China are often blamed on construction works and the country’s rapid pace of development. Surveillance cameras in March captured images of a security guard being swallowed by a sinkhole, also in Shenzhen. Two months ago a man was killed when his bedroom was swallowed by a eight meter sinkhole in Florida, in the US. –Herald Sun

May 20, 2013 – KANSAS – Tornadoes touched down in three states on Sunday, ripping roofs off homes and turning trees to matchsticks, as severe weather swept the region. A large “violent and extremely dangerous” tornado was spotted on the southwest side of Wichita, Kansas, the National Weather Service said. A second confirmed tornado was seen near Edmond, Oklahoma, said the weather service. Another tornado was spotted in nearby Luther, Oklahoma, but it was not immediately clear whether that was the same twister. A third tornado touched down near Wellston, Oklahoma, taking out power lines and damaging several homes, according to video from CNN affiliate KFOR. The affiliate’s helicopter pilot estimated the funnel cloud to be about a half-mile wide. “It’s tearing up everything,” the pilot said. “Just ripping everything up in its sight.” Aerial video from KFOR and CNN affiliate KOCO showed severe damage near Wellston and near Carney, Oklahoma. Roofs were ripped from homes, branches stripped from trees and roads were filled with debris. Tornadoes were also reported east of Dale, west of Paden, and near Prague in Oklahoma. Part of Interstate 40 in Shawnee, Oklahoma, was shut down in both directions Sunday night after a tornado touched down, overturning multiple tractor-trailers. Still more tornadoes were spotted in Iowa, near Earlham, Huxley and east of Dallas Center, according to the weather service. It did not mince words, telling people to take cover there, as elsewhere. “You could be killed if not underground or in a tornado shelter. Complete destruction of neighborhoods, businesses and vehicles will occur. Flying debris will be deadly to people and animals,” it said in its Kansas advisory. Incredibly, given the severe nature of the weather, there have been no immediate reports of injuries or death, said Randy Duncan, director of emergency management in Sedgwick County, where Wichita is located. “I’m very pleased to say there are no fatalities or injuries … and actually only relatively minor reports of property damage,” he told CNN. “Overall, I would say we escaped relatively unscathed.” The twisters are part of a severe weather outbreak that is sweeping through parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Missouri as the storms sweep east. Baseball-sized hail, wind gusts and tornadoes are threatening to pummel parts of the central Plains and Midwest through Monday. Beyond the Midwest, other areas were already seeing severe weather on Sunday. In Atlanta, serious flooding was reported amid storms producing heavy rainfall. –CNN


May 20, 2013 – ALASKA - 232 days – it took over 30 years for Anchorage to set a new record for the longest snow season on record. The National Weather Service measured 2/10ths of an inch just after 9 p.m. Friday and 1/10th Saturday morning – breaking the old record of 230 days set in 1981-1982. Anchorage police responded to 22 crashes, 4 with injuries and 37 vehicles in distress between midnight and noon Saturday. Police say roads were wet and not icy midday and “motorists should use caution if the temperatures drop below freezing. Other parts of the city had much higher amounts of snow, however official measurements must be consistent and observed at the Sand Lake forecast office. The recent snowfall also broke the daily record for liquid precipitation, lowest maximum temperature for May 17, and a host of other records. NWS says Saturday evening’s forecast calls for “mostly cloudy with isolated snow showers in the evening…then partly cloudy after midnight – lows in the upper teens to mid 20s and north wind to 15 mph.” For Sunday, the forecast will be mostly sunny, highs in the 40s, and light winds, according to NWS. -NBC

May 25, 2013 – COLORADO - What is life going to look like as our precious water resources become increasingly strained and the western half of the United States becomes bone dry? Scientists tell us that the 20th century was the wettest century in the western half of the country in 1000 years, and now things appear to be reverting to their normal historical patterns. But we have built teeming cities in the desert such as Phoenix and Las Vegas that support millions of people. Cities all over the Southwest continue to grow even as the Colorado River, Lake Mead and the High Plains Aquifer system run dry. So what are we going to do when there isn’t enough water to irrigate our crops or run through our water systems? Already we are seeing some ominous signs that Dust Bowl conditions are starting to return to the region. In the past couple of years we have seen giant dust storms known as “haboobs” roll through Phoenix, and 6 of the 10 worst years for wildfires ever recorded in the United States have all come since the year 2000. In fact, according to the Los Angeles Times, “the average number of fires larger than 1,000 acres in a year has nearly quadrupled in Arizona and Idaho and has doubled in every other Western state” since the 1970s. But scientists are warning that they expect the western United States to become much drier than it is now. What will the western half of the country look like once that happens? In a recent National Geographic article contained the following chilling statement…The wet 20th century, the wettest of the past millennium, the century when Americans built an incredible civilization in the desert, is over. Much of the western half of the country has historically been a desolate wasteland. We were very blessed to enjoy very wet conditions for most of the last century, but now that era appears to be over. To compensate, we are putting a tremendous burden on our fresh water resources. In particular, the Colorado River is becoming increasingly strained.

Dust in the wind: Building unsustainable mega-cities in the western U.S., where water supplies were already scarce and now rapidly dwindling, just as demand is growing may be one of the greatest ecological blunders of the 20th century.

Ecosystem crash: Without the Colorado River, many of our largest cities simply would not be able to function. The following is from a recent Stratfor article: “The Colorado River provides water for irrigation of roughly 15 percent of the crops in the United States, including vegetables, fruits, cotton, alfalfa and hay. It also provides municipal water supplies for large cities, such as Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, San Diego and Las Vegas, accounting for more than half of the water supply in many of these areas.” In particular, water levels in Lake Mead (which supplies most of the water for Las Vegas) have fallen dramatically over the past decade or so. The following is an excerpt from an article posted on Smithsonian: “And boaters still roar across Nevada and Arizona’s Lake Mead, 110 miles long and formed by the Hoover Dam. But at the lake’s edge they can see lines in the rock walls, distinct as bathtub rings, showing the water level far lower than it once was—some 130 feet lower, as it happens, since 2000. Water resource officials say some of the reservoirs fed by the river will never be full again.” Today, Lake Mead supplies approximately 85 percent of the water that Las Vegas uses, and since 1998 the water level in Lake Mead has dropped by about 5.6 trillion gallons. -TECB
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-colorado-river-the-high-plains-aquifer-and-the-entire-western-half-of-the-u-s-are-rapidly-drying-up

May 25, 2013 – SAN ANTONIO, TX – The wet weather plaguing many parts of the U.S. this holiday weekend has turned fatal in sodden San Antonio. Two people are dead, and nearly two hundred more have been rescued as heavy rain has pummeled the Texas city, causing flash flooding. The majority of rescues were people trapped in their vehicles in low-lying areas of the city, San Antonio Fire Department spokesman Christian Bove told NBC News. Bove confirmed one fatality thus far, a 29-year-old woman who was trapped in her vehicle and tried to escape the rising water by climbing onto the car’s roof. She was washed away, and her body was found down the road against a fence. A man who had been trapped in his vehicle is unaccounted for. Weather Channel Meteorologist Nick Wiltgen said San Antonio received 12.16 inches of rain in the 24 hours ending at 11 a.m. Central Time on Saturday. That is just shy of the 24-hour record for the city of 13.35 inches in October 1998. –NBC News

U.S. loses major weather satellite: A satellite designed to track severe weather in the US, has failed on the eve of the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season. Experts fear it could not have happened at a worse time. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the satellite, which provides coverage for the entire US eastern seaboard, is relied upon to track hurricanes threatening cities along the coast. The NOAA gave a warning that this year’s hurricane season – the first since hurricane Sandy devastated the New York and New Jersey shorelines last October – is likely to be “extremely active.” The Atlantic-Caribbean hurricane season begins this week and lasts for six months. The NOAA has predicted as many as 13 to 20 tropical storms could threaten homes, with half of those likely to strengthen. The NOAA announced that a spare satellite had been activated while attempts are made to fix the failed one, but added there was currently “no estimate on its return to operations.” The organization’s three current Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) were built by Boeing and designed to last 10 years. The failed satellite, GOES-13, was launched in 2006. NOAA typically operates two GOES spacecraft over the country, overlooking the East and West coasts, plus one on-orbit spare. The satellites are fitted with technology enabling them to watch for clouds and developing storms. The first sign of trouble with GOES-13, the primary East coast satellite, emerged late last Wednesday when it failed to relay expected images, NOAA reports showed. If a second GOES should fail, NOAA would operate its remaining satellite to get a full view of the US every half-hour. The organization would also depend more on other information relayed by polar-orbiting weather satellites. –Independent UK