May 26, 2013 – UZBEKISTAN – An earthquake with a magnitude of at least 6.0 struck southeast Uzbekistan on Sunday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The quake was later downgraded to a 5.8 by the USGS. It was preceded by a 5.5 magnitude earthquake which struck 9km NNW of Buka, Uzbekistan, as a foreshock. The foreshock struck at a depth of 15.8 km. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from either quake. –Reuters
May 26, 2013 – ITALY – Mount Etna is spitting lava more violently than it has in years, and scientists are baffled as to why. Despite being the world’s most-studied volcano, the Sicilian mountain is also its most unpredictable. The volcano is raging. Fountains of lava, some taller than the Eiffel Tower, shoot from its mouth every few weeks, flowing in red-hot streams into the surrounding valleys.
May 27, 2013 – NEW ORLEANS, LA – Tens of thousands of Formosan termites swarmed New Orleans on Wednesday night, leading many people to believe that the apocalypse had struck the city. The termites were attracted to bright and well-lit devices, which included car headlights, homes, and streetlights. The insects were expected to hit at the beginning of May, but it has been an unusually cold few weeks, and they only made their first appearance on Wednesday night. The Formosan termites were introduced to the United States of America from the Far East during World War Two when they were brought over in crates and various wood products.
May 27, 2013 – NEW YORK - It’s a snowy Memorial Day weekend for parts of the U.S. On the aptly named Whiteface Mountain in upstate New York, there are at least 34 inches of snow on the ground. What’s that look like? Glad you asked: According to Weather Underground, a couple of other mountain peaks in Vermont reached 18 inches of snow, while some towns with higher elevations clocked in at about 7 inches of snowfall this weekend. To figure out how unusual the snowfall this weekend was, Weather Underground had to go back to 1816: Most famous of all cold and snowy late season events would have to be the infamous 1816 ‘Year without Summer’ when Tambora erupted (1815) and the snowfall in June that occurred in the eastern U.S. and Canada. Between June 6th and June 8th accumulating snow was observed as far south as the Catskills in New York (where one inch was reported) and highlands of central and northwest Pennsylvania. Snowflakes were seen at sea level as far south as ten miles north of tidewater on the Hudson River just above New York City. But, they note, snowfall in the north east this late in the season hasn’t been unheard of since then: the area tends to get some late season snowfall every 5-10 years. Just not nearly as much as this time. –Atlantic Wire
May 28, 2013 – CHILE – Chilean and Argentine authorities on Monday declared a red alert and ordered the mandatory evacuation of a 25-km (15.5-mile) radius around the active Copahue volcano, which straddles the border between the two Andean nations. The volcano – located some 500 km (310 miles) south of capital Santiago, between Chile’s Bio Bio region and Argentina’s Neuquen province – has seen increasing seismic activity in recent weeks but has not erupted, Chilean authorities said.
May 28, 2013 – NORWAY - Flooding has forced hundreds of people to evacuate from their homes in eastern Norway. The weather has been unsettled across the region over recent weeks, and in just the last couple of days the rain has turned very heavy. Lillehammer reported 64mm of rain on Wednesday, which is more than is expected in the entire month.
May 28, 2013 – NEW ZEALAND - The equivalent of a magnitude 7 quake is quietly rocking the capital, though until now you’d have only noticed it if you were a geophysicist. The huge underground movement called the Kapiti Slip is responsible, and it’s not over yet. “This is what we call a silent earthquake,” Geonet scientist Caroline Little said on Firstline this morning. “Instead of this movement happening in seconds, this will take around a year to move.”
May 28, 2013 – CHINA - The new bird flu strain that has killed 36 people in China has proved resistant to Tamiflu for the first time, a development scientists said was “concerning.” The H7N9 virus was found to be resistant to Roche’s widely used flu drug in three out of 14 patients who were studied in detail by doctors from Shanghai and Hong Kong. Tamiflu, which is given as a pill, belongs to a group of medicines known as neuraminidase inhibitors that currently offer the only known treatment option for bird flu.
May 28, 2013 – FRANCE - A Frenchman has died after contracting a SARS-like virus that has killed 22 of its 44 known victims, the Associated Press reported. The 65-year-old man, whose name has not been made public, was hospitalized with respiratory symptoms after a trip to Dubai in mid-April.
May 28, 2013 – ISRAEL - An advanced anti-aircraft system destined for Syria has not left Russia yet, but Israel will know how to act if it does, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said on Tuesday. Yaalon’s remarks appeared to contradict Israel’s air force chief, who said last week the shipment of S-300 missiles was “on its way” to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is battling a popular uprising that has turned into a civil war. Israel is alarmed by the prospect of Russia supplying advanced weapon systems to Syria, saying such arms could end up in the hands of arch-foe Iran or the Lebanese Hezbollah group.
May 28, 2013 – MARYLAND – A cargo train derailed Tuesday afternoon in the Rosedale area, damaging nearby buildings, shutting down US Route 40 and causing a loud explosion that could be felt miles away. Authorities in Baltimore County said the train struck a tractor trailer near the 7500 block of Lake Drive, veering off the tracks near an industrial park.
May 29, 2013 – HEALTH - Three more people have died from a deadly new SARS-like virus, taking the total death toll to 27. The unnamed victims were from Saudi Arabia and died in the country’s eastern region.
May 29, 2013 – WALES – An earthquake on the North Wales shoreline has been felt over an area of 140 km. People were woken by the quake which happened at around 4.15 am and was felt as far away as Southport in Merseyside. The epicenter was 13km northwest of the town of Abersoch, Gwynedd, on the Lleyn Peninsula and measured a magnitude of 3.8, the British Geological Survey (BGS) said.
May 29, 2013 – CALIFORNIA - A magnitude-4.6 earthquake struck off the Santa Barbara coast Wednesday morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The temblor struck at 7:38 a.m. about three miles west of Isla Vista, the USGS reported. Initial reports indicated that the quake had a magnitude of 4.9, but that was later adjusted to 4.6.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Monday, May 20, 2013
5/19/13 - 5/25/13
May 19, 2013 – ANCHORAGE - Alaska’s remote Pavlof Volcano has been shooting lava hundreds of feet into the air, but its ash plume is thinning and is no longer making it dangerous for airplanes to fly nearby.
May 20, 2013 – KAMCHATKA – A massive earthquake swarm has occurred in the region of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Russia. More than 20 earthquakes have struck the region in the last 22 hours- the strongest of which was a 5.9 magnitude earthquake, which rattled the seafloor at a depth of 16.5 km deep.
May 20, 2013 – ISRAEL – Syria has put its most advanced missiles on standby with orders to hit Tel Aviv if Israel launches another strike on its territory, The Sunday Times reported overnight Sunday.
May 20, 2013 – KANSAS – 22 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.
May 20, 2013 – TAIPEI, Taiwan - The only H7N9 patient so far in Taiwan was carrying two strains of the same virus, with one being drug resistant and the other not, making it tricky to treat to him, doctors said. Huang Li-min, a doctor from National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH), explained that it was possible the avian flu virus was not drug resistant when the patient was first infected, but mutated later to become resistant to Tamiflu.
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.
May 20, 2013 – SPACE - In the last 24 hours the AMS has received confirmed reports about 4 unique fireball events all occurring near 4:00 AM UTC time. The most recent event occurred in Arkansas and Missouri on May 19th near 3:37 UTC. At the same time 3:37 UTC 4 witnesses reported a fireball in Arizona. The distance between these two locations would inhibit witnesses from observing the same fireball from both locations. On May 18th two large fireball meteors were also spotted within an hour of each other, one over the central east coast and another in Colorado. -AMS
May 20, 2013 – SANTIAGO, Chile — The U.S. Geological Survey says a magnitude-6.5 earthquake has struck off the coast of Chile. The quake was recorded at 5:49 a.m. local time (EDT; 0949 GMT) Monday, at a shallow depth of 10 kilometres, some 600 kilometres from the city of Puerto Quellon.
May 20, 2013 - Oklahoma City -A monster two-mile-wide tornado ripped through southern Oklahoma City and the suburb of Moore on Monday afternoon, leaving homes and schools in ruins and fires burning out of control.
May 21, 2013 – TUNIS, Tunisia – Tunisia’s Health Ministry says a 66-year-old man has died after being infected by the new coronavirus following a visit to Saudi Arabia. The ministry’s statement reported that his son and daughter were also diagnosed with the virus but have been treated and since recovered.
May 21, 2013 – ANCHORAGE, Alaska – One of Alaska’s most active volcanoes, which has been belching ash and spewing lava since last week, has forced regional flight cancellations and dusted some nearby communities with ash, scientists and local officials said on Monday. Pavlof Volcano has sent up ash as high as 22,000 feet, with the cloud blowing eastward and the eruption showing no signs of abating, according to the federal-state Alaska Volcano Observatory. The lava from its 8,261-foot (2,518-metre) peak has also created huge steam clouds on meeting the mountain’s snow.
May 22, 2013 – SWEDEN - Rioters have lit fires and stoned emergency services in the suburbs of Stockholm for the third night in a row after a man was shot dead by police. Incidents were reported in at least nine suburbs of the Swedish capital and police made eight arrests. On Sunday night, more than 100 cars were set alight, Swedish media report.
May 22, 2013 – GENEVA — The world is unprepared for a massive virus outbreak, the deputy chief of the World Health Organization warned Tuesday, amid fears that H7N9 bird flu striking China could morph into a form that spreads easily among people. Keiji Fukuda told delegates at a WHO meeting that despite efforts since an outbreak of another form of avian influenza, H1N1, in 2009-10, far more contingency planning was essential.
May 22, 2013 – ALABAMA - A mystery respiratory illness has killed two people and infected five others in Alabama. All of the victims have shown signs of fever, cough and shortness of breath, but the Alabama Department of Public Health hasn’t been able to identify the disease.
May 22, 2013 – INDONESIA – An increase in seismicity since 26 April triggered VSI to rise the alert status from 2 to 3 on a scale of 1-4 (from “Waspada,” “watch” to Siaga,” alert). For the moment, only degassing has been observed as surface activity. A similar increase in seismic activity was observed in Oct 2012, when the alert was raised as well and then reduced again in November. The last eruption at the volcano occurred in 2009. –Volcano Discovery
May 22, 2013 – COSTA RICA - At 5 a.m. Tuesday morning, the Turrialba Volcano, located east of the province of Cartago, began to spew gas and ash from two crater openings, the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica (Ovsicori) reported. By 8:30 a.m. a significant amount of volcanic material was released from the two openings of volcano, “which may indicate that these materials come from deep areas,” Ovsicori said. “It is uncertain what will happen.
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.
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.
May 23, 2013 – SAUDI ARABIA – A man who had contracted the coronavirus has died in Saudi Arabia, raising the death toll in the kingdom from the SARS-like virus to 17, the health ministry announced on its website on Wednesday. “A male non-Saudi died on Tuesday in a hospital in the Qassim region where he had been admitted several days ago with acute bronchitis,” the ministry said. The ministry announced on Monday that a patient had died of coronavirus in the Eastern Region where most of the kingdom’s cases have been registered.
May 23, 2013 – ISRAEL - A day after the IDF and the Syrian Army exchanged fire in the Golan Heights, Israel Air Force chief Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel warned that Israel must be prepared for a “surprise war” developing. Speaking at a conference in Herzliya focusing on the conclusions of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Eshel stated that “a surprise war can develop today in many forms. Isolated events can escalate very quickly and require that we are ready in hours to act in the full spectrum – and when I say the full spectrum, I mean activating the full capabilities of the Air Force.” Eshel stated that, in the Second Lebanon War, the IAF had employed just a “small amount” of its capabilities, but that in the next war, the Air Force “will need to give 100 percent, in order that our operations will be very quick and powerful.” After Russia said last week that it remains committed to an arms deal with Syria to deliver the S-300 air defense system to the Assad regime, Eshel warned that the advanced platform could change the equation.
May 23, 2013 - London (CNN) -- Why did Lee Rigby have to die?
That's what people around Britain -- its officials, its authorities, its citizens -- asked themselves Thursday, a day after the soldier was hit with a car, then hacked to death on a London street in broad daylight.
May 20, 2013 – KAMCHATKA – A massive earthquake swarm has occurred in the region of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Russia. More than 20 earthquakes have struck the region in the last 22 hours- the strongest of which was a 5.9 magnitude earthquake, which rattled the seafloor at a depth of 16.5 km deep.
May 20, 2013 – ISRAEL – Syria has put its most advanced missiles on standby with orders to hit Tel Aviv if Israel launches another strike on its territory, The Sunday Times reported overnight Sunday.
May 20, 2013 – KANSAS – 22 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.
May 20, 2013 – TAIPEI, Taiwan - The only H7N9 patient so far in Taiwan was carrying two strains of the same virus, with one being drug resistant and the other not, making it tricky to treat to him, doctors said. Huang Li-min, a doctor from National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH), explained that it was possible the avian flu virus was not drug resistant when the patient was first infected, but mutated later to become resistant to Tamiflu.
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.
May 20, 2013 – SPACE - In the last 24 hours the AMS has received confirmed reports about 4 unique fireball events all occurring near 4:00 AM UTC time. The most recent event occurred in Arkansas and Missouri on May 19th near 3:37 UTC. At the same time 3:37 UTC 4 witnesses reported a fireball in Arizona. The distance between these two locations would inhibit witnesses from observing the same fireball from both locations. On May 18th two large fireball meteors were also spotted within an hour of each other, one over the central east coast and another in Colorado. -AMS
May 20, 2013 – SANTIAGO, Chile — The U.S. Geological Survey says a magnitude-6.5 earthquake has struck off the coast of Chile. The quake was recorded at 5:49 a.m. local time (EDT; 0949 GMT) Monday, at a shallow depth of 10 kilometres, some 600 kilometres from the city of Puerto Quellon.
May 20, 2013 - Oklahoma City -A monster two-mile-wide tornado ripped through southern Oklahoma City and the suburb of Moore on Monday afternoon, leaving homes and schools in ruins and fires burning out of control.
May 21, 2013 – TUNIS, Tunisia – Tunisia’s Health Ministry says a 66-year-old man has died after being infected by the new coronavirus following a visit to Saudi Arabia. The ministry’s statement reported that his son and daughter were also diagnosed with the virus but have been treated and since recovered.
May 21, 2013 – ANCHORAGE, Alaska – One of Alaska’s most active volcanoes, which has been belching ash and spewing lava since last week, has forced regional flight cancellations and dusted some nearby communities with ash, scientists and local officials said on Monday. Pavlof Volcano has sent up ash as high as 22,000 feet, with the cloud blowing eastward and the eruption showing no signs of abating, according to the federal-state Alaska Volcano Observatory. The lava from its 8,261-foot (2,518-metre) peak has also created huge steam clouds on meeting the mountain’s snow.
May 22, 2013 – SWEDEN - Rioters have lit fires and stoned emergency services in the suburbs of Stockholm for the third night in a row after a man was shot dead by police. Incidents were reported in at least nine suburbs of the Swedish capital and police made eight arrests. On Sunday night, more than 100 cars were set alight, Swedish media report.
May 22, 2013 – GENEVA — The world is unprepared for a massive virus outbreak, the deputy chief of the World Health Organization warned Tuesday, amid fears that H7N9 bird flu striking China could morph into a form that spreads easily among people. Keiji Fukuda told delegates at a WHO meeting that despite efforts since an outbreak of another form of avian influenza, H1N1, in 2009-10, far more contingency planning was essential.
May 22, 2013 – ALABAMA - A mystery respiratory illness has killed two people and infected five others in Alabama. All of the victims have shown signs of fever, cough and shortness of breath, but the Alabama Department of Public Health hasn’t been able to identify the disease.
May 22, 2013 – INDONESIA – An increase in seismicity since 26 April triggered VSI to rise the alert status from 2 to 3 on a scale of 1-4 (from “Waspada,” “watch” to Siaga,” alert). For the moment, only degassing has been observed as surface activity. A similar increase in seismic activity was observed in Oct 2012, when the alert was raised as well and then reduced again in November. The last eruption at the volcano occurred in 2009. –Volcano Discovery
May 22, 2013 – COSTA RICA - At 5 a.m. Tuesday morning, the Turrialba Volcano, located east of the province of Cartago, began to spew gas and ash from two crater openings, the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica (Ovsicori) reported. By 8:30 a.m. a significant amount of volcanic material was released from the two openings of volcano, “which may indicate that these materials come from deep areas,” Ovsicori said. “It is uncertain what will happen.
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.
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.
May 23, 2013 – SAUDI ARABIA – A man who had contracted the coronavirus has died in Saudi Arabia, raising the death toll in the kingdom from the SARS-like virus to 17, the health ministry announced on its website on Wednesday. “A male non-Saudi died on Tuesday in a hospital in the Qassim region where he had been admitted several days ago with acute bronchitis,” the ministry said. The ministry announced on Monday that a patient had died of coronavirus in the Eastern Region where most of the kingdom’s cases have been registered.
May 23, 2013 – ISRAEL - A day after the IDF and the Syrian Army exchanged fire in the Golan Heights, Israel Air Force chief Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel warned that Israel must be prepared for a “surprise war” developing. Speaking at a conference in Herzliya focusing on the conclusions of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Eshel stated that “a surprise war can develop today in many forms. Isolated events can escalate very quickly and require that we are ready in hours to act in the full spectrum – and when I say the full spectrum, I mean activating the full capabilities of the Air Force.” Eshel stated that, in the Second Lebanon War, the IAF had employed just a “small amount” of its capabilities, but that in the next war, the Air Force “will need to give 100 percent, in order that our operations will be very quick and powerful.” After Russia said last week that it remains committed to an arms deal with Syria to deliver the S-300 air defense system to the Assad regime, Eshel warned that the advanced platform could change the equation.
May 23, 2013 - London (CNN) -- Why did Lee Rigby have to die?
That's what people around Britain -- its officials, its authorities, its citizens -- asked themselves Thursday, a day after the soldier was hit with a car, then hacked to death on a London street in broad daylight.
There's been no indication that the 25-year-old machine gunner, drummer and father of a 2-year-old boy knew the men who attacked him with meat cleavers. One of them who approached a man filming the gory scene in southeast London's Woolwich neighborhood suggested Rigby had been targeted only "because Muslims are dying daily" at the hands of British troops like him.
That man and another who suffered gunshot wounds in a confrontation with police minutes after Rigby's killing spent Thursday in stable condition at separate South London hospitals.
May 24, 2013 – TONGA – A strong quake has hit southwest of Tonga, reportedly shaking homes in the capital Nuku’alofa but no damage has been reported. A magnitude 7.4 earthquake has hit about 255 kilometers southwest of Tonga.
May 24, 2013 – WASHINGTON - The Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River collapsed Thursday evening, dropping three vehicles into the water and injuring at least three people. Both the northbound and southbound portions of the bridge collapsed into the river sometime before 7 p.m.
May 24, 2013 – CHILE - SERNAGEOMIN has raised the alert level to orange. Since May 15, a progressive increase in seismic activity as well emissions of gas and now some ash have been observed. Both earthquakes related to rock fracturing and fluid movements have picked up in numbers and possibly indicate a new magmatic intrusion on its way.
May 24, 2013 – CALIFORNIA - An earthquake in far northeastern California was felt by thousands of people as far away as San Francisco and in two other states, but there have been no reports of injury or serious damage. The magnitude-5.7 quake broke dishes and shook mirrors when it struck at 8:47 p.m.
May 24, 2013 – KAMCHATKA – A magnitude 8.3 earthquake struck off Russia’s eastern coast on Friday, briefly prompting a tsunami scare but causing no casualties or substantial damage.
May 24, 2013 – CHINA - The H7N9 bird flu virus can be transmitted not only through close contact but by airborne exposure, a team at the University of Hong Kong found after extensive laboratory experiments.
May 24, 2013 - Eruption continues in Mexico: Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano unleashed another wave of powerful exhalations and explosions in the early hours of Thursday (May 23), officials reported.
May 24, 2013 – RUSSIA, FAR EAST - The remote volcano in the northern Kuriles is probably in eruption, the latest SVERT report and satellite images suggest. A plume of gas and steam, and possibly some minor amounts ash was seen with the MODIS sensor onboard the NASA Terra satellite this morning.
May 25, 2013 – HEALTH – The new H7N9 bird flu virus can be transmitted between mammals not only via direct contact but also in airborne droplets, and may be capable of spreading from person to person, Chinese and American researchers have found.
May 25, 2013 – CALIFORNIA – A magnitude 5.7 temblor Thursday night was the largest earthquake to shake California since 2008 and has generated curiosity from seismologists. The temblor occurred in a rugged section of Northern California that has not been studied as thoroughly as Southern California and the Bay Area and has less monitoring equipment.
May 25, 2013 – MISSOURI - Seven people were injured early Saturday morning in southeastern Missouri after two freight trains collided, taking out a nearby overpass. A Union Pacific train t-boned a Burlington Northern train at an intersection, Scott County Sheriff Rick Walter told KFVS-TV. The collision, which occurred around 2:30 a.m., caused one of the trains to derail and hit a pillar under the overpass, collapsing it.
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.
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?
May 25, 2013 – HEALTH – The new H7N9 bird flu virus can be transmitted between mammals not only via direct contact but also in airborne droplets, and may be capable of spreading from person to person, Chinese and American researchers have found.
May 25, 2013 – CALIFORNIA – A magnitude 5.7 temblor Thursday night was the largest earthquake to shake California since 2008 and has generated curiosity from seismologists. The temblor occurred in a rugged section of Northern California that has not been studied as thoroughly as Southern California and the Bay Area and has less monitoring equipment.
May 25, 2013 – MISSOURI - Seven people were injured early Saturday morning in southeastern Missouri after two freight trains collided, taking out a nearby overpass. A Union Pacific train t-boned a Burlington Northern train at an intersection, Scott County Sheriff Rick Walter told KFVS-TV. The collision, which occurred around 2:30 a.m., caused one of the trains to derail and hit a pillar under the overpass, collapsing it.
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.
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?
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Answer to Prayer
I have worked at Keihin for a year and a half. I have to wear their shoes. Well their shoes have hurt my feet for a year and a half. LOL
Periodically, I have prayed for the Lord to help me with that problem. Well, yesterday I was working on ISO 50001 documents for the Safety Department and dropped by that area. The Safety coordinator said he had just received a new type of shoe and needed someone to try them out and if I would like to wear them and give him feedback they were mine.
Well, that was an answer to prayer. These do not have steel toes. They are not heavy. They are soft. They fit so much better and best of all they don't hurt my feet.
Thank you Lord for answering my prayer.
Periodically, I have prayed for the Lord to help me with that problem. Well, yesterday I was working on ISO 50001 documents for the Safety Department and dropped by that area. The Safety coordinator said he had just received a new type of shoe and needed someone to try them out and if I would like to wear them and give him feedback they were mine.
Well, that was an answer to prayer. These do not have steel toes. They are not heavy. They are soft. They fit so much better and best of all they don't hurt my feet.
Thank you Lord for answering my prayer.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Answer to Prayer
For the last year, I have been praying for a young man at work who has dreams to better his life. He worried about his weight, he was going to school and wanted to improve himself. Shortly after I began working there, I shared a book with him about heaven.
One of my co-workers, who is a Christian, has been encouraging him for several years. This week, he stopped us on our way to lunch to tell us how much he appreciated our encouragement and he had been on a diet, lost about 40 pounds, was still going to school at night and on Sunday, Mother's Day, was going to surprise his mother at church and respond to the alter call and give his life to the Lord. Amen and Amen.
God is good. He works in our lives for good. No one comes into our lives except through divine intervention.
Praise the Lord!
One of my co-workers, who is a Christian, has been encouraging him for several years. This week, he stopped us on our way to lunch to tell us how much he appreciated our encouragement and he had been on a diet, lost about 40 pounds, was still going to school at night and on Sunday, Mother's Day, was going to surprise his mother at church and respond to the alter call and give his life to the Lord. Amen and Amen.
God is good. He works in our lives for good. No one comes into our lives except through divine intervention.
Praise the Lord!
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Week of 5/12/13 - 5/18/13
May 12, 2013 – SRI LANKA – The Health Ministry yesterday warned of a possible influenza A and B virus outbreak and appealed to the people to rush patients in the risk group to the nearest hospital if cough and fever continued for more than a day after treatment. Health Services Director General Dr. Mahipala identified expectant mothers, those over 65 years of age and children less than two years and those with non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, kidney failure and coronary heart diseases as those vulnerable.
May 12, 2013 – FRANCE – A second diagnosis of the new SARS-like coronavirus has been confirmed in France, the Health Ministry said on Sunday, in what appeared to be a case of human-to-human transmission. The new infection was found in a 50-year-old man who had shared a hospital room with France’s only other known sufferer, the ministry said in a statement.
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.
May 12, 2013 – TONGA - A strong 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck off the Pacific nation of Tonga US seismologists said, but no tsunami warning was issued. The under-sea quake hit at 08:46 am (2046 GMT Saturday), 139 kilometers (86 miles) from the town of Neiafu, on the south coast of the island Vava’u, at a depth of 205 kilometers, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said based on the depth of the quake, no tsunami was expected. The epicenter of the tremor was 353 kilometers north of the capital Nuku’alofa. Tonga, almost 2,000 kilometers northeast of New Zealand.
May 12, 2013 – MYANMAR – A tropical cyclone in the Andaman Sea is headed close to an area in Myanmar where tens of thousands of victims of ethnic and religious violence are living in makeshift camps, adding urgency to fears of what the United Nations has termed a looming “humanitarian catastrophe” for displaced families. Of the more than 130,000 people forced to flee their homes in rioting between Buddhists and Muslims over the last year in western Myanmar, around half are living in low-lying camps near the sea, the United Nations says.
May 12, 2013 – IRAN – A strong earthquake of 6.2 magnitude hit southern Iran early today, killing one child and injuring at least 20 others in remote, mountainous villages, state television reported. The US Geological Survey registered the quake at 0738 IST, measured at 85 kilometres (52 miles) southeast of the town of Minab, located in the southern Hormuzgan province and off the Strait of Hormuz. The quake was registered at a depth of 36.44 kilometres (22.64 miles).
May 12, 2013 – HEALTH - Terrible new forms of infectious disease make headlines, but not at the start. Every pandemic begins small. Early indicators can be subtle and ambiguous. When the Next Big One arrives, spreading across oceans and continents like the sweep of nightfall, causing illness and fear, killing thousands or maybe millions of people, it will be signaled first by quiet, puzzling reports from faraway places — reports to which disease scientists and public health officials, but few of the rest of us, pay close attention. Such reports have been coming in recent months from two countries, China and Saudi Arabia.
May 13, 2013 – MEXICO – Mexican authorities raised the alert level for the Popocatepetl volcano near Mexico City on Sunday morning after observing an increased level of explosive activity.
May 13, 2013 – CALIFORNIA - Homes are sinking in a California subdivision built on top of volcanic country. Eight homes have been abandoned so far and 10 more are under an imminent evacuation notice after cracks appeared in the ground and entire sections dropped 10 feet into the ground.
May 14, 2013 – SOLAR WATCH - The sun erupted for the second time in less than 24 hours Monday morning, releasing the most powerful solar flare so far of 2013. Monday’s solar flare, which peaked at 9 a.m. Pacific time, came just 14 hours after the second largest solar flare of 2013, which occurred on Sunday evening. A solar flare is a huge explosion in the sun’s atmosphere that sends out a burst of radiation.
May 14, 2013 – CHINA - Three more people have died in China from the new strain of H7N9 bird flu virus, raising the death toll to 35 while the total number of infections rose to 130, state media said today.
May 14, 2013 - Saudi Arabia - 4 more cases in Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia has confirmed four new cases of the SARS-like novel coronavirus in its Eastern Province, state media reported late on Monday, citing the health ministry.
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 8) 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. “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.”
May 14, 2013 – ALASKA - Another volcano in Alaska is heating up, with seismic instruments signaling a possible eruption. The Alaska Volcano Observatory says tremors were detected Monday at Pavlof Volcano 1,000 km southwest of Anchorage.
May 14, 2013 – PACIFIC - A deep 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck near the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific on Tuesday, the US Geological Survey said, but no tsunami warning was issued.
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 15, 2013 - KASHMIR – Fresh tremors on Wednesday shook Bhaderwah belt of Doda district where a panic-stricken elderly woman died of a heart attack while fleeing from her home. 61-year-old Naseema Begum suffered the cardiac arrest while running out of her house during tremors this morning in Soti village of the district, officials said.
May 15, 2013 – INDIA - India’s west coast is far more vulnerable to monster earthquakes and tsunamis than believed till now, scientists have said in dramatic new findings that could force a rethink on the country’s preparedness for natural disasters on a coastline that hosts its biggest nuclear reactor. Undersea earthquakes as strong as the 2004 Sumatra temblor that spawned a tsunami killing over 220,000 could also strike under the Arabian Sea, off the coast of Pakistan and Iran, striking those countries, India, Oman and further inland, a team of British and Canadian scientists has said. India’s Arabian Sea coast is home to the 1400 MW Tarapur Power Station near Mumbai, India’s largest operational nuclear plant that in 2011 was also identified by a government expert panel as the least prepared of the country’s atomic power complexes to handle a scenario like the one at Fukushima in Japan in 2011. The country is also in the process of setting up a 10,000 MW nuclear power complex at Jaitapur that has faced local opposition.
May 15, 2013 – ALASKA - U.S. Forest Service Geologist Jim Baichtal, who is based on Prince of Wales Island, and Anchorage geologist Sue Karl were looking at some hydrographic surveys, something geologists tend to do. When we were done, I noticed the area from Thorne Arm to Rudyerd had been surveyed,” Baichtal said. “I zoomed in and there was this large… some kind of volcano, and two other dome-like structures.” Karl added that, “This new NOAA survey allowed us to see things that people had never seen before.” Karl said a modern example of a similar eruption is Surtsey, a volcanic island in Iceland, which erupted from the sea floor in the 1960s, building itself up and eventually breaching the surface to form the island. Karl points out that when the newly discovered volcano erupted, sea levels also were lower than they are now, but even with that, “We still have too much depth. We have to call on glacial loading and rebound.”
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.’
May 15, 2013 – GEOLOGY – A flurry of earthquakes continues across the planet over the past 72 hours, showing few signs of abatement. Seismic tension continues to build across the Pacific Plate, the Cocos plate (Central America), and the Nazca plate, near South America. Tectonic plate agitation appears to be increasing, along with volcanic pressures under many of the world’s major volcanoes. -TEP
May 15, 2013 - Alaska - 55th volcano erupts in Alaska: Scientists say small lava flows have been detected on two restless volcanoes in Alaska. The Alaska Volcano Observatory says satellite images Tuesday show the lava partly down a flank of Pavlof Volcano in a low-level eruption 625 miles southwest of Anchorage. Geophysicist Dave Schneider says minor steam and ash emissions are visible from the community of Cold Bay 37 miles away. Pavlof is the second Alaska volcano to erupt this month.
May 15, 2013 - Texas- Possible tornadoes cut a wide swath through north Texas on Wednesday night, killing at least six people and injuring more than 100 others, officials said
May 16, 2013 – SAUDI ARABIA – Two health workers in Saudi Arabia have become infected with a potentially fatal new SARS-like virus after catching it from patients in their care – the first evidence of such transmission within a hospital, the World Health Organization said. The new virus, known as novel coronavirus, or nCoV, is from the same family of viruses as those that cause common colds and the one that caused the deadly outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that emerged in Asia in 2003.
May 16, 2013 – BANGLADESH - A tropical storm has lashed coastal areas of Bangladesh, killing 12 people, destroying thousands of huts and forcing up to a million people to flee. Officials had prepared for a cyclone, but the storm, called Mahasen, weakened considerably before making landfall.
May 16, 2013 – ISRAEL - In a clear warning to Syria to stop the transfer of advanced weapons to Islamic militants in the region, a senior Israeli official signaled on Wednesday that Israel was considering additional military strikes to prevent that from happening and that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, would face crippling consequences if he retaliated. “Israel is determined to continue to prevent the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah,” the Israeli official said. “The transfer of such weapons to Hezbollah will destabilize and endanger the entire region.” “If Syrian President Assad reacts by attacking Israel, or tries to strike Israel through his terrorist proxies,” the official said, “he will risk forfeiting his regime, for Israel will retaliate.” The Israeli official, who had been briefed by high-level officials on Israel’s assessment of the situation in Syria, declined to be identified, citing the need to protect internal Israeli government deliberations.
May 17, 2013 – CANTERBURY, NZ - A magnitude 4.2 earthquake hit Canterbury this afternoon. The quake struck at 3.59pm at a depth of 7 kilometers and was centered 25km southwest of Christchurch. GeoNet rated the intensity of the quake as “strong.” The last widely-felt quake to hit the region was on the second anniversary of the February 2011 earthquake, when a 3.9 quake rocked the city.
May 17, 2013 – LOS ANGELES, CA. – The Southern California coastline felt a “real good jolt” yesterday at about 1 p.m. A 4.0 magnitude earthquake rumbled just off the coast of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. No serious problems were reported in relation to the earthquake, though the shake-up certainly was frightening.
May 17, 2013 – OREGON – The Cascadia Subduction Zone runs along the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States to Vancouver Island in Canada. This major fault line is capable of producing megathrust earthquakes 9.0 or higher, though, due to a dearth of observations or historical records, this trait was only discovered within the last several decades from geology records. The 1700 Cascadia event was better documented in Japan than in the Americas. Records of the “orphan tsunami”—so named because its “parent” earthquake was too far away to be felt—gave earth scientists hints that this subduction zone was capable of such massive seismic activity. Geological studies provided information about the earthquake, but many critical details remained lost to history. “Previous research had determined the timing and the magnitude, but what we didn’t know was how the rupture happened,” says Benjamin Horton, associate professor and director of the Sea Level Research Laboratory in the department of earth and environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania. “Did it rupture in one big long segment, more than a thousand kilometers, or did it rupture in parcels?”
May 17, 2013 – OTTAWA, CAN – Earthquakes Canada is reporting a 5.1-magnitude earthquake just west of Ottawa that was felt as far away as Toronto. The federal agency that monitors earthquakes revised its original report, saying it registered a 5.1-magnitude temblor with an epicenter located about 21 kilometers (13 miles) northeast of Shawville, Quebec, about an hour’s drive outside Ottawa.
May 18, 2013 – SPACE – A massive explosion from a meteor which crashed into the Moon was visible to the naked eye on Earth, NASA says. A boulder-sized meteor slammed into the moon in March, causing an explosion so bright anyone looking up at the right moment would have spotted it, NASA said. NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office is reporting the discovery of the brightest impact seen on the Moon in the eight years the monitoring program has run the National Geographic reports. About 300 lunar impacts have been logged over the years but this latest impact, from March 17, is considered much, much brighter than anything else observed.
May 18, 2013 – SPACE – It’s 1.7 miles long. Its surface is covered in a sticky black substance similar to the gunk at the bottom of a barbecue. If it impacted Earth, it would probably result in global extinction. Good thing it is just making a flyby. Asteroid 1998 QE2 will make its closest pass to Earth on May 31 at 1:59 p.m. PDT. Scientists are not sure where this unusually large space rock, which was discovered 15 years ago, originated from. But the mysterious sooty substance on its surface could indicate it may be the result of a comet that flew too close to the sun, said Amy Mainzer, who tracks near-Earth objects at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. It might also have leaked out of the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, she said. We will know more after the asteroid zips closer to Earth and scientists using the Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif., and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico can get a better look at it. Astronomers at both observatories plan to track it closely from May 30 to June 9, according to a JPL release. At its closest approach the asteroid will still be 3.6 million miles from our planet (about 15 times the distance between the Earth and the moon), but it will be close enough for these powerful radar antennas to see features as small as 12 feet across. “With radar we can transform an object from a point of light into a small world with its own characteristics,” Lance Benner, JPL’s principal investigator for Goldstone radar observations, said in a statement. There is no chance that asteroid 1998 QE2 could collide with Earth this go-around, and its next close approach won’t be until 2119.
May 18, 2013 – NORTH KOREA – North Korea has launched three short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan, apparently as part of a military drill, South Korea’s defense ministry said. US and South Korean forces had been on heightened alert for a medium-range ballistic missile test in recent weeks amid tensions triggered by North Korea’s nuclear test in February.
May 18, 2013 – JAPAN - An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.9 jolted northeastern Japan on Saturday, but no tsunami warning was issued, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. The earthquake was later upgraded by the USGS to a 6.0 magnitude.
May 18, 2013 – CHILE - Chilean Navy discovers more than 600 dead animals in Punta de Choros, a small fishing town north of La Serena. The bodies of sea lions, cormorants and penguins littered a seven mile stretch of beach in Punta de Choros, northern Chile on Sunday.
May 18, 2013 – NORTH KOREA – A 4.8 magnitude earthquake struck in the Yellow Sea, 76km WSW of Ongjin, North Korea. The earthquake struck under the sea at a depth of 13.50 km (8.39 mi). Many residents, living along coastal regions in South Korea, reported they felt the shaking inland.
May 18, 2013 – MEXICO – FOR the villagers closest to Popocatepetl, a Mexican volcano showing alarming signs of an imminent eruption, contingency plans are somewhat lacking. The village president has no telephone line, there is no doctor and the man with the key to the emergency refuge, a disgraced former mayor, has fled town. El Popo, as the 17,887 ft volcano is known, burst into life a fortnight ago, spewing clouds of ash and chunks of rock over nearby towns during eruptions that have grown in intensity. It is potentially one of the world’s most destructive volcanoes because of its proximity to Mexico City.
May 18, 2013
May 12, 2013 – FRANCE – A second diagnosis of the new SARS-like coronavirus has been confirmed in France, the Health Ministry said on Sunday, in what appeared to be a case of human-to-human transmission. The new infection was found in a 50-year-old man who had shared a hospital room with France’s only other known sufferer, the ministry said in a statement.
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.
May 12, 2013 – TONGA - A strong 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck off the Pacific nation of Tonga US seismologists said, but no tsunami warning was issued. The under-sea quake hit at 08:46 am (2046 GMT Saturday), 139 kilometers (86 miles) from the town of Neiafu, on the south coast of the island Vava’u, at a depth of 205 kilometers, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said based on the depth of the quake, no tsunami was expected. The epicenter of the tremor was 353 kilometers north of the capital Nuku’alofa. Tonga, almost 2,000 kilometers northeast of New Zealand.
May 12, 2013 – MYANMAR – A tropical cyclone in the Andaman Sea is headed close to an area in Myanmar where tens of thousands of victims of ethnic and religious violence are living in makeshift camps, adding urgency to fears of what the United Nations has termed a looming “humanitarian catastrophe” for displaced families. Of the more than 130,000 people forced to flee their homes in rioting between Buddhists and Muslims over the last year in western Myanmar, around half are living in low-lying camps near the sea, the United Nations says.
May 12, 2013 – IRAN – A strong earthquake of 6.2 magnitude hit southern Iran early today, killing one child and injuring at least 20 others in remote, mountainous villages, state television reported. The US Geological Survey registered the quake at 0738 IST, measured at 85 kilometres (52 miles) southeast of the town of Minab, located in the southern Hormuzgan province and off the Strait of Hormuz. The quake was registered at a depth of 36.44 kilometres (22.64 miles).
May 12, 2013 – HEALTH - Terrible new forms of infectious disease make headlines, but not at the start. Every pandemic begins small. Early indicators can be subtle and ambiguous. When the Next Big One arrives, spreading across oceans and continents like the sweep of nightfall, causing illness and fear, killing thousands or maybe millions of people, it will be signaled first by quiet, puzzling reports from faraway places — reports to which disease scientists and public health officials, but few of the rest of us, pay close attention. Such reports have been coming in recent months from two countries, China and Saudi Arabia.
May 13, 2013 – MEXICO – Mexican authorities raised the alert level for the Popocatepetl volcano near Mexico City on Sunday morning after observing an increased level of explosive activity.
May 13, 2013 – CALIFORNIA - Homes are sinking in a California subdivision built on top of volcanic country. Eight homes have been abandoned so far and 10 more are under an imminent evacuation notice after cracks appeared in the ground and entire sections dropped 10 feet into the ground.
May 14, 2013 – SOLAR WATCH - The sun erupted for the second time in less than 24 hours Monday morning, releasing the most powerful solar flare so far of 2013. Monday’s solar flare, which peaked at 9 a.m. Pacific time, came just 14 hours after the second largest solar flare of 2013, which occurred on Sunday evening. A solar flare is a huge explosion in the sun’s atmosphere that sends out a burst of radiation.
May 14, 2013 – CHINA - Three more people have died in China from the new strain of H7N9 bird flu virus, raising the death toll to 35 while the total number of infections rose to 130, state media said today.
May 14, 2013 - Saudi Arabia - 4 more cases in Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia has confirmed four new cases of the SARS-like novel coronavirus in its Eastern Province, state media reported late on Monday, citing the health ministry.
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 8) 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. “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.”
May 14, 2013 – ALASKA - Another volcano in Alaska is heating up, with seismic instruments signaling a possible eruption. The Alaska Volcano Observatory says tremors were detected Monday at Pavlof Volcano 1,000 km southwest of Anchorage.
May 14, 2013 – PACIFIC - A deep 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck near the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific on Tuesday, the US Geological Survey said, but no tsunami warning was issued.
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 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. 
May 15, 2013 – INDIA - India’s west coast is far more vulnerable to monster earthquakes and tsunamis than believed till now, scientists have said in dramatic new findings that could force a rethink on the country’s preparedness for natural disasters on a coastline that hosts its biggest nuclear reactor. Undersea earthquakes as strong as the 2004 Sumatra temblor that spawned a tsunami killing over 220,000 could also strike under the Arabian Sea, off the coast of Pakistan and Iran, striking those countries, India, Oman and further inland, a team of British and Canadian scientists has said. India’s Arabian Sea coast is home to the 1400 MW Tarapur Power Station near Mumbai, India’s largest operational nuclear plant that in 2011 was also identified by a government expert panel as the least prepared of the country’s atomic power complexes to handle a scenario like the one at Fukushima in Japan in 2011. The country is also in the process of setting up a 10,000 MW nuclear power complex at Jaitapur that has faced local opposition.
May 15, 2013 – ALASKA - U.S. Forest Service Geologist Jim Baichtal, who is based on Prince of Wales Island, and Anchorage geologist Sue Karl were looking at some hydrographic surveys, something geologists tend to do. When we were done, I noticed the area from Thorne Arm to Rudyerd had been surveyed,” Baichtal said. “I zoomed in and there was this large… some kind of volcano, and two other dome-like structures.” Karl added that, “This new NOAA survey allowed us to see things that people had never seen before.” Karl said a modern example of a similar eruption is Surtsey, a volcanic island in Iceland, which erupted from the sea floor in the 1960s, building itself up and eventually breaching the surface to form the island. Karl points out that when the newly discovered volcano erupted, sea levels also were lower than they are now, but even with that, “We still have too much depth. We have to call on glacial loading and rebound.”
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.’
May 15, 2013 – GEOLOGY – A flurry of earthquakes continues across the planet over the past 72 hours, showing few signs of abatement. Seismic tension continues to build across the Pacific Plate, the Cocos plate (Central America), and the Nazca plate, near South America. Tectonic plate agitation appears to be increasing, along with volcanic pressures under many of the world’s major volcanoes. -TEP
May 15, 2013 - Alaska - 55th volcano erupts in Alaska: Scientists say small lava flows have been detected on two restless volcanoes in Alaska. The Alaska Volcano Observatory says satellite images Tuesday show the lava partly down a flank of Pavlof Volcano in a low-level eruption 625 miles southwest of Anchorage. Geophysicist Dave Schneider says minor steam and ash emissions are visible from the community of Cold Bay 37 miles away. Pavlof is the second Alaska volcano to erupt this month.
May 15, 2013 - Texas- Possible tornadoes cut a wide swath through north Texas on Wednesday night, killing at least six people and injuring more than 100 others, officials said
May 16, 2013 – SAUDI ARABIA – Two health workers in Saudi Arabia have become infected with a potentially fatal new SARS-like virus after catching it from patients in their care – the first evidence of such transmission within a hospital, the World Health Organization said. The new virus, known as novel coronavirus, or nCoV, is from the same family of viruses as those that cause common colds and the one that caused the deadly outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that emerged in Asia in 2003.
May 16, 2013 – BANGLADESH - A tropical storm has lashed coastal areas of Bangladesh, killing 12 people, destroying thousands of huts and forcing up to a million people to flee. Officials had prepared for a cyclone, but the storm, called Mahasen, weakened considerably before making landfall.
May 16, 2013 – ISRAEL - In a clear warning to Syria to stop the transfer of advanced weapons to Islamic militants in the region, a senior Israeli official signaled on Wednesday that Israel was considering additional military strikes to prevent that from happening and that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, would face crippling consequences if he retaliated. “Israel is determined to continue to prevent the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah,” the Israeli official said. “The transfer of such weapons to Hezbollah will destabilize and endanger the entire region.” “If Syrian President Assad reacts by attacking Israel, or tries to strike Israel through his terrorist proxies,” the official said, “he will risk forfeiting his regime, for Israel will retaliate.” The Israeli official, who had been briefed by high-level officials on Israel’s assessment of the situation in Syria, declined to be identified, citing the need to protect internal Israeli government deliberations.
May 17, 2013 – CANTERBURY, NZ - A magnitude 4.2 earthquake hit Canterbury this afternoon. The quake struck at 3.59pm at a depth of 7 kilometers and was centered 25km southwest of Christchurch. GeoNet rated the intensity of the quake as “strong.” The last widely-felt quake to hit the region was on the second anniversary of the February 2011 earthquake, when a 3.9 quake rocked the city.
May 17, 2013 – LOS ANGELES, CA. – The Southern California coastline felt a “real good jolt” yesterday at about 1 p.m. A 4.0 magnitude earthquake rumbled just off the coast of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. No serious problems were reported in relation to the earthquake, though the shake-up certainly was frightening.
May 17, 2013 – OREGON – The Cascadia Subduction Zone runs along the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States to Vancouver Island in Canada. This major fault line is capable of producing megathrust earthquakes 9.0 or higher, though, due to a dearth of observations or historical records, this trait was only discovered within the last several decades from geology records. The 1700 Cascadia event was better documented in Japan than in the Americas. Records of the “orphan tsunami”—so named because its “parent” earthquake was too far away to be felt—gave earth scientists hints that this subduction zone was capable of such massive seismic activity. Geological studies provided information about the earthquake, but many critical details remained lost to history. “Previous research had determined the timing and the magnitude, but what we didn’t know was how the rupture happened,” says Benjamin Horton, associate professor and director of the Sea Level Research Laboratory in the department of earth and environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania. “Did it rupture in one big long segment, more than a thousand kilometers, or did it rupture in parcels?”
May 17, 2013 – OTTAWA, CAN – Earthquakes Canada is reporting a 5.1-magnitude earthquake just west of Ottawa that was felt as far away as Toronto. The federal agency that monitors earthquakes revised its original report, saying it registered a 5.1-magnitude temblor with an epicenter located about 21 kilometers (13 miles) northeast of Shawville, Quebec, about an hour’s drive outside Ottawa.
May 18, 2013 – SPACE – A massive explosion from a meteor which crashed into the Moon was visible to the naked eye on Earth, NASA says. A boulder-sized meteor slammed into the moon in March, causing an explosion so bright anyone looking up at the right moment would have spotted it, NASA said. NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office is reporting the discovery of the brightest impact seen on the Moon in the eight years the monitoring program has run the National Geographic reports. About 300 lunar impacts have been logged over the years but this latest impact, from March 17, is considered much, much brighter than anything else observed.
May 18, 2013 – SPACE – It’s 1.7 miles long. Its surface is covered in a sticky black substance similar to the gunk at the bottom of a barbecue. If it impacted Earth, it would probably result in global extinction. Good thing it is just making a flyby. Asteroid 1998 QE2 will make its closest pass to Earth on May 31 at 1:59 p.m. PDT. Scientists are not sure where this unusually large space rock, which was discovered 15 years ago, originated from. But the mysterious sooty substance on its surface could indicate it may be the result of a comet that flew too close to the sun, said Amy Mainzer, who tracks near-Earth objects at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. It might also have leaked out of the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, she said. We will know more after the asteroid zips closer to Earth and scientists using the Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif., and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico can get a better look at it. Astronomers at both observatories plan to track it closely from May 30 to June 9, according to a JPL release. At its closest approach the asteroid will still be 3.6 million miles from our planet (about 15 times the distance between the Earth and the moon), but it will be close enough for these powerful radar antennas to see features as small as 12 feet across. “With radar we can transform an object from a point of light into a small world with its own characteristics,” Lance Benner, JPL’s principal investigator for Goldstone radar observations, said in a statement. There is no chance that asteroid 1998 QE2 could collide with Earth this go-around, and its next close approach won’t be until 2119.
May 18, 2013 – NORTH KOREA – North Korea has launched three short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan, apparently as part of a military drill, South Korea’s defense ministry said. US and South Korean forces had been on heightened alert for a medium-range ballistic missile test in recent weeks amid tensions triggered by North Korea’s nuclear test in February.
May 18, 2013 – JAPAN - An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.9 jolted northeastern Japan on Saturday, but no tsunami warning was issued, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. The earthquake was later upgraded by the USGS to a 6.0 magnitude.
May 18, 2013 – CHILE - Chilean Navy discovers more than 600 dead animals in Punta de Choros, a small fishing town north of La Serena. The bodies of sea lions, cormorants and penguins littered a seven mile stretch of beach in Punta de Choros, northern Chile on Sunday.
May 18, 2013 – NORTH KOREA – A 4.8 magnitude earthquake struck in the Yellow Sea, 76km WSW of Ongjin, North Korea. The earthquake struck under the sea at a depth of 13.50 km (8.39 mi). Many residents, living along coastal regions in South Korea, reported they felt the shaking inland.
May 18, 2013 – MEXICO – FOR the villagers closest to Popocatepetl, a Mexican volcano showing alarming signs of an imminent eruption, contingency plans are somewhat lacking. The village president has no telephone line, there is no doctor and the man with the key to the emergency refuge, a disgraced former mayor, has fled town. El Popo, as the 17,887 ft volcano is known, burst into life a fortnight ago, spewing clouds of ash and chunks of rock over nearby towns during eruptions that have grown in intensity. It is potentially one of the world’s most destructive volcanoes because of its proximity to Mexico City.
May 18, 2013
There have been:
- 37 earthquakes today
- 243 earthquakes in the past 7 days
- 280 earthquakes in the past month
- 11,285 earthquakes in the past year
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