Monday 23 April 2012

Loud boom over Northern California and Nevada thought to be from meteor

April 22, 2012 – Northern, CA - People in Northern California and Nevada reported hearing a loud boom in the sky above the Sierra Sunday morning. The Tuolumne County sheriff’s department said they are investigating the possibility that it might have been the physical impact of an overnight meteor shower. Some people in the Tahoe area said they saw what they believed to be a meteor just prior to the sound. People who live in Lake Tahoe, El Dorado County, Placer County, Tuolumne County, Amador County and Nevada County contacted our sister station in Sacramento. KCRA is reporting that they heard the sound just after 8:30 a.m. A television station in Reno said they received similar calls from the city of Reno and as far away as Incline Village. Meteorologists in California and Nevada including our own Rob Mayeda said there were meteor showers Saturday night that could have still been going on Sunday morning. If the boom was a signal that an outer space rock made its way through the atmosphere, then there could be a rock or rocks now on Terra Firma. So far, no one has called authorities or television stations to report “a hit.” Mayeda said the meteor would likely be a bolide rock and that it likely burned up before getting to the ground. Every year the Earth passes through the orbit of a comet causing the Lyrid meteor shower. The results on a clear night are a meteor shower, which comes in the form of shooting stars streaking across the night sky. The stars are actually debris from the comet as it enters the Earth’s atmosphere. –NBC Bay area

Tuesday 17 April 2012

100 tornadoes hit midwest states in 24 hours!

The tornadoes were unrelenting — more than 100 in 24 hours over a stretch of the Plains states. They tossed vehicles and ripped through homes. They drove families to their basements and whipped debris across small towns throughout the Midwest. In some areas, baseball-size hail rained from the sky. And yet, in a stroke that some officials have attributed to a more vigilant and persistent warning system, relatively few people were killed or injured.
As of Monday morning, there were six confirmed deaths from the weekend storms in Woodward, a rural community about 140 miles from Oklahoma City. Local emergency management officials said on Monday that four children were among the victims and that 31 people had been hurt, with injuries ranging from minor wounds to those requiring hospitalization. A spokeswoman for the state’s chief medical examiner identified five of the victims as Frank Hobbie and two girls, ages 5 and 7, all of whom died after the tornado hit their mobile home park, and Derrin Juul and a 10-year-old girl, both of whom died in a house a few miles away. It was believed that the two girls killed with Mr. Hobbie were his daughters, and that the 10-year-old girl was Mr. Juul’s daughter. The identity of the sixth victim, a critically injured child who was airlifted to a Texas hospital, had not been released. Days ahead of the deadly winds there was an unusual warning that alerted residents across at least five states to the threat of “extremely dangerous” and “catastrophic” weather. The predictions held, it seems. But the people listened. “I really think people took the warnings, and they took them very seriously,” Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas said Sunday. “We had more notice on this system than you normally do. You normally are looking at a couple of hours’ notice. Well, this one had almost two days’ notice.” In southwest Iowa, a tornado battered the small town of Thurman, damaging or destroying 75 to 90 percent of its homes, the authorities said. And yet, somehow in the town of about 200, there were no serious injuries or deaths reported. “Mostly everybody was able to get to cover before it hit,” said Mike Crecelius, the emergency management director for the county.

Nearby, the high winds overturned five tractor-trailers that had been traveling on Interstate 29 shortly before the tornado hit. One truck driver was taken to a hospital with a perforated lung, Mr. Crecelius said. Forecasters issued their first warning on Friday, predicting a tornado outbreak that had the potential of being a “high-end, life-threatening event” for a swath of the Midwest. Officials said the enhanced language had been developed because of the large number of deaths from tornadoes across the country in recent years. “This is one of the lessons learned from the various deadly outbreaks of tornadoes last year,” Chris Vaccaro, a spokesman for the National Weather Service, said Sunday in a telephone interview. One warning in Wichita, Kan., on Saturday said: “This is a life-threatening situation. You could be killed if not underground or in a tornado shelter.” The system will be tested for another six months before National Weather Service officials decide whether to continue or expand it. Before the storms hit on Saturday, Mike Hudson, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Kansas City, Mo., called the forecast perhaps the “first opportunity” to gauge the effect of the heightened language. Early returns were promising, officials said. Sharon Watson, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Adjutant General’s Department, said, “The language that was being used appeared to make people pay more attention.” In 2011, 550 people nationwide, and more than 150 in Joplin, Mo., alone, were killed by tornadoes, Mr. Vaccaro said, the fourth deadliest year on record. The deadliest year was 1925, when 794 people were reported killed by tornadoes. Weather service officials chose Kansas and Missouri to test the new language, Mr. Vaccaro said, because of the number of storms that typically develop there. “We wanted to pick the central states because you’re in the heart of Tornado Alley,” he said. Despite the impressive number of tornadoes, weather experts said the data did not indicate any significant increase in the number or the severity of storms in recent years. - NY Times.

Giant sinkhole in Sweden creating tremors as it expands

April 16, 2012 – SWEDEN – It looks like something taken straight from a horror movie. An enormous hole leading to hell, some would say. But this is not a movie. This is a real and dangerous phenomenon. New shocking images clearly show the enormous pit in Sweden is expanding. The 200 foot wide open pit is called the “Fabiangropen’ (Fabian pit) and is in the Malmberget area is located at Gällivare, 75km from Kiruna, Sweden. As you can see on the map, it is in the northern regions of Sweden. Due to presence of many orebodies, mining at Malmberget is conducted at different levels at 600m, 815m and 1,000m.  The mining company LKAB has now taken new pictures of the pit. In the pictures you see the new Fabian pit which has expanded during the night between Tuesday and Wednesday in the former cavity full width. The pit is square and 150×150 meters high. This is naturally very bad news for people who live close to this giant sinkhole and many are afraid and also annoyed because of the loud noises. According to the locals sometimes the tremor around here can last up to 45 minutes! –Message to Eagle

Are earthquakes destabilizing tectonic plates across the globe?

April 16, 2012 – WORLD – A leading earthquake scientist has warned that the planet could be cracking up after a series of massive quakes in just 48 hours. Expert Gheorghe Marmureanu – from Romania’s National Institute of Earth Physics – says 39 quakes had hit the globe within two days. The series started with two massive quakes in Indonesia measuring 8.6 and 8.2 on the Richter scale rapidly followed by three more only slightly smaller in Mexico within hours. “There is no doubt that something is seriously wrong. There have been too many strong earthquakes,” said Marmureanu. He added: “The quakes are a surprise that cannot be easily explained by current scientific knowledge. With the Indonesian quake for example, statistically, there should be one big earthquake in this part of Asia every 500 years. However, since 2004, there were already three quakes with a magnitude of over 8, which is not normal. –Croatian Times




shocking number of earthquakes rattle the globe!

April 17, 2012 - WORLD - The shocking number of earthquakes that have rattled the globe, especially along tectonic plate boundaries, since the double 8.0+ magnitude earthquakes struck off the coast of Northern Sumatra on April 11 could be early indication the planet may be shifting towards a new catastrophic model. Romania’ s top seismologist, Gheorghe Marmureanu, told the Bucharest Herald: “There is no doubt something is seriously wrong. There have been too many strong earthquakes.” I said in my book: “If you keep seismically shaking the Earth, like a bottle of soda, its structural integrity eventually will become compromised and it will start to fracture like an egg. In this case, the fracturing will be thermal dissipation by hyper-volcanism, mega-thrust earthquakes, and greater tectonic boundary plate agitation around volcanic arcs and subduction zones…if this is what’s indeed happening, the pressure will continue to build in the interior of the planet until it eventually destabilizes all tectonic plates in a spectral pattern of continous seismic oscillation. Every earthquake generates and emits enough kinetic energy through the earth to potentially trigger more seismic disturbances.” -The Extinction Protocol, page 495

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