The first box jellyfish invasion of the new year has turned out to be a big one. Warning signs were posted Sunday at Ala Moana and Waikiki beaches, where according to emergency services personnel, 897 jellyfish were counted as of 3 p.m. Sunday. There were also 85 stings reported, mostly in the Waikiki area. Box jellyfish usually show up at Oahu beaches nine or ten days after the full moon. They can usually be found at Ala Moana and Waikiki, but sometimes show up at Leeward Oahu beaches and Hanauma Bay. Jellyfish are expected again Monday but should decrease by Tuesday. Swimmers should look for warning signs and check with lifeguards before going in.
Biohazard name:
Jellyfish invasion (box)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Nearly 1,000 earthquakes recorded in Arizona over 3 years Enlarge Nearly 60 USArray stations were installed in Arizona from 2006 to 2009 as part of the EarthScope project. Station 118A, seen in this photo, recorded ground motion north of Wilcox in southeastern Arizona from April 6, 2007 to Jan. 21, 2009. Credit: Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (funded by NSF EarthScope) Arizona State University researchers use EarthScope data to build the first comprehensive earthquake catalog for Arizona. Ads by Google Emergency Mgmt. Degree – Earn an emergency management degree online at AMU. Enroll now. – http://www.AMU.APUS.edu/EmergencyMgmt Earthquakes are among the most destructive and common of geologic phenomena. Several million earthquakes are estimated to occur worldwide each year (the vast majority are too small to feel, but their motions can be measured by arrays of seismometers). Historically, most of Arizona has experienced low levels of recorded seismicity, with infrequent moderate and large earthquakes in the state. Comprehensive analyses of seismicity within Arizona have not been previously possible due to a lack of seismic stations in most regions, contributing to the perception that widespread earthquakes in Arizona are rare. Debunking that myth, a new study published by Arizona State University researchers found nearly 1,000 earthquakes rattling the state over a three-year period. Jeffrey Lockridge, a graduate student in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration and the project’s lead researcher, used new seismic data collected as part of the EarthScope project to develop methods to detect and locate small-magnitude earthquakes across the entire state of Arizona. EarthScope’s USArray Transportable Array was deployed within Arizona from April 2006 to March 2009 and provided the first opportunity to examine seismicity on a statewide scale. Its increased sensitivity allowed Lockridge to find almost 1,000 earthquakes during the three-year period, including many in regions of Arizona that were previously thought to be seismically inactive. “It is significant that we found events in areas where none had been detected before, but not necessarily surprising given the fact that many parts of the state had never been sampled by seismometers prior to the deployment of the EarthScope USArray,” says Lockridge. “I expected to find some earthquakes outside of north-central Arizona, where the most and largest events had previously been recorded, just not quite so many in other areas of the state.” Ads by Google ITT Tech – Official Site – Convenient Schedules, Over 130 Locations. Browse New Programs. – http://www.ITT-Tech.edu One-thousand earthquakes over three years may sound alarmingly high, but the large number of earthquakes detected in the study is a direct result of the improved volume and quality of seismic data provided by EarthScope. Ninety-one percent of the earthquakes Lockridge detected in Arizona were “microquakes” with a magnitude of 2.0 or smaller, which are not usually felt by humans. Detecting small-magnitude earthquakes is not only important because some regions experiencing small earthquakes may produce larger earthquakes, but also because geologists use small magnitude earthquakes to map otherwise hidden faults beneath the surface. Historically, the largest earthquakes and the majority of seismicity recorded within Arizona have been located in an area of north–central Arizona. More recently, a pair of magnitude 4.9 and 5.3 earthquakes occurred in the Cataract Creek area outside of Flagstaff. Earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 or larger also have occurred in other areas of the state, including a magnitude 4.2 earthquake in December 2003 in eastern Arizona and a magnitude 4.9 earthquake near Chino Valley in 1976. “The wealth of data provided by the EarthScope project is an unprecedented opportunity to detect and locate small-magnitude earthquakes in regions where seismic monitoring (i.e. seismic stations) has historically been sparse,” explains Lockridge. “Our study is the first to use EarthScope data to build a regional catalog that detects all earthquakes magnitude 1.2 or larger.” His results appear in a paper titled, “Seismicity within Arizona during the Deployment of the EarthScope USArray Transportable Array,” published in the August 2012 issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. Ramon Arrowsmith and Matt Fouch, professors in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, are Lockridge’s dissertation advisors and coauthors on the paper. Fouch is also a geophysicist at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington, DC. “The most surprising result was the degree to which the EarthScope data were able to improve upon existing catalogs generated by regional and national networks. From April 2007 through November 2008, other networks detected only 80 earthquakes within the state, yet over that same time we found 884 earthquakes, or 11 times as many, which is really quite staggering,” says Lockridge. “It’s one of countless examples of how powerful the EarthScope project is and how much it is improving our ability to study Earth.” Lockridge is also lead author on a study that focuses on a cluster of earthquakes located east of Phoenix, near Theodore Roosevelt Lake. The results from this study will be published in Seismological Research Letters later this year. In his current studies as doctoral student, Lockridge is using the same methods used for Arizona to develop a comprehensive earthquake catalog for the Great Basin region in Nevada and western Utah. Provided by Arizona State University search and more info website
Possibly volcanic SO2 plumes over Costa Rica on 11 Aug (NOAA)
Activity has decreased at White Island. Ash emissions have been lower than in the previous days. Gas measurements showed that all volcanic gases were at levels lower than the previous measurement on August 1.
Tongariro volcano has stayed calm with and GNS scientists think that the most likely scenario is that the 6 Aug eruption was a single event and will not be followed by new eruptions in the near to medium future.
A “new” volcano just entered the watch list:
Out in the Pacific, a pilot observed an ash cloud rising from Tofua volcano to 3,000 ft (ca. 1 km) in the Tonga Islands at 04:42 GMT, VAAC Wellington reports.
El Hierro volcano: A total of 5 earthquakes (between M1.3-2.4) at 10-19 km depth has occurred today so far. This is the highest number in many days.
Activity remains weak at Popocatépetl in Mexico. About 1 weak eruption per hour has been observed during the past day by CENAPRED. SO2 emissions remain high (which is typical for Popo during phases of activity).
An elevated SO2 plume was visible above Costa Rica’s Central valley on NOAA’s SO2 monitoring images. It could have been caused by stronger degassing activity of the volcanoes Poas or Turrialba, both of which have been showing increased activity in 2011-12, but seem to have calmed down in the past months. Another SO2 signal is visible about 100 km east of Rincon de la Vieja and could have originated there. The Costa Rican volcano observatory doesn’t mention any unusual activity.
Santiaguito / Santa Maria (Guatemala): An explosion at 05:49 local tie ejected an 800 m high ash plume and caused ash fall at Finca la Florida and around San Marcos Palajunoj. Only few and weak rock avalanches were reported since yesterday.
For Fuego volcano, INSIVUMEH reports 8 weak explosions during the past day, generating ash columns of 200-500 m height.
The lava flow in direction of Taniluya canyon has further advances and is now 300 m long and generates constant rock avalanches. Avalanches, too, have been observed towards the “Ash” (Ceniza) canyon.
In Colombia, sporadic gas and ash emissions continue to occur at Galeras and tremor signals are sometimes visible on the seismograms. Nevado del Ruiz (Colombia): Steam and ash emissions continue at Nevado del Ruiz at fluctuating intensity. This morning a fresh ash deposit was found at the volcano observatory.
The seimic recordings show tremor and a seismic swarm with 30 quakes since 22:27 local time last night, located NE of the Arenas crater between 3-5 km, in the same area as the previous swarm on 12 August.
Reventador volcano in Ecuador ejects a 1.5 km high steam plume, but IG mentions no explosions or ash. Tungurahua volcano continues to emit a steam plume with small amounts of ash, and has occasional small to moderate explosions accompanied by gunshot sounds heard around the volcano.
Jumping to the far north, there is little new activity to be reported from volcanoes in Kamchatka, the Kuriles, Aleutians and in Alaska. It is rather surprising that this normally very area has stayed quite calm over the past week.
Midway on its 800-kilometer (500-mile) voyage from Auckland to Raoul Island, New Zealand, the HMNZS Canterbury received an intriguing report: a maritime patrol aircraft had spotted a vast area of open ocean covered with floating pumice. Soon after, the ship was sailing through a mass of buoyant volcanic rocks. Up to two feet thick, the pumice raft was about half a nautical mile (1 kilometer) wide, and “extended sideways as far as the eye could see,” wrote Rebecca Priestley, a science writer aboard the ship. Although the lightweight, gas-filled pumice posed no threat to the Canterbury, enough got stuck in the water filters to provide samples for analysis.
Though the pumice was spread over a vast area of the South Pacific, the origin was a mystery to the crew of the ship. An undersea volcano several hundred kilometers to the north of the pumice—Monowai—had erupted on August 3, but an airline pilot reported seeing pumice as early as August 1. Two data sources provided clues to pinpoint the volcano: earthquake records and satellite imagery. After reports of the pumice rafts surfaced, scientists from Tahiti and New Zealand’s GNS Science connected the eruption with a cluster of earthquakes in the Kermadec Islands on July 17 and 18.
Working independently of GNS, volcanologist Erik Klemetti and NASA visualizer Robert Simmon examined a month’s worth of satellite imagery from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). They discovered the first signs of the eruption—ash-stained water, gray pumice, and a volcanic plume—in imagery from 9:50 a.m. and 2:10 p.m. (local time) on July 19, 2012. (Although the Kermadec Islands are east of the International Date Line, they follow New Zealand time.)
Hidden by clouds in the morning image (above, top), the site of the eruption is clearly visible in the afternoon image (lower). Klemetti matched the satellite imagery with ocean floor bathymetry to identify Havre Seamount as the likely source. The eruption was strong enough to breach the ocean surface from a depth of 1,100 meters (3,600 feet).
Alain Bernard of the Laboratoire de Volcanologie, Université Libre de Bruxelles analyzed nighttime imagery from MODIS and found heat from the eruption at 10:50 p.m. on July 18, 2012, the earliest evidence of the Havre Seamount eruption reaching the ocean surface.
By July 21, the eruption appeared to have waned, leaving behind the dense rafts of pumice. Winds and currents spread the pumice into a series of twisted filaments, spread over an area about 450 by 250 kilometers (280 by 160 miles) as of August 13.
A severe storm swept through Calgary and area this afternoon, bringing hail, torrential downpours and wind gusts reaching more than 100 kilometres per hour that left broken windows and fallen trees in its wake. The worst of the storm has passed Calgary, says CBC meteorologist Danielle Savoni. “At this point it’s starting to change over into just the rain and some embedded thunderstorms, but those embedded thunderstorms are nowhere near as severe as what we’ve seen.” Some window washers got caught on a platform on the 22nd floor on an office building on 5th Avenue S.W. Tara Sukut was in her office a floor below. “You could hear the window washers outside yelling, get us off here, get us out of here,” says Sukut. “And a couple minutes later we just heard glass smashing. And you could see it was banging on the window down on our floor. They broke the windows to get inside the building.” The Calgary Fire Department’s high-angle rescue unit was called in to help the three window washers. Sukut’s interview with the CBC’s Elizabeth Snaddon can be heard in the player below.
NEW: National Guard activated in Washington, will provide air support
An Idaho firefighter is killed battling a blaze; two others are hurt in Oregon and California
In all, 62 fires are burning
Are wildfires blazing near you? Send in your photos and videos to CNN iReport, but please stay safe.
(CNN) — Whipped by high winds, wildfires in central Washington state have scorched 28,000 acres and destroyed at least 60 buildings, officials said Tuesday.
Gov. Chris Gregoire declared Kittitas and Yakima counties to be in states of emergency, according to a written statement from her office. The Washington National Guard will provide air support to the Department of Natural Resources, which is in charge of statewide firefighting efforts.
The fire raging near Cle Elum is one of several Western fires burning this week.
Colorado paid the price earlier this summer. Now, new wildfires are burning through sagebrush, grass and beetle-killed lodgepole pines in California, Oregon, Nevada, Washington and Idaho.
In all, 62 fires, including 16 new large fires, were burning as of Tuesday, the U.S. Forest Service reported. They have destroyed dozens of homes and are threatening many more.
Tearful wildfire victim: ‘Nothing left’
Wildfires destroy homes in Oklahoma
Washington’s Taylor Bridge Fire began as a brush fire Monday afternoon. By Tuesday afternoon more than 20,000 acres, or 31 square miles, were burned.
Authorities have already evacuated between 900 people near the Taylor Bridge Fire, the governor’s office said. There was no report of any injuries.
“The fire behavior I would classify as extreme,” Rex Reed, the incident commander, earlier Tuesday. “Extreme fire conditions. We expect a very busy day. Very rapid rates of spread. There are multiple heads on this fire.”
He said authorities were working to activate National Guard troops to assist in the operation in Kittitas County.
In Idaho, a blaze has killed a 20-year-old firefighter. Two other firefighters have been injured in Oregon and California.
Anne Veseth died Sunday while fighting the Steep Canyon Fire near Orofino, said Phil Sammon of the Forest Service. He said the death was accidental but could not confirm how it happened.
On Tuesday, the fire danger spiked with searing temperatures and single-digit humidity across Western states. In some places, winds were gusting up to 40 miles per hour.
More than 750 firefighters and support personnel were working in Oregon and Nevada to corral the 418,235-acre Holloway Fire, the largest of the Western wildfires ignited by a lightning strike on August 5.
“We saw huge fire whorls all night,” said Fred Kaninski, fire behavior analyst for the Holloway Fire. “It was burning like daytime.”
On Monday, firefighters battled flames that measured 2 to 8 feet high. On occasion, they reported seeing 15-foot flames.
The northeast flank of the fire burned into Oregon Canyon, where a firefighter suffered burns to the leg and forearm and minor smoke inhalation, the Bureau of Land Management said.
The injured firefighter was rushed by helicopter to a hospital in Winnemucca, Nevada, and was released Sunday night. She is being sent to a burn center in Salt Lake City for further evaluation, the bureau said.
In California, a pair of fires north of San Francisco in Lake County burned 7,000 acres and were 30% contained Tuesday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Two buildings were destroyed and one was damaged, CNN affiliate KGO reported. An additional 480 homes are threatened, and a firefighter was injured while battling the flames, said Julie Hutchinson of the state’s forestry and fire department. She did not have information on the status of the injured firefighter.
Meteorologists predict the dry heat will last into next week — not good news for firefighters. Any thunderstorms that pop up could present more bad news than good, since lightning strikes could spark more flames.
However, rain doused the killer Waldo Canyon Fire that blazed out of control through parts of Colorado for many weeks this summer. On Tuesday, Colorado was not on the national map for large fires.
acquired August 13, 2012 download large image (3 MB, JPEG, 4800×3800)
acquired August 13, 2012 download large image (3 MB, JPEG, 4800×3800)
acquired August 13, 2012 download GeoTIFF file (33 MB, TIFF)
acquired August 13, 2012 download Google Earth file (KMZ)
Wildfires raged across Colorado earlier this summer. Now California, Idaho, Nevada, and Oregon are feeling the heat. On August 14, 2012, numerous fires blazed across the four western states, burning through everything from sagebrush to grass to beetle-killed lodgepole pine forests.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of the fires on Aug 11, 2012. Red outlines indicate hot spots where MODIS detected unusually warm surface temperatures associated with fires.
Three large fires burned through coniferous forests in northern California: the Reading fire in Lassen Volcanic National Park, the Chips fire in Plumas National Forest, and the Fort Complex fire in Klamath National Forest. The largest of the three (Chips) had consumed 57 square miles (148 square kilometers) and was 12 percent contained by August 14. The Reading fire had consumed 37 square miles and was 15 percent contained, whereas the Fort Complex Fire had burned 3 square miles and was 10 percent contained. All three were ignited by lightning. In Oregon, lightning also sparked the Barry Point fire, which had burned 68 square miles.
In northern Nevada, the Holloway, Hansen, and Willow fires burned through grass, brush, and sagebrush. The Holloway fire was the largest and had burned 676 square miles by August 14. The Willow and Hanson fires had burned 67 square miles and 20 square miles respectively. All three were ignited by lightning on August 5.
In Idaho, the Halstead fire burned through stands of beetle-killed lodgepole pines in Salmon-Challis National Forest. It had consumed 81 square miles. To the south, the Trinity Ridge fire had burned about 58 square miles. Lightning ignited the Halstead fire on July 27, whereas human activity started the Trinity Ridge fire.
According to statistics compiled by the National Interagency Fire Center, a total of 9,400 square miles had burned in the United States through August 14. That was above the ten-year average for that date, which was 7,750 square miles.
A fast-moving wildfire stoked by triple-digit temperatures burned 3,000 acres Tuesday in the foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains, creeping perilously close to tinder-dry areas of the San Bernardino National Forest, officials said. At least four structures, including one home, were destroyed by the blaze, which spread rapidly through dry brush and grasslands in a sparsely populated area south of Hemet and east of Temecula. The fire, just 5% contained as of Tuesday evening, was spreading rapidly through the rocky hills and desert scrub, and was within a mile of forest lands west of Anza, where drought has heightened fire danger all summer. “Of course we’re concerned,” said John Miller, spokesman for the San Bernardino National Forest. “This year our big concern is the fact that rainfall and that includes snow for our forest was somewhere between 50% to 70% of normal.” Mandatory evacuations were ordered in the sparsely populated area near Aguanga, and more than 30 homes have been evacuated, according to Jody Hagemann of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Two firefighters suffered minor injuries and were taken to a hospital, according to radio dispatch reports. One man who lived in a trailer was seriously burned and taken by helicopter to a local hospital. Authorities said the man, whose home was in a remote area, apparently had not received a notice to evacuate.South of the Riverside County fire, fast-moving blazes, some started by lightning strikes from heat-born thunderstorms, have burned more than 2,300 acres in northeast San Diego County, leading to evacuations in the rural communities of Ranchita and the San Felipe area off California 78. The four San Diego County fires are being fought by more than 500 firefighters, along with air tankers and water-dropping helicopters. No structures have yet been reported damaged. “We have very dry vegetation, brush and grass and things like that. Now we have multiple days of very high temperatures,” said Chief Julie Hutchinson, spokeswoman for the state fire agency. “It’s like lighting your fireplace with a blowtorch.” The fire in Riverside County was reported just before 1 p.m. in the community of Aguanga. More than 210 firefighters were working to extinguish the blaze, and six water-carrying helicopters and six water-tender aircraft as well as a DC-10 were assisting, state fire officials said. Crews from the Sierra Nevada mountains areas are being dispatched to assist firefighters. “That’s one thing that’s unique about California. We have a state fire agency, and we’re able to move resources up and down the state,” said Hutchinson, adding that crews from the U.S. Forest Service, local departments and the California National Guard are playing a role in the statewide firefighting efforts. Although flames are more than 14 miles away from Idyllwild, residents and fire officials in the artsy mountain community have been nervously watching television news reports.
Crews are monitoring a fire in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest that has charred an estimated 1,200 acres. The so-called Queen Fire was reported Monday night and forest officials say its cause is under investigation. The blaze is burning about 2 miles northeast of Superior in rocky, inaccessible terrain and crews are attacking the flames by air. Officials say the fire is burning grass and brush. There was immediate timetable Tuesday for containment of the blaze. Meanwhile, the forest is temporarily closing several areas because of the Mistake Peak fire 11 miles east of Basin. That fire began Aug. 8 and is 10% contained after burning about 3,400 acres by Tuesday. Tonto officials chose to temporarily close areas of the forest to protect the public and crews fighting the fire.
A second tropical storm in as many weeks battered the northern Philippines after making landfall Wednesday, killing at least two people, as forecasters warned that the still-reeling capital could see more flooding. Meanwhile, President Benigno Aquino III scrambled to avert another crisis when hundreds of state weather agency employees protested over their pay and warned that forecasting services could deteriorate. Tropical Storm Kai-Tak slammed ashore in northeastern Isabela province with maximum winds of 100 kilometers (60 miles) per hour and higher gusts. It is expected to traverse northern farming provinces and exit along Luzon Island’s western seaboard possibly as a powerful typhoon heading toward southern China in the direction of Hong Kong. The head of the disaster-relief agency, Benito Ramos, reported two deaths, including a man who drowned while swimming in Ilocos Norte province. He said some roads were flooded knee-deep, and government forecasters warned of intense rains that may drench the sprawling capital, Manila, which is still reeling from last week’s monsoon deluge. On Tuesday, an alarmed Aquino rushed to assure the protesting weather agency employees that steps were being taken to resume payment of the cash benefits that had been suspended in March. “I just reminded that since the weather is bad and we have a weather disturbance, we should not add to the worries of those who were hit by the floods,” Aquino told reporters after a hasty meeting with the restive employees.Forecasters and other employees of the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration wore black arm bands and hoisted streamers urging the government to resume hazard pay and other allowances. While the workers did not plan any work stoppage, protest leader Ramon Agustin said some hard-up employees had failed to report for work due to lack of money. “The only reason why we remain strong in performing our tasks is our pure love for the country, but this will eventually weaken,” Agustin said in a news conference at the weather agency, which buzzed with activity as forecasters tracked the second storm. The archipelago located in the tropical far western Pacific serves like a welcome mat for about 20 tropical storms and typhoons that develop in the open ocean and blow toward Asia every year. Heavy rain from those storms and the annual monsoon often cause flooding and landslides and leave a trail of death and destruction. Relentless rains for nearly two weeks culminated in last week’s two-day deluge that submerged Manila and outlying farming provinces, killing nearly 100 people and displacing more than 400,000. Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said payment of the hazard pay and other cash benefits had been suspended to correct past irregularities, but added the workers would get back the benefits soon. Agustin said the employees have lost an average of 10,000 pesos ($238) monthly since the benefits were suspended by officials in March.
The tornado then went back into the bay as a waterspout before briefly turning into a tornado for a second time as it came onshore at Barker’s Island, where it finally dissipated around 11:20 a.m. CDT.
The tornado was rated an EF-0 on the enhanced fujita scale, with winds from 65 to 85 mph. No damage was reported.
Nonetheless, the tornado is the first confirmed on record to touchdown in Duluth.
Thursday’s waterspout in Duluth, Minnesota is the city’s first tornado on record. (August 9, 2012)
Photo credit:
(NWS)
According to Carol Christenson, Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the NWS, there hasn’t been a tornado in our city limits in recorded history, Northland NewsCenter reports.
“There was one outside of city limits back in 1986,” Christenson said.
The NWS says it appears the waterspout turned tornado developed near an inflection point along the leading edge of a strong surge of northeast winds and or small scale frontal boundary, which were enhanced by the very warm Lake Superior water temperatures.
A state of emergency has been declared by the James Smith Cree Nation following continued high rainfall and flooding. Local officials are calling for increased assistance from the federal and provincial governments. The drinking water of nine homes has been contaminated due to the high water levels and some roads have flooded over, says a news release issued Tuesday by James Smith. The continued rainfall is adding to the problems caused by last year’s flooding, said the release. “The high rains are destroying what’s left of our roads and water systems, and this is creating dangerous health conditions for our people, especially very young children and our elders,” said James Smith Chief Wally Burns. “We’ve been trying to get assistance since the 2011 flood, but have so far received minimal support.” Last month officials with the provincial disaster assistance program met with band leadership. The program provided $110,000 to repair damage from previous years of flooding, but the band estimates $3.2 million is needed. James Smith is located about 180 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon.
View GalleryMysterious Louisiana Sinkhole Raises Concerns of Explosions and Radiation (ABC News)
A nearly 400-foot deep sinkhole in Louisiana has swallowed all of the trees in its area and enacted a mandatory evacuation order for about 150 residences for fear of potential radiation and explosions.
The 400-square-foot gaping hole is in Assumption Parish, La., about 50 miles south of Baton Rouge.
The sinkhole sits in the middle of a heavily wooded space where it has consumed all of the soaring cypress trees that had been there. Flyover photos show some of the treetops still visible through the mud.
Authorities enacted a mandatory evacuation for between 100 and150 homes in the area, but most people have chosen to stay, according to the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Preparedness. If any of the dangers seem to become more imminent, the order will be escalated to a forced evacuation.
While officials are not certain what caused the massive sinkhole, they believe it may be have ben caused by a nearby salt cavern owned by the Texas Brine Company.
After being used for nearly 30 years, the cavern was plugged in 2011 and officials believe the integrity of the cavern may have somehow been compromised, leading to the sinkhole.
On Thursday, Louisiana’s Department of Natural Resources required that Texas Brine drill a well to investigate the salt cavern as soon as possible, obtain samples from the cavern and provide daily reports on their findings. It could take up to 10 days to set up the drilling process, even with an expedited process.
“We have to arrange for the driller. We have to pick a location. We have to be very careful to not be in a point that’s too close to the sinkhole because of the weight of the rig,” Texas Brine Company spokesman Sonny Cranch told ABCNews.com today. “We don’t want to aggravate the situation.”
The sinkhole is on the outside edge of the salt dome where this particular brine well is located.
“There are some indications that it very well may have been connected, but there’s just indications,” Cranch said. “There’s nothing concrete that has connected the sinkhole to the cavern.”
There was bubbling in the water and the sinkhole is near areas where there has been exploration for oil and gas in the past, which would make the presence of low levels of naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) possible.
The state’s Department of Environmental Quality said water samples from the sinkhole showed oil and diesel on its surface, but initial readings did not detect radiation.
In the days after the sinkhole opened up on Aug. 3, nearby Highway 70 was closed down because officials discovered that the sinkhole caused a 36-inch natural gas pipeline to bend and feared the possibility of an explosion, according to ABC News’ Baton Rouge affiliate WBRZ.
“That’s why the mandatory evacuation is going to stay on, because there is a risk for explosion,” John Boudreaux of from Assumption Parish Emergency Preparedness said at a meeting with residents on Tuesday, WBRZ reported.
“We are determined to do everything we can to find the answer,” president of Texas Brine Mark Cartwright told the residents.
Some community members were visibly frustrated with the situation and lack of answers.
“You can give us a straight answer because that’s all we want,” one woman said at the meeting. “We want to know when we can come home and be safe. Because you all go home after a days work. You’re safe, but we’re not.”
Gov. Bobby Jindal issued a declaration of emergency allowing the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security to assist in the efforts if necessary.
“This is extremely serious and it’s been going on for too long to still be at this point,” Kim Torres, spokeswoman for the Office of Emergency Preparedness, told ABCNews.com today. “The people are very aware of how serious this is.”
Prairie Island nuclear plant shut down Unit 1 after operators declared its two backup diesel generators inoperable Tuesday. Staff determined during routine testing that both generators had exhaust leaks, Xcel Energy media relations spokeswoman Mary Sandok confirmed. That deemed them inoperable, and the plant filed an incident report of the safe shutdown with the Nuclear Regulatory Plant. Prairie Island has other backup protection, including diesel generators and turbine-driven and portable pumps, the company said in the statement issued at 2:30 p.m. There was no radiation leak or danger to the public. Prairie Island Tribal Council President Johnny Johnson called the loss of both generators “not acceptable.” “A failure of the back-up diesel generators can affect all other safety features that rely on the electricity that they generate,” he said. The plant has had more than 30 reported incidents of failing equipment, security breaches, human performance problems and operating errors in recent years, he said. The emergency diesel generators did not fail, Sandok said. Plant workers test equipment regularly, and during this week’s test they determined both generators had defects. “When it comes to important equipment, the nuclear industry has no tolerance for any imperfections, so operators shut the unit down to repair the generators,” she said. As of 7 p.m. Tuesday, one diesel was operable and the other one was repaired and awaiting testing. “Despite these assurances, today’s unplanned shutdown – and the unusual white steam clouds released throughout the day during the reactor shutdown – are ominous reminders of the fact that the 40-year-old Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant operating a half-mile from our homes relies on aging technology,” Johnson said. An unrelated outage also occurred Tuesday at the Monticello plant to repair a gasket on a pipe flange. The plant had been operating at 10 percent power since the weekend as workers investigated leakage to a collection point inside the plant’s containment structure.
MessageToEagle.com – Gamma-ray photons seen emanating from the center of the Milky Way galaxy could be evidence of dark matter.
Dark-matter particles are annihilating each other in space, according to UC Irvine astrophysicists, who found more gamma-ray photons coming from the Milky Way galactic center than they had expected, based on previous scientific models.
Kevork Abazajian, assistant professor, and Manoj Kaplinghat, associate professor, of the Department of Physics & Astronomy analyzed data collected between August 2008 and June 2012 from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbiting Earth.
The gamma-rays Fermi detectsare billions of times more energetic, from 20 million to more than 300 billion electron volts.These gamma-ray photons are so energetic, they cannot be guided by the mirrors and lenses found in ordinary telescopes.
Instead Fermi uses a sensor that is more like a Geiger counter than a telescope.
If we could wear Fermi’s gamma ray “glasses,” we’d witness powerful bullets of energy – individual gamma rays – from cosmic phenomena such as supermassive black holes and hypernova explosions.
According to Abazajian, “this is the first time this new source has been observed with such high statistical significance, and the most striking part is how the shape, spectrum and rate of the observed gamma rays are very consistent with the leading theories for dark matter.”
In this illustration, one photon (purple) carries a million times the energy of another (yellow). Some theorists predict travel delays for higher-energy photons, which interact more strongly with the proposed frothy nature of space-time. Yet Fermi data on two photons from a gamma-ray burst fail to show this effect, eliminating some approaches to a new theory of gravity. The animation link below shows the delay scientists had expected to observe. Credit: NASA/Sonoma State University/Aurore Simonnet
“Future observations of regions with less astrophysical emission, such as dwarf galaxies, will be able to conclusively determine if this is actually from the dark matter.”
Nonluminous and not directly detectable, dark matter is thought to account for 85 percent of the universe’s mass. Its existence can only be inferred from its gravitational effects on other, visible matter. The UCI researchers’ findings could support its presumed presence at the center of galaxies.
The prevailing hypothesis is that dark matter is composed of weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. When two WIMPs meet, they annihilate each other to produce more familiar particles – including gamma rays.
Although the data interpretation seems to be consistent with dark-matter theory, the gamma rays could be coming from a source other than WIMP destruction, Kaplinghat noted.
“The signal we see is also consistent with photons emitted by pulsars,” he said, “or from high-energy particles interacting with gas in the galactic center.”
UC Irvine astrophysicists submitted their research to the American Physical Society journal Physical Review D.
Casey Council will not install warning signs after a man reported being stung by a box jellyfish at Tooradin. Devon Meadows’ Tony Jenner said he was swimming when stung by a jellyfish with “six-foot long” tentacles. “It felt like I got bitten by two or three bees,” Mr Jenner said. “I came home and put vinegar on it and I didn’t feel too bad then but through the night I could feel my throat getting tight and it was hard to breathe.” In April, Cr Geoff Ablett called for an investigation into the “life-threatening situation” and whether warning signs should be posted to notify swimmers of the risks. However, in her report to councillors last week, community safety manager Caroline Bell said the incident was isolated and signs were not required. Joanna Browne, of Museums Victoria, said there was a species of box jellyfish in Victoria, but it was smaller and less harmful than those in the tropics.
Biohazard name:
Jellyfish Invasion (Box)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Nine people have died from a West Nile virus outbreak that infected 175 people in Dallas County, Texas, prompting officials to declare a state of emergency. The emergency was declared on Friday by Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, the county’s director of homeland security and emergency management. “This declaration will expand our avenues DisasterNew assistance in our ongoing battle with West Nile virus,” Jenkins said. “While we are busy doing everything we can to keep residents well informed and as protected as possible, we need your help.” Jenkins also said that planes would be spraying insecticide over areas most effected by the virus, which is spread by mosquitoes. He assured citizens that the insecticide is safe and that the planes will be precise in their spraying. Tarrant County has also received 146 reported cases of West Nile in the last few weeks. The county has not declared a state of emergency, though. Houston officials are warning residents of an increased threat of the virus. “Houston can definitely expect an increase in West Nile disease,” said Kristy Murray, an infectious disease specialist at the Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine, DisasterNews reports. “From mid-August through September is the big season here.”
Biohazard name:
West Nile virus outbreak
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
A baby was killed and 14 other people were injured when a Long Island house was reduced to rubble in an explosion Tuesday morning. Six people, including the 18-month-old boy, were inside the Brentwood home when it exploded shortly before noon, said John Meehan, deputy chief of the Suffolk County Police. The five surviving adults were transported to local hospitals, three with serious injuries, he said. Five police officers responding to the scene suffered respiratory problems, one firefighter suffered chest pains and another firefighter suffered a sprained ankle, Meehan said, while a neighbor and a pedestrian were also injured. Authorities have declined to identify any victims and are not saying how many were residents of the home. Investigators are trying to determine if gas caused the explosion, said Robert Kuehn, an inspector for the Brentwood Fire Department. The house was not heated by natural gas, but there were two, 200-pound propane tanks on the property, Meehan said. The explosion leveled the home on Prospect Avenue, leaving no walls standing and covering the small yard in debris. On Tuesday afternoon, firefighters were digging through piles of lumber and sheetrock where the house stood on the wooded suburban street. Clothing was strewn in nearby trees, and adjacent houses sustained broken windows and other damage, authorities said. Neighbors described hearing a loud noise and then walking outside to see only clouds of dust and piles of debris where the house stood moments earlier. “The mother of the baby that came out, she was bloody, crying,” said Anthony Acevedo, 16 year old, who lives across the street. “She kept screaming, ‘My baby’s in there, my baby’s in there.’ They finally got the baby out, but the baby wasn’t moving.”
acquired July 15, 2012 download large image (400 KB, JPEG, 1440×960)
acquired July 7, 1994 download large image (688 KB, JPEG, 1000×1016)
Weather satellites frequently document dust palls blowing westward from Africa’s Sahara Desert across the tropical Atlantic Ocean. Astronauts see these Saharan dust masses as widespread atmospheric haze. The dust can be transported right across the Atlantic Ocean, taking about a week to reach North America (in northern hemisphere summer) or South America (in northern hemisphere winter). This puts the Caribbean Sea on the receiving end of many of these events.
In the top image, the margin of hazy air reaches the island of Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic) and the Turks and Caicos Islands, though the eastern tip of Cuba (foreground) remains clear. This image—taken by astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) in July 2012—attracted the interest of scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center because the margin between dust haze and clear atmosphere lies in almost the same location as it appeared in another astronaut image in July 1994. When astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia captured the lower image (rotated from the 2012 view), few scientists had considered the possibility of trans-Atlantic dust transport.
The Columbia image also shows the brilliant blues of the shallow banks surrounding the Caicos Island in the Bahamas. The mountainous spine of Haiti lies further away, partly obscured by dust. Closer to the foreground—about 26 degrees north latitude—the skies are clear.
The dust in the images is almost 8,000 kilometers from its likely source in northern Mali, although data from sensors such as the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer and Ozone Monitoring Instrument have suggested that some dust traveling across the Atlantic may originate even further east in Chad or Sudan. Once airborne, Saharan dust has been known to travel west all the way into the Pacific Ocean, crossing Mexico at the narrow Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
We now know that African dust reaches the western hemisphere every month of the year, though not necessarily in as visible a form as in these images. Researchers have linked Saharan dust to coral disease, allergies in humans, and harmful algal blooms (“red tides”). There is also evidence that some of this African dust serves as a source of airborne nutrients for Amazon rainforest vegetation.
Astronaut photograph ISS032-E-8976 was acquired on July 15, 2012, with a Nikon D3S digital camera using a 28 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 32 crew. Astronaut photograph STS065-75-47 was acquired on July 7, 1994, with a Hasselblad Camera using a 100 mm lens and Kodak Lumiere film. Both images have been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by M. Justin Wilkinson, Jacobs/ESCG at NASA-JSC.
Ice retreated rapidly in the Parry Channel—part of the famous and elusive Northwest Passage—between mid-July and early August 2012.
These images, acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, show significant changes over two weeks. The top image shows Parry Channel on July 17, 2012, when ice filled the channel. The bottom image shows the same region on August 3, when some ice was still clinging to the shores of Victoria and Melville Islands but open water otherwise dominated the region.
The Canadian Ice Service reported that ice cover in Parry Channel began to fall below the 1981–2010 median after July 16, 2012, and the loss accelerated over the following two weeks. On July 23, the percentage of ice cover in the channel was roughly 67 percent, compared to the median of 80 percent. On July 30, ice cover was roughly 33 percent, compared a median of 79 percent.
These photo-like images show widespread open water in early August, though patches of ice linger south of Melville Island. Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center cautioned, however, that while the Parry Channel appeared almost entirely free of ice, it was not necessarily open for navigational purposes. Sea ice can be thin enough to avoid detection by satellite sensors such as MODIS yet still thick enough to impede ships.
Whether or not ships can easily pass, recent studies have suggested that certain organisms have begun to take advantage of the open water. The Northwest Passage opened in 2007, a year when there was record-low sea ice in the Arctic. A 2007 study on Neodenticula seminae—a type of plankton historically found in the Pacific Ocean—concluded that the species had turned up in the North Atlantic. The research suggested that the plankton’s route included the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. A 2012 study on bowhead whales, which tracked individuals with satellite transmitters, indicated that Pacific and Atlantic populations had begun to overlap in the Northwest Passage in August 2010.
Attempts to identify a shortcut between Europe and Asia across the Arctic date back to the late fifteenth century, just several years after Columbus journeyed to the Americas. For centuries, attempts to find the route were stymied by unfamiliar geography and unforgiving ice. The Northwest Passage was first successfully navigated by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen between 1903 and 1906. He used the southern route through the Northwest Passage; Parry Channel is part of the northern or “preferred” route.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Jesse Allen, using data from the Land Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE). Caption by Michon Scott, with information from Walt Meier, National Snow and Ice Data Center.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes ‘FAIR USE’ of any such copyrighted material.]
An Afghan village where more than 70 people are believed to have been buried in an earthquake-triggered landslide could be declared a mass grave, an official said Wednesday.
Two shallow tremors less than half an hour apart on Monday unleashed a deluge of rock and earth that smashed into the remote village of Mullah Jan, in the mountainous Hindu Kush region.
Villagers say 71 people, all women and children, were trapped in the landslide, and a disaster management official has described the chances of anyone surviving as “slim or non-existent”.
Mechanical diggers were at the site trying to clear rubble to find bodies or survivors, but Nasir Kohzad, the head of the natural disaster agency of Baghlan province, said the scale of the task made it difficult.
“Part of a mountain has collapsed on a part of Mullah Jan village and there is over 60 metres of dirt to remove,” he told AFP.
Pictures from the scene showed earthmovers digging through mounds of brown dirt and rock with no visible signs of buried buildings.
Only three bodies have been recovered from Mullah Jan, Kohzad said, while a fourth was found in a neighbouring district.
Mullah Jan, the chief of the eponymous village, suggested declaring the site a mass grave and leaving the other victims’ bodies to rest, Kohzad said.
The first quake on Monday, with a magnitude of 5.4, struck at 9:32 am (0502 GMT) at a depth of 15 kilometres (10 miles) with the epicentre around 160 kilometres southwest of the town of Faizabad.
A more powerful tremor, measured at 5.7 magnitude, hit around 25 minutes later in almost exactly the same place, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.
Northern Afghanistan and Pakistan are frequently hit by earthquakes, especially around the Hindu Kush range, which lies near the collision of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.
A 7.6-magnitude earthquake in Pakistan in October 2005 killed 74,000 people and displaced 3.5 million.
TERNATE, INDONESIA (BNO NEWS) — Hundreds of residents in northeastern Indonesia fled their homes on Wednesday after a brief eruption at Mount Gamkonora, spewing towering columns of ash and smoke and prompting officials to raise the volcano’s alert level to the second-highest state.
The 1,635-meter (5,364 feet) tall volcano, which is located on the west coast of Halmahera island in the Maluku Islands and is part of North Maluku province, began to erupt on Wednesday afternoon and sent thick ash clouds up to 3,000 meters (9,842 feet) high, although no lava flows were seen.
The Antara news agency reported that hundreds of residents living on the volcano’s slope evacuated the area following the eruption, but they returned hours later after officials determined their communities are not currently at risk. New evacuations could be ordered if activity at the volcano continues to increase.
Following Wednesday’s eruption, the country’s Volcanology and Geology Disaster Mitigation Center (PVMBG) decided to raise the volcano’s alert status to Siaga (level 3), the second-highest level. The agency uses a warning system with four levels of alert, with level 1 being the lowest and level 4 being the highest.
PVMBG said activity at Mount Gamkonora has been increasing for months, with more frequent volcanic earthquakes and an increase of magma activity near the surface. Authorities are still uncertain whether the current eruption will lead to a major event, but past eruptions at the volcano have nearly all been explosive.
Mount Gamkonora last erupted in July 2007, forcing the evacuation of nearly 10,000 people but causing no known casualties. The most notable eruption at the volcano took place in May 1673, when a massive eruption caused significant damage in the area and resulting tsunami waves which flooded nearby villages. An unknown number of people were killed.
Indonesia has more active volcanoes than any other country in the world and sits on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, a belt of intense volcanic and seismic activity.
One of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes is Mount Merapi, which is located on the island of Java near Jogjakarta, the country’s second-most visited area after Bali. Between October and November 2010, a series of eruptions took place at the volcano, killing at least 353 people and displacing more than 300,000 others.
14.06.2012
Volcano Eruption
Indonesia
Halmahera, [Mount Gamkonora Volcano]
Volcano Eruption in Indonesia on Thursday, 14 June, 2012 at 16:53 (04:53 PM) UTC.
Description
Hundreds of residents in northeastern Indonesia fled their homes on Wednesday after a brief eruption at Mount Gamkonora, spewing towering columns of ash and smoke and prompting officials to raise the volcano’s alert level to the second-highest state. The 1,635-meter (5,364 feet) tall volcano, which is located on the west coast of Halmahera island in the Maluku Islands and is part of North Maluku province, began to erupt on Wednesday afternoon and sent thick ash clouds up to 3,000 meters (9,842 feet) high, although no lava flows were seen. The Antara news agency reported that hundreds of residents living on the volcano’s slope evacuated the area following the eruption, but they returned hours later after officials determined their communities are not currently at risk. New evacuations could be ordered if activity at the volcano continues to increase. Following Wednesday’s eruption, the country’s Volcanology and Geology Disaster Mitigation Center (PVMBG) decided to raise the volcano’s alert status to Siaga (level 3), the second-highest level. The agency uses a warning system with four levels of alert, with level 1 being the lowest and level 4 being the highest.
PVMBG said activity at Mount Gamkonora has been increasing for months, with more frequent volcanic earthquakes and an increase of magma activity near the surface. Authorities are still uncertain whether the current eruption will lead to a major event, but past eruptions at the volcano have nearly all been explosive. Mount Gamkonora last erupted in July 2007, forcing the evacuation of nearly 10,000 people but causing no known casualties. The most notable eruption at the volcano took place in May 1673, when a massive eruption caused significant damage in the area and resulting tsunami waves which flooded nearby villages. An unknown number of people were killed. Indonesia has more active volcanoes than any other country in the world and sits on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, a belt of intense volcanic and seismic activity. One of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes is Mount Merapi, which is located on the island of Java near Jogjakarta, the country’s second-most visited area after Bali. Between October and November 2010, a series of eruptions took place at the volcano, killing at least 353 people and displacing more than 300,000 others.
Volcano Eruption in Indonesia on Thursday, 14 June, 2012 at 16:53 (04:53 PM) UTC.
Firefighters continued to build containment lines around the Round Mountain Complex fire Thursday night just east of Tularosa on U.S. Highway 70, Otero County emergency services coordinator Paul Quairoli said. Quairoli said Otero County firefighters were called around 5 p.m. Thursday to the fire on the south side of U.S. Highway 70 East between mile markers 234 and 239. “The fire is about 25 percent contained,” he said. “We had between four and six separate fires in the area. The largest of the fires is 10 acres. Combined with all the fires, we’re about 16 acres total. The fires were burning on private, state and Bureau of Land Management lands. They were small spotted fires that turned into larger grass and brush fires.” He said resources from Otero County fire units, Tularosa Fire Department, U.S. Forest Service, New Mexico State Forestry, BLM and Mescalero responded. “We also had Bureau of Indian Affairs, state police and the sheriff’s department law enforcement respond as well,” Quairoli said. “We had a heavy air tanker and four heavy helicopters respond. We got the air resources from the Little Bear fire here right away. We attacked it aggressively. We had about 28 Otero County units respond to the fire.”
He said fire officials continue the investigation into the cause of the fire. “We’re putting in more fire lines and mopping up certain areas,” Quairoli said. “We have a lot of wet lines down because of the heavy tanker drops that we’re going to work for a long time. Right now we’re a unified command, but we’re going to be turning the command over to the BLM incident commander soon (Thursday night). There was one firefighter who went down with heat exhaustion.” He said he was unable to confirm that a second firefighter suffered from heat exhaustion. “Wednesday, the Otero County Commission confirmed that we’re going into a burn ban county-wide,” Quairoli said. “There are no fireworks within the boundaries of the Lincoln National Forest or basically in the mountain areas. We’re dry and a lot of large fires in the area and resources are short. We urge people to use common sense and precaution that fire doesn’t happen. Any fires in the county, we’re going to continue to extinguish it aggressively because of the dry, high risk and other large fires within the state.”
Forest / Wild Fire in USA on Friday, 15 June, 2012 at 06:43 (06:43 AM) UTC.
Puerto Rico is in the midst of an unusually dry and record-setting hot stretch of weather. Some relief is on the horizon, but it will not be long-lasting. Record heat baked Puerto Rico’s capital of San Juan both Tuesday and Wednesday and threatens to do the same into Friday. Temperatures today are headed to near the day’s record high of 96 from 1983, then they will challenge Friday’s record of 94 degrees from the same year. This week’s record highs are actually not that far above the 88 degrees that San Juan typically warms to this time of year. What is really unusual and contributing to the heat is the absence of cooling showers and thunderstorms. Dry air has not only kept the Atlantic Basin free of organized tropical systems this month, but it has also limited the development of showers and thunderstorms over San Juan. No measurable rain has dampened the city so far this June, a month that typically records 4.40 inches of rain. That dry stretch will continue through Friday, and without the storminess and accompanying clouds, temperatures will no trouble challenging records. The recent lack of rain has also dried out vegetation, leading to a heightened fire danger. The good news is that the presence of high humidity is preventing the fire danger from being extreme. The bad news is that the combination of the heat and humidity is creating a very uncomfortable environment for those who must spend time outdoors. Residents are urged to avoid strenuous outdoor activities and to drink plenty of water before some relief finally arrives this weekend. The passage of a tropical wave will open the door for moisture to surge across Puerto Rico this weekend, leading to an increase in much-welcome showers and thunderstorms. The storminess, however, will not be here to stay. After additional spotty showers and thunderstorms follow early next week, latest indications point toward the return of a lengthy stretch of dry and hot weather for the second half of the week.
Heat Wave in Puerto Rico on Friday, 15 June, 2012 at 03:14 (03:14 AM) UTC.
Base data
EDIS Number:
HT-20120615-35447-PRI
Event type:
Heat Wave
Date/Time:
Friday, 15 June, 2012 at 03:14 (03:14 AM) UTC
Last update:
—
Cause of event:
Damage level:
Unknown
Geographic information
Continent:
Caribean Sea
Country:
Puerto Rico
County / State:
Area:
Statewide
City:
Coordinate:
N 18° 13.250, W 66° 35.409
Number of affected people / Humanities loss
Foreign people:
Affected is unknown.
Dead person(s):
—
Injured person(s):
—
Missing person(s):
—
Evacuated person(s):
—
Affected person(s):
—
Today
Forest / Wild Fire
Canada
Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, [Sheshatshiu Region]
The people of North West River and Sheshatshiu are being told to pack their bags and get ready to hit the road as a forest fire encroaches on the Labrador communities. The province issued an evacuation notice on Thursday: “Residents are encouraged to make the necessary preparations at home and heed warnings and instructions from local emergency officials in the community, as the forest fire situation continues.” The growing forest fire is burning some 30 km north of the towns. The Provincial Fire Weather Index said it is burning at “extreme levels.” About 1,700 people live in North West River and some 1,276 in Sheshatshiu.
Forest / Wild Fire in Canada on Friday, 15 June, 2012 at 03:11 (03:11 AM) UTC.
The images look like snow, but Dallas residents will tell you it was no winter wonderland.
“Oh my gosh, this is the biggest hailstorm I have ever witnessed in my life,” shouted Hannah Jones while videotaping chunks of hail pelting her pool and backyard.
Dallas-area hail. (Photo courtesy: CBSDFW.com)
Supercell storms packing heavy rain and droves of damaging hail swept across parts of North Texas Wednesday evening. Some stones were as big as baseballs.
“It was horrible,” one woman told WFAA-TV. “It was like being bombed or something.”
The wild weather wrecked a historic movie theater, smashed windows and left evening commuters cursing Mother Nature as they scrambled for cover.
British gardeners have been told they can use their hosepipes again after drought prompted a two-month ban — but after weeks of pouring rain, their lawns will be looking fresh anyway.
Days after the ban was brought into force in early April, the skies opened — delivering the wettest April in over 100 years, and causing flooding in some areas.
Three of the seven water companies which imposed bans in early April will officially end them on Thursday.
The restrictions, covering the homes of some 20 million Britons, were introduced to combat drought in southern and eastern England after two consecutive dry winters.
“We have had two-and-a-half times the average rainfall for April, we have had steady showers in May and then monsoon downpours in June. That’s changed things,” said a spokesman for Thames Water, one of the firms lifting the ban.
Anglian Water and Southern Water are also lifting their bans, though South East Water, Sutton and East Surrey Water, Veolia Water Central and Veolia Water Southeast are maintaining them due to low groundwater levels.
The Environment Agency said the recent downpours, which soaked more than a million revellers who crammed into London to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee this month, had boosted river levels and reservoir stocks.
More downpours are expected across Britain this week.
The Environment Agency has two flood warnings, meaning flooding is expected, and 19 flood alerts signalling possible flooding, in place across the country.
Taiwan has seen devastating floods after days of rain.
At least six people have been killed after flooding hit Taiwan.
Torrential rain brought floods to counties in numerous parts of the country, forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes.
Taiwan’s Central Emergency Operation Center said more than 7,000 people were moved, with the help of the military, according to Reuters news agency.
The flooding caused landslides, as well as power cuts and water shortages to tens of thousands of homes.
The emergency centre said flooding had caused power cuts to more than 87,000 homes and water shortages to 12,000.
While it was reported that six people had died, a further two were said to be missing.
The Associated Press said two people had been killed in a makeshift shelter in a landslide in Taichung, while two more were killed in landslide in Nantou county.
Reuters said the agricultural loss to the country had been estimated at more than NT$172m ($5.76m/£3.69m).
Taiwan’s Central News Agency quoted President Ma Ying-jeou as saying those losses would be compensated.
He said this would take place through more generous subsidies and an easier application process for funding.
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense has more than 47,000 personnel ready for relief assistance, according to the Taipei Times.
The newspaper said 411 rivers across the country had been placed on red alert for mud flows with a further 416 on yellow alert.
Two days of rain has flooded several villages and towns in southern Philippines and forced nearly 700 people to flee their homes on Tuesday. Benito Ramos, National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council head, said parts of Sarangani, North Cotabato, Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat provinces were flooded after two days of pounding rain set off by a brewing tropical storm. Two men died while a total of 250 houses were destroyed when a flashflood hit two villages in Glan town, Sarangani province Tuesday. The flashflood struck the villages of Big Margus Proper and Pangyan Cross. The Armed Forces of the Philippines reported 50 families were also displaced by flashfloods. Sarangani Governor Miguel Rene Dominguez identified the victims as Sagapo Cabigding and Rolando Mata. A certain Rani Pregoner is also reported missing. Nineteen fishermen were also rescued by the authorities from the big waves that battered the area for several hours. The governor said that based on the report coming from Ben Solarte of the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office, about 139 houses were totally damaged while 111 houses were partially destroyed by the floodwaters.
A flashflood also struck four villages in Kalamansig, Sultan Kudarat on Monday. It started around 9 p.m. and affected barangays Obial, Sta. Clara, Hinalaan, and Himulan. A total of 2,460 families were affected by the flooding, while 23 families were forcibly evacuated by the authorities. In Malaybalay, Bukidnon, a flashflood also struck barangays Cabangahan, Bangkud, Aglayan, and Linabo at 4:45 p.m. after Bugkaon River overflowed due to continuous heavy rains brought about by the shallow low pressure area. Some 44 families whose houses are situated near a riverbank in this city evacuated to higher grounds when floodwaters reached as high as 15 feet at around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, residents said. Nurkaya Patadon, 42, one of the flood victims in this city, said many of their appliances and valuables were swept out to the Nuangan River, one of the longest rivers in North Cotabato. Patadon’s family, including 43 other families, decided to leave their homes for fear the waters might rise again due to torrential rains. Heavy rains started to pour at around 9:30 p.m. on Monday and continued until Tuesday afternoon, said Psalmer Bernalte, head of the Kidapawan City Emergency Response Unit (KidCeru), one of the groups that conducted rescue operations. Kasan Maruhom, one of the displaced residents, said that Tuesday’s flashfloods was the worst since 2000.
“We never thought the floodwaters could rise as high as 15 feet. What happened was the worst. I’ve lived in this area for more than 30 years,” Maruhom said. Maruhom said he would transfer his family to Mundog Subdivision in Poblacion. Others, however, have problems finding areas for their relocation. “We don’t know where to go. We have no place to stay other than the riverbank. Our workplace is here in the Poblacion,” said Salik Quila, also one of the flood victims. Bernalte said the waters of Nuangan River, already considered a dead river in Kidapawan City, became turbulent as heavy rains continue to fall across North Cotabato due to low pressure area, which brought widespread rain showers and thunderstorms. Mayor Rodolfo Gantuangco has already ordered the immediate evacuation of the families living near the riverbanks, including Lapu-Lapu Street, Cotelco Village, and Licatan Subdivision, all in Poblacion here. “We’ve already given them orders in the past to leave the place, yet, they won’t listen,” Gantuangco said. Gantuangco said a relocation site in Barangay Balindog, about five kilometers away from the Poblacion, is set for the victims. He said they will declare this city under state of calamity so they can use a portion of their funds to help the flood victims. He added that he already ordered the City Social Welfare and Development Office and the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council to assess and evaluate the situation and immediately conduct relief operations on Wednesday.
Flood in Philippines on Wednesday, 13 June, 2012 at 02:47 (02:47 AM) UTC.
Base data
EDIS Number:
FL-20120613-35428-PHL
Event type:
Flood
Date/Time:
Wednesday, 13 June, 2012 at 02:47 (02:47 AM) UTC
Last update:
Situation Update No. 1 on Friday, 15 June, 2012 at 03:19 UTC
Cause of event:
Damage level:
Extreme
Geographic information
Continent:
Pacific Ocean – West
Country:
Philippines
County / State:
MultiProvinces
Area:
Sarangani, North Cotabato, Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat provinces
City:
Coordinate:
N 7° 0.834, E 125° 5.268
Number of affected people / Humanities loss
Foreign people:
Affected is unknown.
Dead person(s):
2
Injured person(s):
—
Missing person(s):
61
Evacuated person(s):
700
Affected person(s):
—
………………………………………..
Ruta 32 Remains Closed For Landslide
Ruta 32, the route that connects San José with Guapiles and Limón, is once again closed due to a landslide occurring at kilometre 30 in the area of the Zurquí, some 10 km east of the tunnel.
The road is expected to remain closed for most of the day today Thursday, as work crews clean up the debris strewn across the road.
The Consejo Nacional de Vialidad (CONAVI) says it is in the process of removing some 6.400 cubic metres of mud and other materials that coves some 8 metres (25 feet) of roadway.
The CONAVI says that the road will be re-open today if the weather conditions allow the work to continue and no new landslides occur.
An ammonium hydroxide spill of less than a gallon in a stockroom at NextEra Energy Inc.’s nuclear power plant in Seabrook, N.H. required the plant to declare an “unusual event,” the lowest of four emergency categories. Plant spokesman Al Griffith says the spill happened about 1:45 p.m. Wednesday inside the administration building. He says there are no injuries and no danger to the public. The emergency was over in the early evening. It’s not clear how the spill happened. Cleaning materials are kept in the stockroom. The building is in a protected area. Plant operations were not affected.
HAZMAT in USA on Friday, 15 June, 2012 at 03:17 (03:17 AM) UTC.
An American man whose HIV seemed to disappear after a blood marrow transplant for leukemia may be showing new hints of the disease, sparking debate over whether a cure was really achieved.
Scientists disagree over the latest findings on Timothy Brown, also known as the “Berlin patient,” presented at a conference in Spain last week, according to a report in the journal Science’s ScienceInsider blog.
Brown was given bone marrow transplants in 2006 that appeared to eradicate the human immunodeficiency virus from his body, leading his doctors to declare a “cure of HIV has been achieved” in the peer-reviewed journal Blood in 2010.
The transplants came from a donor with an unusual genetic mutation that is naturally resistant to HIV. About one in 100 Caucasian people have this mutation which prevents the molecule CCR5 from appearing on the cell surface.
The latest debate arose after virologist Steven Yukl of the University of California, San Francisco, gave a talk on June 8 at the International Workshop on HIV & Hepatitis Virus.
Yukl “highlighted the difficulties that they and several labs they collaborated with have had determining if Brown truly had eradicated the virus from his body,” said the ScienceInsider report.
“There are some signals of the virus and we don’t know if they are real or contamination, and, at this point, we can’t say for sure whether there’s been complete eradication of HIV,” Yukl was quoted as saying by ScienceInsider.
“The point of the presentation was to raise the question of how do we define a cure and, at this level of detection, how do we know the signal is real?”
However, some scientists interpreted the presentation to mean that a cure was not actually achieved, and that Brown may even have been re-infected with the virus that causes AIDS.
Alain Lafeuillade of the General Hospital in Toulon, France, issued a press release that described how Yukl and colleagues “challenged these results as they showed persistence of low levels of HIV viremia in this patient, and HIV DNA in his rectal cells.”
He noted that “these HIV strains were found to be different from those initially present in this patient back in 2006, and different from each other.”
While that could mean the HIV has “evolved and persist(ed) over the last 5 years, these data also raise the possibility that the patient has been re-infected,” Lafeuillade wrote.
“More studies are in progress to know if this seronegative HIV individual can infect other subjects if he has unsafe sex,” he concluded.
Yukl, quoted by ScienceInsider, said Lafeuillade misinterpreted the presentation.
“”We weren’t trying to say HIV was still there or he hadn’t been cured,” he said, noting the talk centered on how to interpret very sensitive test results on Brown’s blood cells, plasma and rectal tissue.
One of his collaborators, Douglas Richman of the University of California, San Diego, said he believes researchers have picked up contaminants.
“If you do enough cycles of PCR (polymerase chain reaction), you can get a signal in water for pink elephants,” Richman was quoted as saying.
WEDNESDAY, June 13 (HealthDay News) — Although the plague is typically considered a remnant of the Middle Ages, when unsanitary conditions and rodent infestations prevailed amid the squalor of poverty, this rare but deadly disease appears to be spreading through wealthier communities in New Mexico, researchers report.
Why the plague is popping up in affluent neighborhoods isn’t completely clear, the experts added.
“Where human plague cases occur is linked to where people live and how people interact with their environment,” noted lead researcher Anna Schotthoefer, from the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation in Wisconsin. “These factors may change over time, necessitating periodic reassessments of the factors that put people at risk.”
This latest study confirms previous reports that living within or close to the natural environments that support plague is a risk factor for human plague, Schotthoefer said.
Plague is caused by a fast-moving bacteria, known as Yersinia pestis, that is spread through flea bites (bubonic plague) or through the air (pneumonic plague).
The new report comes on the heels of the hospitalization on June 8 of an Oregon man in his 50s with what experts suspect is plague. According to The Oregonian, the man got sick a few days after being bitten as he tried to get a mouse away from a stray cat. The cat died days later, the paper said, and the man remains in critical condition.
For the new study, published in the July issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, the researchers used U.S. Census Bureau data to pinpoint the location and socioeconomic status of plague patients.
About 11 cases of plague a year have occurred in the United States since 1976, with most cases found in New Mexico. Plague has also been reported in a handful of other states.
Although many cases were in areas where the habitat supports rodents and fleas, the researchers also found cases occurring in more upper-class neighborhoods. In the 1980s, most cases occurred where housing conditions were poor, but more recently cases have been reported in affluent areas of Santa Fe and Albuquerque, the investigators found.
“The shift from poorer to more affluent regions of New Mexico was a surprise, and suggests that homeowners in these newly developed areas should be educated about the risks of plague,” Schotthoefer said.
Schotthoefer noted that these more affluent areas where plague occurred were regions where new housing developments had been built in habitats that support the wild reservoirs of plague, which include ground squirrels and woodrats.
Bubonic plague starts with painful swellings (buboes) of the lymph nodes, which appear in the armpits, legs, neck or groin. Buboes are at first a red color, then they turn a dark purple color, or black. Pneumonic plague starts by infecting the lungs. Other symptoms include a very high fever, delirium, vomiting, muscle pains, bleeding in the lungs and disorientation.
In the 14th century, a plague called the Black Death killed an estimated 30 percent to 60 percent of the European population. Victims died quickly, within days after being infected.
Infectious disease expert Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City, said he doesn’t expect to see that kind of outbreak ever again.
“This is not a disease of the past, but you are never going to see a massive outbreak of plague in this country,” he said.
“We don’t have the public health problems we used to have and people would be quickly confined if there were ever a large number of cases,” Siegel explained.
Yet, it is not surprising to see plague in these more affluent areas, he noted.
“We know that plague only exists where you have wild animals, and once a reservoir of plague is already present it is likely to persist,” Siegel explained. “It isn’t only about squalor; it’s about where the reservoir is.”
However, if the disease is caught early it is treatable with antibiotics, Siegel added.
Sea ice thickness in the Laptev Sea at the end of the previous winter (April 20, 2012): The sea ice thickness was determined with the SMOS (Soil Moisture Ocean Saliniy) satellite that can resolve ice thicknesses up to 50 centimetres. The black line shows the mission’s flight track. SMOS-data: Lars Kaleschke, KlimaCampus, Hamburg University.
The North-East Passage, the sea route along the North coast of Russia, is expected to be free of ice early again this summer. The forecast was made by sea ice physicists of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association based on a series of measurement flights over the Laptev Sea, a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean.
Amongs experts the shelf sea is known as an “ice factory” of Arctic sea ice. At the end of last winter the researchers discovered large areas of thin ice not being thick enough to withstand the summer melt.
“These results were a great surprise to us”, says expedition member Dr. Thomas Krumpen. In previous measurements in the winter of 2007/2008 the ice in the same area had been up to one metre thicker. In his opinion these clear differences are primarily attributable to the wind: “It behaves differently from year to year.
If, as last winter, the wind blows from the mainland to the sea, it pushes the pack ice from the Laptev Sea towards the North. Open water areas, so-called polynyas, develop in this way before the coast. Their surface water naturally cools very quickly at an air temperature of minus 40 degrees.
New thin ice forms and is then immediately swept away again by the wind. In view of this cycle, differently sized areas of thin ice then develop on the Laptev Sea depending on wind strength and continuity”, explains Thomas Krumpen. (See info charts)
However, the expedition team was unaware of just how large these areas can actually become until they made the measurement flights in March and April of this year. In places the researchers flew over thin ice for around 400 kilometres.
The “EM Bird”, the torpedo-shaped, electromagnetic ice thickness sensor of the Alfred Wegener Institute, was hung on a cable beneath the helicopter. It constantly recorded the thickness of the floating ice. “We now have a unique data set which we primarily want to use to check the measurements of the earth investigation satellite SMOS”, says Thomas Krumpen.
The abbreviation SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) is actually a satellite mission to determine the soil moisture of the mainland and salinity of the oceans. However, the satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) can also be used to survey the Arctic sea ice.
“The satellite can be used above all to detect thin ice areas, as we have seen them, from space”, explains Thomas Krumpen.
The SMOS satellite measurements from March and April of this year confirm that the thin ice areas discovered by the expedition team were no locally restricted phenomenon: “A large part of the North-East Passage was characterised by surprisingly thin ice at the end of the winter”, says Thomas Krumpen.
The new findings of the successful winter expedition give cause for concern to the scientists: “These huge new areas of thin ice will be the first to disappear when the ice melts in summer. And if the thin ice melts as quickly as we presume, the Laptev Sea and with it a part of the North-East Passage will be free from ice comparatively early this summer”, explains the sea ice physicist.
In the past the Laptev Sea was always covered with sea ice from October to the end of the following July and was navigable for a maximum of two summer months. In 2011 the ice had retracted so far by the third week of July that during the course of the summer 33 ships were able to navigate the Arctic waters of Russia for the first time.
The North-East Passage is viewed by shipping companies to be a time and fuel saving alternative to the conventional Europe-Asia route. The connection from Rotterdam to Japanese Yokohama via the Nord-East Passage is some 3800 sea miles shorter than taking the Suez Canal and Indian Ocean route.
On June 14th, for the second day in a row, sunspot AR1504 erupted and hurled a CME toward Earth. The fast-moving (1360 km/s) cloud is expected to sweep up a previous CME and deliver a combined blow to Earth’s magnetic field on June 16th around 10:16 UT. This animation shows the likely progression of the approaching storm:
According to the forecast track prepared by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the CMEs will also hit Venus on June 15th and Mars on June 19th. Because Venus and Mars do not have global magnetic fields to protect them, both of those planets will probably lose tiny amounts of atmosphere when the CMEs strike.
Here on Earth, the impact is likely to trigger a geomagnetic storm around the poles. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras on June 16th
Data from NASA’s AIM spacecraft show that noctilucent clouds (NLCs) are like a great “geophysical light bulb.” They turn on every year in late spring, reaching almost full intensity over a period of no more than 5 to 10 days. News flash: The bulb is glowing. Flying photographer Brian Whittaker photographed these NLCs over Canada on June 13th:
“I was very happy to see my first noctilucent clouds of 2012,” says Whittaker. “They were visible to the north for about 3 hours as we flew between Ottawa and Newfoundland at 35,000 feet.”
These electric-blue clouds are hanging 85 km above Earth’s surface, at the edge of space itself. Their origin is still largely a mystery; various theories associate them with space dust, rocket exhaust, global warming–or some mixture of the three. One thing is sure. They’re baaack … for the summer of 2012.
Observing tips: NLCs favor high latitudes, although they have been sighted as far south as Colorado and Virginia. Look west 30 to 60 minutes after sunset when the Sun has dipped 6o to 16obelow the horizon. If you see luminous blue-white tendrils spreading across the sky, you may have spotted a noctilucent cloud.
Large swathes of farmland are threatened by locusts in Niger even as the drought-prone African nation is grappling with a severe food crisis, a pest-control official said Wednesday.
“Unless swarms are destroyed very early, locusts will reproduce and reach the cropland,” Yahaya Garba, director of the CNLA agency in charge of pest-control, said in the latest bulletin of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Niger.
At least 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) of farmland and one million hectares (2.5 million acres) of pasture land could be devastated.
“Locusts are about to reach the Sahel (region), and notably northern Mali and Niger,” Garba said adding that the migratory species was invading the area from southeast Algeria and neighbouring Libya.
The first swarms were spotted in northern Niger late last month and have started to migrate south where most Niger farmland is concentrated.
More than 80 percent of Niger’s population of 15 million live on farm produce and six million are facing a new food crisis already, out of 18 million in the entire Sahel belt, according to United Nations figures.
“The fight (against the locusts) must be fought intensively and immediately,” warned Garba, appealing for international assistance.
There was a major risk that locusts invade the area from Mali where state agencies do not have access to locust reproduction zones as the north is under the control of armed rebel groups.
The UN’s Rome-based food agency said earlier this month that political insecurity and conflicts in North Africa were hindering efforts to control the swarms of desert locusts.
A 30-foot young humpback whale beached itself on a suburban Vancouver beach and died there.
The midday tide rolls in as police move crowds of people back as they view an eight to ten meter long juvenile humpback whale which died shortly after washing up on the beach in White Rock near Vancouver, British Columbia, early morning June 12, 2012, despite the efforts of local people who tried to save it. The whale was scarred, covered in lice and open sores and appeared malnourished, likely too weak to fight the early morning incoming tides. UPI / Heinz Ruckemann
Today
Biological Hazard
Canada
Province of British Columbia, Comox [Comox coastal region]
A huge Red Tide has formed along the east coast of Vancouver Island, prompting a warning from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. “I just want to inform the public about some closures due to Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning, also known as Red Tide that we have in the area,” explained Comox DFO Fisheries Officer Bryce Gillard. “We had a large section that was identified by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that starts in an area about three kilometres south of Union Bay and it goes all the way down to Northwest Bay, just south of Parksville.” Gillard had this message for those planning on checking out the local shellfish festival this weekend. “It doesn’t affect the Shellfish Festival in Comox because all that product comes from a federally registered plant. There are still large areas of the coast which remain open for commercial harvest and recreational harvest. We always encourage people to call their local DFO office for Red Tide updates in the area.” Gillard says Red Tide is a dangerous toxin that affects the nervous system. “Red Tide is an algae that is in our water system and present all year round. Those toxins in bivalve shellfish can’t be eliminated by cooking them, they are toxins that remain in the meat.”
Biohazard name:
Red Tide
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
Biological Hazard in Canada on Friday, 15 June, 2012 at 06:46 (06:46 AM) UTC.
Base data
EDIS Number:
BH-20120615-35451-CAN
Event type:
Biological Hazard
Date/Time:
Friday, 15 June, 2012 at 06:46 (06:46 AM) UTC
Last update:
—
Cause of event:
Damage level:
Unknown
Geographic information
Continent:
North-America
Country:
Canada
County / State:
Province of British Columbia
Area:
Comox coastal region
City:
Comox
Coordinate:
N 49° 39.844, W 124° 51.907
Number of affected people / Humanities loss
Foreign people:
Affected is unknown.
Dead person(s):
—
Injured person(s):
—
Missing person(s):
—
Evacuated person(s):
—
Affected person(s):
—
Today
Biological Hazard
USA
State of Hawaii, [Sunset Beach Park, Waikiki at Duke Paoa Kahanamoku Beach Park]
A box jellyfish advisory has been issued due to an invasion on Oahu beaches. Affected beaches include Sunset Beach Park, Waikiki at Duke Paoa Kahanamoku Beach Park, Waikiki at Kapiolani Beach Park, Waikiki at Kapiolani Park Beach Center, Waikiki at Kuhio Beach Park, Waikiki at San Souci Beach, and Waimea Bay Beach Park. Today is day three of a four day influx. As of 9:00 a.m., there have been 30 box jellyfish sightings in Waikiki, 50 at Waimea Bay and 50 at Sunset Beach. If you are stung, flush the affected area with copious amounts of white vinegar and use heat or cold for pain. Seek immediate medical attention if you experience breathing difficulty.
Biohazard name:
Jellyfish invasion (Box)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
Biological Hazard in USA on Friday, 15 June, 2012 at 03:13 (03:13 AM) UTC.
Base data
EDIS Number:
BH-20120615-35446-USA
Event type:
Biological Hazard
Date/Time:
Friday, 15 June, 2012 at 03:13 (03:13 AM) UTC
Last update:
—
Cause of event:
Damage level:
Unknown
Geographic information
Continent:
North-America
Country:
USA
County / State:
State of Hawaii
Area:
Sunset Beach Park, Waikiki at Duke Paoa Kahanamoku Beach Park
Researchers trail behind whales waiting for Tucker to indicate by leaning over the bow that he can smell whale poop. The boat on average stays between 450 yards to more than half a mile away from whales. Credit: Fred Felleman.
Not having enough Chinook salmon to eat stresses out southern resident killer whales in the Pacific Northwest more than having boatloads of whale watchers nearby, according to hormone levels of whales summering in the Salish Sea.
In lean times, however, the stress level normally associated with boats becomes more pronounced, further underscoring the importance of having enough prey, according to Katherine Ayres, an environmental and pet-behavior consultant who led the research while a University of Washington doctoral student in biology. Ayres is lead author of a paper appearing online June 6, in the journal PLoS ONE.
In a surprise finding, hormone levels show that southern resident killer whales are best fed when they come into the Salish Sea in the late spring, Ayres said. The Salish Sea includes Puget Sound and the straits of Georgia, Haro and Juan de Fuca. Once there they get a necessary boost later in the summer while eating Chinook salmon at the height of the Fraser River run.
While Fraser River Chinook are an important food source, helping the southern resident killer whales may mean giving additional consideration to spring runs of Chinook salmon off the mouth of the Columbia River and other salmon runs off the West Coast, if that’s where the orcas are bulking up in the spring, Ayres said. “Resident” killer whales are fish-eating orcas, unlike the so-called “transient” orcas that eat marine mammals.
For the study, scientists analyzed hormonal responses to stress that were measurable in whale scat, or poop. Many samples were collected using a black Labrador named Tucker on board a small boat in the vicinity of individuals or groups of whales. Even a mile away, Tucker can pick up on the scent he’s been trained to recognize as the fishy smell distinctive to southern resident killer whales, a group of orcas listed as endangered by both Canada and U.S.
“This is the first study using scat-detection dogs to locate killer whale feces,” Ayres said. “The technique could be used to collect scat and study stress in other species of whales, always difficult subjects to study because the animals spend 90 percent of their time underwater.”
Since the population of southern resident killer whales declined nearly 20 percent between 1995 and 2001, scientists and managers have wondered if the animals weren’t thriving because of lack of food, the closeness of boats, toxins built up in their bodies or a combination of all three.
“Behavior is hard to interpret, physiology is easier,” said co-author Samuel Wasser, UW professor of biology and developer of the program using dogs like Tucker to detect scat for biological research. “Fish matter most to the southern resident killer whales. Even if boats are important to consider, the way you minimize that impact is to keep the fish levels high.”
It’s the same with toxins, Wasser said. The study being published in PLoS ONE specifically considered stress caused by inadequate prey and boats. But Wasser said that toxins accumulating in body fat will likely affect killer whales most when food is scarce and they start to use that stored fat, releasing toxins into their bodies when their physical condition already is in decline. When whales are well-fed, toxins should be less of a factor, he said. In the study researchers examined the level of two hormones to study physiological responses to boat and food stresses.
One type of hormone, glucocorticoids, are released in increasing amounts when animals face immediate challenges, whether it’s a shortage of food or the fight-or-flight response when threatened, Ayres said. When whale watching boats and other vessels were most numerous in the summer, glucocorticoids should have spiked if the whales were bothered. Instead glucocorticoids went down, driven by an increase in the number of Fraser River Chinook.
The other hormone, thyroid hormone, tunes metabolism depending on how much food is available, for example ramping down metabolism to lower the energy an organism expends when food is scarce, Ayres said. Unlike glucocorticoids, thyroid hormone levels do not respond directly to stresses such as boats being nearby. During summers, thyroid levels of Salish Sea whales dipped while they awaited the arrival of Fraser River Chinook, increased again when food became plentiful and declined once again as the Chinook run petered out.
Unexpectedly, the thyroid hormone measures showed the whales were best fed when they first arrive in the Salish Sea, better than at any time in the five months they spent there, Wasser said.
“We assume winter is a lean time, so to come into the Salish Sea at their nutritional high for the year, then clearly they have been eating something – a very rich food source – before they arrive,” Wasser said. “It appears another fish run is critical to them before they get here.”
Some evidence points to the Chinook returning to the Columbia River, although Wasser said that more spring data are needed.
The PLoS ONE paper follows a draft report issued May 3 by U.S. and Canadian fisheries experts considering to what extent salmon fishing is affecting the recovery of the southern resident killer whales. Wasser said the report pays too little attention to year-to-year salmon variability, but got it right when it said more needs to be known about what’s happening to the whales in the winter and, particularly, in early spring.
Among other things, the report said Chinook stocks are currently harvested at a rate of about 20 percent “so there is limited potential for increasing Chinook abundance by reducing fishing pressure,” according to the executive summary.
More extreme measures may be required that increase overall Chinook salmon stocks, Wasser said.
“To support a healthy population of southern residents we may need more salmon than simply the number of fish being caught by commercial and sport fishers,” Ayres said. “We may need to open up historical habitats to boost wild salmon, such as what is being done with the Elwha River and what is proposed for the Klamath River. That may be the only way to support the historic population size of southern residents, which is ultimately the goal of recovery.”
Other co-authors are Rebecca Booth of the UW; Jennifer Hempelmann, Candice Emmons, M. Bradley Hanson and Michael Ford of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center; Kari Koski of Soundwatch Boater Education Program and the Whale Museum, Friday Harbor; Robin Baird of Cascadia Research Collective, Olympia; and Kelley Balcomb-Bartok, who helped get the study off the ground through collaboration with the Center for Whale Research.
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