Topic: Around the Globe in Real Time

[Nichi]

I got corrected for using the expression "dropped out of the sky", as journalistic fear-mongering. I suppose it was, though I could certainly see how it would seem so to the workers cleaning up 2000 carcases.

‘Basically, they just fell out of the sky’: 2,000 snow geese found dead in Idaho

By Abby Ohlheiser March 17
The Washington Post

About 2,000 snow geese migrating from Mexico to their Alaskan nesting grounds were found dead in Idaho, the state's Department of Fish and Game announced Monday. Although testing is still in progress, officials believe that the deaths are consistent with avian cholera.

The suddenness in which the birds died is part of the reason that experts suspect avian cholera, which kills acute sufferers in as little as six hours. “Basically, they just fell out of the sky,” Fish and Game spokesman Gregg Losinski told Reuters.

To prevent any other wildlife from picking up the disease, officials have collected and burned the carcasses, all found in the Mud Lake and Market Lake Wildlife Management Areas in the southeast region of the state. 

"The important thing is to quickly collect as many of the carcasses as possible, to prevent other birds from feeding on the infected birds," Upper Snake Regional Supervisor Steve Schmidt said in a statement. The carcasses were collected over the weekend.

While local wildlife populations are potentially at risk from avian cholera, humans are at a low risk of picking up an infection from the bacteria that causes the disease, officials said. It's not clear where the geese may have contracted the illness, but Schmidt noted that avian cholera has "occurred sporadically in the region over the past few decades."

Observers are already concerned about one group of scavenging birds spotted near the carcasses: about 20 bald eagles, a bird species that scavenges for food. But as Fish and Wildlife notes, avian cholera's incubation period means that officials aren't certain they'll be able to locate the eagles "if and when the avian cholera affects them."

Geese, coots, gulls and crows are the birds most commonly infected with avian cholera, the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center says. It's spread a few different ways: from bird-bird contact, from contact with "secretions or feces" from an infected animal, or from ingesting bacteria-containing water and soil.

The bacteria that cause avian cholera can live in soil and water for months, the USGS adds. Aerosol transmission — in this case, from birds landing, splashing or otherwise disturbing a body of infected water and spraying it onto nearby birds — is also thought to be possible. The only way to stop an outbreak is to cull the flock of sick individuals, but sometimes that's easier said than done: Some birds show no symptoms and carry the disease for life, causing acute outbreaks as soon as they encounter a susceptible flock.

Early symptoms can include lethargy, convulsions, a discharge from the mouth, matted feathers and erratic movements on the ground and in the air — including flying upside down, according to USGS. But many outbreaks of the disease are spotted only after the birds have died from it.

That's because once birds become sick from the disease, they usually don't have very long to live. Some contracting the acute form of the disease die within 6 to 12 hours of exposure, but more often, it takes 24 to 48 hours. Birds drop from the sky in otherwise "good body condition," USGS says, "Death may be so rapid that birds literally fall out of the sky or die while eating with no previous signs of disease."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/03/17/basically-they-just-fell-out-of-the-sky-2000-snow-geese-found-dead-in-idaho/

[Michael]

Nasty - glad to see some people are active on this.

[Nichi]

Thousands gather along English Channel to witness 'tide of the century'

A record spring tide cuts off the Normandy island of Mont Saint-Michel, with thousands flocking to view the once-in-a-lifetime spectacle.

 By Patrick Sawer, and David Chazan in Paris, video source APTN
2:18PM GMT 21 Mar 2015

 Thousands of people gathered on beaches in northern France and south west England on Saturday to watch what is being called “the high tide of the century”.

The exceptionally high spring tide, swollen by a “supermoon” effect linked to the solar eclipse on Friday, sent huge surge waves crashing onto beaches and along estuaries on both sides of the English Channel, to the delight of surfers and tourists.

 The most dramatic effects of the day’s supertide were witnessed at the picturesque island of Mont Saint-Michel, off the coast of Normandy, where a wall of water as high as a four-storey building momentarily cut it off from the mainland.

For a few minutes, Mont Saint-Michel was completely encircled by the sea by a ‘supertide’ caused by the Moon’s extra-strong gravitational pull on the sea. The phenomenon is linked to the alignment of the Moon, Sun and Earth following Friday’s solar eclipse.

Spotlights illuminated the island’s medieval walled town and gothic abbey during the high tide, with visitors jostling to take photos of the phenomenon.

As the surge began to make its way along the coast and tidal estuaries, surfers took to the water in the north west town of Pontaubault and waves crashed onto seawalls along the coast, drenching onlookers.

 Police had difficulty holding back the 20,000-strong crowd eager to get pictures of the scene in the final minutes before the surge on Saturday morning. Similar numbers had gathered to watch the high tide on the previous day, with the tourist hotspot lit up with 60 spotlights for the occasion as night fell.

Among the crowds was France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius.

Mont Saint-Michel, which was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979, is situated one kilometre off the coast of Normandy. The rocky outcrop is home to the famous Norman Benedictine Abbey of St-Michel.

Michael Dodds, the director of the regional tourism committee, said: "This natural phenomenon is an incredible opportunity for tourism in Brittany at this time of year."

 The bay on the coast of Normandy has some of the strongest tides in the world.

Hotels were full along the coast and car and caravan parks were packed. Patrick Gaulois, the owner of several restaurants and hotels, said: “Everything was booked on Mont Saint-Michel as early as October.”

France is the world’s most visited country and Mont Saint-Michel attracts some three million tourists a year.

Eleven departements along the coast of northern France are on alert for fear of flooding and residents have been told to stay away from beaches and coastal areas.

Claude Renoult, mayor of Saint-Malo in Brittany, said: “Concrete blocks and sandbags are there to protect against waves and also to mark out safe areas where people can enjoy the spectacle without any danger of being swept away.”

Similar surges are predicted along the coast of Britain and the Netherlands over the weekend.

Surfers turned out to catch a rare high wave, or ‘bore’, on the River Severn yesterday caused by the tidal surge, while hundreds of others took to their boards off the coast of Devon.

Ben Howe, 31, a surfer at Croyde, said: “I have never seen the beach this packed down here this early in the season, the conditions are ideal. I think Thursday night’s supermoon may have affected tidal conditions too as the waves were absolutely mammoth on Friday.”

The last ‘tide of the century’ was on March 10, 1997 and the next will be on March 3, 2033, making the description something of a misnomer.

The predictions are based on the tide coefficients used by scientists to forecast wave size. With 120 being the highest, they project a 119 on Saturday. On February 21 it reached 117.

Until 1879 Mont Saint-Michel was cut off from the mainland during each high tide. That year a permanent causeway was built to prevent the tide from scouring the silt around the island.

The coastal flats were reclaimed for pastureland, reducing the distance between the shore and the island. The effect was to encourage the silting-up of the bay.

In 2009 work began on building a hydraulic dam using the waters of the river Couesnon and the tides to help remove the accumulated silt, and make Mont Saint-Michel an island again.

Last year a new 2,500ft bridge was opened to the public. The bridge allows the waters to flow freely below and around the island at high tide.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11487205/English-Channel-braced-for-tide-of-the-century.html

[Nichi]

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us20002926?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook#general_map

Multiple quakes thereafter. 1000 fatalities - number may not be accurate.

Felt as far away as Bangladesh and Calcutta.

[Nichi]

Also a 6.6 in Bella Bella, Canada.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us200028ue?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook#general_map

[erik]

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us20002926?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook#general_map

Multiple quakes thereafter. 1000 fatalities - number may not be accurate.

Felt as far away as Bangladesh and Calcutta.

Over 2,000 killed announced by now.
65 mountain climbers perished on Mount Everest in an avalanche.

[Nichi]

At least 3,617 people are now known to have died in a massive earthquake which hit Nepal on Saturday, police say.

More than 6,500 people have been injured, according to the National Emergency Operation Centre.

Dozens of people are also reported to have been killed in neighbouring China and India.

More than 200 climbers have been rescued around Mount Everest, which was struck by deadly avalanches in the 7.8-magnitude quake.

Vast tent cities have sprung up in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, for those displaced or afraid to return to their homes as strong aftershocks continued. Thousands spent Sunday night - their second night - outside.

Officials have warned that the number of casualties could rise as rescue teams reach remote mountainous areas of western Nepal.

Initial reports suggest that many communities, especially those close to mountainsides, suffered significant quake damage.

"Villages like this are routinely affected by landslides, and it's not uncommon for entire villages of 200, 300, up to 1,000 people to be completely buried by rock falls," said Matt Darvas, spokesman for aid agency World Vision.

A man evacuated by helicopter to Pokhara, 200km from Kathmandu, said almost every home in his village of more than 1,000 houses had been destroyed, Mr Darvas told the BBC.
Much of the effort is now turning to recovery of bodies in and around Kathmandu.
Bodies are cremated near a river in Kathmandu.

In Dhading district, 80km west of Kathmandu, people were camped in the open, the hospital was overflowing, the power was off and shops were closed, Reuters news agency reported.

A senior official in Gorkha district, the location of the earthquake's epicentre, told AP he had heard reports of 70% of houses being destroyed.

"Things are really bad in the district, especially in remote mountain villages," Udav Prashad Timalsin said. "There are people who are not getting food and shelter."

Among villages affected are some inhabited by Tibetans, many of whom have sought refuge in Nepal. Bridim, north of Kathmandu, is reported to have been virtually flattened.

The roads to where the epicentre was, northwest of the capital, have been cleared and rescue teams are on their way.

Rescue missions and aid are arriving in Nepal from abroad to help cope with the aftermath of the earthquake, the worst to hit Nepal for more than 80 years.

Efforts to dig victims out from under the rubble of collapsed buildings in Kathmandu are also continuing.
At the scene: Sanjoy Majumder, Kathmandu

After a cold and wet night, the skies have cleared over Kathmandu allowing rescue teams to continue working. But it is becoming harder for the hundreds of thousands sheltering out in the open. Many are staying in very basic tents with little protection.

Water is becoming scarce and there are fears that children in particular could be at risk of disease. Even residents of some of the city's smarter neighbourhoods are sleeping on carpets and mattresses outside their homes.

Aid flights are coming in rapidly and in fact Kathmandu airport is running out of parking bays, so many aircraft are having to wait before getting permission to land.

And at the Pashupatinath temple, one of the city's oldest, cremations have been taking place since the morning. As the death toll rises, the authorities are keen on disposing of the bodies as quickly as possible to prevent a health hazard.

In pictures: Devastation after the quake

Quake 'was anticipated'

Dozens of Britons among the missing

A powerful aftershock was felt on Sunday in Nepal, India and Bangladesh, and more avalanches were reported near Everest. The 6.7-magnitude tremor, centred 60km (40 miles) east of Kathmandu, sent people running in panic for open ground in the city. It brought down some houses that had been damaged in the initial quake.

Hospital patients were among those moved outside over the weekend

At hospitals rattled by the aftershocks, staff moved sick and injured patients outside on Sunday afternoon.

Clearer weather on Monday allowed more helicopters to head to Base Camp on Mount Everest.

Foreign climbers and their Nepalese guides were caught by the tremors and a huge avalanche that buried part of the camp. At least 18 were killed by avalanches.

Monuments:
    19th Century 200-step Dharahara tower in Kathmandu reduced to stump
    Durbar Square in Old City badly damaged
    In Bhaktapur, country's best preserved ancient city, 16th-Century Vatsala Durga and many other buildings destroyed
    Several buildings in Patan's 3rd Century Durbar square razed
    Destruction "culturally speaking an incalculable loss" - Nepali Times editor Kunda Dixit

Nepal's architectural jewels destroyed

There are 14 international medical teams on the way to Nepal, the UN says, and up to 15 international search-and-rescue teams have been sent.

The UN children's agency says nearly one million children in Nepal urgently need humanitarian assistance as they were particularly vulnerable.

The country is running out of water and food, and there are frequent power cuts, the UN says.

Heavy rain earlier on Saturday further worsened conditions with UN officials expressing concern that thunderstorms that could harm people staying outdoors and lead to a shortage of vaccines against disease including diarrhoea and measles.

Dead or missing foreigners

Australia: 549 Australians registered as travelling in Nepal, 200 confirmed safe

Bangladesh: 50 nationals, including members of the country's under-14 girls' football team, evacuated. No information on exact number of nationals in Nepal

China: Four nationals dead in Kathmandu, Xinhua news agency reports

Colombia: Seven nationals missing

France: French authorities have located 1,098 nationals, but another 674 are still not in touch

India: Five killed in Nepal

UK: Several hundred Britons believed to be in Nepal. No reports of deaths or injuries

US: Three Americans killed

Victims from other countries include a dead Estonian national and a Japanese man killed.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32475030

[Nichi]

Nepal quake 'followed historic pattern'
By Kate Ravilious Science writer

Nepal's devastating magnitude-7.8 earthquake on Saturday was primed over 80 years ago by its last massive earthquake in 1934, which razed around a quarter of Kathmandu to the ground and killed over 17,000 people.

This latest quake follows the same pattern as a duo of big tremors that occurred over 700 years ago, and results from a domino effect of strain transferring along the fault, geologists say.

The researchers discovered the likely existence of this doublet effect only in recent weeks, during field work in the region.

Saturday's quake, which struck an area in central Nepal, between the capital Kathmandu and the city of Pokhara, has had a far-reaching impact.

More than 4,000 people have lost their lives, with victims in Bangladesh, India, Tibet, and on Mount Everest, where avalanches were triggered.

Death tolls and casualty figures are likely to rise over the coming days, and the risk of landslides on slopes made unstable by the quake mean that the danger is far from passed.
Trench investigations

In a sadly prescient turn of events, Laurent Bollinger, from the CEA research agency in France, and his colleagues, uncovered the historical pattern of earthquakes during fieldwork in Nepal last month, and anticipated a major earthquake in exactly the location where Saturday's big tremor has taken place.

Down in the jungle in central southern Nepal, Bollinger's team dug trenches across the country's main earthquake fault (which runs for more than 1,000km from west to east), at the place where the fault meets the surface, and used fragments of charcoal buried within the fault to carbon-date when the fault had last moved.

Ancient texts mention a number of major earthquakes, but locating them on the ground is notoriously difficult.

Monsoon rains wash soils down the hillsides and dense jungle covers much of the land, quickly obscuring earthquake ruptures.

Bollinger's group was able to show that this segment of fault had not moved for a long time.

"We showed that this fault was not responsible for the great earthquakes of 1505 and 1833, and that the last time it moved was most likely 1344," says Bollinger, who presented his findings to the Nepal Geological Society two weeks ago.

Previously, the team had worked on the neighbouring segment of fault, which lies to the east of Kathmandu, and had shown that this segment experienced major quakes in 1255, and then more recently in 1934.

The deadly pattern of quakes around Kathmandu

    Saturday's magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck to the north-west of Kathmandu
    The last time the fault ruptured at this location was back in 1344
    It was preceded in 1255 by a big event to the east of Kathmandu
    The last rupture there was in 1934, hinting strain might accumulate westward
    2015's quake follows the pattern with a gap between events of 80 years or so

When Bollinger and his colleagues saw this historic pattern of events, they became greatly concerned.

"We could see that both Kathmandu and Pokhara would now be particularly exposed to earthquakes rupturing the main fault, where it likely last did in 1344, between the two cities," explains Paul Tapponnier, from the Earth Observatory of Singapore, who was working with Bollinger.

When a large earthquake occurs, it is common for the movement to transfer strain further along the earthquake fault, and this seems to be what happened in 1255.

Over the following 89 years, strain accumulated in the neighbouring westerly segment of fault, finally rupturing in 1344.

Now, history has repeated itself, with the 1934 fault transferring strain westwards along the fault, which has finally been released today, 81 years later.

And, worryingly, the team warns there could be more to come.

"Early calculations suggest that Saturday's magnitude-7.8 earthquake is probably not big enough to rupture all the way to the surface, so there is still likely to be more strain stored, and we should probably expect another big earthquake to the west and south of this one in the coming decades," says Bollinger.

   
'Most Nepal troops' in quake effort

Nine out of 10 Nepalese troops are reportedly taking part in search and rescue operations after a massive earthquake that killed 4,000 people. 
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32472310

[Nichi]

Count surpassing 5000 now.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32494628

[Nichi]

I surely hope he is wrong, but one scientist predicts a final count of at least 45k when all the info is finally in.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/dire-prospects-seen-when-the-full-nepal-earthquake-death-toll-is-tallied/?_r=0

[Nichi]

Another 7.3 in Nepal, in what they call an "aftershock" - one in a series of them since the major one on 25 April.

"Nepal Earthquake & Aftershocks—This map depicts more than 100 aftershocks that have occurred since the magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Nepal on April 25, 2015. To date, the largest aftershock is a magnitude 7.3 on May 12. The 1833 and 1934 stars represent the most recent large historical earthquakes on this portion of the plate boundary."




https://www.facebook.com/USGeologicalSurvey/photos/a.169734339739224.34845.102635589782433/879540415425276/?type=1

[Nichi]

Geez Louise, there are 7 cyclones in the Pacific right now (one of them is an Invest). I'll bet that's unprecedented.

You can see the graphic here, but it might change --

http://icons.wxug.com/data/images/sst_basin/gl_sst_mm.gif

Also here:
http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/

[Michael]

bit of a worry...

[Nichi]

Geez Louise, there are 7 cyclones in the Pacific right now (one of them is an Invest). I'll bet that's unprecedented.

You can see the graphic here, but it might change --

http://icons.wxug.com/data/images/sst_basin/gl_sst_mm.gif

Also here:
http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/

The beauty of Weather Underground's site is that you get to see the "whole" at a glance. To be able to see the "whole" should be an easy/ordinary goal, but not so - especially in the Pacific. The watchdogs in the Pacific are divided into 3 or 4 main "stations", from NOAA in the East, to Hawaii in the Central, to Japan in the West, and Australia in the southwest. This doesn't include all the stations locally (for example, I think there's one in the Phillipines). I think China has a faction in there too. The outcome of this is that there is no centralized information, much less a picture of the whole.

And in the US, information is increasingly parceled out: if the powers-that-be had their way, we would only "know" what is coming to us from a 50-mile radius.

This is the outcome of the politics of climate change. As we all know, there is a group who works hard to deny that phenomenon, and let's face it: being able to see the "whole" is a big negation of any denial.

[Nichi]

Weird place to have a 6.4 earthquake. USGS says 4 plates are involved. Seems quite inauspicious.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us20002xx1?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook#general_map
(Pan back a couple of times to get the view of the 'whole'.)