LAKE TAHOE - The red cabin sold in the mountain town of Meyers, a few miles southwest of South Lake Tahoe, seemed a perfect winter retreat - except for the faint sound of snoring coming from beneath the floorboards. The sleeper was discovered this month when a real estate agent crawled under the deck to retrieve a dropped key - only to awaken a 300-pound bear from hibernation. The home did not pass inspection. California black bears always have been a part of life in the Tahoe Basin. But increasingly they're leaving the backcountry to hibernate under homes, to stay close to garbage cans and refrigerators that are becoming a primary source of food.
Black bears are by and large docile creatures, reportedly having never killed anyone in California or Nevada. But their growing dependence on man-made dens means the bears are routinely coming into contact with humans. Many are being killed by motorists or by homeowners with state permits to shoot the "nuisance" bears that repeatedly raid kitchens or hibernate under houses. Ursine squatters are passing the tradition down to their cubs, and second-and third-generation bears are returning annually to the "family home" to hibernate. "A decade ago, this was a garbage story, but now the bears are getting smarter and finding other ways to rely on humans," said Jason Holley, a California Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist. Calls about bear activity are up threefold over a year ago, said Ann Bryant, who created the nonprofit Bear League eight years ago to prevent bear shootings by teaching locals and tourists how to keep the bears wild. "This is the worst year ever," Bryant said. .....
Biologists are alarmed because the bears' physiology is changing: Garbage-fed bears are ballooning in size, and some have stopped taking winter naps altogether. But the biologists' biggest concern is that "garbage" bears will lose their fear of people and become aggressive - fatal black-bear maulings have occurred in other states. Researchers estimate 400 bears have relocated from the mountains and are living year-round on the California side of Lake Tahoe lakeshore, and 200 on the Nevada side.
(Meredith May, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE)
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TAIPEI, Taiwan - With one blow, Mother Nature triggered the largest telecommunications outage in years, cutting off or slowing telephone and Internet traffic in Asia from Beijing to Bangkok.
A powerful earthquake off the southern tip of Taiwan late Tuesday (Dec. 26) damaged up to a dozen fiber-optic cables that cross the ocean floor south of Taiwan. They usually carry traffic for China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, the U.S. and the island itself.
The magnitude 6.7 tremor, which struck near the town of Hengchun, killed two residents of Taiwan and injured more that 40 people. It also showed the vulnerability of the global telecommunciations network.....repairs could take two to three weeks. Taiwan lost almost all of its telephone capacity to Japan and mainland China. Service to the U.S. also was hit, with 60% of capacity lost for a while......
The Internet Traffic Report Web site, which monitors Internet connectivity in several countries, showed that packet loss, or the percentage of data that doesn't reach its destination, spiked sharply in Asia at the time of the earthquake, rising from about 10% to more than 40%. Yesterday afternoon U.S. time, the Web site showed limited connectivity to China, Singapore and Indonesia, while Japan and Taiwan were apparently beach to normal.....after the earthquake struck, 3000 Asian networks disappeared from the tracking equipment of the monitoring firm Renesys. For comparison, 5000 networks disappeared during the blackout of 2003 in the Northeast U.S....
... a ship will be in position in a few days [to repair the ruptured cables]...but mudslides set off by the earthquake can complicate matters by covering the cables, making them harder to retrieve from the bottom. The ruptures are more than 10,800ft below sea levem too deep for remote-controlled submersibles that otherwise would find the cables. Instead, the ship will drag grapnels along the bottom to find them....by one estimate, it costs up to $800,000 a mile to lay undersea cable. As a result, most cables are owned by consortiums of telecommuncations companies, which create joint-pricing structures and share the cost of building and repairing the cables.....
(Peter Enav and Peter Svensson, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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SAN DIEGO - A Pacific storm that was stingy with rainfall but more that generous with wind swept through the county yesterday, toppling trees and lampposts, roiling surf and spawning many more accidents than normal.
The timing of the storm was poor for morning commuters as a rainy rush hour contributed to 98 vehicle crashes countywide, between midnight and 2pm, the California Highway Patrol said. Between midnight and 8pm, 134 occurred. But no fatalities or serious injuries were reported. By comparison, between 50 and 75 crashes occur over 24h on a typical, clear weekday.
....Hail started falling at Mt. Laguna about 11:30am, and snow followed about 2pm and continued into early evening, said Tom McWay, manager of the Laguna Mountain Lodge.... The CHP reported heavy snowfall there about 5pm and visibility around Julian down to 100-150ft because of thick fog. The wind from the cold front caused the most trouble, though. "We had sustained winds of 35mph, gusting to 40mph", said National Weather Service meteorologist Steve Vanderburg. "Usually, we see wind like this with an offshore, Santa Ana condition and that's confined to passes and canyons. We normally do not get gusts of 40mph at the coast", he said. In Chula Vista, high winds caused a 15-foot-tall light pole in the parking lot of the Hometown Buffet on Palomar Ave to fall onto a woman's Chevy van yesterday afternoon, knocking out a window.......
Reports of trees upending and blowing palm fronds causing havoc on streets, from Imperial Beach and Coronado in the south to Oceanside and Escondido in the north, rolled in throughout the day like breakers to the shore. Along the coast, a number of hearty souls braved a double-whammy of warnings - gale-force winds and dangerously high surf - to walk by the ocean and wonder at the wild surf......
Rainfall in San Diego to date: 1.76 in; last season to date: 0.77 in; normal season to date: 2.94 in;
(Mark Sauer, STAFF WRITER)
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NAIROBI, Kenya - The United States, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, staunchly defended its record on battling global warming yesterday, as the head of the United Nations lamented a "frightening lack" of international leadership on climate change.
"The United States is committed to addressing the serious global challenge of climate change", sad Paula J. Dobriansky, a U.S. undersecretary of state and head of the American delegation to the U.N. climate conference in Nairobi.
The two-week meeting, entering its final three days, has been working on technical issues involving the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges 35 industrial nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases [to] 5% below [the level of] 1990 by 2012.
The United States and Australia are the only major industrialized countries to reject Kyoto. President Bush says it would harm the U.S. economy and should have required cuts in poorer nations as well. ..... U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said earlier yesterday that those who would deny global warming or delay taking action against it are "out of step" and "out of time". A British government report recently projected that unimpeded global warming - with its predicted rising seas, droughts and other climate disruptions - could cost between 5 and 20% of global gross domestic product each year. "It is increasingly clear it will cost far less to cut emissions now than to deal with the consequences later", Annan said.....
Scientists attribute at least some of the past century's 1-deg rise in global temperatures to the atmospheric accumulation of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, the byproducts of power plants, automobiles and other fossil fuel-burning sources. Continued temperature rises could seriously disrupt the climate, they say...... Bangladesh's environment secretary, Hyder Ali, said it was vital that industrial nations commit to deeper emissions cuts. He said that according to one estimate, 5 Mio people may be displaced by rising seas in low-lying Bangladesh.
(Elizabeth A. Kennedy, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
NB: The Kyoto Protocol is opposed by the oil-industry, oil-producing countries and major fossil fuel consumers (U.S., Australia, China). An article describing how a more fuel-efficient market can boost the economy can by found at article in American Scientist.
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TOKYO - Thousands of people living along northern Japan's Pacific coast fled to higher ground yesterday after a powerful undersea earthquake prompted tsunami warnings as far away as Alaska and possibly caused damage in California.
In Crescent City - about 20mi south of Oregon's state line - two docks were destroyed after a 5-foot surge rolled into the Crescent City Harbor yesterday afternoon and caused up to $700,000 in damage.
The surge is believed to have been the result of an undersea earthquake with a magnitude of 8.1 that struck earlier in the day near Japan, prompting tsunami warnings for Japan, Russia and Alaska.
Japan's meteorological agency withdrew its tsunami warning after about three hours when no waves larger than 23" were reported. Tsunami warnings posted for Russia and coastal areas of Alaska also were canceled, as were tsunami watches for Hawaii, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia and several Pacific islands. But for several tens of hours, communities along Hokkaido-s northeastern shore braced for larger waves, with thousands fleeing the coastline for higher ground.
In California, the National Weather Service reported ocean surges from 1 to 6 feet and wind gusts of up to 30mph but did not call an official tsunami warning or watch. Surges were observed from Port San Luis on the Central California coast to the Oregon border. In Crescent City, harbor workers noticed a fast current around midafternoon that harbor master Richard Young described as a "river within the ocean". As the surge rushed out of the harbor, workers noticed that two floating docks in the inner basin were destroyed, Young said. Another surge followed, severely damaging a third dock, he said.
Yesterday's quake struck at 3:15 am PST about 245mi east of the island known in japan as Etorofu, according to the Jaapnese meteological agency. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
NB: The epicenter was placed along the Kuril Islands by other seismological surveys such as the US Geological Survey .
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BILOXI, Miss. - Hurricane Katrina has turned some of Mary Rose's neighbors into instant millionaires, but the 70-year-old retiree is still waiting for her turn to cash in on the land rush generated by the Gulf Coast's booming casino industry. Rose lives in Cadet, a hurricane-battered, blue-colar neighborhood in east Biloxi where casino operators are snatching up tracts of land from property owners whose homes were flattened by the Aug29, 2005 hurricane. A few weeks after Katrina, Mississippi passed a law allowing floating casino barges to move ashore and build up to 800ft inland - a change designed to jump-start the region's economic recovery and protect the hotel resorts from future storms. The move sent property values soaring for some homeowners, but the early land grab by casinos and condominium developers passed over many others who live near the water......
It isn't getting any easier for trailer-bound homeowners like Rose to find buyers willing to pay top dollar. Industry observers say the casinos' shopping spree on the coast is in a lull as existing operators wait to see how many new competitors are entering the market. Nine of the 12 casinos that operated on Mississippi's Gulf Coast before Katrina have reopened. In September, the reopened casinos had nearly 14,000 employees and took in $241 Mio, the most ever generated during that month since gambling was legalized there in 1992, according to the state......
(Michael Kunzelman, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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YAKIMA, Wash. - Heavy rain has caused so much damage at Mt. Rainier National Park that officials have closed the attraction for the first time in 26 years. Nearly 18in of rain in 36h swamped roads and bridges and cut power and sewer lines. Initial cleanup will take weeks. Park officials say they hope to return to normal operations by Christmas.....Christmas is a popular season at Mount Rainier, with rangers offering guided snowshoe walks and cross-country skiers hitting the trails. Sledding takes place at the base of the mountain......Officials last closed the park in 1980 when nearby Mt. St. Helens erupted.
The Pineapple Express storm, named for its origin in warm Pacific waters, wreaked havoc across the region. It damaged hundreds of homes, washed out a major highway near Oregon's Mt. Hood, closed part of the North Cascades Highway in Washington, and was blamed for at least three deaths in the two states.
Farther east, Montana's Glacier National Park received close to a foot of rain, causing widespread flooding and damaging the popular Going-to-the-Sun Road. The park's Flattop Mountain got 8.5in of rain on Tuesday alone, roughly tripling the previous record over the last 25 years......At Mt. Rainier, the Nisqually River engulfed the main scenic highway through the park, leaving a quarter-mile gash in the Nisqually Road. The river now flows where a campground once stood. All other roads in the park closed Nov 1 for the winter, though they also suffered extensive damage. Highway 123 and the Stenves Canyon Road were impassible because of multiple washouts. The dirt Carbon Canyon Road was washed out in six places. The Nisqually River wiped out the main power line, cutting electricity for the western half of the park, as well as the main sewer line at Longmire, where a historic inn sits.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS, on CNN)
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PORTLAND, Ore. - The body of a woman who disappeared on a storm-battered beach was found yesterday, the third death during a wave of stormy weather in the Pacific Northwest that smashed rainfall records and threatened hundreds of homes, authorities said. The search continued for the woman's companion.....the two women were last seen walking on the beach near Gleneden Beach on Tuesday. Lt. Vicky Ryan of the Depoe Bay Fire District said she saw the women and "cautionend them to not go out on the beach because of the high water"....Two deaths were reported in Washington state, a hunter whose pickup was swept into the Cowlitz River and a man who ignored road closure signs and whose vehicle was swept into the same river.
The Pineapple Express storm, named for its origin over the warm Pacific Ocean, abated yesterday after sending rivers over their banks Monday and Tuesday, causing millions of dollars in damage.....Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski declared an emergency in Tillamook County, where about 100 people were evacuated because of rising water. Some highways and numerous local roads were closed yesterday because of high water, mud and rock slides or flood damage. Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire had declared an emergency for 18 counties Monday, authorizing the National Guard and the Emergency Management Division to offer assistance.
Rainfall records were set Monday across western Washington, including 8.22in at Stampede Pass, which broke a record for a 24h period there of 7.29in, set Nov 19, 1962. Olympia had a record for the date at 4.31in. The storm dumped up to 15in on Oregon by Tuesday, mostly along the coast.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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NEW YORK - Strong winds and heavy rains toppled trees and brought down power lines from Maine to New Jersey yesterday, sending utility crews scrambling to restore power to thousands. Wind gusts exceeding 50 mph knocked out power yesterday to nearly a quarter-million people in the New York City area. The worst problems were on Long Island, where 78,683 customers - about 228,000 people - were without power at noon. Crews restored electricity to many of those, but winds knocked down more wires later in the afternoon. About 7500 customers still lacked power on Long Island yesterday evening. In central and northern New Jersey, the winds toppled trees and power lines, cutting power to about 6000 customers. That number was down to 2000 by last night.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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APALACHICOLA, Fla. - This seaside town was without power yesterday after a tornado tore through the area, damaging nearly 50 buildings and slightly injuring two poeple, autorities said. By yesterday evening, George E. Weems Hospital had reopened its lab using generator power; workers covered the roof with tarps and the broken windows with boards. American Red Cross damage assessors said three homes were detroyed and 43 were damaged in Friday afternoon's tornado.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Local residents contending with poor air quality due to smoke from [the Esperanza Fire] get some relief today. Santa Ana winds that have pushed smoke toward the coast began weakening yesterday. An emerging onshore patterns will create sea breezes by tomorrow afternoon, giving immediate relief to coastal areas, weather forecasters said....
Some of the smoke blown out to sea Thursday began returning yesterday on the emerging onshore winds, causing moderate pollution levels from downtown San Diego to the inland valleys. Satellite photos show the smoke was far worse Thursday, said Bill Reeve, meteorologist with the county Air Pollution Control District. ...
Yesterday, the poorest air quality countywide was recorded in Escondido and Oceanside, which were rated moderate for airborne pollutants. The district's Air Quality Index - which rates air quality on a scale of 100, the highest being the worst, gave a 65 60 Escondido and a 60 to Oceanside..... On Thursday, smoke was thick enough in Fallbrook to prompt school officials to cancel organized sports and track events.....
For more information, visit the county Air Pollution Control District Web site.
(Terry Rodgers, STAFF WRITER)
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BEAUMONT - The five firefighters of Engine Crew 57 did what they had been trained to do. Seeing great licks of flame nearing a modest, ranch-style house Thursday, they jumped from their truck and began cutting brush and hosing the building to save it. But then the wildfire did what wind-driven blazes can do: It exploded with deadly ferocity from a bowl-like gully, said fellow firefighters close to the scene. There was no time to run, no time to duck into the protective shelters the crew carries.By the time other firefighters reached them, the Esperanza fire, had struck. Four other U.S. Forest Service crews watched helplessly from a nearby ridge as the engine crew disappeared amid the smoke and flames of the fire, which authorities say was intentionally set.
... Three of the firefighters died at the scene.... The captain, a 21-year veteran, died later at a hospital. The fifth crew member was in critical condition with burns over 90% of his body.
Except for the deaths, this fire probably would not have stood out. It has burned 39,900 acres, but is dwarfed by other recent blazes, including one in early September that burned more than 200,000 acres north of Los Angeles and was among the largest in state history..... Wildfires in the fall of 2003 in San Diego County and Southern California killed 24 people, destroyed 3700 homes and burned 750,000 acres. The [largest number] for firefighter dearths in a wildfire is 14. Ten men and four women died July 2, 1994, on the side of a ravine in Glenwood Springs, CO, when flames erupted around them.
.... Santa Ana winds that blow this time of year give each blaze tricky, hard-to-foresee patterns. In [the Esperanza fire], the winds have been particularly erratic, so much that firefighting aircraft haven't always been able to attack.....[ the five trapped firefighters] had experienced hurricane-like conditions at the house, only "instead of rain coming down, it was fire. It's dark because the smoke has blocked the sun, the wind is blowing, it is like a hurricane."
The crew members had experienced tough fires before, buth with winter approaching and bringing the rains that dampen the hillsides and reduce the fire danger, they were preparing to winddown. This summer nationwide, 9.4 Mio acres have burned, well above the 5.3 million average of the past 10 years.
(Randal C. Archibold, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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 enlarge Modis Satellite image; source NASA's Earth Observatory |
BEAUMONT - A huge wildfire stoked by Santa Ana winds raced across canyon lands yesterday as investigators sought leads to whoever set the blaze that killed four federal firefighters and critically injured a fifth. The reward fund for information leading to an arrest soared to $500,000. Fire officials said investigators were looking into whether the blaze was linked to a canyon fire last weekend, one among an unusually high number of fires in recent months. Residents said thay saw two men leaving the area where the blaze broke out..... The Esperanza fire grew to 39,900 acres, and was 25% contained Friday night..... The blaze was burning in uninhabited land south of Beaumont, Banning and other communities along I-10, about 90mi east of Los Angeles.... About 10 structures, including homes, burned Thursday. Santa Ana winds blowing at 15-20mph with gusts to 45mph kept the fire moving west, away from homes. Weather satellite images showed smoke streaming out of California and far into the Pacific. San Diego's air quality has been affected by the smoke, but it should improve this weekend as the Santa Ana winds subside.... More than 2070 firefighters worked to corral the fire in undeveloped brushland west of the San Jacinto Mountains, and a DC-10 jet capable of dropping 12,000-gallon loads of retardant joined a fleet of firefighting helicopters and airtankers. Fifty to 70 firefighters and about 11 fir engines and trucks from San Diego County were on the fire lines yesterday...... The fire erupted shortly after 1a.m. Thursday on Esperanza Avenue in Cabazon, near Interstate 10 in Riverside County.... two young men [were seen] leaving the area, which is close to a teenage hangout known as Racoon Rock...A fire division chief in San Bernardino National Forest said investigator were looking into whether the fire was related to a 40-acre fire Sunday in nearby Mias Canyon, among a high number of blazes locally. Officials are "looking to see if there has been a pattern of fire-caused similarity". Officials have received about 100 tips. (Andrew Glazer, ASSOCIATED PRESS) |
MEXICO CITY - A tropical depression formed in the Pacific southwest of Zihuatanejo yesterday, as the death toll from Tropical Storm Paul and its remnants rose to four, including a U.S. man swept away by heavy surf this week. .... The new storm, Tropical Depression 18-E, was heading out to sea and was not a threat to land, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
On Thursday [Oct 26], the remnants of Tropical Storm Paul made landfall near La Reforma in Sinaloa state, triggering floods, damaging thousands of homes and forcing the evacuation of 5000 people, officials said. In Sinaloa, an elderly woman died in a car crash on a rainy road and a man's body was found in a drainage canal, officials said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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MEXICO CITY - Tropical Storm Paul formed off Mexico's west coast yesterday, and forecasters said it could strengthen into a hurricane and reach land within days.
The storm was hovering over the Pacific Ocean about 315mi south of the coastal city of Cabo Corrientes... The Storm rapidly gained strength and had maximum sustained winds of 50mph by midafternoon yesterday. It could intensify into a huricane within three days.
Pail was moving northwest at 7mph but it was forecast to shift gradually to the northeast, passing by the tip of Baja California peninsula and hitting mainland Mexico near the state of Sinaloa early in the week.
Mexico was hit by two Pacific hurricanes last month. Hurricane John battered a remote section of Baja California, kinning 5 people and destroying 160 homes. Hurricane Lane struck the Sinaloan resort town of Mazatlan, causing relatively minor damage.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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WASHINGTON - This year's Antarctic ozone hole is the biggest ever, government scientists said yesterday. The hole is a region where there is severe depletion of the layer of ozone - a form of oxygen - in the upper atmosphere that protects life on Earth by blocking the sun's ultraviolet rays.
Scientists say human-produced gases, such as bromine and chlorine, damage the layer, causing the hole. That's why many compounds such as spray-can propellants have been banned.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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SEATTLE - A climate researcher at the University of Washington says Pacific Northwest winters will be getting more gray and rainy over the next 50 to 100 years, due to a low-pressure system near the Aleutian Islands that is moving farther to the north and east. Eric Slathe said weather that far in the future may not seem relevant to the average person, but the storms brought on by climate change will affect everyone paying for or designing a new bridge or roadway today. He predicted a 5-15% increase in Washington and Oregon rain and a 10-20% increase in alaska rain 50 to 100 years from now. The storms will be more intense and more frequent, leading to more flooding, more water flow in rivers and erosion of salmon habitat.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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BUFFALO, N.Y. - More than 100,000 customers remained without power yesterday and schools still were closed nearly a week after a record-setting snowstorm. Officials raised the toll of storm-related deaths to 12 people. Health officials said the deaths include one person hit by a falling tree limb, three killed by carbon monoxide poisoning and two who died shoveling snow.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Torrential rains and hurricane-force winds ripped through Tennessee, downing trees and forcing officials to close major roads in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park yesterday.
The storm, which had a peak wind gust of 106 mph, swept into the 520,000-acre preserve that straddles the Tennessee-North Carolina border on Monday evening. In southeast Texas, the storm was blames for severe flooding that killed at least five people, while it damaged hundreds of homes and forced schools to close on northern Louisianna.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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EUREKA - A small, 4.9-magnitude earthquake about 90 mi off the Humboldt County coast yesterday caused no reported damage or injuries, the Huboldt County Sheriff's Department said. The quake was felt in parts of the San Francisco Bay Area.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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October 18, 2006: Stellar Fireworks A Hubble Space Telescope image released yesterday is the sharpest yet of the merging Antennae galaxies, scientists said. The two spiral galaxies started to fuse about 500 Mio years ago, making the Antennae galaxies the nearest and youngest example of a pair of colliding galaxies. As they smash together, billions of starts are born, mostly in groups and clusters of starts. The orange areas to the left and right of the image's center are the two cores of the original galaxies that are highlighted with blue start-forming regions surrounded by glowing hydrogen gas in pink. [The brightest and most compact of these star birth regions are called super star clusters. The new image allows astronomers to better distinguish between the stars and super star clusters created in the collision of two spiral galaxies.] The picture was taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys onboard the Hubble Space Telescope, which is a joint venture of the European Space Agency and NASA. (front page of San Diego Union Tribune; image made available to the public by: Space Telescope Science Institute and NASA) Hubble multimedia site |
LOS ANGELES - The city's palm trees - as much a symbol of L.A. as the autmobile, movie stars and the beach - are vanishing. The trees are dying of old age and a fungal disease, disappearing one by one from parks and streets...... Large numbers of the Canary Island date palms - trees with rough trunks and a topknot of fronds that look like green dreadlocks - are succumbing to disease. Tree surgeons don't know how to stop the fungus, which gets into the soil.... it doesn't make sense to replace dying palms with new ones that will probably fall victim to the same ailment..... City planners are replacing them with oaks, sycamores and other species that are native to Los Angeles and offer more shade. Not all palm trees are infected, and there is no danger they will vanish altogether anytime soon. But some parts of the city could look noticeably different in the years ahead......
The palm tree may be a better symbol of L.A. than many realize. Like the many young people who go to Los Angeles in search of Hollywood stardom, palm trees aren't from there; they were brought in 100 years ago or more from latin America and other exotic locales.......
(John Rogers, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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HOUSTON - Heavy thunderstorms brought torrential rains, flooding and tornadoes to southeast Texas yesterday, killing four people, ripping roofs off mobile homes and trapping rush-hour drivers on flooded, tangled freeways.
As much as 10 in of rain fell in the Houston-Galvaston area overnight, but floodwaters were receding in parts of the Houston area by yesterday. Parts of interstates 10 and 45 were shut down around Houston, and several schools were closed.
Two tornadoes struck near the Texas-Louisiana line, authorities said. No injuries were reported.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii - Preliminary damage estimates from the earthquake that struck Hawaii over the weekend hit $46 Mio yesterday and President Bush declared a major disaster, ordering federal aid to help state and local recovery efforts. {the president's disaster declaration makes federal funding available to state and local governemnts in the counties of Hawaii, Honolulu, Kauai and Maui, and the city of Honolulu for debris removal and other purposes... Damage to 7 schools and a harbor on the island of Hawaii accounted for most of the preliminary figure... damage the businesses, homes, roads and bridges accounted for the remainder.
Damage included $31 Mio for schools, $8 Mio at Kawaihae harbor, $4.89 Mio to businesses, $650,000 to residences, $800,000 to roads and $750,000 to bridges. A statewide figure, including other islands, wasn't available.
[There are also reports of aftershocks.] A 5:26am jolt yesterday widened a crack on a pier at Kawaihae harbor and further damaged a second pier.... The tremor was listed at magnitude 4.0 on the Web site of the Hawaiian Volcano Obsrevatory....
By comparison, the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake that struck the densely populated Los Angeles region in 1994 caused $25 billion in damage.....
The quake was the second major natural disaster to hit hawaii this year. In April, heavy rains pounded the islands, casuing severe flooding, contributing to the failure of Kaloko dam on kauai that killed 7 people and causing a major sewer line to rupture, closing Waikiki beaches.
(Scott Lindlaw, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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HONOLULU, Oct. 16 - Most of the Hawaiian islands returned to normal Monday as state and local officials got their first look at the damage to roads, bridges and buildings caused by a strong earthquakes on Sunday......By Monday morning, all but a handful of communities on Oahu's Waianea Coast had electricity and rush-hour traffic was normal......The focus Monday was on the Big Island, [where] county officials were busy assessing damage to the highway that rings the island, particularly a section some 35 mi north of Hilo along the Hamakua Coast on the east side of the island, where a bridge was reported damaged.
It was too early to say how many structure were damaged, but county officials estimated that hundreds of homes were affected....Officials were also focusing on Kawaihae on the northwest side, where one of the island's two main commercial harbors was closed to shipping traffic because of damage. .... North of Kawaihae, farmers and ranchers in the small communities of Hawi and Kapaau did not wait for county and state crews to clear the roadways of debris. One man tool his backhoe and cleared one lane in Kapaau........The Kalahikiola Congressional Church in Kapaau, a histroic church built in the 1850's by missionaries, was covered by a pile of rubble Monday after the stone porticos over the doors collapsed. ... A few of the resorts along the Kohala Coast reported some damage, mostly broken glass and other items that were tossed around in the rooms. The governor, who was at the Mauna Lani Bay Hotel on Sunday morning when the quake hit, said a heavy television bouncd off the dresser to the floor.
Most of the patients evacuated from the Kona Community Hospital in Kealakekua had not returned to the 94-bed hospital by Monday, including 30 long-tterm care patients who were taken to the Sheraton Kaeuhou Hotel several miles away....
(Janis L. Magin, NEW YORK TIMES)
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KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii - Authorities quickly restored electricity and started to clear away boulders yesterday after the strongest earthquake to hit the islands in more than two decades.
A day after Sunday's 6.7-magnitude quake, there were no reports of any deaths or serious injuries, and there were few signs of any major damage from the quake or several aftershocks, including one measuring 6.0.
...Official cautioned that they needed to inspect the many bridges, roads, earthen dams, schools and other structures across hawaii, also known as Big Island, the isle closest to the epicenter....The Federal Emergency Management Agency was flying a 100-member response team to Honolulu yesterday with plans to go to the Big Island today.
....Utilities restored power to 97% of the state's customers by early morning. Most of Oahu, the most populous island, with more than 800,000 of Hawaii's 1.2 Mio residents, had been blacked out Sunday.
...At least one stretch of road leading to a bridge near the epicenter collapsed. Several other roads on the Big Island were closed by mudslides, debris and boulders, but most were still passable......
State officials said Hawaii-bound tourists should not change plans. "We are open for business," Gov. Linda Lingle said.....
(James Song, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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HONOLULU - A stron earthquake shook Hawaii early yesterday, jolting residents out of bed and causing a landslide that blocked a major highway. Hundreds of hotel guests and hospital patients were evacuated, and aftershocks kept the state on edge.
The Pacific Tsunami Center reported a preliminary magnitude of 6.5, while the U.S. Geological Survey put it at 6.6. The earthquakes was followed by several strong aftershocks, including one measuring magnitude 5.8, the USGS said. Officials rated the quakes the largest to hit Hawaii since a magnitude-6.7 quake in 1983.
Governor Linda Lingle issued a disaster declaration for the state, saying there had been damage to buildings and roads. There were no reports of fatalities, but the state Civil Defense had several reports of minor injuries.
The quake hit at 7:07am local time, 10 mi north-northwest of Kailua Kona, a town on the west coast of Hawaii Island, also known as the Big Island, said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist at the National earthquake Information Center, part of the U.S. Geological Survey.
The quake prompted fears of a tsunami, but forecasters quickly put those fears to rest, predicting only choppier-than-normal waves.
....The quakes caused statewide power outages, and phone communication was difficult. The outages were caused because power plants shut down automatically when built-in seismic monitors were triggered by the earthquakes, Lingle said.....
On Hawaii Island, there was some damage in Kailua Kona and a landslide along a major highway said Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist at the pacific Tsunami Center. Officials also said there were reports of people trapped in elevators in Oahu. In Waikiki, one of the state's primary tourism areas, worried visitors began lining up outside convenience stores to buy food, water and other supplies.
The quake affected travel plans for many visitors, though the state was in its low period of the tourism season. Airports were functioning despite the power outages, though travel was difficult and some flights were being canceled, officials said....
(Greg Small, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
NB: this earthquake was later upgraded to a magnitude 6.7 quake, the same size as the 1994 Northridge earthquake that killed 60 people.
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OJAI - A wildfire that scorched more than 250 square miles of brush and timber in two Southern California national forests and cost more than $70 million to fight was contained last night, nearly a month after it began.
The 162,702-acre Day fire was contained around 6p.m., said Peter Frenzen, a spokesman for Los Padres National Forest.
Crews will focus on putting out hot spots to prevent flames from jumping the 163-,i fire line, Frenzen said.
Large numbers of firefighters were being sent home from the blaze, which was ignited on Labor Day by someone burning debris. Dry and windy conditions that helped spread the fire in recent weeks gave way Sunday to unexpectedly wet weather that brought scattered showers over the fire area in Ventura County.
One home was destroyed and another damaged. The blaze also burned barns, sheds, an unoccupied cabin and a camping trailer. There were a handful of minor injuries, the most serious coming Sunday when a helicopter crashed while picking up fire retardant. Two pilots escaped with bruises and bumps.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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PORONG, Indonesia - Factories that once produced watches and shoes lie under a sea of thick, stinking mud. Villagers stand on hastily constructed dams and gaze at the thousands of homes swallowed by brown sludge.
Four months ago, a torrent of hot mud from deep beneath the surface of Indonesia's seismically charged Java island began surging from a natural gas exploration site after a drilling accident.
The 'mud volcano' pours out some 165,000 cubic yards of mud every day - enough to cover a football field about 75 feet deep. Often spewing out in geyserlike eruptions, the mud has left some 665 acres swamped or abandoned as unsafe, forcing more than 10,000 people from their homes.
Experts say the mud volcano is one of the largest ever recorded on land. Geologists fear the technology may not exist to stop the eruption, saying mud could flow for years or even centuries - or stop on its own at any time. The mud is believed to come from a reservoir 3.5 mi below the surface that has been pressurized by shifts in the crust or by the accumulation of hydrocarbon gases.
The calamity has underscored the patchy safety record of mining companies exploiting the natural resources of the Southeast Asian nation made up of thousands of islands......The government recently gave permission to dump the mud into the sea via a local river. But experts question whether that will get rid of the sludge faster than it gushes from the hole, and environmentalists are opposing the plan as a threat to the marine ecosystem. The mud, which stands as deep as 16 ft in places, has submerged or washed into houses in four villages. At least 20 factories and many acres of rice fields and prawn farms have been destroyed. The sludge has repeatedly washed over a major road, closing it for weeks at a time, and now is threatening a rail line it the industrial area just outside Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city.
The mud which is not toxic, first appeared several days after a blowout deep in [the drilling company's] well shaft May 29. Police claim that the company mishandled the accident by failing to cap the hole properly, allowing the mud to surge to the surface from several cracks close to the well......After two unsuccessful attepmts to stop the flow, the company is digging three shafts alongside the hole, hoping to kill the eruption by pumping in concrete. Experts are skeptical that will work....
(Chris Brummitt, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. - High winds, heavy rain and tornadoes pounded parts of the Midwest and the South, leaving eight people dead and stranding others in trees and shelters while forecasters warned of more stormy weather to come. ...Stormy weather buffeted the region Friday. Areas in northeast Arkansas and southeast Missouri received more than 10 in of rain in 24h.....
Two tornadoes swept through souht-central Missouri on Friday afternoon, damaging more than 100 homes and tearing off part of a roof at a school moments after a tornado drill. ....
Six people were killed in Kentucky, including a father and his 1-year-old daughter who died when their truck slid off an interstate into floodwaters near Elizabethtown. ... In Lexington, Ky, two women died early yesterday trying to cross a flooded roadway. Witnesses told rescue officials the women were swept away in a flooded creek...Others killed in Kentucky included a Jessamine County woman who drove her pickup into high water and a women in the southwestern part of the state whose car struck a guardrail.....in northwest Arkansas, a woman died when her boat was struck by lightning as she tried to make it to shore. Onather person in the boat was injured and treated at a hospital.....in Kentucky, flooding forced more than 100 people out of a Louisville apartment complex. Portions of Interstate 64 just east of Lousiville were closed because of flooding. Dozens of cars were stranded..... thousands across the region were without power.
(Will Graves, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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OJAI - Hot, dry Santa Ana winds gusting to more than 50mph yesterdaygrounded water-dropping helicopters and stoked the flames of a three-week-old wildfire in Los Padres National Forest.
...Flames flared at two remote sites on the western edge of the huge fire, consuming several hundres acres of brush in a few hours....The winds prompted authorities to briefly halt their 27 water-dropping helicopters. They were back in the air by the afternoon......
The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for extreme fire conditions through today. Forecasters said gusts as high as 70mph were possible. Such conditions could drive the blaze in mile-long leaps along ridges and canyons, with flames spreading as fast as 11mph, said Larry Comerford of the U.S. Forest Service.
the blaze along the border of Ventura and Los Angeles counties doubled in size to about 80,000 acres when Santa Ana winds kicked up last week.....The fire that began Labor Day has burned more than 117,000 acres, or nearly 183 square miles. It was 39% contained.....
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Check out Current Large Incidents at the National Interagency Fire Center
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SACRAMENTO - Tropical storm-force winds fueled fast-moving wildfires in Norther California yesterday that destroyed three homes, damaged four others and killed an unknown number of horses and cattle.
Fires in Yolo County, about 30 northwest of the state capital, burned 12 to 15 square miles. The blazes at times moved as fast as 30mph, according to fire officials.
... High winds complicated firefirghters' efforts to control at least 10 other wildfires across the state. Sustained winds above 40mph and gusts near 60mph knocked down trees and power lines, cutting power to more than 6000 residents and halting morning traffic along interstate 80 near Sacramento.....
In Southern California, firefighters battle a wild fire near Ojai in Ventura County that has tripled in size to 112,000 acres during the past week, amid forecasts for hot, dry winds through the weekend that might help fan the blaze.
Elsewhere, crews mopped up two smaller fires in national forests to the south: the 2370-acre Pinnacles Fire in San Bernardino National Forest and the 113-acre wildfire 10mi north of La Canada Flintridge in Angeles National Forest north of Los Angeles.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Check out Current Large Incidents at the National Interagency Fire Center
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CLEVELAND NATIONAL FOREST - The danger of fire is considered very high today in the Cleveland National Forest, officials warn.
Wood fires are restricted to certain campgrounds and smoking is allowed only in enclosed vehicles and in developed recreation sites. Spark arresters are required on all off-road vehicles.
Forest Supervisor Tina Terell said visitors should check with rangers for restrictions being enforced in specific areas of the forest. Conditions alsp may be checked by calling the fire danger hot line at (619) 593-2183 or online at www.fs.fed.us/r5/cleveland/fire at the Forest Service.
("Around the Region", San Diego Union Tribune)
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TOKYO - A strong typhoon swept toward southwestern Japan with fierce winds and heavy rains yestderday, leaving at least five people dead or missing and inuring more than 100.
More than 300 flights were grounded, cars were blown over and strong winds were suspected in an express train derailment that injured five people...thousands of people sought refuge in public shelters.
Although Typhoon Shanshan had weakened overnight, it was still lashing the region with sustained winds of 100 mph. It was forecast to continue churning northeast toward Japan's southwestern island of Kyushu, Japan's Meteorological Agency said.
Heavy rain warning were issued for much of western Japan, and the storm killed four people before even making landfall.
.... Gusts of 155 mph were recorded Saturday on Iriomote Island, near Taiwan, the strongest winds ever observed there, Kyodo said. Up to 14 in of rain were expected in some areas of southwestern Japan by midday today, NHK reported.
Typhoons and tropical stroms frequently hit eastern Asia, especially Japan and Taiwan, in the summer and fall.
(Hans Greimel, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Check out NOAA's Hurricane web site
NOAA's satellite image of Shanshan on September 12
NASA's dscription and image of Shanshan
A powerful category 5 hurricane formed in the central Pacific in August. Though such hurricanes are rare in the Central Pacific, they do happen. Hurricane Ioke did not affect any permanently populated areas but the storm passed over Johnston Atoll as a Category 2 hurricane and Wake Island as a Category 5 typhoon (some residents were evacuated). Ioke formed south of Hawaii as a tropical storm on August 19 and rose to hurricane strength in just 24h (this is remarkably quick!). When Hurricane Ioke crossed the dateline on Aug 27, it became Typhoon Ioke. Technically, Ioke became a super typhoon with sustained winds over 240 km/h (150 mph), on Aug 24, when it was still named a category 5 hurricane (because it was east of the dateline). Ioke was the first Category 5 hurricane to ever form in the Central Pacific and was the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Central Pacific, with a central pressure of 920 mbar. The last tropical storm to form in the Central Pacific was in 2002.
Wikipedia Web site on Ioke
NASA's web site of Ioke
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MAZATLAN, Mexico - Hurricane Lane slammed into a sparsely populated stre tch of Mexico's Pacific coast south of Culiacan yesterday after battering the resort of Mazatlan with strong winds and rain.
The storm, which hit land at Category 3 strength, flooded streets, forced the airport to cancel flights and knocked out power in parts of Mazatlan. a resort and retirement community popular among Americans. It also forced officials to cancel the traditional Independence Day parade.
After lane made landfall, the National Hurricane Center in Miami downgraded it to a Category 1 storm.
At 8p.m. PDT, the storm was about 30mi north-northwest of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state and a center for the region's booming agriculture and food-processing industry. It was moving north at 8mph and had maximum sustained winds of 85mph.
People living in low-lying areas were evacuated, and shelters were set up for the displaced. One man died in the village of Pueblos Unidos when he was knocked over by fierce winds, police told Reuters.
Earlier, the hurricane took an unexpected turn toward the mainland and caught Mazatlan off gourad. many awoke to strong winds and a pounding rain. Previous projections had Lane heading toward the Baja California peninsula..... Last week, rains lashed coastal towns to the south, causing a landslide that killed a 7-year-old boy Thursday in Acapulco and flooding across western Mexico that forced hundreds of people to abandon their homes.....
Yesterday, Tropical Storm Miriam formed far out in the Pacific Ocean, southwest of Baja California, the National Hurricane Center said. Forecasters said Hurricane Helene formed in the open Atlantic but posed no immediate threat to land. Also yesterday, a weakened and nearly stationary Hurricane Gordon had top sustained winds near 75mph and was centered about 640mi east of Bermuda....
(Will Weissert, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Check out NOAA's Hurricane web site
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CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico - Hurricane Lane roared toward the tip of the Baja California peninsula yesterday, lashing Mexico's Pacfic coast, flooding port cities and causing a landslide that killed a 7-year-old boy.
Mexico issued hurricane warnings for the southern tip of the peninsula and for a stretch of mainland Pacific coastline between El Roblito to Altata.
Forecasts had its outer bands of the Category 2 hurricane lashing an area encompassing Cabo San Lucas and its twin resort, San Jose del Cabo, but the eye was supposd to shift east and move ashore near the mainland city of Los Mochis in Sinaloa state early Monday. It was then forecast to dissipate in Mexico without reaching the United States.
Last night, the hurricane had maximum sustained winds of 105 mph and was expected to strengthen. It was centered 215 miles eat-southeast of Cabo San Lucas, moving north-northwest at nearly 12 mph.
lane was following a roughly similar path as Hurricane John, which raked Mexico's Pacific coast this month before slamming into Baja California Sur, killing five people and damaging 160 homes.
.... Lane caused flooding in the port city of Mazaro Cardenas in Michoacan state, where more than 500 people were evacuated from their homes after a canal overflowed....On Thursday, a 7-year-old boy was killed in Acapulco in a landslide caused by the heavy rains....about 200 homes were flooded in Acapulco, and officials closed the port to small boats and shut down schools yesterday across the state of Guerrero. Streets were covered in up to 16 in of water.
(Will Weissert, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Check out NOAA's Hurricane web site
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El Niño weather conditions forecast for this winter are likely to be weak and have little or no impact on Southern California, weather researchers say.
A strong El Niño usually means lots of rain for San Diego, as in the winter of 1997-98, but weak-to-moderate El Niños are less predictable.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported yesterday the development of El Niño conditions in the equatorial Pacific.
Typically, this will mean "warmer-than-average temperatures over western and central Canada, and over the western and northern United States", the NOAA's Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, MD, said on its web site.
Gerry Bell, a hurricane forecaster for the NOAA, said El Niño has already helped make the Atlantic hurricane season milder than forecast.
.... Scripps forecasting models have been predicting an El Niño for about three months, said [David] Pierce [a climate researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in la Jolla.]
The effects of weak-to-moderate El Niños are much harder to predict. Some leave the region dry, as in 1963-64, with 7.05 in of rain; some provide nearly normal rainfall with 10.62 in in 2002-03; and some are very wet, as in 2004-05, when 22.49 in were recorded in San Diego.
El Niños are distinguished by higher-than-normal sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific. When those temperatures average half a degree Celcius above normal over a three-month period, the condition is classified as an El Niño. Warmer-than-usual waters can alter where storms are generated and the path of the jet stream, which carries the storms across North America.
If current sea-surface temperatures hold for the rest of September, the half-degree threshold will barely be met. In 1997-98, the sea-surface temperature anomalies by this point were three times as great......Halpert, a meteorologist with the Climate Prediction Center, said ... that it's still too early to tell if the El Niño will strengthen......
(Robert Krier, STAFF WRITER)
Check out NOAA's Climate Prediction web site
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BOISE, Idaho - Wildfires nationwide have scorched more land in 2006 than in any year since at least 1960, burning an area twice the size of New Jersey.
But the flames have mainly raced across sparsely populated desert, causing fewer firefighter deaths than in previous years.
As of yesterday, blazes had torched 8.69 million acres, or 13,584 square miles, above last year's total of 13,573 square miles, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. Reliable records weren't kept before 1960, officials said. The annual average over the past 10 years is 4.9 million acres.
Federal officials attributed the increase to two consecutive seasons of hot and dry weather that left forests and ranges dry and easily ignited by lightning.
Fifteen ... firefighters have died this year battling wild land fires.... the worst single accident this year was a helicopter crash Aug. 13 in Idaho that killed three firefighters and the pilot. From 1995 to 2004, the average number of firefighter deaths was 18, with 30 killed in 2003, according to the fire center.
Meanwhile, fires continued to burn in the West:
- In north Los Angeles County near the border with Ventura County, fire fighters attempted to keep a 27,000-acre wildfire from jumping Interstate 5 as the blaze crept within a mile of a mobile home park in the Los Padres national Forest......unpredictable winds were driving the fire that was burning across the partly closed freeway ....
- The National Weather Service posted a "red flag warning" for much of northern Nevada due to extreme wildfire dangers and the forecast of high winds through tonight.Forest Service officials also warned that heavy smoke from a wildfire burning in the Sierra near Foresthill, across the border in California, could grow thicker in the Lake Tahoe basin and Reno area the next few days....the Ralston fire [northeast of Sacramento] ... has consumed 7,300 acres.
- A fire in south-central Montana doubled in size yesterday, prompting Park County authorities to order additional evacuations. The Jungle fire was estimated at 18,845 acres last night...
(Christopher Smith, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Check out Current Large Incidents at the National Interagency Fire Center
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HAMILTON, Bermuda - Florence intensified into the second hurricane of the Atlantic season yesterday as it neared Bermuda, where residents stocked up on provisions and formed long lines at gas stations in the lashing rain.
Florence was expected to pass "very near" the tiny British territory today, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. But it was too early to tell whether it will make a direct hit. Preparations to protect life and property "should be rushed to completion", the hurricane center said.....
The Category 1 hurricane, which had had maximum sustained winds near 90 mph yesterday evening, was expected to become a Category 2 hurricane as it passes Bermuda....with hurricane-force winds from the storm's eye, event a near-miss could cause substantial damage, forecasters said......Forecasters said [Florence] was creating high surf and dangerous rip currents in the Bahamas and along parts of America's eastern seaboard. "Those waves will affect a good portion of the U.S. East Coast from basically Florida all the way to the Cape Cod area", which began yesterday and should occur through the early part of next week, hurricane specialist Stacy Stewart said......
Florence follows on the heels of Ernesto, which was briefly the season's first hurricane before weakening and drenching the U.S. East Coast last week.
(Elizabeth Roberts, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Check out NOAA's Hurricane web site
NOAA's satellite image of Florence on September 11
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TAMPA, Fa - The largest earthquake to strike the eastern Gulf of Mexico in the past 30 years sent shock waves from Louisiana to southwest Florida yesterday, but did little more than rattle residents.
The magnitude 6 earthquake, centered about 260 miles southwest of Tampa, was too small to trigger a tsunami or dangerous waves, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The USGS received more than 2,800 reports from people who felt the 10:56~a.m. shaker. Scientists said it was the largest and most widely felt of more than a dozen earthquakes recorded in the region in three decades.....
The most prevalent vibrations, which lasted for about 20 seconds, was felt on the Gulf Coast of Florida and in southern Georgia.... but residents in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana also called in reports.....
Florida counties along the Gulf of Mexico called the state emergency operations center with reports of tremors but no damage was reported.....
The earthquake probably did not have any effect on oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico....Earthquakes are factored into the design of the industry's equipment onshore and offshore.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Call it the mystery of the nonmelting meteorite: For decades scientists have wondered how a meteorite powerful enough to have made Arizona's Barringer Meteor Crater could have left hardly any melted rock in its wake. Now a report in this week's issue of Nature looks to have closed the case.
Prevailing wisdom had the meteorite speeding at 45m000 mi (72,000 km) an hour when it hit. But H. Jay Melosh, of the University of Arizona, and Gareth Collins, of Imperial College London, used mathematical models to show that the space rock was liekly hurtling at a mere 25,000 mi (43,000 km) an hour.
Why the slowdown? .... When the rock slammed into Earth's atmosphere some 50,000 years ago, half of it likely went to pieces.... and atmospheric drag slowed them down ....
Now falling relatively gently, the approximately 65-ft-wide (20-m wide) chunk that remained intact crashed into the desert floor. It would have hit with the force of 150 Hiroshima bombs, creating - but not melting - the 0.75-mi-wide (1.2-km-wide) pit we know today.
(Ted Chamberlain, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NEWS)
NB: check out complete news item at National Geographic News top
Sixty-five million years ago, a city-size asteroid slammed into what is now Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula at a site known as Chicxulub (pronounced CHEEK-shoo-loob). The impact left a crater 110 to 170 mi (180 to 280 km) wide and spewed massive volumes of ash into Earth's atmosphere.
Did that cataclysmic event trigger the extinction of the dinosaurs and 70% of the world's other species? For over a decade, most scientists said yes.
But authors of a controversial new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (online edition) contend that the asteroid behind the Chicxulub crater impacted Earth 300,000 years earlier than previously thought. They say a second, as yet unidentified asteroid impact must have caused the mass extinction popularly attributed to the Chicxulub asteroid. Princeton University professor of geosciences Gerta Keller led the study, which analyzed new core samples drilled at Chicxulub....
While asteroid impacts played a role, Keller says several hundred thousand years of "massive volcanic eruptions" contributed to climatic changes that precipitated the mass extinctions that marked the end of the Cretaceous period.
Key to Keller's assertions is a 20-inch (50-cm)-thick layer of limestone found between the K-T boundary and the impact breccia, or molten lava and rocky debris, laid down when the Chicxulub asteroid collided with Earth....According to Keller, [this layer] was deposited after the asteroid impact but before the period of [the] mass extinction.
Many other scientists disagree with that interpretation, however. They say the [fossil-rich] layer was deposited ... by a huge tsunami that followed the Chicxulub asteroid's impact with Earth. The layer, they say, did not take 300,000 years to accumulate.....
The single-asteroid-impact extinction theory [was first proposed by] father and son scientists Luis and Walter Alvarez... The pair based their theory on research which found that the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) boundary - a geologic layer present in rock formations around the world - exhibits a thin layer of clay rich in iridium. Rare on the Earth's surface, the element is more commonly found in extraterrestrial sources like asteroids, or deep inside Earth..... The race was on to find the smoking gun: the crater impact site itself. Alan Hildebrand, an associate professor at the University of Calgary, Canada, took the lead in 1990, discovering the impact crater in Yucatan.... Using boreholes and geophysical evidence, scientists found the crater buried under sediments dating to the Tertiary period, the era between 65 and 1.8 mollion years ago, which followed the Cretaceous. ...
(Angela Botzer, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NEWS)
NB: check out complete news item at National Geographic News top