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An uptick in activity has been observed at the Nicaraguan Telica volcano on Monday, November 30, 2020, with low-level ash emission and dozens of explosions at regular rates. Ashfall was reported in nearby communities, including El Panal, Cristo Rey, Los Cocos, and Los Ángeles​. At least 50 explosions were recorded within 9 hours on November 30, with a maximum height of ash between 100 and 400 m (330 - 1 300 feet) above the crater. This is about 1.5 km (5 000 feet) above sea level. "This activity is part of the normal behavior of an active volcano and it...

The soil under Dar el Sallam, the finance capital of Tanzania, is mysteriously liquefying under homes and businesses. Mud has been seen coming out of the soil, destroying at least 9 houses (total collapse), cracking tens of others and prompting mass evacuations. Residents started taking the situation seriously when a child and a cow almost drowned in one of the mud pools The source of the oozing mud is unknown It was first thought it could be coming from a small stream. But then the similar phenomenon was discovered in many neighboring districts of the town. So what the heck?...

Unseasonal ice storms hit many parts of Russia on November 18 and 19, 2020, causing power outages, traffic chaos, and the collapse of key infrastructure systems in the Far East. An overnight storm accompanied by strong northerly winds and ice rain -- described by The Siberian Times as 'weather apocalypse' -- caused the collapse of key systems in the Russian Far East on November 19, 2020, leaving at least 120 000 people without electricity. Vladivostok and most of the Primorye region were turned into frozen land, the paper reported, adding that hundreds of power lines were cut by wet snow...

A new blaze, the Silverado Fire, prompted evacuations for about 60,000 residents – also affected about 10 schools – Monday in the Orchard Hills neighborhood of Irvine, Orange County, California. The fire, which began Monday morning at 6:47 a.m. PDT, quickly exploded to 500 acres during some of the season’s most extreme fire conditions. Much of the state is under red flag warnings because of high winds and low humidity. Wind gusts and low humidity are making for dangerous conditions in parts of California. Gusts over 80 mph have been recorded. At least 20 wildfires still have not been fully...

Australia has been hit by more than 2.24 million lightning strikes in just 48 hours as wild weather battered the east coast over the weekend. Storms and damaging winds up to 100km/h wreaked havoc in multiple states, with volunteers responding to hundreds of calls for help. The weather bureau said most of the 2.24 million lightning strikes were recorded in Queensland, NSW and the Northern Territory, with more storms expected this week. The same wave of extreme weather slammed Southern Australia with more than 120,000 lightning strikes on October 22, 2020. In Melbourne’s outer east a woman aged in her...

Royal Tiger Imports brings Ethiopia’s Arsenal to America - If you don’t know by now, Royal Tiger Imports is offering for sale some of the rarest late 19th century to mid-20th century military rifles and carbines to ever make their way to the collector market. What makes them really significant is not so much the types of weapons available, as it is their remarkable and undisputable provenance to Ethiopia. One of the least studied and most important military powers in Africa, Ethiopia’s history was shaped by the arms its people bore. Military history buffs have likely, at least, heard of...

This week stargazers will be able to see up to 25 shooting stars per hour fly across the night sky as the Orionid Meteor Shower puts on its annual show. These meteors streak across the sky each October, through until November 7 – but peak viewing is expected on Wednesday, October 21 around midnight. This cosmic event happens when Earth passes through stream of debris left behind Comet Halley – the parent comet of the Orionid shower. You should be able to see the shooting stars from whatever direction you look, but they will appear to come from the constellation...

BREAKING: M7.5 #earthquake south of the Aleutian Islands triggers #tsunami warning for parts of southern Alaska, including Kodiak, Homer. pic.twitter.com/9Jz6OHFjt3— The Weather Channel (@weatherchannel) October 19, 2020

In central Africa is a deep lake that has a dangerous propensity to explode – but tapping it as a source of energy could help avert disaster. Lake Kivu is one of Africa’s strangest bodies of water. An unusual set of properties make it an intriguing subject for scientists, as well as a potential source of both peril and prosperity for the millions of people living nearby. Kivu doesn’t behave like most deep lakes. Typically, when water at the surface of a lake is cooled – by winter air temperatures or rivers carrying spring snowmelt, for example – that cold,...

Unexplained deaths of sea life are continuing to cause anxiety in Russia’s Far East. On Tuesday, fish, octopuses and crabs were filmed washed ashore hundreds of kilometers away from the spot where the alarm was first raised. A video of the ecological disaster near Ozernovskiy village on Kamchatka’s western coast shows dead marine creatures scattered along a 50-meter-wide area of the beach. The peninsula, some 7,000km east of Moscow, is home to one of the earth’s most pristine environments. The footage is similar to clips that came from Avacha Bay on the opposite eastern coast in late September, when numerous...

A new United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) report confirms how extreme weather events have come to dominate the disaster landscape at the beginning of 21st century. Floods and storms were the most prevalent disaster events, followed by earthquakes, extreme temperatures, landslides, droughts, wildfires, volcanic activity and dry mass movement. UNDRR used statistics from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) maintained by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) which records disasters which have killed ten or more people, affected 100 or more people, resulted in a declared state of emergency, or a call for international...

Stephen Maciejewski dropped to a knee on a Center City sidewalk Wednesday morning and gently scooped up a yellow-billed cuckoo that had smashed into a skyscraper and died on its way to Central America or the West Indies. “This probably happened yesterday,” said Maciejewski, a 71-year-old retired social worker and volunteer for Audubon Pennsylvania. He labeled a plastic bag with the time, date, and location, tucked the slim migrator into it, and continued his rounds. Maciejewski gets emotional when he speaks about all the birds he finds, but nothing, he says, prepared him for what happened Friday. “So many birds...

232 waterspouts/funnels have been confirmed over the Great Lakes from September 28 to October 4, 2020, in the second world record waterspout outbreak of the year, according to the International Center for Waterspout Research (ICWR). From August 16 to 19, 2020, a short-lived waterspout outbreak produced 88 funnels, setting a new world record waterspout outbreak -- the first of the year. Both outbreaks were a result of Canadian cold air sweeping over the region, which made surface air prone to rise. "There were an average of 33 per day," said ICWR director Wade Szilagyi, also a meteorologist at Environment Canada....

The crater just keeps getting bigger. The big sink hole in Pasco County just keeps growing, expanding and collapsing. The depression in New Port Richey, Florida continues to expand at a rapid rate, very unusual for geologists. The hole opened on Monday at a few-feet deep but has grown to 50 – 75 feet deep and more than 30 feet wide! “The speed of it opening and the speed of it still spreading, that makes it unusual,” said Emergency Management Director Andrew Fossa. Nearby, The Varsity Club has been evacuated and shut down. County crews erected a fence around the...

As we reach a total of about 1200 quakes in the last week, the swarm’s activity continues to wane. There has only been one quake over the last 24 hours that was felt – a M3.0 at 1:50am. 21 others were recorded but were too small to be felt. The chances of larger earthquakes in the area are almost back to background levels The USGS has issued their seventh statement and forecast for this swarm. Here’s part of today’s statement: “The following three scenarios describe possibilities of what could happen from 6 October to 13 October. Only one of these...

A rare phenomenon formed in Abkhazia, on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, on September 23, 2020. According to local and tourist eyewitnesses, the water started twisting into a gigantic spiral. The whirlpool most probably formed by the collision of water masses having different characteristics (salinity, temperature, etc.).

Black Lives Matter leaders, organized labor, progressive groups and members of the House Democratic “Squad” are unveiling a 2021 agenda Thursday, laying down markers for how big a Joe Biden administration could go on coronavirus aid, economic relief and more next year. Known as the Working Families Party’s “People’s Charter,” the 1,000-word proposal calls for universal free health care, a jobs program employing 16 million people, retroactive hazard pay for essential employees and the reallocation of resources from policing toward education and other services. It also promotes giving the public an ownership stake in firms that receive bailouts, as well...

SIG Sauer's 9mm Pistol feels both new and familiar within the MPX line. The MPX family of pistol-caliber firearms fixes the main flaw of close-bolt blowback designs: excessive bolt weight. Adapting the AR-15 platform to 9×19 Luger with a gas-piston action, SIG engineers cut the overall weight and the reciprocating bolt carrier in particular, making MPX lighter than other 9mm ARs and cutting the recoil intensity at the same time. The resulting weapon is available as a 16-inch carbine, and as submachine gun, short barrel rifle and pistol, all available with 8-inch or 4.5-inch barrels. In the carbine form, the...

The desert near the Salton Sea continue to tremble as a swarm of small earthquakes that started Wednesday continued into Thursday. The swarm slowed down Thursday, but at least four earthquakes of magnitude 3 or larger were recorded in the first seven hours of the day, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The swarm is taking place in the Brawley seismic zone, a predominantly extensional tectonic zone that connects the southern terminus of the San Andreas Fault with the Imperial Fault in Southern California. The area has seen swarms in the past in which they remain active for as many...

42,000-foot plumes of ash. 143-mph firenadoes. 1,500-degree heat. These wildfires are a new kind of hell on earth, and scientists are racing to learn its rules. On the windy, hot day of July 26, 2018, as record 113-­degree temperatures baked Redding, California, in the northern Sacramento Valley, Eric Knapp toiled in an air-conditioned government office. After work, he planned to meet his wife and 3-year-old daughter, and some family friends, for dinner. Slender and fair-skinned with a gentle smile, Knapp is a research ecologist for the US Forest Service. He was well aware that, three days earlier, in coastal mountains...