and of a freedom almost forgotten.**
Sigurd Olson
LARGEST QUAKES -
This morning -
5.5 BANDA SEA
5.0 NEW BRITAIN REGION, P.N.G.
Yesterday -
8/1/11 -
5.0 NEAR N COAST OF PAPUA, INDONESIA
6.0 NEAR S. COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.6 NEAR EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.2 WESTERN XIZANG
5.4 FOX ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS
5.1 MOLUCCA SEA
5.0 NEAR N COAST OF NEW GUINEA, PNG.
5.2 SOUTH OF KERMADEC ISLANDS
CANARY ISLANDS - El Hierro Earthquake Swarm Enters Third Week. The intensity of earthquakes recorded on the smallest of the Canary Islands, El Hierro, has increased slightly during the last 24 hours. However, the total number of earthquakes recorded daily has lessened.
NEW ZEALAND - A proposed temporary replacement for Christchurch's destroyed cathedral made of shipping containers and cardboard has been met with scepticism from residents of the quake-hit city. A cardboard replacement for the earthquake-damaged Cathedral could become a permanent feature of the new city.
NEW ZEALAND - Earthquakes to blame for high smog reading. Number of pollution days abnormally high. Considering the mild start to the winter, with the country's warmest May on record and the third-warmest June, Christchurch has had an abnormally high number of high-pollution days. The city experienced its 22nd high-pollution night last night and forecasters were expecting another smoggy night tonight. This would take the city close to double last year's total for the winter when only 12 breaches of the health guidelines were recorded for particulates in the air, the lowest number since records began in 1999.
Only nine of this year's high-pollution nights were "typical'', with the other 12 related to dust and silt in the air after the February 22 and June 13 quakes. "If you look at the actual number of days of high pollution, if you take out the earthquake-related effects, it's very similar to last year." Soon after the September 4 quake, the Energy and Resources Minister said the region's air quality would be boosted by the quake, considering homeowners could use insurance cover to switch to cleaner forms of heating. About 30,000 chimneys in Canterbury have been damaged or toppled by the quakes. However, ECan is not rigorously enforcing a ban on using older woodburners and open fires from April and September because of the quakes. "It may be that people are using appliances that they wouldn't have otherwise been using. You may also find people are using appliances more frequently than in the past." The theoretical risk of health problems related to liquefaction silt in the air had not increased hospital admissions for respiratory problems. "It's something we could have expected but it hasn't materialised." In recent weeks, trucks ladened with demolition debris leaving the central city had been dampened down to prevent dust coming off them. Canterbury's quakes were unusual because they had affected so many urban buildings. There had not been enough research to reveal any toxicity in the liquefaction dust, but there was the potential for health-related problems.
TROPICAL STORMS -
-Tropical storm Emily was located 265 mi./ 430 km SE of Puerto Rico. Emily is expected to interact with Hispaniola in the next 2-3 days and strike the Atlantic coast of Florida on Saturday night. Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. A tropical storm watch is in effect for the U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Kitts, Montserrat.and Antigua & Haiti.
-Hurricane Eugene was located in the Pacific, about 435 mi / 700 km SSW of Manzanillo, Mexico.
- Typhoon 11w (Muifa) was located approximately 410 nm east-southeast of Kadena, AB, Japan.
Tropical Storm Emily formed Monday in the eastern Caribbean and lashed islands with heavy rain and winds, as the system moved northwest on a track that could take it near Puerto Rico and Haiti by the middle of the week.
PHILIPPINES - The combined death toll from Tropical Storm Nock-ten and Typhoon Muifa in the Philippines has risen to 70, with threats of yet another storm in the rain-battered country, the government said Tuesday.
SEVERE RAIN STORMS, FLOODING, LANDSLIDES -
Indonesian landslide - An Australian man is believed to have been killed when a landslide caused his pick-up truck to plunge more than 150 metres off a cliff in Indonesia's Papua province. A search and rescue team was attempting to retrieve the man's body. It is believed he worked for a mining contractor. The landslide, which happened about 3am local time on Tuesday (04.00pm AEST), was thought to have been caused by heavy overnight rain.
HEAVY SNOW / EXTREME COLD -
TASMANIA - The weather bureau has revealed a series of cold fronts caused Tasmania's extreme weather conditions last month, bringing RECORD LOW TEMPERATURES and huge swells. The extreme conditions reached their peak on the 23rd, when Liaweenee in Highlands recorded minus 11.2 degrees overnight, the second coldest July temperature on record. The cold fronts also whipped up massive swells that damaged Port Arthur and other sections of Tasmania's south-east coast. In the north, the Cape Sorell wave rider buoy recorded its LARGEST EVER SWELL of more than 18 metres.
The cold fronts also caused powerful wind gusts, especially in the west and south. "178 kilometre an hour gusts recorded on Mt Wellington, 176 down on Maatsuyker Island. That brought damaging surf which caused a lot of problems on the Tasman Peninsula, coastal erosion." The cold spell only broke in the last four days of the month. "What was peculiar about July was although most of it was cold, a lot of us will remember the very mild end to the month, where we saw some very high temperatures, well, high for winter, pushing up into the high teens, especially in the eastern half of the state." Strathgordon in the south west recorded more than 360 mm in July, compared with 13 mm for Maria Island off the east coast.
SPACE WEATHER -
Sunspot 1261 has a "beta-gamma-delta" magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class solar flares. Any such eruptions today would be geo-effective as the sunspot is squarely facing Earth.
Newly discovered Asteroid 2011 OD18 passed by Earth on July 28 at less than half the distance to the moon. It is 24 meters in size.
HEALTH THREATS -
Multistate Salmonella outbreak prompts ground turkey alert - The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has issued a public health alert about a multistate outbreak of Salmonella Heidelberg infections thought to be linked to eating ground turkey. Epidemiologic investigations and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis studies have linked 77 illnesses in 26 states to the outbreak. Federal officials have not listed the states.
So far, authorities have not named a specific company or issued a recall notice for the products. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its state partners are monitoring the outbreak, and the FSIS is investigating possible contamination sources. The FSIS urged consumers to follow package cooking instructions for fresh or frozen turkey products and to use food safety precautions when handling raw meat or poultry. It advised making sure turkey patties reach an internal temperature of 165° F before serving, regardless of cooking time specified on package directions, because cooking methods and product temperature may vary.
Earlier this year the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutrition and food safety watchdog group, filed a regulatory petition asking the FDA to declare Salmonella Heidelberg and three other antibiotic-resistant Salmonella strains as adulterants in ground meat and poultry. Classifying the four as adulterants would trigger testing for them , allowing them to be recalled before they reach consumers. In April, federal officials announced they were investigating an outbreak linked to Jennie-O turkey burgers contaminated with Salmonella Hadar, another of the four antibiotic-resistant strains. At least 12 infections in 10 states were connected to the outbreak.
