Earthquake Swarm Continues In German-Czech Border Region - Towns and villages across the western Czech Republic were shaken Sunday afternoon by a magnitude 4.0 earthquake, the latest in a series of tremors to hit the region. The Geophysical Institute, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic says it has recorded 10,000 earthquakes during the last 10 days in Nový Kostel area of the Cheb District, a region located close to the Czech Republic’s western border with Germany.
The earthquake swarm started on Tuesday 23 August and continued Saturday 03 September. While many have gone unnoticed by the local population some of the larger tremors, including more than two dozen quakes exceeding 3 magnitude have been felt in the towns of Chemnitz, Karlovy Vary, Birch, Bukovany and Luby.
The most recent, significant earthquake measured 3.7 magnitude and struck at 02:25 AM on Saturday. The shallow earthquake was measured at a depth of just 5 kilometres. The quake occurred just over two hours after a quake measuring 3.6 magnitude on the Richter Scale hit. The epicentre was located less than 2 kilometres north of Luby, a two with a population of just over 2,500. The tremor was also felt 71 kilometres away in Gera, a city of some of 105,000 people.
In recent years, scientists have noted an increase in the movement of magma towards the earth’s surface in the Cheb Basin, western Czech Republic. They say rising magma could be one of the causes of the earthquake swarms, which regularly occur in the Vogtland, North-West Bohemia, the Fichtelgebirge and the Upper Palatinate. The last earthquake swarm to occur before this week’s activity was in 2008. “The activity started in the evening of 23 August and is almost continuous till now...The location of hypocenters directly below the NKC station, so it appears a new patch of the fault plane is being activated”. Earthquake swarms are one of the events typically preceding eruptions of volcanoes.
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.**
Lao Tzu
LARGEST QUAKES -
This morning -
None 5.0 or higher.
Yesterday -
9/4/11 -
6.1 VANUATU
5.2 KURIL ISLANDS
TROPICAL STORMS -
-Category two Katia was located about 385 mi...620 km NNE of the northern Leeward Islands. Some strengthening is forecast during the next 48 hours and Katia could become a major hurricane today. Large swells generated by Katia are expected to affect parts of the East Coast of the United States...Bermuda...the Greater Antilles...and east-facing beaches of the Bahamas during the next few days.
-Tropical depression Lee was located about 60 mi...95 km ESE of Alexandria, Louisiana. All coastal tropical storm warnings have been discontinued. The center of Lee will move across southern Mississippi overnight Sunday and today. The strongest winds are located well to the south and southeast of the center over water.
Flooding rains expected to spread from the central Gulf Coast to the Appalachians.
-Tropical depression 16w (Noru) was located approximately 575 nm southeast of Misawa, Japan.
Gulf communities underwater from Lee - Faced with an onslaught from Tropical Storm-turned-Tropical Depression Lee, scattered Gulf Coast communities from Alabama to Louisiana were underwater, even as New Orleans' upgraded pumps and levees continued to hold. Cities and towns along the Eastern Seaboard, meanwhile, including some hammered recently by Hurricane Irene, braced for their turn as the system moves north. Having done its initial damage as a tropical storm, Lee lost steam Sunday night and was downgraded to a depression.
The storm's center chugged between Lafayette and Baton Rouge in Louisiana on Sunday afternoon, headed north-northeast at about 8 mph. New Orleans was in good shape Sunday, with streets generally clear and damage to homes minimal. "Just because it's been slow it does not mean it's over." Lee's wind and rain will continue to plague the city through this afternoon. The National Hurricane Center was, warning of extremely heavy rainfall over much of the Southeast in the next few days. The rain was "expected to cause extensive flooding and flash flooding."
Just miles from New Orleans, meanwhile, there was misery. Flooding was reported in a number of outlying parishes. Mississippi emergency management officials reported flooded roads and damaged homes across that state's three-county coastal region. And residents there and in Alabama reported spinoff tornadoes. Some of the most dramatic trouble came in southern Jefferson Parish, where about half of a cluster of fishing and oil and gas communities — Jean Lafitte, Crown Point and Barataria — were underwater, with 6 to 7 feet of water in some areas. Winds from Lee had pushed water from the Gulf of Mexico to inland waterways, including Bayou Barataria, which was about 5 feet higher than normal Sunday. The communities, which are home to about 8,000 people, lie just outside of metro New Orleans' flood-control system, which received a multibillion-dollar upgrade after its failure during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A massive pump and floodwall installed north of these communities had exacerbated flooding in the area Sunday. Federal authorities had not heeded locals' requests to protect the area with levees. AccuWeather meteorologists predicted the storm would degrade to a low pressure system around Tuesday, when it would bring heavy rain to Washington, D.C., Lynchburg, Virginia., and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Flash flooding is a particular concern for parts of the Appalachian region.
Meanwhile, the National Hurricane Center announced that Katia, a storm churning in the Atlantic Ocean, had strengthened again to hurricane status, this time at Category 2, with maximum sustained winds of almost 100 mph. No coastal watches or warnings have been issued, but the hurricane center said the storm's fate remained clouded by "a lot of uncertainty."
Katia's current track has it moving in the direction of the Carolinas before turning northward on Thursday and running parallel to the US coast, far off shore. The threat to the US east coast of rip currents from Hurricane Katia was expected to increase over the next few days. The storm could also bring dangerous surf and rip current conditions to Bermuda, the Greater Antilles and east-facing beaches of the Bahamas. Katia's maximum sustained winds increased to 165km/h, with additional strengthening forecast for the next two days.
Typhoon Talas Rains Kill at Least 25 and Maroon Thousands in Japan. Typhoon Talas dumped RECORD AMOUNTS OF RAIN in western and central Japan on Sunday, killing at least 25 people and stranding thousands as it turned towns into lakes, washed away cars and set off mudslides that buried or destroyed houses. At least 50 people were missing. Evacuation orders and advisories were issued to 460,000 people in the region, which is hundreds of miles from the country’s tsunami-ravaged northeastern coast. At least 3,600 people were stranded by flooded rivers, landslides and collapsed bridges, which were hampering rescue efforts.
The typhoon dumped record amounts of rain in some areas, and more was expected. It was the country’s WORST STORM SINCE ONE IN 2004 that left 98 people either dead or missing. By Sunday, Talas had been downgraded to a tropical storm. The center of Talas, the season’s 12th typhoon, crossed the southern island of Shikoku and the central part of the main island of Honshu overnight on Saturday. It was moving slowly north across the Sea of Japan off the country’s western coast. Because of the storm’s slow speed, the agency warned that heavy rains and strong winds were likely to continue. With the ground already soaked, fears of additional mudslides were growing, and the agency issued landslide warnings in nearly all of the country’s prefectures.
