Monday, December 17, 2012

Category four cyclone Evan has smashed into the island nation of Fiji, sending thousands fleeing to emergency centres. Tourists have retreated to their hotel rooms and still aren't allowed to leave. Locals are facing the cyclone head on. Cyclone Evan is about 480 kilometres wide, and has winds of up to 230 kilometres per hour. It's THE STRONGEST CYCLONE TO HIT FIJI IN THE PAST DECADE, and there are concerns storm surges will flood low-lying areas.
The day started with dire warnings to prepare for the worst. As the hours ticked by, the winds got stronger and stronger. Tourists have either flown home, or bunkered down to ride out the storm. "It's bending the coconut trees over and ripping their fronds off. It's ripping off the young coconuts too. And there's a lot of debris flying around outside...The water is starting accumulate on the ground and it's started to flood our room a little bit. We've stopped up the doors and windows with towels and pillows but it is starting to seep in under the doors now. There's rain whipping by at a great speed. And it looks like the wind's still starting to get stronger."
Several days ago, as the Cyclone approached Fiji, its military leader warned the nation to brace for damage. It has winds up to 180 kilometres per hour which may intensify. It will affect Fiji in a very damaging way. The eye of the cyclone is currently about 10 to 30 kilometres from the Fijian town and airport of Nadi. Nadi itself is probably under what's called the eye-wall of the cyclone. The winds are very strong, it's raining very heavily. The eye of the cyclone is closer to land than was forecast.
The wind gauge at Nadi airport is reporting wind speeds from 90 to 150 kilometres per hour. Structural damage has been reported, with trees falling onto people's homes and roofs being blown away. Fiji took no chances in the lead up to the storm, moving thousands of locals and tourists to emergency shelters. Flooding has been reported in the country's north, and there are fears for low-lying islands in the west.
"The cyclone's pressure is very low, so you've got the sea level is higher than it would be normally near the cyclone's centre. You've also got the fact that when the winds come around to pointing on shore they're very strong, so they're pushing that sea water onto the coast, and remember that sea level's already higher than normal. And on top of that you've got large waves which then, because you've got a higher sea level, are allowed, are able to run inshore more easily."
In April, Nadi International Airport and the surrounding areas were swamped after another cyclone left scores dead and more than 10,000 people in shelters.

No update on Tuesday.

**We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages.
Our task is not to unleash them on the world;
it is to transform them in ourselves and others.**
Albert Camus

LARGEST QUAKES -
Live Seismograms - Worldwide (update every 30 minutes)

This morning -
6.0 SULAWESI, INDONESIA
5.6 KURIL ISLANDS
Small cluster in Spain

Yesterday -
12/16/12 -
5.3 ROTA REGION, N. MARIANA ISLANDS
5.1 GUATEMALA

Bulgarian Top Cop Obstructed Recovery after Pernik Quake - Bulgaria's Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister has obstructed the fast absorption of funds, slated by the Cabinet for people affected by the strong earthquake in the western region and city of Pernik. The accusations against Tsvetanov, who is heading the Inter-institutional Committee for Recovery and Assistance at the Council of Ministers, were voiced Sunday by the Initiative Committee for Restoring the Damage from the Disaster.
The Committee, which visited the Pernik region, informed that the Cabinet had decided to halt the payment of BGN 3 M from a total of BGN 5 M slated by it for the municipalities of Pernik and Radomir. They further reported that four months after the quake, people in the village of Dragichevo were still living in trailers and in distress. They pointed out in outrage that those responsible for creating normal live conditions for locals affected by the disaster will celebrate the holidays lavishly, while the former will do so in trailers and in the cold.
She called on all Bulgarians to show compassion with the people in the Pernik region since the government of the Prime Minister has abdicated from this duty. A 5.8-magnitude earthquake shook the Pernik area on May 22, damaging buildings in the city and in several other communities. The quake affected over 10,000 households in the region.

Great Nepalese quake of 1255 points to Himalayan risk - A mega-quake in 1255 that wrecked Kathmandu wiped out a third of the population of Kathmandu Valley and killed the country's monarch, was of a kind that may return to the Himalayas, seismologists reported on Sunday.
Experts mapped deposits of river sediment displaced along part of the fault line where the Indian subcontinent slams into the Asia tectonic plate at up to 50 millimetres (1.97 inches) per year. With the help of carbon dating, they found that the soil movement in one place was caused by a huge quake that coincided with the great event of July 7 1255. More than six centuries later, there was another surface-breaking event, correlating to a magnitude 8.2-event in 1934.
The finding is important because until now there had been no evidence of surface ruptures from the collision of these plates. Surface ruptures are not only extremely violent - they also tend to release most or all of the accumulated strain. "Blind" quakes are ones that do not break the surface, and tend to be more frequent. The study says it takes probably takes centuries for the strain to accumulate before another bust occurs, if the evidence of the surface turnover is a guide.
This long timespan is worrying as the previous event may be undocumented or poorly understood because it is so ancient. The scientists do not rule out the possibility that other potential monsters could be lurking elsewhere on the fault, as no-one has looked for the evidence for them. "Two great earthquakes 679 years apart contributed to the frontal uplift of young river terraces in eastern Nepal. The rare surface expression of these earthquakes implies that surface ruptures of other reputedly blind great Himalayan events might exist."

TROPICAL STORMS -
In the South Indian Ocean -
Category 4 Tropical Cyclone Evan was located approximately 95 nm north-northeast of Nadi, Fiji.

New Zealand searchers are now looking for 10 fishermen off Samoa since Cyclone Evan hit the island nation, after a fourth boat was discovered to be missing. As the destructive cyclone crossed Fiji, a New Zealand Air Force Orion continued its search for the missing Samoan fishermen.
It was initially thought eight were missing from three boats but they now know of a fourth boat. "We have now been advised that a fourth fishing boat has been confirmed missing, with a total of 10 men still to be accounted for. Each boat had three crew aboard, but two men, from different boats, have made it to shore." Cyclone Evan caused widespread destruction in Samoa, killing four people and displacing about 4000.
Meanwhile, the cyclone has now reached Fiji, running one bulk carrier ship aground and causing destruction in Rakiraki. The ship Starford, believed to be carrying equipment for a Chinese firm constructing a highway, dragged its anchor about 11.30am local time (0930 AEDT) and was pushed onto the reef in Suva Harbour. In Rakiraki, the Vaileka River has burst its banks and water is flowing into the town.
Evan was still rated as a category four storm by the Fiji Meteorological Office shortly after midday, with winds were reaching 170km/h with gusts of more than 230km/h. The Fiji government urged people in low-lying areas to take shelter on higher ground. A number flights in and out of Fiji have been cancelled or delayed. (map)

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Scotland - Gale-force winds and UNUSUALLY HIGH TIDES have caused damage across areas of eastern and northern Scotland. Huge waves caused up to £500,000 damage to North Berwick harbour in East Lothian, as sea defences were swept away. A 15m section of the harbour wall collapsed in Lossiemouth in Moray.
Residents of a sheltered housing complex were evacuated after coastal flooding hit parts of Aberdeenshire. The storm that hit the town overnight between Friday and Saturday was THE WORST IN MORE THAN 100 YEARS. "This was a massive storm causing damage to sea walls that have stood for 150-odd years. The wind strength wasn't all that high, but THE SEA WAS ABSOLUTELY BEYOND UNDERSTANDING. In the harbour you have a 40ft sea container that was washed approximately 200m, took away some fencing, and went straight into the harbour. There were also sea defence boulders weighing up to 200 kilos washed 150m along the esplanade, so that gives you the size and some sort of scale of the energy of the whole thing."
High tides and severe weather led to 25 people being taken from sheltered complexes at Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire. They were taken to St Bridget's Hall in the town, where a rest centre was set up. A large sea container was swept into the harbour at North Berwick Further north at Peterhead, about 30 people were evacuated from properties in the Roanheads area. The town's RNLI lifeboat launched in what were described as "horrendous" conditions at 02:30 to rescue three people marooned on the east side of Peterhead harbour.
The high tide again reached Stonehaven at about 14:30 on Saturday, causing further coastal flooding. People evacuated from affected properties earlier in the day remained out of their homes, with most having been collected by friends or family and alternative accommodation has been found for others. However, the second bout of flooding was not expected to be as serious as the morning had been. Stonehaven was battered by huge waves It was also not expected to affect any properties which had not already been affected, although the situation was being closely monitored.
Elsewhere, a 15m section of the harbour wall collapsed in Lossiemouth. Police and council staff were at the scene and warned some flooding was possible at high tide. They also urged people to stay away from the area until it was made safe. The village of Kingston in Moray was said to have been completely cut off after its sea defences were breached. In Wick, on the far north coast, roads were closed and fishing boats were damaged in high winds. About 12 cars were moved from a car park when a strong surge breached a river bank, police said, and several roads were closed by debris thrown up by the waves.
Lorries were deluged by water in Wick Harbour during the heavy weather In the town. Huge waves caused part of the harbour wall at Balintore, near Tain in Ross-shire, to collapse, with two boys aged 12 and 14 suffering minor cuts after being thrown to the ground by the force of the water. "I've lived in Balintore all my life and I've never seen it this bad before. It's devastation. The wall should have been repaired long ago."
And storm force winds continued to batter Shetland throughout Saturday, with the road through Sandsayre in Sandwick flooded. The force of the waves combined with the high tide ripped up part of the beach and lifted some of the boats onto the road, and the nearby boat museum was flooded. The Scottish government has convened its Resilience Room in response to the storms. A crewman was killed when an oil support vessel was hit by severe gales. (photos)

**Few will have the greatness to bend history itself;
but each of us can work to change a small portion of events,
and in the total of all those acts
will be written the history of this generation.**
Robert F. Kennedy

LARGEST QUAKES -
Live Seismograms - Worldwide (update every 30 minutes)

This morning -
None 5.0 or larger.

Yesterday -
12/15/12 -
6.1 NEW BRITAIN REGION, P.N.G.
5.2 NEW IRELAND REGION, P.N.G.
6.0 NEAR ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS
5.2 NEAR EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN

12/14/12 -
5.0 NEW IRELAND REGION, P.N.G.
5.8 FIJI REGION
6.4 OFF W. COAST OF BAJA CALIFORNIA
5.1 OFFSHORE GUATEMALA
5.3 OFFSHORE GUATEMALA
5.1 NEW IRELAND REGION, P.N.G.

Strong, relatively shallow earthquake strikes off California coast - A 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck early Friday in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California and Mexico. The trembler centered about 88 miles off the southwest coast of California - near San Diego. People in cities such as Los Angeles and San Diego flooded police stations with phone calls. There were no reports of damage or injuries and no tsunami was generated.

2011 East Coast Earthquake Traced From Sky - Blobs of solidified magma may have helped control the direction of energy from the 2011 Virginia earthquake, according to early results from an airborne geologic survey conducted in July 2012.

VOLCANOES -
Volcano Webcams

Tungurahua volcano (Ecuador) - sudden strong explosion. A sudden strong ash explosion occurred at Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador Saturday at 14:35 local time. According to local reports, the eruption produced an ash plume rising to 6 km altitude and was visible from Ambato, Riobamba, Pelileo and Patate. The explosion followed an increase in seismicity over the past days.

Weird Underwater Volcano Discovered Near Baja - Scientists have discovered ONE OF THE WORLD'S WEIRDEST VOLCANOES on the seafloor near the tip of Baja, Mexico. The petite dome - about 165 feet tall (50 meters) and 4,000 feet long by 1,640 feet wide (1,200 m by 500 m) - lies along lies along the Alarcón Rise, a seafloor-spreading center. Tectonic forces are tearing the Earth's crust apart at the spreading center, creating a long rift where magma oozes toward the surface, cools and forms new ocean crust.
Circling the planet like baseball seams, seafloor-spreading centers (also called midocean ridges) produce copious amounts of basalt, a low-silica content lava rock that makes up the ocean crust. But samples from the newly discovered volcano are strangely rhyolite lava, and have the highest silica content (up to 77 percent) of any rocks collected from a midocean ridge.
"When we picked up the rocks and got them back on the ship, we immediately noticed that they were very low density, and they were very light, glassy and gray. They were not the usual dark, black, shiny basalts. So we immediately knew that something was unusual."
The volcano is primarily rhyolite and a silicic lava called dacite. "To find this along a midocean ridge is a total surprise."
A few ridges were composed of very strange, steeply dipping, lineated flows very different from the pillow-style appearance of deep-sea basalt. Of more concern is the evidence for explosive volcanism, which is typical of rhyolite volcanoes. "It's only 100 kilometers [60 miles] from land. When the sun is setting, you can see Cabo." Both the Baja Peninsula and mainland Mexico near Alarcón Rise have cities and luxury resorts. The Gulf of California is also home to endangered sea life.
Rhyolite lava carries more gas and volatiles (things that are likely to cause explosions) than basalt, and when magma meets water, it vaporizes instantly, driving an even more explosive eruption. "There's definitely explosive deposits there, and that is of extreme concern, given that the ridge is so close to land and the tsunami potential of a big explosion there. We don't know how explosive, and that is something we are definitely trying to figure out."
Rhyolites have been found on spreading centers, but only above hot spots, such as in Iceland and the Galapagos Islands. There is no hot spot under the Alarcón Rise. Rhyolite lava typically occurs only on continents, such as in Mount St. Helen's growing dome in Washington. One possible explanation for the bizarre composition of the Alarcón dome is that continental crust snuck into the molten rock below — the spreading center is young, and continental crust lies close by. But tests of different isotopes (versions of elements with differing numbers of neutrons in the cores) in the lava samples revealed no evidence of contamination by continental crust.
Another discarded idea was that a cold spot underlying the ridge cooled and crystallized the magma chamber that fed the volcano, leaving only a high-silica melt behind. The team's current hypothesis is that the magma source had a high concentration of volatiles like water, sulfur and chlorine, maybe from an influx of seawater. "It's a work in progress, but we have found some of the glassy volcanic debris surrounding this feature has water concentrations of up to eight percent, which is pretty unusual for a spreading center." The Alarcón Rise drifts apart at a relatively slow 2 inches (5 centimeters) a year.

TROPICAL STORMS -
In the South Indian Ocean -
Tropical Cyclone Evan was located approximately 385 nm northeast of Nadi, Fiji.

Cyclone Evan - The category 4 tropical cyclone is bearing down on the Pacific island nation of Fiji and is expected to arrive in Fijian waters later on Sunday.
Evan is set to disrupt flights between Australia and Nadi. Air Pacific said most flights on Sunday will operate but flights on Monday have been cancelled or delayed until Tuesday. Cyclone Evan killed at least four people in Samoa as it ripped through houses, knocked down power poles and trees, and caused flooding. The cyclone is expected to pass just north of Fiji on Sunday with winds gusting up to 230km/h. It is intensifying and may increase from a category four to a category five cyclone some time between Saturday and Monday afternoon. Cyclone Evan was ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL STORMS IN 20 YEARS to hit Samoa and American Samoa.
People around the country are gearing up for Tropical Cyclone Evan with shoppers hitting shelves at supermarkets in a bid to secure provisions for what COULD BE ONE OF THE WORST NATURAL DISASTERS TO HIT FIJI.
A rush of people are stocking up on items such as candles, batteries and tinned food. They were also stocking up on provisions like rice and other goods as well. A local supermarket giant chain has extended its opening hours to allow customers a chance to get all their last-minute provisions for the weekend. Evan is expected to hit Fiji with winds of between 159 and 200 kilometres per hour, gusting up to 225 and 270 kilometres per hour.

Typhoon Bopha's death toll has now reached 1,020. With nearly 850 people still missing, the toll is likely to rise further. The storm struck the Philippines on 4 December, with the southern island of Mindanao worst affected. Many of those still unaccounted for are fishermen who went to sea before the storm hit. "The death toll will go higher. We found a lot of bodies yesterday, buried under fallen logs and debris."
The storm displaced hundreds of thousands of people and caused severe damage to property and infrastructure. A large relief operation continues. More than 27,000 people remain in evacuation centres, with many more sheltering at the homes of friends and family. The Philippines is hit by several typhoons each year but they usually strike further to the north.

SEVERE RAIN STORMS, FLOODING, LANDSLIDES -

Reservoirs can make local flooding worse - Researchers say that large man-made reservoirs can increase the intensity of rainfall and could affect flood defences. The scientists found that rain patterns around bodies of water in Chile were much higher than in similar areas without them. This "lake effect" could overwhelm flood defences which are often built without taking it into account.
There is evidence that standing bodies like reservoirs and lakes can alter rain patterns by increasing the amount of water that evaporates. Some experts believe that you also get circulating air patterns in the atmosphere above the boundary between the water and the land and this can initiate thunderstorms and showers. The impact can be significant. One study showed that extreme precipitation increased by 4% per year after dams were built. The huge Three Gorges dam in China is believed to affect weather patterns up to 100km away.
"If you install a water reservoir that will change things totally and that will lead to flooding. Engineers get fired when there's flooding because they didn't do a good design, but in reality they did good work but someone else installed a water reservoir and the climate changed. The bigger the water body, the greater the effect."
"We have modified the weather patterns in such a way that we didn't anticipate before building these reservoirs, and yes in the global context it might have serious ramifications." Several studies have now pointed to the impact of reservoirs particularly in dry areas. "The physics says that it will happen, but I'm struggling a little to know how big an impact it is, and quite whether it is strong enough to change the design of flood defences." This area of research is controversial because changing the design of flood defences is very expensive. "In the US, they are very rigorous about taking climate change into account when talking about storm water management design, but this is new and should be taken into account too."

SPACE WEATHER -

QUIET SUN, BUT NOT FOR LONG? - For the second week in a row, solar activity remains very low, but a new group of sunspots could be poised to break the quiet. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory observed the phalanx of dark cores emerging over the sun's southeastern limb on Dec. 15th. It is too soon to say whether these spots have potential for strong flares. We'll know more in a few days when they turn toward Earth, offering a clearer view of their magnetic architecture. Meanwhile, NOAA forecasters have boosted the odds of an M-class eruption to 10% on Dec. 16th.

HEALTH THREATS -

RECALLS & ALERTS

Recalls due to possible contamination by Listeria monocytogenes -
- Ocean Beauty Seafoods - “Nathan’s Brand Cold Smoked Atlantic Salmon 3 oz” and “LASCCO Cold Smoked Atlantic Salmon 4 oz”
- Taylor Farms Retail, Inc. of Salinas - 110 cases of Taylor Farms Hearts of Romaine 10 oz. bags.
- Freshway Foods - 6,671 pounds of Out-of-Date Sliced Apples that were packaged on November 12.
- The Stop & Shop Supermarket Company - Veggie Patch Ultimate Meatless Burger
- VEGGIE PATCH - Two Items - The Ultimate Meatless Burger and Falafel
- Kenny's Farmhouse Cheese - Various Cheeses

Pets -
- Claudia’s Canine Cuisine® Voluntarily Recalls it’s Dogcandy® Brand of Holiday Hound Cake (7.5 Oz.) and Blueberry Hound Cake (7.5 Oz) Manufactured for, Distributed, and Sold in Approximately 130 Petsmart Stores Because of The Possibility of Mold.
- Carolina Prime Pet Inc. Recall Of Priority Total Pet Care All Natural Bullstrips Because Of Possible Salmonella.
- Magnolia Bird Farm, Incorporated, of Anaheim, California - Raw and Roasted In-shell Peanuts and Magnolia Bird Farm Bird seed mixes that contain peanuts

Friday, December 14, 2012

**We can perhaps remember, if only for a time,
that those who live with us are our brothers,
that they share with us the same short moment of life;
that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out
their lives in purpose and in happiness,
winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal,
can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn,
at least to look at those around us as fellow men,
and surely we can begin to work a little harder
to bind up the wounds among us and to become
in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.**
Robert F. Kennedy

LARGEST QUAKES -
Live Seismograms - Worldwide (update every 30 minutes)

This morning -
5.1 OFFSHORE GUATEMALA
5.2 OFFSHORE GUATEMALA
5.1 NEW IRELAND REGION, P.N.G

Yesterday -
12/13/12 -
5.7 EAST OF SEVERNAYA ZEMLYA
5.3 OFFSHORE EL SALVADOR 2
5.0 COSTA RICA
5.5 KERMADEC ISLANDS REGION

Guatemala - The epicentre of the quake late on Thursday was offshore and some 35 kilometres southeast of the coastal town of Champerico and 151 kilometres west of Guatemala City.

VOLCANOES -
Volcano Webcams

Scientists warn of unrest along New Zealand's North Island volcano belt - New Zealand's central North Island looks set for a period of volcanic activity after warnings issued on three volcanoes over the last two days.
On Wednesday, scientists at the government's Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS Science) announced they had noticed a "spiny lava dome" that had grown in a crater on White Island, a volcanic island off the east of the North Island, after an eruption on August 5. GNS Science raised the volcanic alert level to level two, indicating minor eruptive activity, and the aviation color code to orange, warning pilots that an eruption was underway with little or no ash emissions.
"The dome is probably 20 to 30 meters across and has spines sticking up. In more than 30 years I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT while visiting White Island. If you imagine a volcano is like a tube of toothpaste then a lava dome is like the congealed, dried toothpaste that has come out of the tube. It doesn't move like a lava flow, but grows from the inside as new magma comes up and pushes the already cooled magma upwards and outwards." Lava domes were common at some volcanoes, but HAD NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE AT WHITE ISLAND, where magma last reached the surface in 2000 during an explosive eruption that threw up molten rocks called volcanic bombs, rather than forming a dome. "Our concern is that lava dome growth can be accompanied by explosive eruptions and could impact people on the island. We need to see if the dome is continuing to grow. If it's not growing, then we will be less concerned."
Also Wednesday, GNS Science volcanologists warned they still believed Mount Ruapehu, in the central North Island, remained at a heightened level of unrest and that an eruption was more likely than normal. "Our analysis is still showing higher than normal temperatures beneath the crater lake. We think this reflects a partially sealed zone a few hundred meters beneath the lake, which might be causing a pressure build up behind it. That pressure would make an eruption more likely than normal. It doesn't mean that an eruption is inevitable.
"If the sealed zone fails suddenly an eruption could occur, probably with little or no warning. If it fails more gradually then the pressure would probably be released more slowly and the likelihood of an eruption would revert to normal." The crater lake was quiet and its temperature had remained relatively low at 20 to 25 degrees centigrade since March. Eruptions at Ruapehu in 1988, 2006 and 2007 were believed to have occurred as a result of sudden failure of a seal beneath the crater lake. Small earthquakes 3 to 5 km beneath the crater lake in late October and early November had stopped, but it was unclear whether they were related to the high temperatures estimated a few hundred meters beneath the lake. The volcanic alert level for Ruapehu remains at level one, indicating a departure from typical background surface activity, and the aviation color code at yellow, indicating signs of elevated unrest above known background levels.
On Tuesday, GNS Science warned that neighboring Mount Tongariro was still showing a substantial possibility of further eruptions after an eruption in August and two more last month. "After the second eruption in November we now have to consider the possibility that Tongariro might have entered an eruptive episode and this unrest could continue for several months. Within an episode Tongariro might quietly discharge steam most of the time, but occasionally have small eruptions with little or no warning. There was a similar episode of activity in the 1890s."
Tongariro had seen only minor seismic activity since November 21, but but there had been a very noticeable gas discharge in recent days. It is on volcanic alert level one and aviation color code yellow. The 80,000-hectare Tongariro National Park has more than 1 million visitors a year. Last month's eruption resulted in videos of panicked hikers fleeing from the plume of ash and steam. Tongariro's eruption on Aug. 6 was the first since 1897.

Russia - On Wednesday, KVERT reported strong (but now fluctuating amplitude) volcanic tremor at Plosky Tolbachik (Kamchatka Peninsula) again. The new unsteadiness in tremor amplitude may be the first sign of an ebbing magma supply. KVERT also reports relatively strong volcanic tremor eminating from nearby Klyuchevskoi Sopka. Small strombolian explosions are currently taking place at the summit of Klyuchevskoi. Volcanic tremor at Tolbachik remains strong enough to interfere with seismic monitoring at nearby Bezymianny volcano. The Bezymianny seismometers are overwhelmed with the seismic “noise” coming from Tolbachik to the extent that only relatively large local events (M2.5+) can be identified and located using Bezymianny seismograms. (photos & info on additional volcanoes)

MYSTERY BOOMS -
More Mysterious Loud Booms Reported in Georgia - 12/12/12 - There have been widespread reports of the booms over 24 hours on Wednesday. The booms sound like "explosions or thunder". Officials still do not know the cause of the booms, but the reports are widespread, "coming from areas all over the CSRA".

TROPICAL STORMS -
In the South Indian Ocean -
Category 2 Tropical Cyclone Evan was located approximately 115 nm northwest of of Pago Pago, American Samoa.

Cyclone Evan swept over Samoa on Thursday - The cyclone has caused widespread destruction on the Pacific island, cutting power, uprooting trees and triggering floods. At least three people, two of them children, were killed. In the capital, Apia, homes were flattened and the Vaisigano River burst its banks, washing away cars, trees and other debris. But fears the cyclone might hit Samoa a second time have receded.
"The best guess" was that the cyclone would not return. Power was off throughout the country. "Tanugamanono power plant is completely destroyed and we might not have power for at least two weeks." The cyclone was bigger than other tropical storms experienced in the region, and its strength was unexpected. "The unpredictable nature of this one has made it quite different. The forecast winds did not give any indication of how strong the impact was going to be." The cyclone generated winds of up to 165km/h (100 mph) as it hit Samoa.
Cyclone Evan to hit Fiji by Sunday - The tropical depression that was affecting Fiji earlier this week has been upgraded to Tropical cyclone Evan and could hit Fiji by as early as this Sunday. This has prompted calls for communities to be be prepared now.

HEALTH THREATS -

With new rules, few U. S. public health labs will handle the riskiest agents. With tougher security requirements set to take effect next April, few state public health laboratories plan to maintain stocks of certain pathogens considered most tempting to bioterrorists.

Global study notes progress against infectious diseases - Infectious diseases are causing fewer deaths and illnesses worldwide than two decades ago, with fewer kids dying, but younger and middle-aged adults are bearing more of the overall medical burden.
The new 'Burden of Disease' study shows world's people living longer but with more disability - The health of most of the planet's population is rapidly coming to resemble that of the United States, where death in childhood is rare, too much food is a bigger problem than too little, and life is long and often darkened by disability.

RECALLS & ALERTS

Thursday, December 13, 2012

**Only earthbound man still clings to the dark and poisoning
superstition that his world is bounded by the nearest hill,
his universe ends at river shore,
his common humanity is enclosed in the
tight circle of those who share his town or his views
and the color of his skin.
Robert F. Kennedy

LARGEST QUAKES -
Live Seismograms - Worldwide (update every 30 minutes)

This morning -
5.5 KERMADEC ISLANDS, NEW ZEALAND

Yesterday -
12/12/12 -
5.0 FIJI REGION

12/11/12 -
5.1 VANUATU
5.2 VANUATU
6.0 MOLUCCA SEA
5.3 NORTHERN YUKON TERRITORY, CANADA

Friday's Japanese quake revised up to magnitude 7.4 - The Japan Meteorological Agency has revised the magnitude of Friday's earthquake that rocked the Tohoku and Kanto regions from 7.3 to 7.4, after analysing seismometer records and other data. The quake's focus was off Tohoku's Sanriku coast.
The agency also said Monday the quake could have been caused by the movement of several faults east and west of the Japan Trench, where an oceanic plate slides under the continental plate. Friday's quake was initially considered to have occurred after the Earth's crust was pulled on the east side of the trench, causing the faults to shift vertically. This is called an "outer-rise" quake.

VOLCANOES -
Volcano Webcams

New Zealand - White Island volcano: spiny lava dome observed, alert level raised. Volcanologists have discovered a spiny lava dome at White Island volcano in an existing small crater formed as a result of the recent eruptions in August.
Ruapehu eruption 'more likely than normal' - Scientists have confirmed Ruapehu remains at a heightened level of unrest and that an eruption is "more likely than normal". Analysis was still showing higher than normal temperatures beneath the crater lake.
Mt Tongariro gas does not mean eruption - A noticeable release of gas has been spilling out of Mt Tongariro but this did not mean an eruption has occurred, GNS Science says. There was still a "substantial possibility" of eruption however, especially over the next few months.

Video: Lava flows after huge volcanic eruption in Russia - Check out this volcanic eruption that's so spectacular it's been described as looking like the end of the world! The Plosky Tolbachik volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Russia, is pouring out 1,200 tonnes of lava every second.

TROPICAL STORMS -
In the South Indian Ocean -
Tropical Cyclone Claudia was located 1215 nm south of Diego Garcia. The final warning has been issued on this system by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

Tropical cyclone Evan was located approximately 40 nm west-northwest of Pago Pago, American Samoa.

Category 2 Tropical cyclone Evan lashes Samoa - Tonga and Fiji may be next. Flash floods and power cuts have hit the Samoan capital Apia as tropical cyclone Evan lashed the Pacific island nation with high winds and heavy rain. The category two cyclone, packing wind gusts exceeding 120 kilometres per hour, made landfall in the early afternoon on Thursday and was expected to intensify after moving out to sea.
Apia residents said the cyclone uprooted trees and caused widespread flooding, cutting power to much of the city and blocking roads. Police advised locals to make their way to evacuation centres. "There's lots of debris flying around and coconut trees going down. It's really dangerous to try to drive around, some people are already evacuating." Parts of the city's airport were damaged, but there were no reports of injuries.
While cyclones are relatively common in Samoa, Evan WAS EXCEPTIONAL. "I have never seen it this bad, this is very significant and scary." The US embassy in Samoa set up a hotline for citizens caught in the storm and advised them to move away from coastal areas. In travel advice, the Australian government said the cyclone was "causing damage to local services and infrastructure, including communications and electricity services and Faleolo International Airport".
The Fiji Meteorological Service, which provides forecasts for the South Pacific, said the cyclone was expected to head out to sea but could curve back and intensify to category three. It said the cyclone could threaten Tonga on Friday and reach Fiji by Sunday. "All communities in Fiji should be prepared now, heed warnings and act responsibly to avoid unnecessary loss of lives and property."

The state of Massachusetts has issued an unprecedented $24.8 million in fines against three utilities for their inadequate response to the power outages in 2011 that plunged hundreds of thousands of people in the dark after Tropical Storm Irene and the Halloween snowstorm.

SEVERE RAIN STORMS, FLOODING, LANDSLIDES -

NWS confirms long-tracked tornado in South Mississippi early Monday - After surveying the damage from severe storms early Monday, the National Weather Service (NWS) confirmed a long-tracked tornado tore across parts of two counties in South Mississippi. The NWS says it was an EF-1 tornado with winds of 100 mph.

SPACE WEATHER -

Hundreds of squid have intentionally stranded themselves on the shores of California and scientists only have guesses as to why. The Santa Cruz coastline is littered with squid carcasses. (video) [Occasionally, squid massings have preceded earthquakes. One time in Japan as I recall - may be purely coincidental.]

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

No update on Wednesday this week.

**Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world.**
Archimedes

LARGEST QUAKES -
Live Seismograms - Worldwide (update every 30 minutes)

This morning -
6.0 MOLUCCA SEA
5.4 NORTHERN YUKON TERRITORY, CANADA

Yesterday -
12/10/12 -
5.3 BANDA SEA
7.1 BANDA SEA
5.0 MINDANAO, PHILIPPINES
5.0 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN

7.1 quake hits off coast of Indonesia - The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center had no immediate tsunami warning following the quake, located northwest of Saumlaki, Indonesia. The earthquake was located too deep inside the earth to create a tsunami in the Indian Ocean. The quake struck offshore, with the epicenter 147 miles (236 kilometers) northwest of the city of Saumlaki. The quake was reported at a depth of 96 miles (155 kilometers).

Japan Nuclear Plant Found Sitting on Quake Fault - A panel of Japanese government-appointed experts concluded Monday that a nuclear reactor in the western part of the country is likely sitting on an active earthquake fault - a finding that may lead to it being shut down.

TROPICAL STORMS -
In the South Indian Ocean -
Tropical Cyclone Claudia was located approximately 680 nm southeast of Diego Garcia.

Philippines - Rescuers are losing hope of finding nearly 900 people missing after Typhoon Bopha struck the southern Philippines last week, killing 714 people. Bopha, the strongest cyclone to hit the Philippines this year, slammed into the southern region of Mindanao on December 4, triggering widespread floods and landslides that wiped out entire villages.
Rescuers have not found survivors for the past three days, and officials said on Tuesday they feared they would discover only bodies one week after the typhoon. "We can no longer say that we can recover many survivors." 890 people were still reported missing from the disaster while 714 were confirmed killed in the floods and landslides. More than 1900 were injured and 110 rescued. More than 5.4 million people were affected by the typhoon, including 116,404 residents staying in cramped evacuation centres.
On Monday, the United Nations appealed for $US65 million ($A62.25 million) in emergency aid to provide food, water and emergency shelter to the victims. Bopha damaged infrastructure and agriculture worth more than 7.11 billion pesos (about $A165.67 million), including more than 70,000 homes and several banana plantations.
Early warnings save lives - Last year, when Tropical Storm Washi hit the southern Philippines, people had no warning at all and about 1,300 people died - many in the town of Cagayan de Oro. Cagayan de Oro was in the path of Typhoon Bopha as well, but the memory of Washi is still fresh. This time, people near the rivers all moved to higher ground and not a single life was lost.
In New Bataan and Andap, they knew typhoon Bopha was coming, yet many chose to ignore advice to seek shelter. "We were indeed informed there would be a typhoon, but we didn't listen. We never thought this would happen to us. Our ancestors, our grandparents - it never happened to them."
But looking at the devastation in New Bataan and Andap, it is difficult to believe that, even if everyone had heeded evacuation warnings, there would not have been substantial loss of life. The area is prone to landslides and flooding anyway, and the typhoon made matters much, much worse, bringing rocks and mud over a huge area several miles long. Given the risks, some officials are questioning whether people should go back to those areas at all.

Tropical Cyclone threat for Fiji - Forecasters are continuing to closely monitor a predicted deep and aggressive low near Fiji this coming weekend and with each passing day confidence is mounting that this could become the first tropical cyclone of the south west Pacific cyclone season.
Reliable models - which accurately picked past cyclones such as Yasi and Wilma - are now predicting a large storm this Sunday in Fiji. "The models show this likely tropical cyclone slamming Fiji from the the east on Sunday and Monday then it has the potential to drift towards New Zealand". Fiji residents should be preparing now for floods, landslides, coastal flooding and powercuts.
However, it's too soon to know if the predicted tropical cyclone could impact New Zealand, but things are stacked against it reaching there. "We expect the swells to possibly reach New Zealand from the north east but as for wind and rain it's still too early to say but looking unlikely at this early stage. Historically speaking it's in a prime position to reach us but the one thing confusing things is a large high currently over New Zealand."
The large high is expected to remain in control and in charge of New Zealand's weather for at least another seven days. "This high may last, in fact, until Christmas Day." Highs are basically one of the main enemies for tropical storms - they can help pull them apart and kill them off - so having a high protecting New Zealand could be helpful.
Except that a potential cyclone brushing New Zealand's north eastern coastline - which would affect Gisborne and Hawkes Bay - could be a blessing in disguise if not a direct and aggressive hit. Gisborne and Hawkes Bay are bone dry and desperately need rain. Only "4.9mm of rain in Hastings in the past 4 weeks. It looks like February not December". The location of the storm makes it "one to watch" even though the current threat to New Zealand is deemed to be "low".

EXTREME HEAT & DROUGHT / CLIMATE CHANGE -

Australia - A wildfire that is burning near homes on Queensland's North Stradbroke Island is under control but residents are being warned to get ready to evacuate if necessary.
Rain showers on Tuesday helped slow the blaze, which is burning in inaccessible land two kilometres south of Amity Point. "Now it's just picking up again but it is under control by fire crews at the moment." The fire is burning on the leeward side of the island so is largely unaffected by the strengthening winds. Amity Point residents have a bushfire survival plan, they should review it and be prepared to act.
"Basically listen to your local radio, listen to your local media, and just be prepared so in the event they do have to move and be relocated then we can do so effectively." The blaze has been testing firefighters since Sunday, when it destroyed four caravans, a large shed, a demountable house and cars at Myora on the island

Monday, December 10, 2012

**Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves.
What is equally true is that every community
gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.**
Robert F. Kennedy

LARGEST QUAKES -
Live Seismograms - Worldwide (update every 30 minutes)

This morning -
5.0 MINDANAO, PHILIPPINES

Yesterday -
12/9/12 -
5.0 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.3 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.6 MINDANAO, PHILIPPINES
5.2 TONGA
5.3 NEW GUINEA, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
5.0 BOUVET ISLAND REGION

Peru's capital highly vulnerable to major quake - In 1746, an earthquake all but flattened colonial Lima, the shaking so violent that people tossed to the ground couldn't get back up. Minutes later, a 50-foot (15-meter) wall of Pacific Ocean crashed into the adjacent port of Callao, killing all but 200 of its 5,000 inhabitants. Bodies washed ashore for weeks.
Plenty of earthquakes have shaken Peru's capital in the 266 years since that fateful night of Oct. 28, 1746, though none with anything near the violence. The relatively long "seismic silence" means that Lima, set astride one of the most volatile ruptures in the Earth's crust, is increasingly at risk of being hammered by a one-two, quake-tsunami punch as calamitous as what devastated Japan last year and traumatized Santiago, Chile, and its nearby coast a year earlier, seismologists say.
Yet this city of 9 million people is sorely unprepared. Its acute vulnerability, from densely clustered, unstable housing to a dearth of first-responders, is unmatched regionally. Peru's National Civil Defense Institute forecasts up to 50,000 dead, 686,000 injured and 200,000 homes destroyed if Lima is hit by a magnitude-8.0 quake. "In South America, it is the most at risk."
Lima is home to a third of Peru's population, 70 percent of its industry, 85 percent of its financial sector, its entire central government and the bulk of international commerce. "A quake similar to what happened in Santiago would break the country economically." That quake had a magnitude of 8.8.
Quakes are frequent in Peru, with about 170 felt by people annually. A big one is due, and the chances of it striking increase daily. The same collision of tectonic plates responsible for the most powerful quake ever recorded, a magnitude-9.5 quake that hit Chile in 1960, occurs just off Lima's coast, where about 3 inches of oceanic crust slides annually beneath the continent.
A 7.5-magnitude quake in 1974 that struck about a day's drive from Lima, in the Cordillera Blanca range, killed about 70,000 people as landslides buried villages. Seventy-eight people died in the capital. In 2007, a 7.9-magnitude quake struck even closer, killing 596 people in the south-central coastal city of Pisco.
A shallow, direct hit is the big danger. More than two in five Lima residents live either in rickety structures on unstable, sandy soil and wetlands that amplify a quake's destructive power or in hillside settlements that sprang up over a generation as people fled conflict and poverty in Peru's interior. Thousands are built of colonial-era adobe. Most quake-prone countries have rigorous building codes to resist seismic events. In Chile, if engineers and builders don't adhere to them they can face prison. Not so in Peru. "People are building with adobe just as they did in the 17th century."
Environmental and human-made perils compound the danger. Situated in a coastal desert, Lima gets its water from a single river, the Rimac, which a landslide could easily block. That risk is compounded by a containment pond full of toxic heavy metals from an old mine that could rupture and contaminate the Rimac. Most of Lima's food supply arrives via a two-lane highway that parallels the river, another potential chokepoint.
Lima's airport and seaport, the key entry points for international aid, are also vulnerable. Both are in Callao, which seismologists expect to be scoured by a 20-foot (6-meter) tsunami if a big quake is centered offshore, the most likely scenario. A February 2011 law obliged Peru's municipalities to make a quake-response and disaster mitigation plan. Yet Lima's remains incipient. "How are the injured going to be attended to? What is the ability of hospitals to respond? Of basic services? Water, energy, food reserves? I don't think this is being addressed with enough responsibility."
By necessity, most injured will be treated where they fall, but Peru's police have no comprehensive first-aid training. Only Lima's 4,000 firefighters, all volunteers, have such training, as does a 1,000-officer police emergency squadron. But because the firefighters are volunteers, a quake's timing could influence rescue efforts. "If you go to a fire station at 10 in the morning there's hardly anyone there."
In the next two months, Lima will spend nearly $2 million on the three fire companies that cover downtown Lima, its first direct investment in firefighters in 25 years.. The national government is spending $18 million citywide for 50 new fire trucks and ambulances. But where would the ambulances go? A 1997 study found that three of Lima's principal public hospitals would likely collapse in a major quake, but nothing has been done to reinforce them.
And there are no free beds. One public hospital serves more than 1.2 million people in Lima's south but has just 400 beds, and they are always full. Contingency plans call for setting up mobile hospitals in tents in city parks. But only about 10,000 injured could be treated. Water is also a worry. The fire threat to Lima is severe - from refineries to densely-backed neighborhoods honeycombed with colonial-era wood and adobe. Lima's firefighters often can't get enough water pressure to douse a blaze.
"We should have places where we can store water not just to put out fires but also to distribute water to the population." The city's lone water-and-sewer utility can barely provide water to one-tenth of Lima in the best of times. Another big concern: Lima has no emergency operations center and the radio networks of the police, firefighters and the Health Ministry, which runs city hospitals, use different frequencies, hindering effective communication.
Nearly half of the city's schools require a detailed evaluation to determine how to reinforce them against collapse. A recent media blitz, along with three nationwide quake-tsunami drills this year, helped raise consciousness. The city has spent more than $77 million for retention walls and concrete stairs to aid evacuation in hillside neighborhoods, but much more is needed.
At the biggest risk, apart from tsunami-vulnerable Callao, are places like Nueva Rinconada. A treeless moonscape in the southern hills, it is a haven for economic refugees who arrive daily from Peru's countryside and cobble together precarious homes on lots they scored into steep hillsides with pickaxes. Engineers who have surveyed Nueva Rinconada call its upper reaches a death trap. Most residents understand this but say they have nowhere else to go.
Water arrives in tanker trucks at $1 per 200 liters (52 gallons) but is unsafe to drink unless boiled. There is no sanitation; people dig their own latrines. There are no streetlamps, and visibility is erased at night as Lima's bone-chilling fog settles into the hills. Homes of wood, adobe and straw matting rest on piled-rock foundations that engineers say will crumble and rain down on people below in a major quake.

VOLCANOES -
Volcano Webcams

Volcanoes, not a meteorite, killed off the dinosaurs - A study suggests that a massive volcano near India spewed toxic gas into the atmosphere for thousands of years. And eventually, that gas killed off the dinosaurs.

TROPICAL STORMS -
In the South Indian Ocean -
Tropical Cyclone Claudia was located approximately 450 nm south of Diego Garcia. [No threat to land.]

Typhoon Bopha - The United Nations is set to launch a global appeal for millions of Philippine typhoon victims as the death toll surged past 600, with nearly 800 people still missing.
"Five million people were affected and they need express assistance. Their priority needs are food, water and shelter but there's also a big emphasis on helping people's livelihood. So many farmers have lost their crops and it's such a poor area. People need to earn money immediately and agriculture has to be rehabilitated." The hard-hit region is the centre of both the country's banana as well as gold mining industries.
A number of villages are still completely cut off and not receiving any aid, a week after the typhoon struck. The region will need sustained assistance for at least six months. The civil defence office in Manila said 647 corpses had been recovered after landslides and floods obliterated entire communities in the typhoon's path.
A total of 780 people are still missing, including about 150 fishermen from General Santos, the country's tuna capital, who had put to sea ahead of Bopha's landfall. Many of those missing could be among the hundreds of unidentified bodies, many of them bloated beyond recognition.
Victims beg for food after deadly typhoon - Desperate families begged for food Sunday, days after Typhoon Bopha brought death and destruction to parts of a southern Philippine island, as the storm returned to the north of the country. Northern areas escaped with heavy rain after the storm weakened. But scenes of hardship were everywhere in southern areas that last week felt the full fury of the strongest typhoon to hit the country this year.
Officials said 548 people are confirmed dead, most of them in the southern island of Mindanao. The number of missing had shot up to 827 from previous figures of 500 unaccounted for, after reports of more missing fishermen came in. In the Mindanao mountain town of New Bataan, which took the brunt of the typhoon, families lined the roads holding signs begging for food. "We were given rations but it was not enough. Just rice, bread and noodles. It is not enough...All we can do is wait for donations. There are cars passing by and sometimes drivers give us something."
The relief supplies from the national government had yet to arrive. "We have not been given anything yet. Only the local government and the village officials gave us something, just some rice, noodles and dried fish." Drivers of private vehicles also handed out donations but the lack of coordination led to more confusion. When a truck from a local power company arrived to distribute relief supplies, it was mobbed by hungry villagers and many children were almost trampled in the chaos.
In the northern Philippines, the once-deadly typhoon had weakened to a tropical storm and brought downpours. But there were no reports of any floods. Bopha, which once packed 210-kilometre per hour winds and heavy rain, had weakened with gusts of only 120 kilometres per hour. It had been headed out to the South China Sea when it made a U-turn towards the north this weekend, initially raising fears of another disaster.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

More mysterious loud booms reported in Columbia County, Georgia; reports in other U.S. cities too - Arizona, Rhode Island, Alabama, and Texas.
Columbia County officials say that more people reported hearing mysterious booms over several days last week. Some people said the blasts were so loud that they were awakened from sleep. Local experts still don't know what the cause is, but now the reports aren't limited to just Columbia County.
Early this week, reports starting flooding into the Columbia County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) about loud booms in the area. "Appling, Harlem is the typical area we are looking at here. Of loud booms, rumbling. Now we're hearing about pictures being moved on walls." A man said the blast shook his house early Tuesday morning. He says when he walked outside, his driveway had new cracks in it. Since he lives near a rock quarry, he figured that's what it was. "We have already checked and our seismologist says that there is no activity on any of our equipment, as far as earthquakes. We've already called all the rock quarries, there was no blasting during any of those times."
The cause of the booms could be a device called an Earth Shaker. It's full of gun powder and when it explodes, it's apparently powerful enough to shake the ground. But this week there have also been other reports of loud booms in other cities, some in Arizona, Rhode Island, Alabama, and Texas. Could there be another explanation?
"I'm concerned because we do have a lot of credible people who are telling me these things. Law enforcement, fire, county employees, citizens, all of who are credible because they are people I know, people who go through our training. You don't have clusters of people that are all telling you the same thing and it's not happening. Something is making those loud booms, what it is, I don't know."
Several theories are popping up about methane gas pockets exploding underground, military testing, and the fact that we are a few weeks away from the end of the Mayan calendar. There were similar occurrances in central Arizona during the same timeframe as the occurrances in Columbia County. (links to other online stories similar to Columbia County's occurrances)

**Hand in hand with freedom of speech
goes the power to be heard,
to share in the decisions of government
which shape men's lives.
Everything that makes man's life worthwhile
- family, work, education,
a place to rear one's children and
a place to rest one's head -
all this depends on the decisions of government;
all can be swept away by a government which does not heed
the demands of its people, and I mean all of its people.
Therefore, the essential humanity of men
can be protected and preserved
only where government must answer - not just to the wealthy,
not just to those of a particular religion, or a particular race,
but to all its people.**
Robert F. Kennedy

LARGEST QUAKES -
Live Seismograms - Worldwide (update every 30 minutes)

This morning -
5.3 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN

Yesterday -
12/8/12 -
5.0 HALMAHERA, INDONESIA
5.1 NEAR S COAST OF NEW GUINEA, P
5.7 NEAR S COAST OF NEW GUINEA, PNG.
5.0 NEAR S COAST OF NEW GUINEA, PNG.
5.1 NEAR S COAST OF NEW GUINEA, PNG.
5.1 TAIWAN REGION

12/7/12 -
5.6 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.0 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.1 NEAR EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.0 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.1 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.1 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.0 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.0 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.5 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
6.2 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
7.3 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN - 459 km (285 miles) NE of TOKYO, Japan.
6.3 NORTH ISLAND OF NEW ZEALAND
5.3 SOUTHERN XINJIANG, CHINA
5.6 EASTERN NEW GUINEA REG., P.N.G.
5.0 NEW BRITAIN REGION, P.N.G.
5.1 BOUVET ISLAND REGION

VOLCANOES -
Volcano Webcams

Indonesia - North Sulawesi's Mount Lokon Enters Second Day of Eruption on Friday. So far there have been no report of casualties or damages, and the alert status of the mountain was still at “ready,” or two rungs above normal and one below full eruption.

TROPICAL STORMS -
In the Western Pacific -
Typhoon Bopha was located approximately 665 nm east-southeast of Palau.

In the South Indian Ocean -
Tropical Cyclone Claudia was located approximately 480 nm south-southeast of Diego Garcia. [It was likely that Claudia will weaken and become an extra-tropical storm over the weekend.]

Typhoon Bopha is THE STRONGEST CYCLONE TO EVER HIT THE PHILIPPINES - The death toll from Tropical Cyclone Pablo (Bopha) exceeded 500 early Sunday, even as the damage caused by the cyclone breached the P6-billion mark.

NY mostly ignored reports warning of superstorm - More than three decades before Superstorm Sandy, a state law and a series of legislative reports began warning New York politicians to prepare for a storm of historic proportions, spelling out scenarios eerily similar to what actually happened: a towering storm surge; overwhelming flooding; swamped subway lines; widespread power outages. The Rockaway peninsula was deemed among the "most at risk."
But most of the warnings and a requirement in a 1978 law to create a regularly updated plan for the restoration of "vital services" after a storm went mostly unheeded, either because of tight budgets or the lack of political will to prepare for a hypothetical storm that may never hit. Some of the thorniest problems after Sandy, including a gasoline shortage, the lack of temporary housing and the flooding of commuter tunnels, ended up being dealt with largely on the fly.
"I don't know that anyone believed," acknowledged Gov. Andrew Cuomo this past week. "We had never seen a storm like this. So it is very hard to anticipate something that you have never experienced." Asked how well prepared state officials were for Sandy, Cuomo said, "not well enough." It wasn't as if the legislative actions over the years were subtle. They all had a common, emphatic theme: Act immediately before it's too late.
The 1978 executive law required a standing state Disaster Preparedness Commission to meet at least twice a year to create and update disaster plans. It mandated the state to address temporary housing needs after a disaster, create a detailed plan to restore services, maintain sewage treatment, prevent fires, assure generators "sufficient to supply" nursing homes and other health facilities, and "protect and assure uninterrupted delivery of services, medicines, water, food, energy and fuel."
Reports in 2005, 2006 and 2010 added urgency. "It's not a question of whether a strong hurricane will hit New York City," the 2006 Assembly report warned. "It's just a question of when." A 2010 task force report to the Legislature concluded: "The combination of rising sea level, continuing climate change, and more development in high-risk areas has raised the level of New York's vulnerability to coast storms. ... The challenge is real, and sea level rise will progress regardless of New York's response."
The Disaster Preparedness Commission met biannually some years, but there are gaps in which there is no record of a meeting. However, some administrations, including Cuomo's, convened many of the same agency heads to discuss emergency management. But even under Cuomo, who has taken a much greater interest in emergency management after three violent storms in his first two years in office, there are still three vacancies on the commission.
Some improvements very made to the plan in recent years, such as requiring a specific plan to protect and evacuate the infirmed and to save pets. "But on two issues related to Sandy — prevention and recovery — they did almost nothing. If Goldman Sachs was smart enough to sandbag its building, why wasn't the MTA smart enough to sandbag the Battery Tunnel?" Sandy flooded both tubes of the Tunnel, which was one of the major and longest transportation disruptions of the storm. It also ravaged the Rockaways in Queens, particularly the waterfront community of Breezy Point, where roughly 100 homes burned to the ground in a massive wind-swept fire.
Among the other crises faced on a daily basis during Sandy were the shortage of temporary housing (which continues), the long disruption of electricity and gasoline, generators in health care facilities swamped by floodwaters, restoring power from swamped electrical infrastructure and repairing commuter rail lines. The warnings touched on many of these areas, but mostly in a broad way with few specific directions for action. Some areas, such as a shortage of shelters in New York City and repairing commuter rail lines quickly, have improved in recent years to some degree, but other areas such as making sure health facility generators are on upper floors are newly realized problems forced by Sandy, according to the former legislators.
"What you've got here is a great number of consequences that were foreseeable, but unforeseen. Prevention is politically less sexy than disaster response." There was another obstacle to enacting calls for more preparation: funding. The state and city were each facing $1 billion deficits from a slow economic recovery before Sandy hit. "As your budget shrinks, the first thing that goes out the door is emergency management, the first thing. To take the 1978 law and really enable it, you need to put a ton of money behind it and there was no political will to do it."
Cuomo is now asking the federal government for more than $32 billion to cover the immediate costs triggered by Sandy, and an additional $9 billion for preventive measures to better protect the area for the next big storm. The Cuomo administration insists that it has had robust emergency planning and clearly made important changes after tropical storms Irene and Lee slammed much of upstate and threw a scare into New York City in 2011. The administration created three regional disaster logistics centers and conducted training and exercises and, before Sandy, took extensive preparatory steps learned from Irene to "preposition" equipment and top staff and National Guard troops around the state.
Like the state, the city has talked up storm preparedness in a series of hurricane and climate change plans since 2000. And it has taken some concrete steps, such as requiring some new developments in flood zones to be elevated, eliminating roadblocks to putting boilers and electrical equipment above the ground and restoring wetlands as natural storm-surge barriers.
Still, the city wasn't expecting Sandy. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had figured there was only a 1 percent chance that the Battery in lower Manhattan would see the 14 feet of water Sandy sent in; the previous record, set in 1960, was 11 feet.
Bloomberg said the city would reassess building codes and evacuation zone borders, look at ways to flood-proof power and transportation networks, make sure hospitals are better prepared and do an engineering analysis of whether to build levees, dunes or other structures to protect the coast.

EXTREME HEAT & DROUGHT / CLIMATE CHANGE -

Texas - Is drought coming back in Houston? Much of the area received some much needed rain this week, but even with the rain there are concerns about a returning drought across the state. A record drought in Texas last year contributed to a historic number of wildfires in the state that burned more than four million acres of land, destroyed more than 3,000 homes and devastated massive acreage of farmland and forests. "October and November of this year were among the five driest October and Novembers on record."

U.S. Drought revives old water war among river states - The water wars are raging again in America's heartland, where drought-stricken states are pleading for the increasingly scarce water of the Missouri River – to drink from their faucets, irrigate their crops and float the barges.

The nation's most expensive weather event in 2012 was not Superstorm Sandy, but the continuing drought. More than 62 percent of the United States is still experiencing drought conditions. Less than 18 months after the US Army Corps of Engineers blasted gaps in a levee on the Mississippi River to cope with a record flood, it's getting ready to detonate explosives for the opposite reason – to clear rock outcroppings on the bottom of the river to try to deepen the channel for river traffic. Except for patches of California, Montana and Wyoming, the drought is expected to persist in most of the dry regions west of the Mississippi River over the next three months.

Drought in the Horn of Africa Delays Migrating Birds - The extensive 2011 drought in the Horn of Africa had significant consequences for European songbirds such as thrush nightingale and red-backed shrike. These birds visit northern Europe every spring. Year-round tracking revealed that the cause of the delay was a prolongation of stopover time during spring migration at the Horn of Africa, which was affected by extreme drought.

UN climate talks in Doha have closed with a historic shift in principle but few genuine cuts in greenhouse gases. The summit established for the first time that rich nations should move towards compensating poor nations for losses due to climate change. Developing nations hailed it as a breakthrough, but condemned the gulf between the science of climate change and political attempts to tackle it.
The deal, agreed by nearly 200 nations, extends to 2020 the Kyoto Protocol. It is the only legally-binding plan for combating global warming. The deal covers Europe and Australia, whose share of world greenhouse gas emissions is less than 15%. But the conference also cleared the way for the Kyoto protocol to be replaced by a new treaty binding all rich and poor nations together by 2015 to tackle climate change.
The final text "encourages" rich nations to mobilise at least $10bn (£6bn) a year up to 2020, when the new global climate agreement is due to kick in. There was last-minute drama as the talks were thrown into turmoil by the insistence of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus that they should be allowed extra credit for the emissions cuts they made when their industries collapsed. After a long delay, the chairman lost patience, re-started the meeting and gavelled through the agenda so fast there was no chance for Russia to object. A cheer exploded into prolonged applause. Russia bitterly objected at what it said was a clear breach of procedure, but the chairman said he would do no more than reflect the Russian view in the final report.
The big players, the US, EU and China accepted the agreement with varying degrees of reservation. But the representative for the small island states at severe risk from climate change was vociferous. "We see the package before us as deeply deficient in mitigation (carbon cuts) and finance. It's likely to lock us on the trajectory to a 3,4,5C rise in global temperatures, even though we agreed to keep the global average temperature rise of 1.5C to ensure survival of all islands. There is no new finance (for adapting to climate change and getting clean energy) - only promises that something might materialise in the future. Those who are obstructive need to talk not about how their people will live, but whether our people will live."
The island states accepted the agreement because for them it is better than nothing. Other diplomats will point to the immense complexity of the UN process, which is attempting to move away from the old Kyoto Protocol into a new phase binding rich and poor nations together in the task of tackling climate change. Until now rich nations have agreed finance to help developing countries to get clean energy and adapt to climate change, but they have stopped short of accepting responsibility for damage caused by climate change elsewhere. But in Doha that broad principle was agreed.
"It is a breakthrough," said an association of 52 developing nations. "The term Loss and Damage is in the text - this is a huge step in principle. Next comes the fight for cash. What helped swing it was [US President Barack] Obama asking Congress for $60bn for the damage caused by [Hurricane] Sandy." "This is a watershed in the talks. There is no turning back from this."
The UK think-tank E3G said: "This agreement really opens a can of worms - it might be applied to countries damming transboundary rivers, for instance. It could be very significant in future." The US had been adamant that this measure would be blocked, and the EU nearly vetoed it, too. The US head of delegation was seen for much of the past few days walking in circles The key to US agreement was the positioning of the Loss and Damage mechanism under an existing process promising to mobilise $100bn a year for poor nations to adapt to climate change. Facing tough budget decisions at home over the "fiscal cliff" it was essential for the US to avoid the impression that it was giving away more cash at this time.
The Seychelles representative told rich nationsthat discussion of compensation would not have been needed if they had cut emissions earlier. "We're past the mitigation [emissions cuts] and adaptation eras. We're now right into the era of loss and damage. What's next after that? Destruction?"
The US has been blamed on finance and on failure to cut its emissions more aggressively. The EU has also been under fire for failing to raise its promised cuts from 20%, which it is reaching easily, to 30%. (Scientists say it should be 40%.) The EU has been held back by Poland, which insists on its right to burn its huge reserves of coal.
Russia, Belarus and Ukraine then further delayed the endgame of the conference with an argument over so-called "hot air" - the pollution permits they were given to allow their heavy industries to thrive. Those industries collapsed but Poland and Russia insist that - as they suffered economic pain during the collapse - they should be allowed to use up the pollution permits as their economies grow again. In effect, they want to be able to increase their emissions as other nations are obliged to cut theirs.
The major task of this two-week conference has been untangling of the diplomatic spaghetti from climate agreements that have grown piecemeal over the past 15 years. It is widely agreed that a useful house-keeping job was done to help the UN move towards the next phase, which aims at a globally-encompassing agreement. Preliminary discussions were held on this, and it was quickly evident that making a global agreement fair to all parties will be monumentally difficult.

HEALTH THREATS -

Early-season rise in US flu activity continues - Influenza is widespread in eight US states, and some other indicators of an early flu season continue to rise.
RECALLS & ALERTS