Tuesday, December 31, 2013

UK : Huge Sinkhole - 130 Feet deep and Growing

Published on Dec 30, 2013

The more more rain and flooding, the better the chances are for seeing sinkholes!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic...

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130ft-deep SINK-HOLE opens up in sodden Derbyshire fields as forecasters warn wild, wild weather will continue for a MONTH

Met Office says that strong winds and heavy rain are expected to continue until the end of January
New storms will sweep across the UK this week sending the number of flooded homes to more than 2,000
Tens of thousands of homes were without power over Christmas and 130 were connected on Sunday after five days
Government urges power networks to cancel New Year holidays as more storms head for Britain in coming week
Some 126 flood alerts and 8 more serious flood warnings are in place across the country, with number set to rise
Dartford Bridge was closed for second time in a week, with south-bound drivers diverted via the east bore tunnel

By Rebecca Evans and Gerri Peev and Martin Robinson
PUBLISHED: 18:57 EST, 29 December 2013 | UPDATED: 22:17 EST, 30 December 2013
Torrential downpours over Christmas have caused a rare sink-hole to appear in the Peak District, which is 130ft deep and growing.
Part of the Milldam lead mine near Buxton in Derbyshire caved-in overnight on Sunday and swallowed a field as terrible weather continued to plague most of Britain.
Electricity engineers visited the site yesterday to assess how to re-route cables after two poles were left standing precariously either side of the 160ft wide hole, caused when water erodes the earth underneath and causes the whole area to collapse.
Meanwhile it emerged yesterday that Britain should brace itself for an entire month of violent weather, which could cause the number of homes currently flooded more than double to 2,000 by the end of the week.

Rural idyll: With the rolling Peak District in the background, the 130ft deep and 160ft wide gash in the landscape has appeared overnight after the earth beneath it collapsed

Power problems: Engineers will examine the site for damage to cables which they may have to re-route

Trouble: The River Afton in New Cumnock, Ayrshire, broke its banks after heavy rain ovenight causing major flooding in the area and blocking a main road

Yesterday commuters suffered a miserable return to work after Christmas as bad weather again caused havoc on the roads and railways.
A number of major road routes were blocked by flooding or by fallen trees while landslips added to the problems for train travellers whose services were already disrupted by planned engineering work.

Persistent rain swept across the country yesterday and will return to drench New Year’s Eve revellers.

SINKHOLES TAKE SECONDS TO OPEN AND CAN STRETCH FOR MILES

Sinkholes are found worldwide and can be more than 2000ft deep and dozens of miles wide.
The ground beneath is normally made of easily-dissolved rocks such as limestone, carbonates and salt beds.
When groundwater flows through these rocks, it eats away at them, leaving behind subterranean holes and caverns.
When the roof of one of these caverns collapses, the land above it falls in too, often in seconds. The world's largest is Qattara near Cairo, measuring 80km long by 120km wide.
Similar smaller holes have engulfed residential streets, often claiming lives.

Then from New Year’s Day tomorrow, storms and rain can be expected for the foreseeable future, forecasters warn. ‘There is no end in sight,’ said a Met Office spokesman.

The Environment Agency said there was a continuing risk of flooding, particularly in the south west of England, as rivers respond to heavy rainfall overnight.
For the past five days energy companies have scrambled to reconnect power to tens of thousands of homes left in the dark since Christmas Eve but bosses have admitted that their efforts were hampered by engineers being on holiday.
At its peak, more than half a million homes were left without electricity, but as of Sunday night this figure was down to 130, which are now said to be reconnected.
Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said he has pressed energy companies to stop staff taking new year holidays as a second week of storms looks set to derail the festive period.
'Quite clearly some of the power companies let their customers down badly,' he told BBC Breakfast.
'It seems obvious at this stage that they let too many of their staff go away for the Christmas holiday, they didn't have enough people manning the call centres and that wasn't acceptable.'
He continued: 'We have had bad weather overnight and we are looking to more bad weather unfortunately on New Year's Day, New Year's night. We made it very clear at Cobra - we do expect the power companies and we also expect those local councils that did not perform, that they have adequate staff to cater with what I am afraid may be more difficult times and more flooding.'
The minister added that he had chaired another emergency meeting to make plans for the continuing bad weather forecast for later this week.
'I don't want to see people left without power for days again,' he said. 'The Environment Agency will once again be out day and night and I have met their teams in Kent to see for myself how preparations are going.'

More disruption: After a nightmare Christmas week roads all over the UK have been blocked by floods and landslides caused by heavy rain, still making the Monday commute completely miserable for many

Danger: A vast swathe of rain has crossed the UK and now sits over the north-west and most of Scotland, which means there is a continued heightened flood risk

However, Labour's environment spokesman criticised Mr Paterson for 'pointing the finger' at workers when he was 'not been seen for days' himself.
'As the country faces more severe weather, households that went a week without power and suffered devastating flooding expect to see some action from ministers at long last, not attempts to pass the buck,' Maria Eagle said.
'Of course the energy companies must explain why it took so long to get power restored, but Owen Paterson has a nerve pointing the finger at staff being on holiday when he himself has not been seen for days.'
Energy bosses will be called before MPs to explain why so many homes were left without power for so long, it emerged yesterday.
Tim Yeo, chairman of the energy select committee, said the firms' performance was 'unacceptable' and warned that they had to be 'properly scrutinised' by the power watchdog in future.
'I'm very concerned about how long the network distribution companies took to restore power to thousands of customers,' he told the Daily Telegraph. 'The committee will call them in when the House gets back.
'I'm already concerned that these distribution companies are not properly scrutinised by Ofgem, despite being effectively monopolies. Their performance over Christmas was unacceptable.'
Basil Scarsella, chief executive of one of the country’s biggest power distributors, UK Power Networks, said: ‘We could not have avoided the damage caused by the storm but we could have responded to it better.
‘A lot of our employees had gone away for holidays so it meant we had a level of depletion in our resources – and that caused problems with getting people’s power restored.
‘It’s difficult to justify saying the company has performed well when customers have been without power for five days, but once we had an idea of how bad it was we were able to mobilise as many engineers and office staff as possible.’
The company, which owns electricity lines and cables in London, the South-East and East of England, said it will triple payments for 48 to 60-hour outages from £27 to £75 for those affected on Christmas Day as ‘a gesture of goodwill’.
Despite being a normal working day for many, many rail and some Tube services were disrupted because of engineering work.

Picture of Britain: Dozens of flood alerts and more serious flood warnings remain in place across the country, with the majority in the west and south-west of the UK

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Sun has 'flipped upside down' as new magnetic cycle begins

Sun expected to 'flip upside down' as magnetic field reverses its polarity

According to NASA the sun is about to flip upside down and it could happen any day now

By Lucy Kinder

8:00AM GMT 15 Nov 2013

The sun's magnetic field is about to flip upside down as it reverses its polarity.

In August Nasa said the reversal would happen in three to four months time, although that it would be impossible to pinpoint a more specific date.

Solar physicist Todd Hoeksema from Stanford University said that the reversal would have "ripple effects" across the whole of the solar system.

According to Nasa the sun's magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years.

In comparison the last time the Earth's magnetic field flipped was almost 800,000 years ago.

When this happens the opposing magnetic poles switch places so the magnetic field is flipped.
The pole reversal happens at the peak of each solar cycle as the sun's "inner magnetic dynamo" reorganises itself.
The exact internal mechanism that drives the magnetic shift is not yet entirely understood by researchers, although the sun's magnetic field has been monitored on a daily basis by Scientists at Stanford's Wilcox Solar Observatory.

Read More Here

Stanford scientist explains sun's magnetic reversal

Published on Nov 8, 2013

The sun's magnetic field is poised to reverse its polarity. The effects of the event, which occurs every 11 years, will ripple throughout the solar system and be closely monitored by Stanford solar physicists.

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Sun Flips Poles! Sun's Magnetic Field Reverses Polarity!

Published on Dec 30, 2013

The Cycle of flipping is complete. We are Now at the mid point of solar cycle 24. The pattern runs in 22 year cycles!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sci...

http://zeenews.india.com/news/space/s...

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Sun has 'flipped upside down' as new magnetic cycle begins

The sun’s magnetic field has fully reversed its polarity, marking the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24, which will be completed in 11 years time

Sunday 29 December 2013The sun’s magnetic field has fully reversed its polarity, marking the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24, which will be completed in 11 years time

The sun has "flipped upside down", with its north and south poles reversed to reach the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24, Nasa has said.

Now, the magnetic fields will once again started moving in opposite directions to begin the completion of the 22 year long process which will culminate in the poles switching once again.
"A reversal of the sun's magnetic field is, literally, a big event," said Nasa’s Dr. Tony Phillips.
"The domain of the sun's magnetic influence (also known as the 'heliosphere') extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto. Changes to the field's polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space."

Read More and Watch Video Here

To mark the event, Nasa has released a visualisation of the entire process.

NASA | The Sun Reverses its Magnetic Poles

Published on Dec 5, 2013

This visualization shows the position of the sun's magnetic fields from January 1997 to December 2013. The field lines swarm with activity: The magenta lines show where the sun's overall field is negative and the green lines show where it is positive. A region with more electrons is negative, the region with less is labeled positive. Additional gray lines represent areas of local magnetic variation.

The entire sun's magnetic polarity, flips approximately every 11 years -- though sometimes it takes quite a bit longer -- and defines what's known as the solar cycle. The visualization shows how in 1997, the sun shows the positive polarity on the top, and the negative polarity on the bottom. Over the next 12 years, each set of lines is seen to creep toward the opposite pole eventually showing a complete flip. By the end of the movie, each set of lines are working their way back to show a positive polarity on the top to complete the full 22 year magnetic solar cycle.

At the height of each magnetic flip, the sun goes through periods of more solar activity, during which there are more sunspots, and more eruptive events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. The point in time with the most sunspots is called solar maximum.

Credit: NASA/GSFC/PFSS

This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?11429

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Bald eagles dying in Utah from mystery ailment

Los Angeles Times

Published 7:43 pm, Sunday, December 29, 2013

This bald eagle is one of four that were brought to a Utah rehabilitation center with body tremors and paralysis before they eventually died. Twenty bald eagles have died in the state in the past few weeks, and a new ailing eagle surfaces almost daily. Scientists say the birds were not shot by hunters or poisoned. Photo: Associated Press
Salt Lake City --
Bald eagles are dying in Utah - 20 in the past few weeks alone - and nobody can figure out why.
Hundreds of the majestic birds - many with wing spans of 7 feet or more - migrate here each winter, gathering along the Great Salt Lake and feasting on carp and other fish that swim in the nearby freshwater bays.
Earlier this month, however, hunters and farmers across five counties in northern and central Utah began finding the normally skittish raptors lying listless on the ground. Many suffered from seizures, head tremors and paralysis in the legs, feet and wings.
Many of the eagles were brought to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah, where Buz Marthaler and other handlers tried to save the birds. Within 48 hours most were dead.
"It's just hard to have your national bird in your arms, going through seizures in a way it can't control - when you can see its pain but don't know what's happening to it," said Marthaler, 56, co-founder of the facility in Ogden.
State wildlife specialists are also baffled. For weeks, officials have sent birds for necropsies at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis., hoping the results would offer clues.
Read More Here

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Science X network

Phys.Org

Bald eagle deaths in Utah alarm and mystify scientists

Dec 29, 2013 by John M. Glionna

Bald eagles are dying in Utah - 20 in the past few weeks alone - and nobody can figure out why.

Hundreds of the majestic birds - many with wing spans of 7 feet or more - migrate here each winter, gathering along the Great Salt Lake and feasting on carp and other fish that swim in the nearby freshwater bays.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-12-bald-eagle-deaths-utah-alarm.html#jCp

Earlier this month, however, hunters and farmers across five counties in northern and central Utah began finding the normally skittish raptors lying listless on the ground. Many suffered from seizures, head tremors and paralysis in the legs, feet and wings.
Many of the eagles were brought to the mammoth Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah, where Buz Marthaler - a longtime animal caretaker - and other handlers tried to save the birds. Within 48 hours most were dead.

"It's just hard to have your national bird in your arms, going through seizures in a way it can't control - when you can see it's pain but don't know what's happening to it," said Marthaler, 56, co-founder of the facility in Ogden.
"As a human being, you just have problems with that. And when you lose one, it just grabs your heart."
State wildlife specialists are also baffled. For weeks, officials have sent birds for necropsies at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis., hoping the results would offer clues.
They began to rule out obvious possibilities: The birds were not shot by hunters, and officials don't believe the birds were poisoned. "There doesn't seem to be anything suspicious in that regard," said Mitch Lane, a conservation officer with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, who has responded to numerous reports of downed or sick eagles.
Read More Here

Mexican coastal highway cracks up and slides 300ft down mountainside into sea after earthquake near U.S. border

A 300-yard section of the Tijuana-Ensenada toll road sunk into the Pacific Ocean on Saturday
Several small earthquakes shook the area on December 19 and cracks were seen in the lead up to the collapse
Road might be closed for up to year according to some media reports

By Alex Ward
PUBLISHED: 04:24 EST, 30 December 2013 | UPDATED: 15:46 EST, 30 December 2013

Cliff-side cracks: A cement truck driver was rescued from his vehicle after huge section of the Tijuana-Ensenada toll road cracked and slid 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean

A cement truck driver is lucky to be alive after the coastal highway he was driving on in Mexico cracked and sunk some 300 feet down a mountainside into the sea near the U.S. border.
The driver was rescued by heavy machinery before his truck, along with a 300-yard section of the road, which leads to port city Ensenada on the Baja California peninsula, slid into the Pacific Ocean.
While it remains unclear what caused the landslide, fractures in the Tijuana-Ensenada toll road were seen after several small earthquakes ranging from 1.3 to 4.3 in magnitude shook the area on December 19, according to some media reports. By Saturday morning huge cracks appeared in the cliff-side, exacerbated by heavy rain, before it slid into the sea.
The landslide caused gaping holes, one more than 40 feet deep and 200 feet long.

The collapse occurred about 58 miles south of the American border, closing the scenic road near the San Miguel toll booth.

Some media reports suggest that the road may remain closed for up to a year with vehicles advised to use a smaller, alternate freeway.

Mexican coastal highway slides into sea after earthquake

Fault line: Days before the road collapsed, several small earthquakes were recorded in the area and cracks started to appear in the road

Earthquakes, Rain to Blame for Collapse of Scenic Highway in Mexico

weather.com and Associated Press Published: Dec 30, 2013, 9:06 AM EST

Highway Crumbles into Pieces

MEXICO CITY — Part of a scenic highway on Mexico’s West coast collapsed Saturday after a series of small earthquakes rocked the area.
The highway, popular with tourists, is 58 miles south of the U.S. border and Tijuana. The road leads to the port city of Ensenada, on the Baja California peninsula. Mexican officials say a 300-yard section collapsed and the road fell about 100 feet.

American Forces Network

The highway leads to Ensenada is a popular scenic route for tourists. (American Forces Network)

The road was closed shortly after the collapse. Traffic is now being diverted onto a smaller highway. No one was injured in the collapse.
The Mexican highway agency told the Associated Press that seven small earthquakes, combined with recent heavy rainfall, were to blame for the collapse. The road runs over a known geological fault, according to Mexican officials.

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Tuesday, December 31, 2013

UK : Huge Sinkhole - 130 Feet deep and Growing

The more more rain and flooding, the better the chances are for seeing sinkholes!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic...

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130ft-deep SINK-HOLE opens up in sodden Derbyshire fields as forecasters warn wild, wild weather will continue for a MONTH