Snow Storm - Russia [Asia], Chelyabinsk Oblast, Chelyabinsk

Earth Watch Report  -  Snow Storm

Young women cross a snow-covered bridge after a snowstorm in Yekaterinburg. (RIA Novosti/Pavel Lisitsyn)

.....

Snow Storm

Russia [Asia]

Chelyabinsk Oblast, Chelyabinsk

.....

RSOE EDIS

Snow Storm in Russia [Asia] on Saturday, 26 April, 2014 at 13:31 (01:31 PM) UTC.

Description Electricity was cut off to more than 150 residential localities in the Chelyabinsk region hit by a heavy snowstorm on Friday. Electro-transmission lines were covered with snow and torn by strong winds. Electricity supply was resumed to most of the houses overnight, but 13 residential localities of 9,369 people had no electricity on Saturday morning, the Russian Emergencies Ministry's Chelyabinsk regional department reported. Repairs were planned to be completed at 16:00 Moscow time. Mass cultural events and school classes were cancelled in Chelyabinsk on Saturday, and all services in the city remained on alert because of the severe weather. Emergency services organized work to clear roads of snow and help drivers. Hospitals were ready to receive affected people. The Emergencies Ministry reported that the bad weather with heavy snow and winds of 20-25 m/sec would remain in the region on Saturday.

.....

Winter comes again suddenly for Russia’s Urals (PHOTOS)

Published time: April 26, 2014 13:24

Pedestrians cross the street during a heavy blizzard in Chelyabinsk, Russia (RIA Novosti/Aleksandr Kondratuk)

Russia’s Urals region has been hit with freak winter weather, with severe snowstorms causing massive traffic jams, flight delays, power blackouts and school closures.
Just when everybody in the cities of Ekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk thought they had waved winter good-bye and was anticipating greener spring weather, blizzards dragging the region back to winter.

Having heard the forecast for snow, internet users were taking photos of the frail Urals spring that was proclaimed doomed by meteorologists.
Those would later be used in “before and after” collages with “goodbye summer” hashtags.
“We have snow falling the whole day without stopping,” an Instagram user wrote. “It’s sweeping severely, everything’s white. My daughter even wanted to go for a snow-tubing ride.”

Winter struck the region hard, with precipitation twice the monthly average coming as a shock to already burgeoning grass and trees.


Chelyabinsk made headlines across the world last year when a huge meteorite rocked the region. These late April blizzards have led to numerous online jokes over the region’s “misfortune.”

“Chelyabinsk’s somewhat harsh,” one Twitter user wrote. “They either have meteorite or snow at the end of spring.”

The sudden return of winter has led to chaos on the region’s highways.

.....


.....

Related articles

• Snow Storm - Asia - Russia [Asia]
• Snowstorm hits Chelyabinsk reg, leaving thousands without electricity
• Winter comes again suddenly for Russia's Urals (PHOTOS)
• Snow Storm - Europe - Russia [Asia]

Gang of Asteroids Russian meteor may have followers on same

Chelyabinsk meteorite may have gang of siblings – study

Published time: August 05, 2013 14:06
Edited time: August 05, 2013 16:13

The Chelyabinsk meteor trace. (RIA Novosti / Nakanune.RU)

The Chelyabinsk meteorite that hit Russia in February, injuring over a thousand, may have stemmed from a massive cluster of rocks which broke off from a disintegrating asteroid thousands of years ago, a new study claims.
Spanish astronomers have discovered that the Chelyabinsk bolide, an 18-meter wide 11,000-ton space rock that burst in a 460-kiloton explosion above Russia, used to be a part of a larger space body.
Scientists believe between 20,000 to 40,000 years ago, a massive body orbiting the sun broke up, most likely as a result of the temperature extremes and planetary gravitation it experienced while looping out past Mars and Venus.
Subsequently, the pieces of that asteroid formed a so-called ‘asteroid family’, a group of asteroids that share same origin, composition and orbit. The parent of this potentially hazardous asteroid family has been identified as 2011 EO40. Those rocks are still flying somewhere in space, and just like the Chelyabinsk meteorite, their orbits could intersect with that of Earth.
In a new study, Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and his brother Raul from the Complutense University in Madrid said that they have found reliable statistical evidence for the existence of the Chelyabinsk cluster, or asteroid family.
The brothers used computer simulations of billions of possible asteroid orbits to find the ones most fitting into the Chelyabinsk impactor pre-collision orbit. They then searched the NASA database of known asteroids to find out if any of them follow those orbits. In the course of their investigation, they spotted the Chelyabinsk bolide family of about 20 asteroids, which range in size from 5 to 200 meters across.
“It appears to include multiple small asteroids and two relatively large members: 2007 BD7 and 2011 EO40. The most probable parent body for the Chelyabinsk superbolide is [asteroid] 2011 EO40,” according to their article, which is to be published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.
The study points out that the shattered pieces of a rubble-pile asteroid can spread along the entire orbit of the parent body, making their collision with Earth possible on a time-scale of hundreds of years.
Read More  Here

Related articles

• Russian Meteor May Have Sibling Asteroids That Pose Threat To Earth, Study Suggests
• Study: Chelyabinsk Meteorite Could Come from Asteroid Family
• Chelyabinsk meteor formed by dangerous asteroid 2011 EO40
• Russian meteor 'groupies' may still threaten Earth - study
• Asteroid named as possible source of exploding Russian meteorite
• Russian Meteor Might Have Siblings in Tow
• Asteroid pinpointed as likely source of Russian meteor
• Russian meteor may have gangmates in tow
• Russian meteor may have gangmates in tow