Archive | March 6, 2015
New tropical storm has formed in Mozambique Channel
IMAGE: NASA/JAXA’S GPM SATELLITE SAW POWERFUL CONVECTIVE THUNDERSTORMS IN TROPICAL CYCLONE 15S WERE DROPPING RAIN AT A RATE OF OVER 30 MM (1.4 INCHES) PER HOUR WEST OF THE CENTER
Tropical Cyclone 15S formed in the Mozambique Channel of the Southern Indian Ocean, and the Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM core satellite gathered data on its rainfall rates.
The GPM (core satellite) flew over the northwestern half of newly formed Tropical Cyclone 15S on March 5 at 15:36 UTC (10:36 a.m. EST). The GPM satellite is managed by both NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency known as JAXA.
GPM’s Microwave Imager (GMI) instrument found that the heaviest precipitation was then occurring on the western side of the circulation center. Powerful convective thunderstorms in that area were dropping rain at a rate of over 30 mm (1.4 inches) per hour.
At 1500 UTC (10 a.m. EST) on March 5, TS15S’ maximum sustained winds were near 35 knots (40 mph/62 kph) making it a tropical storm. TS15S was centered near 15.9 south latitude and 42.1 east longitude, about 393 nautical miles north-northeast of Europa Island. Europa Island is an atoll in the Mozambique Channel, that’s located about one-third of the way from southern Madagascar to southern Mozambique.
The tropical storm is expected to meander in the Mozambique Channel before moving east toward the island of Madagascar, where forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center expect it to dissipate.
Courtesy of Eurek Alert
MAGNITUDE 5.0 OFF COAST OF AISEN, CHILE
http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=430613
Subject To Change
Depth: 10 km
Distances: 1367 km SW of Santiago, Chile / pop: 4,837,295 / local time: 07:39:51.5 2015-03-06
523 km W of Coihaique, Chile / pop: 45,787 / local time: 07:39:51.5 2015-03-06
403 km W of Puerto Quellón, Chile / pop: 21,823 / local time: 07:39:51.5 2015-03-06
UPGRADED BY EMSC MAGNITUDE 6.0 MID-INDIAN RIDGE
http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=430593
Subject To Change
Depth: 10 km
Distances: 3198 km SE of Port Louis, Mauritius / pop: 155,226 / local time: 12:22:19.4 2015-03-06
3272 km SE of Saint-Denis, Reunion / pop: 137,195 / local time: 12:22:19.4 2015-03-06
3993 km SE of Antananarivo, Madagascar / pop: 1,391,433 / local time: 11:22:19.4 2015-03-06
Plane crash injures Harrison Ford in Los Angeles, USA
The plane crashed just short of the Santa Monica Municipal Airport
US actor Harrison Ford has been injured in a small plane crash in Los Angeles.
The 72-year-old star of the Indiana Jones and Star Wars films reported engine failure and crash-landed his vintage plane on a Venice golf course.
He was breathing and alert when medics arrived and took him to hospital in a “fair to moderate” condition, a fire department spokesman said.
His son Ben, a chef in Los Angeles, later tweeted from the hospital: “Dad is OK. Battered but OK!
His publicist said: “The injuries sustained are not life threatening, and he is expected to make a full recovery,”
The nature of Ford’s injuries have not been disclosed but website TMZ, which first reported the story, said he suffered “multiple gashes to his head”.
Shortly after take-off from Santa Monica Airport, he said he was having engine failure with his 1942 Ryan Aeronautical ST3KR and was making an “immediate return”.
He was unable to reach the runway and landed on the golf course, where onlookers pulled him from the plane fearing it could explode.
Officials said the plane had been flying at about 3,000 feet (914 metres) and hit a tree on the way down.
“There was no explosion or anything. It just sounded like a car hitting the ground or a tree or something. Like that one little bang, and that was it,” Jeff Kuprycz, who was playing golf told the Associated Press news agency.
“He ended up crashing around the eighth hole.”
Christian Fry of the Santa Monica Airport Association said it was “an absolutely beautifully executed emergency landing by an unbelievably well-trained pilot”.
Film producer Ryan Kavanaugh witnessed the accident from his office near the airport where Harrison had taken off.
He told The Hollywood Reporter: “He literally had five seconds, and 99 per cent of pilots would have turned around to go back to the runway and would have crashed – it would have stalled, gone nose first and crashed.”
“Harrison did what the best pilots in the world would do,” he continued. “He made the correct turn that the plane was designed for with an engine out.”
‘Moderate trauma’
After crash-landing, Ford was initially treated by two doctors who happened to be at the golf course.
Fire Department spokesman Patrick Butler said the LAFD received a 911 emergency call at 14:20 (22:20 GMT) and attended to a “medium-to-high impact” plane crash at the Penmar Golf Course.
There have been calls from local people to close Santa Monica airport, which is situated in a residential district, because of concerns about safety and noise.
Later this year, Ford is reprising his role of Han Solo in the latest addition to the Star Wars franchise, Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
He broke his leg in June last year on set at Pinewood Studios while filming a scene involving a door on the Millennium Falcon spaceship.
Ford took up flying when he was in his 50s and is also trained to fly helicopters.
In 1999, Ford crash-landed his helicopter during a training flight in Los Angeles but both he and the instructor were unhurt.
A year later a plane he was flying had to make an emergency landing at Lincoln Municipal Airport in Nebraska. Again he and his passenger escaped unhurt after the plane clipped the runway.
Courtesy of The BBC
Massive fireball as crude oil freight train derails in Illinois, USA
March 5, 2015: Smoke and flames erupt from the scene of a train derailment. (AP)
A freight train carrying crude oil through Illinois derailed, bursting into flames and promoting evacuations of everyone within one mile of the accident, authorities said.
The train derailed at 1:20 p.m. near where the Galena River meets the Mississippi, Jo Daviess County Sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Moser said. The train had 103 cards loaded with crude oiler, along with two buffer cars loaded with sand.
There were no injuries reported and the cause of the crash has not been determined.
The derailment occurred three miles south of the Galena in a rural area, which is a major tourist attraction and the home of former President Ulysses S. Grant.
Firefighters arrived on the scene, but could only fight the flames from the bike path, Galena Assistant Fire Chief Bob Conley said. They attempted to fight a small fire, but were unable to stop the flames.
The derailment comes amid increased public concern about the safety of shipping crude by train. According to the Association of American Railroads, oil shipments by rail jumped from 9,500 carloads in 2008 to 500,000 in 2014, driven by a boom in the Bakken oil patch of North Dakota and Montana, where pipeline limitations force 70 percent of the crude to move by rail.
Since 2008, derailments of oil trains in the U.S. and Canada have seen 70,000-gallon tank cars break open and ignite on multiple occasions, resulting in huge fires. A train carrying Bakken crude crashed in a Quebec town in 2013, killing 47 people. Last month, a train carrying 3 million gallons of North Dakota crude derailed in a West Virginia snowstorm, shooting fireballs into the sky, leaking oil into a river tributary and forcing hundreds of families to evacuate.
The ruptures and fires have prompted the Obama administration to consider requiring upgrades such as thicker tanks, shields to prevent tankers from crumpling, rollover protections and electronic brakes that could make cars stop simultaneously, rather than slam into each other.
The Federal Railroad Administration said in a statement it was sending investigators to the crash site.
Courtesy of Fox News
MAGNITUDE 5.6 MID INDIAN RIDGE
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usc000tvgw#general_summary
Subject To Change
Depth: 10 km
Distances: 468km (291mi) SSE of Amsterdam Island, France
2895km (1799mi) SSE of Ile Rodrigues, Mauritius
3166km (1967mi) SE of Mahebourg, Mauritius
3167km (1968mi) SE of Plaine Magnien, Mauritius
3200km (1988mi) SE of Port Louis, Mauritius
PROTON PARTICLES HAVE DRAMATICALLY INCREASED
**URGENT PROTON ALERT**
PROTON PARTICLES HAVE DRAMATICALLY INCREASED. FURTHER EARTHQUAKES, VOLCANO ACTIVITY & ADVERSE WEATHER PATTERNS WILL BE GREATLY INFLUENCED BY THE COSMIC RAYS STRIKING THE EARTH’S CORE
***BE ALERT***
MAGNITUDE 4.4 MOROCCO, AFRICA
http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=430576
Subject To Change
Depth: 10 km
Distances: 255 km SE of Gibraltar, Gibraltar / pop: 26,544 / local time: 05:01:51.2 2015-03-06
36 km S of Melilla, Spain / pop: 73,460 / local time: 05:01:51.2 2015-03-06
19 km W of Zaïo, Morocco / pop: 30,008 / local time: 04:01:51.2 2015-03-06
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