The Icelandic eruption that everyone has been waiting for ended up being small, lasting ~3-4 hours and producing lava flows and spatter ramparts. Video of this morning’s flyover show a linear fissure about 0.6 km long (see above) that is still degassing strongly, but no lava is currently erupting. A shot of the eruption site (see above) released today clearly shows the short lava flow tongues that issued from the fissure during the brief eruption. Right now, there is no threat at all to aviation and even during the height of the eruption last night, the explosivity was low. The IMO has lowered the aviation alert level back to orange and briefly raising it to red during the eruption last night. The latest statement from the IMO says that they are still unsure how the eruption may proceed: this might be it or new fissures may open in the area as more magma reaches the surface.
The same can’t be said for the ongoing eruption from the Rabaul caldera, an eruption that was not expected. The Tavurvur cone has been producing impressive explosive eruptions that has caused some international flights to alter their flightpaths to avoid the copious ash. Unlike the Icelandic eruption, this eruption is occurring right next to a city of nearly 20,000 people, so the threat to life and property is much higher. In fact, the 1994 eruption of Rabaul came close to destroying the city, so this sort of intense eruption from Tavurvur can have very real consequences for the people living near the volcano – and the current activity has led to evacuations of some of the villages nearby. You can check out a brief video of the intense strombolian eruption from yesterday while galleries of the eruption show the impressive ash plume from the eruption that spread mostly to the southwest and southeast.
The Rabaul eruption is probably the one to watch most closely because the Rabaul caldera has a history of explosive eruptions and is much closer to populated area. Right now, the Icelandic eruption is about a benign as an eruption can be: it is in a remote area and has been lava flows with some lava fountains. The Icelandic events have definitely captured the public’s imagination, but in terms of real world volcanic hazards, Rabaul is the real threat.
Strong deep earthquake below the sea in Southern Greece (West of Ademas)
Last update: August 29, 2014 at 5:38 am by By Armand Vervaeck
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Update : Due to the deep hypocenter, this earthquake will have been felt by millions of people who, if the data are right, will all of them have felt a weak or max. light shaking
Update : ER does not expect damage because of this earthquake. 2 main reasons for this : a) a deep hypocenter which means that strong shaking waves will be weaker when they arrive at the surface and b) the epicenter below the sea floor (below land is always more dangerous)
60km (37mi) W of Adamas, Greece
121km (75mi) S of Vari, Greece
122km (76mi) S of Voula, Greece
123km (76mi) S of Kalyvia Thorikou, Greece
137km (85mi) S of Athens, Greece
Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : 5.8
Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2014-08-29 06:45:07
Massive earthquake at intermediate depth in Peru – 1 collapsed home, multiple buildings damaged.
Last update: August 25, 2014 at 4:29 am by By Armand Vervaeck
This article is also written by Carlos Robles and James Daniell.
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Update 09:58 UTC: INDECI has updated damage and injury reports: Ica Region:
-Two non-life threatening injuries. Ayacucho Region Lucanas Province:
-One collapsed home in Amoca.
-10 damaged homes in Sanco.
– 3 damaged schools (2 in Sancos and 1 in Chaviña).
– 1 damaged clinic in Sancos.
– 1 damaged temple in Chaviña.
Paranicochas Province: – 4 damaged homes in Coracora.
-Two small landslides have been reported so far, one in the route Los Libertadores – Huancavelica and one in Panamericana Sur – Arequipa.
Update 03:57 UTC: INDECI has released initial values from the earthquake, with the Seismological Service of Peru having given a Ml6.6 earthquake at 106km depth. 1 house was destroyed in Amoca, Lucanas. 4 houses were damaged in Cora Cora. 1 temple and 1 school were also slightly damaged in Chavina.
Update 00:18 UTC: Very great news, USGS has just decreased the magnitude to 6.9 and changed the depth from 59km to 100km, a shallower quake has a lot more potential to create damage.
Update 00:01 UTC: Radio RPP is reporting damaged homes in Coracora.
Update 23:57 UTC: The quake was widely felt in a very big area and in a lot of big cities including Lima, the capital of Peru, this big cities should only have felt a slight shaking for a prolonged time and should only have minimal damage. Villages closer to the epicenter should have taken all the impact, but news from those areas will take time to travel.
Update 23:48 UTC : Very dangerous earthquake in a sparsely populated area of Peru
42km (26mi) ENE of Tambo, Peru
61km (38mi) E of Puquio, Peru
108km (67mi) S of Andahuaylas, Peru
131km (81mi) SW of Abancay, Peru
471km (293mi) SE of Lima, Peru
Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : 6.8
Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2014-08-24 18:21:41
CRISTOBAL intensified into a hurricane early last night as wind shear eased a bit, and outflow improved somewhat to the North and south. Shear remains relatively high near 20Kts, and with no improvement in the outflow pattern above the storm expected and the proximity to drier to its west – significant intensification appears unlikely as the 988mb storm moves Northward during the next 2 days along the western periphery of the sub-tropical (Bermuda) High centered in the central Atlantic. All the models are now in excellent agreement on both the track and intensity forecast for CRISTOBAL, and except for large waves and localized rip currents along the east coast – CRISTOBAL will have no impact on the US mainland
INVEST 97L POSES A POTENTIAL THREAT OF DEVELOPMENT THIS WEEKEND
Although NHC dropped 97L overnight, this system is now BACK on the NHC home page chart, most likely due to several global models now forecasting it to develop this weekend as it approaches the Leeward Islands – with the GFS and a few other models tracking it as a cyclone into the southeast coast of the US mainland late next week. Because NHC ‘dropped’ the system over night, none of the specialized hurricane models we executed during the 12Z cycle run. However, the models will almost certainly be initialized for the 18Z cycle run later today. That said – the system is currently surrounded by dry and somewhat stable air with no significant outflow signature seen on SAT imagery at this time; so development, if any, will be quite slow for the next 72 hours.
STRONG DISTURBANCE STILL WESTBOUND OVER AFRICA
Finally, the strongest African tropical disturbance of the season is now located over west-central Africa with a long history of deep convection and a well established rotation in low to mid levels. The disturbance is now moving slowly westward, and is expected to emerge off the west African coast this weekend. Some model projections forecast this system to gradually intensify next week – but also put it on a more Northwesterly track next week – implying this system will start heading out to sea by later next week.
Fig 1: Early morning VIS imagery shows the center of CRISTOBAL on the NW side of deep convection moving Northward at about 5Kts (based on the last 6 hours of RECON/SAT image tracking). The overall satellite signature is highly unusual for a tropical cyclone, especially of hurricane intensity – with the system appearing to be along the southern edge of a mid-latitude frontal boundary. In some respects, that is exactly what has occurred over the last 24 hours, with the southward plunge of well defined dry air surge to the immediate west of the cyclone, leading to a ‘linear’ type orientation of convection extending from well north of CRISTOBAL southward to the storm itself. There is a small possibility that this ‘dynamic’ boundary actually helped intensify the cyclone, despite the moderate shear and dry air that is just west of the storms core circulation. Normally, dry air this close to a relatively weak and sheared system like we had would weaken or totally halt intensification – but in this case (the first I’ve ever seen) – the opposite occurred. It’s worth noting that the dry air surge extended into the northern GOM as well – triggering a line of strong convection there.
Fig 2: The above overview of the tropical Atlantic shows a significant tropical wave/disturbance that was (and now again, is) 97L approaching 50W, and is still westbound at ~16Kts. Dry air is to the north and northwest of the system does not appear to be infiltrating the central area of what isolated convection there is. However, the system still remains in a less than favorable area of somewhat stable air – with no upper level wind support. As the system approaches the far eastern CARIB late this week, the environment should become somewhat more favorable for development.
Fig 3: Enhanced IR imagery over Africa earlier this morning highlights the very strong system in west-central Africa. This system had been moving W/SW for the last 36 hours – but has slowed its forward motion somewhat, and is expected to move on a West/Northwest (290°) during the next few days.
Fig 4: The above image over Africa includes satellite derived winds – and show a well established cyclonic flow around the major system of interest – just as it had for the last 2 days
Fig 5: The global models like the NAVY GEM above – and the GFS & CMC forecasts (not shown) all forecast the system to slowly intensify next week, with the GFS then carrying the system into the SE U.S. coast as a cyclone. Clearly, this system needs close monitoring.
It doesn’t look much like hurricane, but the Hurricane Hunters measured surface winds around 75 mph on Monday evening and Tuesday morning in Hurricane Cristobal, making it the third hurricane of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season. These missions proved the value of hurricane hunter flights, since there is no way that we would have known Cristobal was a hurricane based on satellite data. The storm is stretched out in a long line of heavy thunderstorms, has no eye or low-level spiral bands, and is giving early August’s Hurricane Bertha some stiff competition for ugliest Atlantic hurricane of the century. Along with Hurricane Arthur and Hurricane Bertha, Cristobal gives us three Atlantic hurricanes so far this year, exceeding the entire 2013 Atlantic hurricane season total. The second (and final) hurricane of the 2013 season (Ingrid) did not arrive until September 14. On average, the third hurricane of the Atlantic season arrives on September 9, and the third named storm of the year on August 13. The last time the first three named storms in the Atlantic became hurricanes was in 1983, when Alicia, Barry and Chantal all became hurricanes (if we exclude 1992, when an unnamed subtropical storm formed prior to the arrival of Hurricanes Andrew, Bonnie, and Charley.) Cristobal continues to dump heavy rains over the Central and Southeast Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands as the storm heads northeastwards out to sea. Satellite loops show that Cristobal is struggling with wind shear, with a center of circulation partially exposed to view, and all the heavy thunderstorms pushed to the south and east sides of the center. The only land area at risk from Cristobal is Bermuda, and the 5 am EDT Tuesday Wind Probability Forecast from NHC gave that island a 27% chance of experiencing tropical storm force winds of 39+ mph. The GOES-14 satellite is in rapid-scan mode over Cristobal on Tuesday, and you can access an impressive 1-minute resolution satellite loop of the storm from the NOAA/RAMMB website.
Figure 1. MODIS true-color image showing Tropical Storm Cristobal’s intense thunderstorms stretching from the Southeast Bahamas to Bermuda at 2 pm EDT on August 25, 2014. At the time, Cristobal had top winds of 60 mph. Image credit: NASA.
Little change to 97L headed towards the Lesser Antilles
A tropical wave (Invest 97L) was near 13°N, 47°W on Tuesday morning, about 900 miles east of the Lesser Antilles Islands, and was headed west to west-northwest at about 15 mph. Satellite loops show the wave has changed little since Monday, and has a modest amount of spin but only a small amount of heavy thunderstorms. Water vapor satellite images and the Saharan Air Layer analysis show that 97L is located in a dry environment, which is keeping development slow. Wind shear was a moderate 10 – 20 knots, which should allow some slow development. Sea Surface Temperatures are near 27.5°C, which is warm enough to allow some slow development. The wave should arrive in the Lesser Antilles Islands by Friday and be near Puerto Rico on Saturday, according to the Tuesday morning runs of the GFS model. None of the three reliable computer models for predicting tropical storm formation predict 97L will develop over the next five days. In their 8 am EDT Tuesday Tropical Weather Outlook, NHC gave 97L 2-day and 5-day development odds of 0% and 20%, respectively. These odds are 10% lower than their previous advisory, and NHC has stopped running their suite of models on 97L.
New tropical wave coming off coast of Africa this weekend
A large and powerful tropical wave will move off the coast of Africa on Friday evening, and the GFS model has been very aggressive in recent runs about developing this wave into a tropical storm within a day of its emergence. The other reliable models for tropical cyclone genesis, the European and UKMET models, have not been developing this wave right away. Residents of the Cape Verde Islands should anticipate the possibility of heavy rain and strong winds on Saturday as the wave moves west at 10 – 15 mph across the islands. In their 8 am EDT Tuesday Tropical Weather Outlook, NHC gave 97L 2-day and 5-day development odds of 0% and 30%, respectively.
The Gulf of Mexico is worth watching
In the Gulf of Mexico, heavy thunderstorm activity has diminished since Monday along a weak cold front stretching from South Florida to the Louisiana coastal waters. Some models show a weak area of low pressure developing along this front and moving westwards over Texas by Friday, and we should keep an eye on this region for development.
Figure 2. MODIS true-color image of Hurricane Marie in the Eastern Pacific taken at approximately 18:15 UTC (2:15 pm EDT) on August 25, 2014. At the time, Marie was a Category 4 storm with 145 mph winds. Image credit: NASA.
Powerful Hurricane Marie generating huge waves in Eastern Pacific
The Eastern Pacific’s Hurricane Marie had weakened to a Category 2 storm with 105 mph winds on Tuesday morning, but was still generating huge swells that were bringing large waves to the coasts of Southern California and Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. At 5 am EDT on Tuesday, Marie’s tropical storm-force winds covered a huge area of ocean, up to 275 miles from the center, and 12-foot high seas extended up to 550 miles from the center. A High Surf Advisory is in effect for Los Angeles, where waves of 10 – 15 feet will potentially cause structural damage to piers and beachside property as well as significant beach erosion. The powerful surf will be accompanied by strong rip currents and long-shore currents, making for very hazardous swimming and surfing conditions through Thursday. Satellite loops on Tuesday morning showed a steady degradation of Marie’s cloud pattern, with the eyewall cloud tops warming and the areal coverage of the strongest thunderstorms decreasing. The storm is headed to the northwest over cooler waters and into drier air, and will not affect any land areas.
You can see a spectacular loop of infrared satellite images of Marie as it intensified into a Category 5 storm on Sunday at the CIMSS University of Wisconsin.
Extremely dangerous earthquake close to the Napa Valley, California – no official report of injuries so far but a lot of damage
Last update: August 24, 2014 at 2:09 pm by By Armand Vervaeck
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Update 13:57 UTC : A typical strike-slip earthquake with a mainly horizontal movement OR in otrher words the most dangerous earthquake type in the world. Still no official reports about injured people. A lot of rumours though.
Update 13:27 UTC : Damage we can expect at a place like Napa Valley. What a terrible waste of energy for the wine makers. Hopefulkly they are well insured
Update 13:24 UTC : No official reports of injuries so far (let’s call this a miracle)
Update 13:18 UTC : 68,742 customers still without power across California; majority affected are in Napa and Sonoma counties
Update 13:13 UTC : Significant damage to downtown Napa, ordering rescue teams, people trapped in homes
The Napa City council reports that some streets in downtown Napa, Calif., are being closed following major damage to buildings
Update 11:45 UTC : Twitter user Mike Smith just wrote : Listening to a Napa County scanner stream. Sounds like a lot of injuries and damage in the Napa/Sonoma area.
Update 11:38 UTC : A building partly collapsed in Napa (see image below). ER fears that there are more cases like this one. Hard to say how many people might be injured but we are sure that there wil be people injured during this quake. Recent houses will be OK but alder not-refitted houses might be of risk.
Update 11:29 UTC : California Highway Patrol checking crossings and bridges for obvious signs of structural integrity after quake. For our readers from elsewhere in the world : The earthquake happened in the middle of the night and rescue services have to operate in the dark. millions of people have been awakened from the shaking of this earthquake
Update 11:23 UTC : There is a population of 280000 people in a radius of 20 km around the epicenter. Power outages are reported in North Bay area of San Francisco as well as Sonoma, Napa counties
Update 11:13 UTC : Until now much reports of shaken interiors from Napa and the Napa valley area
Update 11:08 UTC : People in Napa Valley are frightened and call it the biggest ever. The image below is from a house in Napa. San Francisco no reports of damage so far.
Ar ER we call a radius of 10 km around the epicenter as extremely dangerous and a radius of 30 km as dangerous for damage/injuries
Update 11:01 UTC : ER calls this earthquake extremely dangerous for serious damage and even injuries.
Update 10:59 UTC : We apologise for not being able to serve all our readers as the servers can only serve a limited number of people (thousands at a time) but demand is simply too high to cope
6km (4mi) NW of American Canyon, California
9km (6mi) SSW of Napa, California
13km (8mi) NNW of Vallejo, California
14km (9mi) SE of Sonoma, California
82km (51mi) WSW of Sacramento, California
Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : 6
Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2014-08-24 03:20:44
It has now been over 4 days of intense seismicity at Iceland Barðarbunga, located under the Vatnajökull ice cap. The latest report from the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) says that over 2,600 earthquakes, most less than M3, have occurred since the morning of August 16. The activity has shifted in its focus (see below) and is now primarily under a part of Vatnajökull that is ~600 meter thick, so any eruption would have a lot of ice to melt when the lava reaches the surface. This likely means that it would be a long time before any eruption would be noticed on the surface of the ice cap – instead, it would be glacial outburst floods (jökulhlaups) that would herald the start of the eruption. If the eruption never breaches the surface of the ice cap, there is the potential of a new tuya forming under the ice, where lava forms a broad, flat-topped mountain. Beyond the seismicity, we’ve also seen deformation around the focus of the earthquakes, suggesting magma is filling in below and needs to make space by moving the Earth’s surface. IMO says most of the seismicity is occurring at depths between 3-7 km but there aren’t signs yet that the magma is moving to shallower depths, so we still could see this all end as merely the intrusion of magma rather than an eruption. The alert status for Barðarbunga remains at Orange.
If you want to see what some of the potential scenarios, be sure to read Dr. Dave McGarvie’s article. Also, there are now two webcams pointed at the Barðarbunga area, so you can keep an eye on it if any potential eruption manifests at the surface: Mila and Mogt.is. You can also see some realtime earthquake data in 3D (note: I can’t guarantee the accuracy of this model and more recent earthquakes do not have accurate depths until they have been examined) on this interactive page.
ERUPTING FILAMENT CREATES ‘CANYON OF FIRE’, CME: A magnetic filament snaking down the middle of the solar disk erupted during the late hours of Aug. 15th. The eruption split the sun’s atmosphere, hurling a CME toward Earth and creating a “canyon of fire,” shown here in a movie recorded by the Solar Dynamics Observatory:
The glowing walls of the canyon trace the original channel where the filament was suspended by magnetic forces above the stellar surface. From end to end, the structure stretches more than 250,000 km–a real Grand Canyon.
Of greater interest to us on Earth is the coronal mass ejection (CME) which billowed away from the blast site: movie. Coronagraph images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory show that it is a ‘halo CME.’ In other words, it is heading straight for Earth. Minor geomagnetic storms are possible when the cloud arrives during the late hours of August 18th. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.
Moderate earthquake in Yunnan/Sichuan, China injures 20 people and damages 1424 houses
Last update: August 17, 2014 at 4:10 pm by By Armand Vervaeck
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Update 15:37 UTC : Most recent information as brought by China Daily about this earthquake :
At least 19 people were injured after an earthquake measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale jolted Yongshan County in southwest China’s Yunnan Province at 6:07 am on Sunday, local authorities said.
The epicenter was in Wuji Township, 21 kilometers from the county seat. The source of the quake was 7 km deep.
20 injured in SW China earthquake
The quake was strongly felt in the neighboring counties of Suijiang, Daguan and Zhenxiong as well as the Zhaoyang District of Zhaotong City, which administers Yongshan, according to the provincial seismological bureau.
Nineteen people in Yongshan were injured and 1,424 houses were damaged as of 2 p.m., with 42 houses collapsed and 568 badly damaged. Cracks have been spotted in adobe houses and more than 10 cattle lots collapsed at Jinping Village, according to the county government.
Among the injured, ten have been sent to county hospitals for treatment and another nine are receiving medical care at township clinics.
About 50 km of roads, 41 km of tunnels and 21 km of power transmission lines were damaged in five townships. More than 1,000 local officials, policemen and militia personnel are working in the affected regions in rescue efforts and disaster investigations.
About 200 firefighters from various cities have arrived in Yongshan for rescue.
Civil affairs authorities have sent 200 tents, 2,000 quilts and 2,000 coats to the county.
Twenty-two aftershocks had been reported as of 8 a.m. on Sunday. Communication in the county is unimpeded, according to the seismological bureau.
Yunnan governor Li Jiheng led a work team to Yongshan from Ludian, also a county in Zhaotong City, where a 6.5-magnitude earthquake on Aug. 3 killed more than 600 people and destroyed 80,000 homes.
The Yongshan earthquake is not an aftershock of the Ludian earthquake as the epicenters of the two quakes are 113 km away from each other, said Zhang Junwei, an official with the provincial seismological bureau.
Update 09:48 TC : The Chinese authorities published new data about this earthquake (only mainshock so far) : 16 collapsed houses, 196 severely damaged houses and 481 slightly damaged houses
Update 09:25 UTC : M4.0 and M4.2 aftershocks will normally trigger more minor damage (based on our China experience)
Update August 17 09:18 UTC : We had to change the title as the Chinese authorities said that we had to talk about a new earthquake and not an aftershock. The epicenter of this earthquake is 110 km north of the deadly Ludian quake.
So far the authorities reported 19 people injured, 11 houses collapsed, 37 houses severely damaged and 189 damaged to various extend.
Some minor damage was also reported from Sichuan
Update 22:19 UTC : We found out that this was a Yunnan aftershock of M4.8 at a depth of 5 km. Additional damage will certainly be inflicted in the epicenter area, but the damage will be hopefully not serious (what we expect)
Leibo County (from the epicenter approximately 19.7 kilometers)
Yongshan County (from the epicenter approximately 19.9 kilometers)
Meigu (from the epicenter approximately 44.6 kilometers)
King County (from the epicenter approximately 51.0 kilometers)
Zhaojue County (from the epicenter approximately 65.4 kilometers)
Suijiang County (from the epicenter approximately 71.5 kilometers)
Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : 5.1
Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2014-08-17 06:08:02
Perhaps you’ve yet to hear of a little town called Fryeburg, Maine, USA. It sits on its own pristine aquifer, but once Nestlé subsidiary Poland Spring moved to town, residents noticed that their streams were getting smaller. It turns out, in its continued efforts to privatize water, the company was pumping the aquifer, and then selling the water back to town residents in bottles. Freyburg is fighting back, thoug
Nestlé has openly admitted that they don’t think water is a human right. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the Chairman and CEO of Nestlé, stated so openly in public, only to back-paddle later once activists accused him of being singularly interested in corporate profits and not water conservation, as he claimed. You can see him admit his true stance in this video.
When lakes and streams started to be depleted in Freyburg (that’s some water conservation, Nestlé) the residents spoke up, and the company then launched an aggressive, divide and conquer campaign.
The corp sued the town, almost bankrupting several water advocacy activists, and worked with the city board members to ensure their ongoing access to the town’s water. Nestlé took the case all the way to the Supreme Court when Freyburg wouldn’t just lay down and take it.
Furthermore, Nestlé alsoset up a Poland Spring shop for outreach, and established the Fryeburg Business Association staffed by a Nestlé employee. What this corrupt company is trying to do is get people to accept this as the norm: water they have to pay a corporation for, even though it was abundant and free prior to Nestlé’s interference.
Activists have taken up a new plan to try to defeat Nestlé, launching an education campaign to try to get residents to reclaim their water rides and pride of ownership in what was already theirs before a corporate monopoly moved to town. They are passing out re-usable water bottles to Fryeburg residents stamped with the message, “we don’t want your bottled water!”
Activists have also set up a website, called StopNestleWaters.org, to help oust this greedy behemoth from their town. Freyburg has won suits brought against them five times (and appealed) by Nestlé. Nestlé’s lost all four (one is still pending), and in one instance, the company’s lawyers argued in front of the Maine Supreme Court that their right to grow market share superceded the town’s right of control. You can see a video of that here.
The citizen’s group trying to fight Nestlé; however, is now $20,000 in debt, trying to keep up with their constant legal attack
If you want to support the town of Freyburg and send Nestlé a very clear message before they come to your town trying to sell you back any remaining good water that is still around after fracking and weaponized-weather-induced drought, you can contribute here.
