Temperature
Extremes
High
temperature extreme:
Villa Montes, Bolivia, +108 degrees.
Low temperature extreme:
Oimyakon, Siberia -58 degrees.
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Volcanoes
Ecuador’s
Guagua Pichincha Volcano continued to produce strong eruptions
six miles west of Quito, blanketing the capital with ash and keeping
the country’s main international airport shut down. Latest advisories
on this and other volcanoes in the Americas may be obtained at:
www.ssd.noaa.gov/VAAC/messages.html
Europe’s
largest underwater volcano is now active, according to the scientists
who have monitored it for years but until recently believed it
to be dormant. Mt. Marsili, which rises 9,800 feet from the seabed
in the Tyrrhenian Sea southwest of Naples, is capable of
producing huge tidal waves along southern Italy should an eruption
occur.
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Turtle
Haven
A
two-year ban on longline fishing throughout a vast area of the
Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii will go into effect next
month to protect the diminishing population of sea turtles.
The turtles live in an environment teeming with swordfish and
are accidentally being hooked by fishermen using longlines. The
protected zone starts about 500 miles north of Hawaii and extends
northward at a width of 1,000 miles. One of the four turtle groups
protected by the ban is the Leatherback, which is hovering on
extinction. Its population in the eastern Pacific is estimated
at 3,000, and it is already extinct in the western Pacific.
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Lightning
Death
Lightning
struck and killed a man in Brazil as he was answering his
cell phone during a severe thunderstorm.
The victim was walking in the city of Maria Quiteria, 750 miles
northeast of Rio de Janeiro, with four friends when the storm
began. His cell phone rang as the group was running for cover.
He stopped to answer the call and was immediately struck down
and killed by a bolt of lightning. Police said the man suffered
third- degree burns over much of his body.
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Earthquakes
At
least 10 people were killed and thousands of others left homeless
when a magnitude 7.1 earthquake beneath the seabed sent a giant
ocean wave (tsunami) crashing over Pentecost Island in the Pacific
nation of Vanuatu.
Earth
movements were felt in Taiwan, central Japan, northeast
and central China, southern Greece, Albania,
Bolivia, the Chile-Peru border region, the Los
Angeles Basin and California’s Mojave Desert.
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Siberian
Winds Chill Desert
Icy
winds blowing from Siberia chilled the Gulf desert state of Kuwait
to 35-year record lows with even colder weather predicted.
Al-Qabas reported that temperatures had dropped to 35 degrees
Fahrenheit. Well-known television weatherman Issa Ramadan told
his desert viewers that the colder weather at the week’s end would
break all existing records with subzero temperatures.
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New
Islands
German
and Danish scientists announced the discovery of a chain of six
previously unexplored islands 47 miles off the east coast of Greenland.
Scientists first spotted the islands from the air two years ago
after a huge block of ice broke away, then later pinpointed their
exact location with satellite images. A Danish researcher named
the chain the Tobias Islands after a dog that accompanied a Danish
exploration team to Greenland in 1906.
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African
Inundations
Torrential
rains have caused the Congo, the world’s second largest river,
to burst its banks and swamp cities in what disaster officials
are calling the “flood of the century.” The inundation forced
authorities to evacuate at least 16,000 residents from parts of
Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Three
people were killed in central and eastern Kenya as heavy
rain that began in late October continued to pound the country,
triggering flash floods. The rain also ended a severe drought
that has plagued the country.
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Indian
Monkey Siege
An
invasion of hungry monkeys in India’s capital of New Delhi
has caused some residents to become prisoners in their own homes.
Officials reported that the problem is due to a shortage of trappers
who could catch the simians and relocate them to less populated
areas. The animals have proliferated and are invading homes where
they break into refrigerators looking for a quick meal. The Times
of India reported that residents have taken to barricading their
houses with grills and wire mesh to keep out the marauding monkeys.
Many say that they have had to spend hours inside their locked
homes, which makes them feel as if they are in a cage and the
monkeys are like visitors in a zoo.
