Archive for October 5th, 2015

This is now deepest lake in Iceland, thanks to melting glaciers

Mother Nature Network: This gorgeous but frigid scene is Jökulsárlón, perhaps the most famous lake in Iceland. Located at the head of the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier, the lake first appeared only in 1934-1935. Since then, it has continued to grow at varying rates based on the speed of glacier melt. Only a handful of years ago, it became the deepest lake in Iceland at over 814 feet deep. The floating icebergs that have calved from the glacier are a big tourist and photographer attraction, and a variety of companies...

South Carolina Braces for More Flooding as Rain Persists

New York Times: South Carolina emergency officials warned that flooding would continue Monday in “more than half” of the state, as rescue crews continued to extricate residents from inundated neighborhoods. Many other residents navigated a state in disarray, with broken waterlines, impassable roads and thousands of power failures. An unrelenting storm system partly fed by moisture from Hurricane Joaquin has been pounding the state since Thursday. Gov. Nikki R. Haley on Sunday called the resultant flooding “an incident...

Gov. Haley: South Carolina Rainfall Is Worst in a Thousand Years

Huffington Post: "We haven't seen this level of rain in the low country in a thousand years," Gov. Nikki Haley told reporters Sunday afternoon. "That's how big this is." In just the last 12 hours before her 3 p.m. press conference, she said, there had been 754 calls for assistance and 320 collisions. At least eight people have died in the Carolinas. "It is literally changing by the minute," she said of the number of incidents and amount of rainfall. More than 20 inches of rain have fallen in parts of the...

Oil Patch Braces for Exploration Chill After Canada’s Election

Bloomberg: As Canada’s oil patch grapples with a price shock, pipeline delays and rising tax rates, the federal election could add another barrier to recovery by reining in a key incentive for development of new wells. Two of the three major parties jostling for power in the Oct. 19 vote are campaigning against “fossil fuel subsidies” and propose tightening the rules for a tax deduction that allows oil-and-gas producers to write off exploration costs against profits entirely in the year they’re incurred....

East coast floods bring misery to Carolinas – in pictures

Guardian: A deadly ‘once in a millennium’ deluge triggered by hurricane Joaquin has battered large swaths of the east coast

Obama administration moving to create two marine sanctuaries

Reuters: President Barack Obama's administration will announce steps on Monday to create marine sanctuaries in Maryland and Wisconsin and will take further action to combat illegal fishing, the White House said. The proposed sites - a 14-square-mile (36-square-km) section in the Mallows Bay-Potomac River waters of Maryland, and an 875-square-mile (2,265-square-km) area of Wisconsin's Lake Michigan, will be the first new National Marine Sanctuaries since 2000, the administration said. The proposals will be...

Death toll in French Riviera floods rises to at least 16, natural disaster declared

Reuters: Flash floods on the French Riviera killed 16 people and five others were reported missing on Sunday, prompting the government to declare a natural disaster in the southeastern tourist region. Torrential rain struck the Alpes-Maritimes administrative department on Saturday evening, flooding local towns including Cannes and disrupting transport routes. The victims included three people killed at a retirement home that was flooded in the village of Biot, and seven inhabitants of the town of Mandelieu-la-Napoule...

Some relieved to find bodies as dozens still missing in Guatemala landslide

Reuters: Despair in the search for dozens of people still missing after a deadly landslide swallowed part of a Guatemalan town is so deep that some relatives feel lucky simply to have found the bodies of their loved ones. Families lit candles on Sunday for relatives engulfed by a mass of earth and rubble that crashed down on a neighborhood in Santa Catarina Pinula. Rescue teams have found more than 130 bodies and up to 150 others are missing, feared dead. "I feel lucky because other families can't even...