This Colorado farmer says it’s like starving to death in a grocery store. Weld County, Colorado farmers lost surface irrigation water from rivers because of drought, but they can’t pump groundwater because of a 2006 court decision. Discovered on The Weather Channel
Campaigning in Missouri Valley, Iowa, yesterday, President Obama announced yet another government spending program — this time designed to inflate meat prices in Midwest swing states. “Today the Department of Agriculture announced that it will buy up to $100 million worth of pork products, $50 million worth of chicken, and $20 million worth of lamb and farm-raised catfish,” Obama explained… Read more →
(CNN) – Whipped by high winds, a wildfire in central Washington state has scorched 26,500 acres and destroyed at least 60 homes, officials said Tuesday. The fire raging near Cle Elum is one of several devastating Western states this week. Colorado paid the price earlier this summer. Now, new wildfires are burning through sagebrush, grass and beetle-killed lodgepole pines in California,… Read more →
(Phys.org) — An unusually strong storm formed off the coast of Alaska on August 5 and tracked into the center of the Arctic Ocean, where it slowly dissipated over the next several days. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color mosaic image on Aug. 6, 2012. The center of the storm at that date… Read more →
Northwestern Iran was struck Saturday by a series of major earthquakes and strong aftershocks, as state TV reported at least 180 dead, 1,350 injured and at least six villages leveled. Officials asked residents in affected areas to stay outdoors through the night, the Fars news agency reported. The U.S. Geological Survey put the first earthquake, which struck midday, at magnitude… Read more →
Record breaking arid weather causes the Mississippi River to shrink.
A vast “raft” of volcanic rocks covering 10,000 sq miles (26,000 sq km) of ocean has been spotted by a New Zealand military aircraft. A naval ship was forced to change course in order to avoid the cluster of buoyant rocks, located 1,000 miles off the New Zealand coast. The unusual phenomenon was probably the result of pumice being released… Read more →
(CNN) – The July heat wave that wilted crops, shriveled rivers and fueled wildfires officially went into the books Wednesday as the hottest single month on record for the continental United States. The average temperature across the Lower 48 was 77.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.3 degrees above the 20th-century average, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration reported. That edged out the previous… Read more →
Global food prices sharply rebounded in July due to wild swings in weather conditions, a UN food and agricultural body has said. The rise has fanned fresh fears of a repeat of the 2007-2008 food crisis which hurt the world’s poorest. Untimely rains in Brazil, drought in the US and production difficulties in Russia drove the rally, said the Food… Read more →
Here’s a scary thought: scientists are testing the idea of pumping water into the sides of a dormant volcano in Oregon at pressures great enough to evoke small earthquakes. Why? Apparently, the boiling bowels beneath our feet hold tremendous promise for geothermal energy. According to a report MIT submitted to the Department of Energy, two percent of the heat some… Read more →
