(CBS News) SALT LAKE CITY – Two new wildfires were burning in Utah Tuesday, and officials said one of them was sparked by gunfire. Recreational shooting is being blamed for at least 20 fires this year in the state. It’s an activity long enjoyed and fervently protected by enthusiasts — but firing a gun near the high and dry grass… Read more →
A magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck off the coast of New Zealand Tuesday sending shock waves into its capital city of Wellington, the U.S. Geological Survey reported on its website. Its epicenter was between the country’s two large islands at a depth of 147 miles, Reuters reported. The New Zealand Herald reported residents across the country felt long rumblings and a fire department… Read more →
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., June 28 – A wildfire that forced the evacuation of 35,000 people from the edge of Colorado’s second-largest city has killed at least one person and incinerated 346 homes, making it the most destructive blaze in state history, officials said on Thursday. Lighter winds helped firefighters gain new ground against the inferno, which had roared unchecked on… Read more →
The drought in the U.S. Midwest that has pushed up corn prices 28 percent since June 15 may eventually rival a dry period in 1988 that cost agriculture $78 billion, a government meteorologist said. This year’s weather pattern, which settled into the Great Plains and the Southwest last year and has spread into the Corn Belt, resembles those of a quarter… Read more →
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated and multiple homes destroyed as a growing wildfire races through Colorado Springs in a scene Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper described as “like looking at a military invasion.” KDVR reports as of Tuesday night the El Paso County Sheriff says more than 32,000 people have been evacuated from the… Read more →
(multimedia) Debby is forecast to continue moving very slowly through Wednesday. The tropical storm has dumped as much as 20 inches of rain on parts of northern Florida.
Rates of sea level rise are increasing three-to-four times faster along portions of the U.S. Atlantic Coast than globally, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey report published in Nature Climate Change. Since about 1990, sea-level rise in the 600-mile stretch of coastal zone from Cape Hatteras, N.C. to north of Boston, Mass. — coined a “hotspot” by scientists —… Read more →
MIAMI (AP) — Tropical Storm Debby spun drenching rains Monday over northern Florida as it hung nearly stationary over theGulf of Mexico, making its biggest threat flooding rather than winds. Tropical storm warnings were in effect along the Florida Panhandle as the storm parked offshore. Yet even with the storm’s center far from land, it lashed Florida with heavy rains and spawned isolated tornadoes… Read more →
(multimedia) The damage is breathtaking. “The roads are just a disaster around here,” Greg Vogt, with Expert Tire in Duluth said. In and around Duluth, roads collapsed and sinkholes swallowed cars. On East Skyline Drive a car sits 10 feet below the surface of the road, in a massive sinkhole. Deep water left some vehicles totaled, like a Volvo behind Expert… Read more →
Russia has declared a state of emergency in several eastern regions due to hundreds of wildfires. NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of fires and smoke in north central Russia on June 15, 2012, at 05:50 UTC (1:50 a.m. EDT) The red spots are where the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard the Terra satellite detected heat… Read more →
