Temperature
Extremes
High
temperature extreme:
Mecca, Saudi Arabia 112 degrees.
Low temperature extreme:
Vostok (Russia), Antarctica -100 degrees.
(top)
Hurricane
Aftermath
Skies
cleared over eastern North Carolina after a final soaking
rainfall ended one of the wettest months ever for the region devastated
by hurricane Floyd’s floodwaters.
Many
residents in the inundated region have yet to return to their homes,
swamped by the worst flooding in the state’s history. Toxic chemicals
flushed into populated areas have also produced an environmental
disaster. A rash of snakebites is being reported across flooded
areas of the state as more and more of the reptiles are forced out
of their habitats. Drier weather set in behind a line of severe
storms that spawned tornadoes, which demolished several homes and
businesses across the Carolinas.
Nuclear
Accident
Japan’s
worst nuclear disaster on record occurred at a uranium processing
plant 90 miles northeast of Tokyo when 10 workers were exposed to
radiation levels up to 10,000 times above normal following an explosion
caused by an accidental nuclear reaction.
Area
residents were warned to stay indoors as rain was believed to be
producing fallout. The Japanese government made an unprecedented
request to the U.S. military to provide assistance with the disaster,
but American officials said their personnel were unequipped to help.
Elephant
Rampage
A
herd of at least 40 wild elephants has been on a rampage for several
weeks in Indonesia’s eastern Sumatra, smashing homes and
destroying palm and rubber crops near jungle areas.
Local
residents said that almost 90 percent of the fields in the Indragiri
Hulu district of Riau Province have been destroyed. Conservationists
have said that the animals have no choice but to move into cultivated
fields and plantations to forage for food because their habitat
has been destroyed by human development.
Wildfires
The
hottest weather so far this year across Northern California
caused several wildfires to spread rapidly across the dry region.
At
least 37 houses in the northwest of the state were destroyed by
a wildfire that ravaged the town of Happy Valley.
Earthquakes
At
least three people were killed and 58 others injured when quake-ravaged
Taiwan was shaken by the strongest of several powerful aftershocks
of the devastating Sept. 21 temblor.
Mexico was rocked from the capital city to the southwest coast by
a magnitude 7.4 earthquake that caused moderate damage and lasted
for two minutes.
Earth
movements were also felt in southern Iran, southeastern Turkey,
the Turkish aftershock zone, the Athens, Greece, aftershock zone,
southeastern Spain, the Aleutian Islands, the Solomon Islands, Death
Valley and northwestern California.
Tropical
Cyclone
Tropical
storm Cam, the second to strike Hong Kong in less than two
weeks, drenched the former British colony, leaving 23 people injured.
Cam
was packing winds of 50 mph when it hit the port before weakening
and moving into the Pearl River estuary in southern China.
Eruption
Warning
Residents of Ecuador’s capital city of Quito were placed
on “orange alert” when seismologists determined that Guagua Pichincha
Volcano appeared to be within days of erupting.
The
volcano, seven miles from Quito, has been sending up immense clouds
of water vapor more than two miles into the sky since August 24.
Authorities said that in case of an eruption, Quito would be shielded
from lava flows by the taller, inactive Pichincha Volcano, which
overlooks the city.
Piton
de la Fournaise Volcano on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion erupted
for the second time in two months. Witnesses reported lava shooting
165 feet into the air from two new rifts on the slopes of the volcano,
which dominates the French island.
Flamingo
Mystery
Biologists
don’t know why the famed flamingoes of Kenya’s Lake Nakuru
sanctuary have left in droves.
The
flamingoes seem to have migrated to other lakes in the Great Rift
Valley. The population of nearly a million birds has diminished
dramatically over the past three years, possibly due to environmental
stress. Lake Nakuru has been increasingly polluted by industrial
refuse and other wastes. Flamingoes feed on the algae, spirulina
platensis, which blooms in the saline waters of Lake Nakuru, but
salinity levels of the water have also been fluctuating as part
of the lake is drying up. The bird sanctuary now appears abandoned
except for a few remaining pelicans.
