By Steve Newman - February 5, 1999 - Click on any icon 

	High Temperature Extreme
	Low Temperature Extreme
	Earthquakes
	Volcanic Extinction
	Euro Winter
	Austral Blazes
	Cyclone Season
	Killer Bee Attack
	Argentine Spill Update
	Somali Lion Attacks

High Temperature Extreme
Pannawohica, Australia: 111 degrees Fahrenheit

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Low Temperature Extreme
Ilirney, Siberia: -65 degrees Fahrenheit

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Earthquakes
Powerful aftershocks continue to rumble across quake-ravaged western Colombia, but no significant additional damage was reported.

The government reported that the death toll from last week’s disaster had reached 938, with 4,117 people injured and 400,000 others left homeless. The third earthquake in as many days jolted southern Russia’s Dagestan region, destroying about 80 homes and damaging thousands of others. Earth movements were also felt in southern Bolivia, eastern Spain, western Iran, eastern Japan and two points in China.

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Volcanic Extinction
A rare species of fish may have become extinct in the wake of a massive fish kill in a lake on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, possibly caused by nearby volcanic activity.

Hundreds of tons of decaying Bilih fish were found floating on Singkarak Lake, 60 miles north of the city of Padang. Experts suspect that poisonous gases from underwater vents extending out of the nearby Marapi Volcano may have wiped out the Bilih fish, which exists only in Singkarak Lake.

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Euro Winter
Fierce blizzard conditions and a numbing chill paralyzed a wide area of Europe.

Scores of fatalities were reported from traffic accidents on icy highways while thousands of motorists were trapped on snowbound routes in Romania. Two people froze to death in Poland, bringing the number of those dying of exposure in that country this winter to 181. The first snow in 20 years fell in the Algerian capital of Algiers as the arctic chill blew deep into North Africa.

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Austral Blazes
Nearly 250,000 acres of Australian bush land were blackened by a menacing wildfire near the border of South Australia and Victoria states.

The flames raced through eucalyptus and mallee woodlands in the Ngarkat Conservation Park and the Big Desert Wilderness Area. Unfavorable weather conditions hampered fire-fighting efforts to contain the blazes for several days after the fires were ignited by lightning.

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Cyclone Season
Tropical Cyclone Damien was renamed Chikita as it traveled out of the monitoring jurisdiction of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and into the central Indian Ocean. The storm later brought much-needed rain to drought-stricken Reunion.

Cyclone 01B formed over the Bay of Bengal then lost force off the eastern coast of India.

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Killer Bee Attack
Africanized bees, or so-called killer bees, stung a mother and her daughter to death in northern Argentina during a violent weekend attack.

Four other family members were taken to a hospital after they were stung by the bees at an elementary school near the tourist town of Rio Hondo, in the northern province of Santiago del Estero. Survivors escaped by throwing water at the insects.

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Argentine Spill Update
Rising floodwaters in Argentina’s Rio de la Plata estuary broke through a protective barrier built to hold back last month’s oil spill, spreading the crude up the Atlantic coast.

With waters six feet above normal, the oil spill seeped into the river banks, making it difficult to remove, according to environmental officials. About 66,000 gallons of crude leaked from a Royal Dutch Shell tanker after it collided with a German container ship on January 15 about 50 miles from Buenos Aires. Local authorities had been struggling to contain the disaster by installing barriers and by recovering the crude with pumps.

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Somali Lion Attacks
At least four people were killed during an attack by lions at a refugee camp for famine victims in western Somalia.

The attack occurred in the village of El-Bardeh near the border with Ethiopia. The four victims were among the estimated 4,000 people searching for food and water in the region. Last month, the World Health Organization reported that more than 700,000 Somalis were affected by severe drought and food shortages in the south of the country brought on by the La Niña ocean-cooling phenomenon.

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Additional Sources: Japan Meteorological Agency, U.S. Climate Analysis Center, U.S. Earthquake Information Center and the World Meteorological Organization.