MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

“Powerful storms ravaged through Alabama early this morning in an area that has not yet fully recovered from tornadoes that left the community in despair last year.

At least two people were killed and heavy damage was reported just hours after tornadoes struck portions of Arkansas, downing trees and power lines and leaving thousands without electricity there.

The predawn storms struck the Birmingham area, with the towns of Center Point and Trussville just to the northeast of the city being particularly hard hit, emergency management officials said.

The devastation prompted Alabama Gov Robert Bentley to declare a state of emergency for the entire state.

Fatalities were reported in the towns of Oak Grove and Clay, but those weren’t the only towns affected.

‘Center Point was hit pretty badly,’ Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency spokesman Mark Kelly said.

An emergency management spokesman told the Associated Press that more than 100 people have been injured in central Alabama by the line of storms.

Homes were flattened, windows were blown out of cars and roofs were peeled back in the middle of the night in the community of Oak Grove near Birmingham. As dawn broke, residents surveyed the damage and officials used chainsaws to clear fallen trees.

Chief Deputy Randy Christian told the Birmingham News: ‘The hardest hit area at this time includes Oak Grove and Center Point through Clay and Trussville. Several homes are reported destroyed and numerous reports of injuries have come in to our call center’.

Jefferson County EMA official, Bob Ammons said: ‘We have major, major damage’.” Read more.

“(WAPA) – The Etna volcano has greeted new year with an eruption of Strombolian type this morning that has provoked a 5,000 m smoke column high (at the moment) that constitutes potential danger at the arriving and departing activity of airplanes in Catania’s airport.

The task-force present on the air station has decided the limitation of air traffic until 2:00pm of today, when the unit will gather again.

At the moment in which we write the eruptive activity has finished, but remain problems linked to the volcanic ash cloud, whose move has continuously controlled.

“The limitations will not cause significant changes at the scheduled flights in consideration of the reduced number of aircraft movements planned daily for the interested period”, is read in a press-release issued by the airport’s management society.

The effusive activity of Strombolian kind is characterized from magma (from basaltic to intermediate) sticky in a medium manner, that provoke a permanent activity from emission at regular intervals of lava fountains and pieces that reach hundred of meters of high, and from the launch of lapillus and volcanic bombs.” Source – Avionews.

By Ted Thornhill – “A sleeping super-volcano in Germany is showing worrying signs of waking up.

It’s lurking just 390 miles away underneath the tranquil Laacher See lake near Bonn and is capable of ejecting billions of tons of magma.

This monster erupts every 10 to 12,000 years and last went off 12,900 years ago, so it could blow at any time.

It covered 620 square miles of land with ash and rocks and several small earthquakes in the region last year indicate that it could be awakening from its deep sleep.

Experts believe that if it did go off, it could lead to widespread devastation, mass evacuations and even short-term global cooling from the resulting ash cloud blocking the sun.

The effect on the UK is hard to predict but it’s possible that large parts of southern England could be covered ash.

It’s thought that the volcano is similar in size and power to Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, which blew in 1991 and became the biggest eruption of the 20th century.” Read more.

Bloomberg — “The storm Dagmar lashed the Nordic countries with Hurricane-strength winds, cutting power and Norwegian natural-gas exports as it damaged buildings, shut roads and halted train traffic.

About 264,500 homes in Finland, Sweden and Norway were without electricity as utilities such as Vattenfall AB worked to restore power after the storm yesterday toppled trees and damaged lines, according to estimates today by companies and grid operators.

In Finland, the number of those blacked out has increased as winds have picked up again, leaving 190,500 customers at Fortum Oyj, Vattenfall and Savon Voima Oyj without electricity, the utilities said. Some failures may last for days, Fortum said. In Sweden, about 44,000 homes were without power as of 2:33 p.m., according to a compilation from the three-largest utilities, including Vattenfall and EON AG.

The storm is causing the worst outages since the Janika storm in November 2001, said Heini Kuusela-Opas, a spokeswoman for Vattenfall in Finland, by phone today…

About 30,000 homes were without power in Norway as of 2 p.m., grid operator Statnett SF said in a statement. Statoil ASA, Norway’s largest oil company, reduced staffing on its offshore oil platforms over the weekend while maintaining production, Stavanger Aftenblad reported yesterday, citing Baard Glad Pedersen, a company spokesman.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s Ormen Lange natural gas field was operating at 50 megawatt power out of a capacity of 200 megawatts, the Nord Pool power exchange said late yesterday in a statement, citing grid disruptions. A Shell spokesman, who declined to be identified by name, said by phone today that the company is now increasing gas exports after a halt.

The highest average wind measured in Norway was 44.6 meters per second (100 miles per hour), with gusts reaching 64.7 meters per second, Norway’s Meteorological Institute said. All measuring stations had winds peaking at more than 32 meters per second, or hurricane strength, the institute said. Gusts exceeded 30 meters per second at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport yesterday, the Finnish Meteorological Institute said…

Finns in the southeastern and southern parts of the country, including the capital Helsinki, were told by the police to stay indoors during the storm. In Sweden, train traffic in the middle and northern parts of the country was halted and smaller, local roads were temporarily closed.” Read more.

Third storm threatens to sweep through Finland next week – “Very warm air masses spreading into Finland from the east could cause a new storm next week. According to duty meteorologist Henri Nyman from the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the Eastern districts of Finland will be most at risk from thunderstorms. ‘Locally lightning may be substantial already at the weekend, but the risk of a heavier storm will grow by Monday’, Nyman predicts. The risk of thunderstorms is a consequence of the weather conditions that have remained unchanged for a long time. Thunderstoms can form and develop when the warm air from the east and southeast collides with the cooler western air masses. ‘According to the forecast, a low-pressure zone will be created in the frontier between the warm and cool air masses at the weekend, concomitant with strengthening winds and possibly dangerous thunderstorms’, Nyman reports. On average, powerful thunderstorms like the ‘Asta’ and ‘Veera’ examples that swept over Finland last Wednesday and a week ago occur in Finland only a few times in a decade.” Read more.

By Mara Lee, Hartford Courant – “Reporting from Hartford, Conn.— The United States had a dozen weather disasters that each caused at least $1 billion in damages in 2011, the greatest frequency of severe weather that caused costly losses in more than 30 years of federal government tracking.

However, even with the number of events, the total losses this year from the storms, flooding and droughts is $52 billion, not even close to the most expensive year on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina alone cost $145 billion in today’s dollars. It was the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history and, with more than 1,800 deaths, the highest fatality toll since a 1928 hurricane in south Florida.

The disasters in 2011 caused more than 600 deaths, the agency said. The Groundhog Day blizzard, Hurricane Irene, many tornadoes and drought-fueled wildfires in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona crossed the $1-billion threshold.

The increase in losses from hurricanes has more to do with population growth and increased home building near beaches than it does with climate change, scientists from NOAA say.

But, they added, ‘there is evidence that climate change may affect the frequency of certain extreme weather events. An increase in population and development in flood plains, along with an increase in heavy rain events in the U.S. during the past 50 years, have gradually increased the economic losses due to flooding.'” Read more.