A cold spell covering the Ukraine has killed 83 people already this year putting the death toll in reach of surpassing all of last year’s deaths. One hundred people died during last winter in total.
Temperatures as low as -10F and heavy snowfall have left Kiev and other areas under frozen blankets of snow and ice. Meteorologists are reporting that the temperatures could fall even lower and raise the death toll. Continue reading
“We are entering a new era of rising food prices and spreading hunger. Food supplies are tightening everywhere and land is becoming the most sought-after commodity as the world shifts from an age of food abundance to one of scarcity. The geopolitics of food is fast overshadowing the geopolitics of oil.”
Those chilling words from Lester Brown of the Earth policy research center in Washington come as the United Nations is reporting that grain reserves worldwide have reached such a critical point that extreme weather in the United States or other major food exporting nations next year could cause a major hunger crisis. Continue reading
The summer of unusually wet weather has created a large impact on British crops that is going to lead to heavy increases in food prices.
The National Farmers Union announced that wheat yields in the country are down almost 15% lower than the country’s five-year average. The British Retail Consortium said that food prices, already high due to the drought in the U.S. and a heatwave in Russia, which lowered corn and wheat production. Continue reading
A floating island of volcanic rock larger than the state of Maryland is floating a thousand miles off the eastern coast of New Zealand. New Zealand Air Force planes first spotted the mass, which looks like a giant ice shelf under spotlights, earlier this week.
The golf ball sized pumice causes little threat to ships and shipping according to government volcanologists. They attribute the rocks to an eruption of an undersea volcano. Naval officials have called it the “weirdest thing” they’ve seen in their career. Continue reading
A double-barreled dose of bad news came out Thursday: Not only did the drought worsen over the last week, but it’s likely to widen and intensify through the end of October, according to the seasonal outlook prepared by government forecasters. Continue reading
Extreme weather across the United States has muted many Fourth of July celebrations.
Dozens of cities across the country have scrapped fireworks displays due to the extreme heat wave drying out land and woods.
“The way I look at it,” Dale Seward of the Delphi, Indiana Chamber of Commerce told MSNBC, “I’d rather preside over the chamber that canceled fireworks one year than preside over the chamber that burned the school down.” Continue reading
Over two million people are still without power and the death toll has risen to 18 in the aftermath of a weekend storm that roared across the eastern United States. Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio and the District of Columbia have declared states of emergency due to the disaster.
Power is reported out along the eastern seaboard from New Jersey to North Carolina and as far west as Illinois.
Compounding the problem is a record heat waves that is keeping daytime temperatures at and over 100 degrees. Many residents have no access to air conditioning or refrigerators. Continue reading