“Mother Nature Hates You”

Firefighters on Thursday night were trying their best to preserve homes in the line of a fast-moving wildfire, which has shocked the state at a time when the ground should usually be thick with December snow.

The Marshall Fire, just south of Boulder, was sparked by extreme winds gusting over 100mph, which knocked down power lines and sparked a fire.

Officials on Thursday night confirmed that at least 580 homes had been lost – making the Marshall Fire the most devastating destruction of property in state history.

Microbes in oceans and soils across the globe are evolving to eat plastic, according to a study.

The research scanned more than 200m genes found in DNA samples taken from the environment and found 30,000 different enzymes that could degrade 10 different types of plastic.

The study is the first large-scale global assessment of the plastic-degrading potential of bacteria and found that one in four of the organisms analysed carried a suitable enzyme. The researchers found that the number and type of enzymes they discovered matched the amount and type of plastic pollution in different locations.

I know there’s a joke in here somewhere.

Emergency crews in western Canada continued searching on Friday for victims of flash floods and mudslides which tore through the region this week, as survivors described harrowing escapes from the disaster.

British Columbia declared its third state of emergency in a year on Wednesday after a month’s worth of rain fell in two days, swamping towns and cities, blocking major highways and leaving much of the province under water.

So far, officials have confirmed just one fatality, in a landslide near the village of Pemberton. But gripping testimony from a journalist who survived that incident suggests that figure is likely to rise.

A deadly storm described by officials as a once-in-a-century weather event has severed road and rail links around Vancouver, Canada.

Two motorways connecting the West Coast city were closed after being damaged by severe flooding.

Thousands of people were forced to leave their homes due to the massive storm, which struck on Monday.

A woman was killed in a highway landslide, and rescuers say at least two other people are missing.

VANCOUVER – The intense storm bombarding British Columbia has forced officials to evacuate the entire City of Merritt, where floodwaters have “inundated” bridges and left the local sewage treatment plant inoperable.

Some homes were evacuated overnight as unrelenting rain drenched much of the province, causing flooding, mudslides, rockslides and widespread highway closures between the Lower Mainland and Southern Interior.

This footage out of Merritt is heartbreaking.

The entire City of #Merritt is now under an evacuation order due to surging floodwaters from the Coldwater River.

The city’s mayor is urging residents to stay calm.@EmconServicesBC #BCFlood #BCStorm pic.twitter.com/k6R25Z61P2

— Alanna Kelly (@AlannaKellyNews) November 15, 2021

Get ready. An epic solar storm may be heading our way, one so big it could knock out power grids, damage satellites, cause internet blackouts, and essentially take down our modern life as we know it. It’s known as a 1-in-100 years solar storm.

Solar storms are an explosion of energized particles hurled from the Sun known as flares or coronal mass ejections (CME). Small scale storms occur regularly but every century or so there is an extreme eruption.

The sun launched a massive solar flare yesterday that’s headed in Earth’s direction — the strongest storm seen in the current weather cycle.

The volley of radiation may trigger the northern lights if it collides with our atmosphere, and could cause major issues for power grids, experts suggest.

The aurora borealis may be observed tomorrow night as far south as Tennessee and the Carolinas (near the horizon), with high auroral activity in a band from Portland OR to New York City. This is thanks to the strongest Earth-directed coronal mass ejection so far this solar cycle. pic.twitter.com/96ZwrhPAas

— John Morales (@JohnMoralesNBC6) October 29, 2021

This is our co-blogger Sarcasticat’s homestead in the Appalachians. Last night a storm passed through and this is the damage done.

He has to wait till Monday to speak to the insurance people. So far no roof leakage he says.

One of the most destructive and rapidly spreading invasive species on the continent has been found for the first time in a Canadian national park.

Wild pigs, which tear up landscapes and eat everything from roots to bird eggs to deer, are regularly present in Elk Island National Park east of Edmonton, says Parks Canada.

At least 17 people were killed across New York City and New Jersey — including a 2-year-old boy and his parents who drowned in a basement apartment in Queens — as the tail-end of Hurricane Ida ravaged the northeast overnight.

Eight died in the city after becoming trapped in flooded basement apartments and nine died in the Garden State, including five who were found in the same apartment complex.

Water cascades onto a New York City subway train as remnants of Hurricane Ida bring flooding rain to the Northeast. https://t.co/pKqmXs6g8J pic.twitter.com/sYmzPSGb1I

— ABC News (@ABC) September 2, 2021

🚨#BREAKING Shocking video shows flood waters ripping through apartments in New York City

📌#Manhattan I #NYC

Reports of catastrophic flash flooding happening across in New Jersey and New York City as millions of people brace for this devastating floods pic.twitter.com/0Y2170sgKo

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) September 2, 2021

I think reader Norman in New York lives in Queens.

1st live ‘murder hornet’ of 2021 spotted near Canada-U.S. border

The first live “murder hornet” of 2021 has been spotted approximately one kilometre from the Canada-U.S. border, confirmed scientists from the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA).

In a news release Thursday, entomologists said the Asian giant hornet was reported by a Whatcom County resident in Washington state on Wednesday.

A burst of plasma would set in motion a devastating cascade of failures

The world began to end on 12th May 2024, though another 309 years would pass before our species finally went extinct. The apocalypse was not the result of one thing, unless that one thing was that we repeatedly ignored signs that industrial civilisation had become increasingly fragile, even as it grew ever more powerful. But our end very definitely had a trigger. A burst of charged plasma from the sun caused the sudden, simultaneous collapse of numerous electrical grids across the world, setting in motion a cascade of devastating failures from which humanity would never recover.