“Mother Nature Hates You”

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.

The fourth searing heatwave in five weeks is set to strike the west of the United States and Canada this weekend, aggravating wildfires that are already ravaging an area larger than Rhode Island as drought and record-breaking temperatures tied to the climate crisis pummel the region.

The impending heatwave comes as 12 US states are already battling 71 active wildfires. The combined area of the blazes is about 1,553 sq miles (4,021 sq km), according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Twenty people are missing in central Japan after a huge landslide hit Atami city following heavy rainfall.

Video on social media showed a torrent of black mud plummeting down from a mountain top and on through the city towards the sea. Several houses were destroyed or buried.

Kyodo news agency reports that the bodies of what appear to be two victims have been found in the port district.

A witness described a “horrible sound” before he fled to higher ground.

Así fue el tremendo deslizamiento de tierra en balneario de aguas termales Atami en Japón.

pic.twitter.com/ZznwVYmnyc

— rubeneus (@rubenanguiano) July 3, 2021

After three days of unrelenting heat, the people in the British Columbia village of Lytton were hoping for a modest respite.

Temperatures which had shattered longstanding national records – at one point reaching a blistering 49.6C (121.28F) – eased slightly on Wednesday, raising hopes that the worst was over.

But that same day, a wildfire tore through the settlement 153km (95 miles) north-east of Vancouver. It was moving so fast that officials didn’t even have time to issue evacuation orders.