Category Archives: Earth Stuff

News of Earth Changes, climate shifts, weather anomalies, volcanoes, etc

Severe Weather & Tornadoes — Why Now?

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Why So Many Tornadoes Are Striking the US

Brett Israel, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer
Date: 02 March 2012 Time: 05:55 PM ET

 

Wind speed at 18,000 feet in the atmosphere. The darkest shade represents winds of up to 150 mph.
Wind speed at 18,000 feet in the atmosphere. The darkest shade represents winds of up to 150 mph.
CREDIT: NOAA/NASA.

A warm spell and a low-dipping jet stream are fueling the monster storms that are spawning tornadoes today across a wide swath of the country, weather experts said.

Today, the Storm Prediction Center has received 311 reports of severe weather, including 48 reported tornadoes and a few reported fatalities. This massive storm system also spawned deadly tornadoes on Leap Day, which raked Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee. The severe storms killed at least 12 people and included a strong EF-4 twister in Harrisburg, Ill., a rarity for February.

As of this morning, the severe storm risk area covered an estimated 162 million people, or 56 percent of the United States, according to weather experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

While the main tornado season runs from spring to early summer, this year’s early outbreaks show that tornadoes can form under a variety of conditions and strike during fall and winter, too. This year’s mild winter and warm start to meteorological spring has upped the risk of dangerous storms.

“We’ve been in a very warm pattern all winter,” said meteorologist Mark Rose of the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Ala. “Because it has been so mild, it increases our chances for severe weather.”

Also behind this week’s twisters is a low-dipping jet stream. The jet stream is moving at a blistering pace today across the Mid-South and Ohio River Valley. NOAA satellites clocked the jet stream at 150 mph (241 kph) across these regions. The jet stream is bringing cold air from Canada to mix with the warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico. Where these two differing air masses meet is often an area of severe weather, hail, winds and even tornadoes. [Infographic: 2012’s Active Tornado Season]

The warm air and rapid jet stream will keep fueling the storms thru tonight and into the weekend, according to NOAA. Weather experts continue to warn that dangerous tornado outbreaks could explode throughout the evening and overnight hours across the Mid- and Deep South and Ohio River Valley.

“We actually are looking at a risk from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes to west of the Mississippi to the East Coast,” Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told the Weather Channel. “And these storms are moving fast.”

from:    http://www.livescience.com/18806-tornadoes-striking-explained.html

Dutch Sinse on Extreme 3/2 Weather

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3/3/2012 — ” (never) in my life.. ” — EXTREME hail in Fort Branch Indiana — March Mega-storm 2012

Posted on March 3, 2012

———————————————–

I agree .. NEVER IN MY LIFE have I seen such a tremendous weather outbreak effect so many people over so many states….. it may indeed be one for the record books when it comes to widespread damage.. only time will tell.

This video is just a SMALL SAMPLE of the severity of these storm.

The March Mega-storms of 2012 have turned out to be something for the record books, tragedy beyond imagination in many towns across the United States. Our thoughts and prayers are with those effected by this severe weather outbreak.

MANY THANKS to youtube video maker ‘themetaltempest’ for recording this!

http://www.youtube.com/themetaltempest

make sure to check out their Anti-GMO site !!!

http://www.gmodestroyer.com

from:    http://sincedutch.wordpress.com/

 

Earthquake – Loyalty Islands Region

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Very strong earthquake in the greater Loyalty Islands / New Caledonia area

Last update: March 3, 2012 at 1:14 pm by By 

 

Earthquake overview : A very strong earthquake occurred at 11:19 PM (23:19) in the greater Loyalty Islands / New Caledonia area

Most important Earthquake Data:

Magnitude : 6.9 (preliminary)
UTC Time :  Saturday, March 03, 2012 at 12:19:57 UTC
Local time at epicenter : Saturday, March 03, 2012 at 11:19:57 PM at epicenter
Depth (Hypocenter) : 31 km (19.3 miles)
Geo-location(s) :
254 km (158 miles) ESE (110°) from Tadine, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia
323 km (200 miles) SSE (163°) from Isangel, Vanuatu  

 

Update 13:13 UTC
– The picture to the right shows very well the deep trench were 2 plates are subducting each other. The traveling speed of these plates is estimated to be approx. 8 cm / year which can be called a massive movement, and also the reason for these many sometimes violent earthquakes, luckily mostly with epicenter in the ocean.

Update 12:56 UTC
– Only 3000 people will experience a light MMI IV shaking and 34000 people a weak shaking. This may be the reason that we haven’t received experience reports yet. A lot of people in Vanuatu and New Caledonia will have slept through this earthquake and will be surprised tomorrow morning.

Update 12:51 UTC
– The maximum tsunami wave height near the coast of Isino will be 0.04m.  In other words, NO real tsunami has to be expected.
– A lot of strong to very strong aftershocks can be expected.

Update 12:49 UTC
GDACS simulation, is not mentioning a tsunami wave towards the New Caledonia or Vanuatu islands, most at risk in similar earthquakes.

Tsunami wave propagation courtesy GDACS

Update 12:42 UTC
– This area of the Pacific has regular massive earthquakes due to fast traveling tectonic plates.  Based on the Magnitude/ Depth and distance from the islands Earthquake-Report.com is calling this earthquake NOT dangerous for eventual damage or injuries on the nearest islands, however people and properties will be shaken very good.

Update 12:38 UTC
NOAA PACIFIC EVALUATION
NO DESTRUCTIVE WIDESPREAD TSUNAMI THREAT EXISTS BASED ON HISTORICAL EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI DATA. HOWEVER – EARTHQUAKES OF THIS SIZE SOMETIMES GENERATE LOCAL TSUNAMIS THAT CAN BE DESTRUCTIVE ALONG COASTS LOCATED WITHIN A HUNDRED KILOMETERS OF THE EARTHQUAKE EPICENTER. AUTHORITIES IN THE REGION OF THE EPICENTER SHOULD BE AWARE OF THIS POSSIBILITY AND TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION.   

for more information and updates, go to:    http://earthquake-report.com/2012/03/03/very-strong-earthquake-in-the-greater-loyalty-islands-new-caledonia-area/

 

Tomb Suggests Early Evidence for Christianity

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Possible Earliest Evidence of Christianity Resurrected from Ancient Tomb

Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 28 February 2012 Time: 10:00 AM ET
An engraving depicting a large fish thought to represent the story of the Biblical prophet Jonah found on an ossuary in a Tomb. It and an inscription found elsewhere in the tomb may be the oldest archaeological evidence of Christianity, excavators say.
An engraving depicting a large fish thought to represent the story of the Biblical prophet Jonah found in a tomb. It and an inscription in the same tomb may be the oldest archaeological evidence of Christianity, excavators say.
CREDIT: Simcha Jacobovici

In an ancient tomb located below a modern condominium building in Jerusalem, archaeologists have found ossuaries — bone boxes for the dead — bearing engravings that could represent the earliest archaeological evidence of Christians ever found.

The tomb has been dated to before A.D. 70, so if its engravings are indeed early Christian, they were most likely made by some of Jesus’ earliest followers, according to the excavators.

One of the limestone ossuaries bears an inscription in Greek that includes a reference to “Divine Jehovah” raising someone up. A second ossuary has an image that appears to be a large fish with a stick figure in its mouth. The excavators believe the image represents the story of Jonah, the biblical prophet who was swallowed by a fish or whale and then released.

Together both the inscription and the image of the fish represent the Christian belief in resurrection from death. While images of the Jonah story became common on more recent Christian tombs, they do not appear in first-century art, and iconographic images like this on ossuaries are extremely rare.

“If anyone had claimed to find either a statement about resurrection or a Jonah image in a Jewish tomb of this period I would have said impossible — until now,” James D. Tabor, professor and chairman of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and one of the excavators, said in a news release issued by the university.

The excavators acknowledge the discovery and their interpretation are likely to be controversial.

This tomb was originally uncovered in 1981, but the original excavators were forced to leave by Orthodox Jewish groups who oppose the excavation of Jewish tombs. The tomb was then resealed and buried beneath the condominium complex in the neighborhood of East Talpiot. Almost two decades later, Tabor and colleagues got a license to go back into the tomb; however, because of the condos on top of it and the threat of protests from Orthodox Jewish groups, they took an unconventional route into the tomb.

They inserted a robotic arm, developed for this project, carrying high-definition cameras, through holes drilled in the basement floor of the building. The cameras photographed the ossuaries inside from all sides.

This tomb is located adjacent to another one, uncovered in 1980, that contained ossuaries with names some have associated with Jesus and his family. That tomb was thoroughly excavated at the time.

An article by Tabor describing the discovery is scheduled for publication online at The Bible and Interpretation today (Feb. 28). A book, “The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find That Reveals the Birth of Christianity” (Simon & Schuster, 2012), co-authored by Tabor and filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, is also being published today. Later this spring, a documentary on the subject will air on the Discovery Channel.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/18697-christianity-evidence-tomb-inscriptions.html

El Hierro Update

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El Hierro Volcano : Yellow-Red alert

Last update: March 1, 2012 at 3:49 pm by By 

Update 01/03 – 15:49 UTC
– NO new earthquakes
– NO change in HT
– ITER is currently installing more instruments at the Tacoron area. Currently someone has to go to Tacoron to do a number of manual measurements.  The new instruments will send data in real-time to the analysts. Once this has been tested, people will be allowed to enter this sector of the island.
– Joke Volta March 1 morning images

Update 01/03 – 09:12 UTC
– A short revival of harmonic tremor for a couple of minutes at 01:16. It has not repeated since then.
– The eruption webcam is frozen again for the second day in a row.  Hopefully the disturbance is not due to a serious problem.
– 4 earthquakes since midnight varying from M 0.6 to M 1.3, depths from 10 to 16 km. Epicenters on the usual line from Frontera to the main vent.
– Today is the last day of the INVOLCAN course Joke is following. She is very positive about this initiative. Compared to the Geology course given by Ramon Casillas from the University of La Laguna who was focusing more to the specific technical details of volcanoes and tectonics, the Involcan course is zooming in on the many dangers for property and population. Joke was surprised that Lahars, toxic gases, lava flows, landslides, explosions etc has caused many casualties in the past.  The El Hierro eruption goes on and on and looks like a peaceful event (what it surely is at this time), but in other places of the world volcanoes can cause a lot of misery. The pictures below have been taken during the Involcan course.
– Poets from everywhere in the world showed their solidarity with the people of El Hierro during a poetry event yesterday at La Restinga (pictures of this event : click here)

Involcan course about volcano risks at El Pinar

Update 29/02 – 23:55 UTC
– The day ended with only 4 earthquakes
– almost no HT
– No stain or jacuzzi
– we are very curious for the next couple of days. If the present situation continues for another week, Pevolca might decrease the alert levels

Update 29/02 – 15:46 UTC
– 4 earthquakes so far today
– In the many mails we received from Joke yesterday and after midnight today (yes, she often works until after midnight), something escaped our attention. An earthquake at 05:02 yesterday morning with an epicenter to the east of the La Restinga reef (in between El Hierro and Tenerife).
In a message later yesterday and before Joke had seen this earthquake location, she told us about a stain in that same area. When climbing montaña La Restinga, she usually looks both sides of the La Restinga. She found it strange to see a stain in that part of the sea (especially as we had no more stains above the main vent for many days). She indicated the stain spot in her image series from yesterday afternoon, adding a map with the location.  There are no signs that this is a viable reason for a new emission vent as the quake was reported at a depth of 20 km, but the least we can say is that this event is rather unusual and not immediately explainable, unless the stain drifted away from the main vent.

Update 29/02 – 09:23 UTC
– 2 great videos for Volcano Lovers : with special thanks to AVCAN, who gave us the lead for them.  We have embedded them in our Volcano News updates.

Update 29/02 – 07:55 UTC
– 3 earthquakes so far today. Magnitudes : 1.1, 0.8 and 1.3. Depths in between 7 and 12 km.
– unchanged harmonic tremor
– continuing micro-seismicity
– no visible stain or jacuzzi on the eruption webcam

for more information, go to:   http://earthquake-report.com/2011/09/25/el-hierro-canary-islands-spain-volcanic-risk-alert-increased-to-yellow/

Jeff Masters on Possibility of Tornadoes 3/2

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The winter of 2012 blew out like a lion yesterday, with a massive Leap Day storm that pounded the Midwest with deadly tornadoes and heavy snow. A violent EF-4 tornado with 180 mph winds tore through Harrisburg, Illinois at 4:56 am CST yesterday morning, killing six, injuring approximately 100, and damaging 200 homes and 25 businesses. The tornado cut a path seven miles long and 250 yards wide across the town, according to the NWS damage survey. Another person was killed in southwest Missouri near Buffalo when am EF-2 tornado ripped through a mobile home park late Wednesday night. Twelve others were injured in the mobile home park. Four additional deaths occurred due to tornadoes in Cassville, MO, Smithville, TN, and Monterey, TN yesterday, bringing the death toll of the two-day severe weather outbreak to eleven. An EF-2 tornado also plowed through downtown Branson, Missouri yesterday morning, injuring 33 people. The tornado blew out or cracked windows in 219 of the hotel rooms in the 12-story/295 room Hilton Branson Convention Center, and extensively damaged three of Branson’s 50 plus theaters–Americana Theater, Branson Variety Theater and Dick Clarks’ American Bandstand Theater. The Branson Landing on Lake Taneycomo and the Veterans Memorial Museum were also heavily damaged. An NWS storm survey found the tornado was 400 yards wide and carved a path 22 miles long. An EF-2 tornado also hit the small town of Harveyville, Kansas (population 275), twenty miles southwest of Topeka, at 9:03 pm Wednesday night. The tornado destroyed 40 – 60% of the structures and injured twelve, three critically. Overall, damage from the two-day tornado outbreak will run in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and could add up to be the first billion-dollar weather disaster of 2012 in the U.S.


Figure 1. Damage in Branson, Missouri after yesterday’s tornado. Image credit: BransonRecovery Facebook page.

Yesterday’s tornado outbreak’s place in history
Yesterday was the deadliest day for U.S. tornadoes since May 24, 2011, when 18 people died in a Midwest tornado outbreak–part of the five-day outbreak that brought the deadliest U.S. tornado since 1947, the May 22, 2011 Joplin, Missouri tornado, which killed 158 people and injured 1150. The preliminary tornado total from February 28 – 29 of 2012 is 30, making it the largest February tornado outbreak since February 17 – 18, 2008, when 31 twisters touched down. Yesterday’s Harrisburg, Illinois tornado was the deadliest February tornado since the February 10, 2009 EF-4 twisterthat struck Southern Oklahoma near Ardmore, killing eight. The deadliest February tornado in recorded history occurred on February 21, 1971, when an F-4 tornado ripped a 202-mile path through Mississippi, killing 58 people.


Figure 2. By analyzing both the rotational velocity of the storm systems (the spinning of tornadoes has high rotational velocity compared to the surrounding storms) and presence of hail, scientists at the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory have developed a product that approximates the track of tornadoes, shown here for the February 29, 2012 storms. Image credit: NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory.

Violent tornadoes in February: a rarity
Violent February tornadoes are rare in February. The Tornado History Project lists eighteen EF-4 and one EF-5 tornadoes in the U.S. during the month of February since 1950–an average of one violent February tornado every three years. Part of the reason for this is the lack of warm, unstable air so early in the year. However, this year’s unusually mild winter has led to ocean temperatures across the Gulf of Mexico that are approximately 1°C above average–among the top ten warmest values on record, going back to the 1800s. Averaged over the month of February, the highest sea surface temperatures on record in the Gulf between 20 – 30°N, 85 – 95°W occurred in 2002, when the waters were 1.34°C above average. Yesterday’s tornado outbreak was fueled, in part, by high instability created by unusually warm, moist air flowing north from the Gulf of Mexico due to the high water temperatures there.

Heavy snow hits Upper Midwest
The same storm system also brought the heaviest snows of the winter to portions of the Upper Midwest, which has received scant snowfall this winter. Widespread heavy snow fell in northern Wisconsin, where Mincqua recorded 18 inches. South Dakota, Central Minnesota, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula also received snow amounts in excess of a foot. The storm also brought moderate snows to Northern New England, with southern Vermont receiving more than 8 inches. The latest NOAA Storm Summary has detailed storm total accumulation info.


Figure 3. Snowfall amounts for the 3-day period ending at 7 am local time Thursday, March 1, 2012. Image credit: NOAA Southern Region Headquarters.

New tornado outbreak likely on Friday
The storm system that brought yesterday’s tornadoes and snow has moved into Canada and New England, and the threat of severe weather is minimal today in the Midwest. However, a new storm system is expected to form over Missouri early Friday and track northeastward, unleashing a new tornado outbreak over Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Indiana, and Ohio. NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center has placed this region in their “Moderate Risk” area for severe weather Friday, and is warning of the possibility of long-track significant tornadoes. Consult ourSevere Weather Page and Interactive Tornado Page to follow the storms.


Figure 4. NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center has placed much of Tennessee, Kentucky, and portions of surrounding states in their “Moderate Risk” area for severe weather on Friday. This is one level below the highest level of alert, “High Risk.”

Portlight disaster relief charity responds to the Harrisburg, Illinois tornado
Portlight is sending people into the Harrisburg, IL, area at this time in response to the tornado disaster there. They will be assessing needs there and surrounding areas. As usual, they will be focusing efforts on the un-served, under-served and forgotten. Please visit the Portlight Disaster Relief blog to learn more. Donations are always welcome!

Jeff Masters

from:    http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2042

Storm Central Calls for More Heavy Weather Friday

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fr/Storm Central:

A major low pressure is forecasts to deepen and slide north northeastward into the Chicagoland area. With this, a warm front is going to ride above while a cold front slips to the south. The huge contrast from Warm 70-80 degree temperatures with warm moist gulf air is going to have these storms popping near the Mississippi River on Friday. With the lower level jet stream being farther to the south, a clash of air masses coupled with strong forcing and dynamic cooling is going to quickly get these storms tornadic. Unfortunately, it currently looks like a widespread outbreak. A tornado outbreak means at least 10 tornadoes occurring with a system. Forecasters at Storm Central think this could very well be worse than Tuesday’s or Wednesday’s storms.

Since we are dealing with such a strong low pressure, shear levels are going to be through the roof. With that being said, storms are going to quickly become super cells and have a much higher threat to become tornadic super cells. While it is impossible toforecast the exact path or city a tornado will impact, Storm Central has laid out a diagram where the all the ingredients will come together.
 Please prepare for the potential for long lasting strong tornadoes to occur in any of the Red or Pink areas. While all areas will likely not see a tornado warning, most areas are likely to be under a tornado watch sometime on Friday or Friday night. What is dangerous with this upcoming system is that storms are not going to stop overnight. Tornadic storms could go well into the overnight hours as they did Tuesday night. While the areas are subject to minor changes, a firstforecast is out and this is likely to be a big event.

Storm Central will be updating on Facebook with update posts, watches,warnings and more. We have proved ourselves Tuesday evening as a great helper to alerting others and we would like to help you as well. (LIKE) Us on Facebook for the latest! 
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
This is certainly not the only topic we are discussing. Another potential Blizzard may impact Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin this weekend. Model runs are placing out over a foot of snow with 40mph winds. While this is not set in stone, it is certainly something to watch very closely as If this does occur, a big storm for many!

-Matt Baranowski

2/29/12

from:   http://stormcentral1st.com/?p=5085

Mayan Pyramid’s Light Beam

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Mayan Light Beam Photo: Message from Gods, or iPhone Glitch?

Natalie Wolchover, Life’s Little Mysteries Staff Writer
Date: 27 February 2012 Time: 05:31 PM ET

 

"El Castillo," a Mayan temple on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, with a mysterious "light beam" emerging from the top. Credit: Hector Siliezar
“El Castillo,” a Mayan temple on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, with a mysterious “light beam” emerging from the top.
CREDIT: Hector Siliezar

When Hector Siliezar visited the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza with his wife and kids in 2009, he snapped three iPhone photos of El Castillo, a pyramid that once served as a sacred temple to the Mayan god Kukulkan. A thunderstorm was brewing near the temple, and Siliezar was trying to capture lightning crackling dramatically over the ruins.

In the first two images, dark clouds loom above the pyramid, but nothing is amiss. However, in the third photo, a powerful beam of light appears to shoot up from the pyramid toward the heavens, and a thunderbolt flashes in the background.

Siliezar, who recently shared his photographs with occult investigators, told Earthfiles.com that he and his family didn’t see the light beam in person; it appeared only on camera. “It was amazing!” he said. He showed the iPhone photo to his fellow tourists. “No one, not even the tour guide, had ever seen anything like it before.” [See photo]

The photo has surfaced on several Mayan doomsday discussion forums. But was the light beam a sign from the gods — a warning about Dec. 21, 2012, the date that marks the end of the Mayan calendar cycle, and when some people fear the world will end? Or is it simply the result of an iPhone glitch

According to Jonathon Hill, a research technician and mission planner at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, which operates many of the cameras used during NASA’s Mars missions, it is almost definitely the latter. Hill works with images of the Martian surface taken by rovers and satellites, as well as data from Earth-orbiting NASA instruments, and is fully versed in the wide range of potential image artifacts and equipment errors.

He says the “light beam” in the Mayan temple photo is a classic case of such an artifact — a distortion in an image that arises from the way cameras bounce around incoming light.

It is no mere coincidence, Hill said, that “of the three images, the ‘light beam’ only occurs in the image with a lightning bolt in the background. The intensity of the lightning flash likely caused the camera’s CCD sensor to behave in an unusual way, either causing an entire column of pixels to offset their values or causing an internal reflection [off the] camera lens that was recorded by the sensor.” In either case, extra brightness would have been added to the pixels in that column in addition to the light hitting them directly from the scene.

Evidence in favor of this explanation is the fact that the beam, when isolated in Photoshop or other image analysis software, runs perfectly vertical in the image. “That’s a little suspicious since it’s very unlikely that the gentleman who took this picture would have his handheld iPhone camera positioned exactly parallel to the ‘light beam’ down to the pixel level,” Hill told Life’s Little Mysteries.

It’s more likely that the “light beam” corresponds to a set of columns of pixels in the camera sensor that are electronically connected to each other, but not to other columns in the sensor, and that this set of connected pixels became oversaturated in the manner described above.

“That being said,” Hill said, “it really is an awesome image!”

from:    http://www.livescience.com/18692-mayan-light-beam-photo.html

Earthquake — off Coast of Japan

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February 29, 2012 – strong coastal earthquake close to Tokyo

Last update: February 29, 2012 at 2:57 pm by By 

 

Earthquake intensity image courtesy JMA Japan

M 5.8      2012/02/29 14:32    Depth 20.0 km     JAPAN
local time 23:32 – Epicenter location see below in list
70 km SE Choshi (pop 75,650) and 108 km SE Narita (pop 100,641) (Narita is one of the Tokyo airports)
Earlier report we wrote when we found out the earthquake occurred
Preliminary data are talking about a strong earthquake 20 km out in the sea near Tokyo
We are estimating that the epicenter is about 50 km out in the sea. Certainly NOT strong enough to generate a tsunami.
JMA Japan reports a magnitude of 5.8 at a depth of 20 km. Max. registered intensity by JMA : 4 at Isumi-shi Misakicho-choja* – Earthquake-Report.com considers 5+ as dangerous for eventual damage
Conclusion Earthquake-Report.com : NOT dangerous for damage or injuries

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2012/02/28/earthquakes-list-february-29-2012/

Earthquake – France

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Moderate very shallow earthquake in Alpes de Haute-Provence, France

Last update: February 27, 2012 at 9:19 am by By 

Earthquake overview : Shortly before midnight a moderate but very shallow earthquake struck the French Southern Alps.  The earthquake was felt from the Alps ski areas down to the French Mediterranean coast

Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : 4.7
UTC Time :  Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 22:37:56 UTC
Local time at epicenter :  Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 11:37:56 PM at epicenter
Depth (Hypocenter) :
Geo-location(s) :
5 km E Crévoux (pop 111)
41 km S Briançon (pop 11,577)
92 km (57 miles) SW of Torino, Italy
102 km (63 miles) SE of Grenoble, France

Update 09:15 UTC :  After having called the mayors office of Embrun, one of the bigger cities in the direct epicenter area, earthquake-report.com can confirm that NO serious damage has been inflicted (only reports of fallen objects in the local press), NO roads have been blocked by rockfall or landslides and NO dangerous avalanches have been reported in the ski areas.

Update 08:29 UTC :  – The French seismological servicehas received a lot of calls marking a max.  MMI intensity of IV (light shaking). Earthquake-report.com has also received an important number of experience reports indicating a max. intensity of V, an acceptable margin in between both.
– Our own France-Only list has noticed 3 aftershocks since the mainshock. They had Magnitudes of 3.7, 2.4 and 3.3
– The intensity values that we have noticed are normally not generating any damage. Additionally we know that people who are not used to earthquakes are slightly exaggerating the intensity.
– Another important effect in weakening the shaking near the epicenter is the soil who is mainly composed of rock. Rocks are weakening an earthquake wave considerably. Epicenter area and valleys at 50 km or more from the epicenter have therefore almost the same shaking values.
– Main risk with earthquakes in mountainous areas are landslides and avalanches. We are 100% sure than a lot of rockfall will have been noticed in the direct epicenter area, not necessarily leading to damage.

Update :  The epicenter was located very close to Crévoux

Update :  We are very curious to find out more details  during daylight tomorrow. As the epicenter is right in the ski-areas in the French and Italian Alps, avalanches are very well possible, especially because of the huge amounts of snow currently in the area.

Update :  The epicenter has been located almost on the Italy / France border. Some agencies are reporting the Italian side of the border being the epicenter,, others the France area.

Landscape at Guillestre, very close to the epicenter – image courtesy Stig Ekelund

Update:  La terre a tremblé à Crévoux, à 16 km au nord est de Barcelonette, ce soir à 23h37 précises, selon le site du Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA). Ce séisme de magnitude 4,9 sur l’échelle de Richter a été ressenti dans le Var, les Alpes-maritimes et même Marseille où de nombreux habitants ont senti la secousse durant 3 à 4 secondes. Il faut remonter à 1997 pour retrouver une amplitude équivalente dans cette région montagneuse des Hautes-Alpes. (source : LaProvence.com)

Update :  The earthquake has also been felt very well in South Western Italy, from the Alps until the Mediterranean coast.

Update : The nearest villages are : Guillestre (10 km), Embrun, Chateauroux les Alpes and Jausiers.

Update : The EMSC numbers are annoying as they can implicate minor damage in villages close to the epicenter. Especially the extremely shallow depth of 2 km means that the shaking (explosion) must have been felt and heard hard by people in these villages.

Update : The other seismological agencies reported the following data :
EMSC :  Magnitude 4.8 and 2 km depth
GEOFON : Magnitude 4.6 at 10 km depth

Shortly before midnight a moderate but very shallow earthquake struck the French Southern Alps.  The earthquake was felt from the Alps ski areas down to the French Mediterranean coast

to read more, and for updates, go to:    http://earthquake-report.com/2012/02/27/moderate-very-shallow-earthquake-in-alpes-maritimes-area-france/