#ashes-buildup

#ashes-buildup

Heavy rain and thunderstorms affected much of Greece, with southeastern areas experiencing the most severe conditions, including flooding and stranded vehicles.

Flash flooding has been a major problem in recent days in places such as Maui, Molokai and the Big Island, where rain had been falling between 1 and 2in (2.5 and 5cm) an hour overnight, according to the Hawaii emergency management agency.

Successive punches of snow, wind and severe weather are "going to impact the eastern half of the United States," AccuWeather senior meteorologist Tyler Roys said in an interview. Beyond the threat to lives and property, "whether it's wind gusts from a squall line, blizzard or snow, or just wind because of the storm, you're looking at several major airports being impacted."

We're not expecting much in terms of winds, mainly just going to be flood potential. And thinking that the focus is going to be Oahu, Maui County and Big Island, with Kauai kind of being on the fringes of it versus, you know, all the Islands were impacted last time.

The fragile-looking filaments of cooled lava known as Pele's hair can form when pockets of bubble-rich lava pull apart rapidly, experiments suggest.

Marine fossils have been discovered on mountain ranges around the world, including the Himalayas, Andes and Rocky Mountains, which scientists say were once covered by ancient seas before being pushed upward as continents collided and mountains formed.

A long, productive storm cycle will keep the Washington Cascades favored through Saturday afternoon, while Oregon stays warmer and more wind-affected. Confidence is highest from Wednesday morning through Saturday afternoon, when steady snow stacks up to 36"-57" at the biggest Washington winners, around 25"-34" at Mt Baker, and a denser but still healthy 34"-46" at Timberline.

Although Kansas has no active volcanoes, the region marks the southern reach of the Midcontinent Rift System, a massive tectonic event that nearly split North America apart in Earth's distant past. When magma forced its way through the crust during that period, it left behind hardened igneous rock and deep fractures that remain buried thousands of feet underground.

If a 10-pound sphere of ice about 10 centimeters in diameter were to fall, he said, "very quickly" - in about three seconds - "it would reach a terminal velocity of close to 50 or 60 mph." "You're talking about being potentially hit by something 10 pounds going 50 miles an hour. Uh, not pleasant."

Recent examination of some ancient rocks from the west coast of Scotland have now overturned that thinking, suggesting there were periods during snowball Earth when the climate woke up. Close-up views of thin, repeating rock layers known as varves, each thought to represent a single year of sedimentation during the snowball Earth period.

The 1993 erotic thriller Sliver should have ended differently: Zeke, played by William Baldwin, was scripted to fly a helicopter towards an active volcano, after Sharon Stone's character, Carly, reveals she's the killer. The pilot, Craig Hosking, had been tasked with flying low over Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, accompanied by the director of photography, Mike Benson, and his assistant Christopher Duddy, to film the bubbling lava and white plumes of smoke escaping from the Puu Oo vent.

Remembering the life and work of the geologist George Poulett Scrope, and salmon stories in this week's pick from the Nature archive.

Californians looking to resume their weekly commute Tuesday awoke to see several major roads closed after heavy rains drenched much the state Monday - with the expected precipitation far from over. Among the closures was a section of Highway 1 through Big Sur, which state officials just weeks ago celebrated reopening for the first time in three years. The road closed Monday after rockslides left "debris in the roadway at multiple locations," according to the California Department of Transportation.

Consider the Kamchatka Peninsula, a Russian territory that reaches into the Pacific Ocean north-east of Japan, which has been battling with record amounts of snow this winter. On January 16 alone, a small city on the peninsula's southern coast, called Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, experienced a baffling five and a half feet of snow, effectively burying local residents and their cars completely. Some areas saw more than six and a half feet in just the first half of January.

Avalanches kill about 100 people in Europe each year, with vast masses of ice, snow and rock regularly crashing down on hikers and skiers who have been caught unawares. The structure of the snow, angle of the slope and variation of the weather can dictate whether a gentle disturbance like a gust of wind or the glide of a snowboard can trigger a deadly shift in the mountain.

Australia's east coast is being smashed by summer storms as residents are told to evacuate. An emergency warning was in place for Sydney's northern beaches on Sunday morning, with residents at Narrabeen Lagoon and surrounds told to leave. More than a dozen people have been rescued across Sydney, with cars submerged and homes flooded. At Great Mackerel Beach, in the northern beaches, a landslide damaged numerous homes with at least one woman injured.

WeatherA powerful early-week storm delivers very heavy snowfall to Mt. Etna, then tapers to lighter, higher-quality snow mid to late week as winds ease. Snow levels fluctuate between about 4,400 and 5,900 feet, so lower elevations may see some rain or mixed periods at times, while upper mountain conditions stay wintry with temperatures holding in the upper teens. The core of the storm arrives Monday night through Tuesday night with intense winds and denser snow.

If you are reading this on the East Coast, congratulations on the warmer weather you're finally getting this week. It was cold and snowy for a while there. Here in the West, we wish we'd been in your shoes. Spare a thought for the tens of millions of us who live on the other side of the continent, where a catastrophe is unfolding.

Land is one of those things that can disappear even as you see it. It falls away beneath you, becoming merely the ground under your feet, because you're thinking about where you're going, or a place slowly blurring out of focus from the airplane window. Land is a primal word, primordial even, like lava. And it is a loaded word if, say, you're Indigenous or descend from a people whose land was taken from them.

This is a very serious set of weather conditions, said Emergency Management Commissioner Tim Wiebusch on Sunday. We haven't seen heatwave conditions like this in Victoria for almost 20 years. It was 2009, ahead of the [Black Saturday] bushfires where we saw those prevailing conditions.

The past 11 years are the warmest since records began, with the past three top of the leader-board. Hottest of the lot was 2024, which coincided with a strong Niño-a pattern of winds and ocean currents that nudges the thermometer upwards-combined with a peak of the 11-year solar cycle when the sun shines brightest. But in 2025 El Niño tailed off, to be replaced by its opposite pattern, La Niña, and the sun-only a minor part of the story in any case-began to dim.