Hurricane Flossie upgraded to Category 4

HONOLULU - Hurricane Flossie strengthened to a Category 4 storm Saturday as it spun more than 1,000 miles south of Hawaii.

The hurricane could pass by Hawaii late Tuesday or early Wednesday, forecasters said, but by then cooler waters should weaken Flossie considerably to a tropical storm.

At 5 p.m. EDT, Flossie had intensified with maximum sustained winds near 135 mph about 1,035 miles southeast of Hilo, Hawaii.

The storm, with gusts of 161 mph, was expected to weaken later in the day as it passed over cooler waters. It was traveling west at about 12 mph.

Jeff Powell, lead forecaster at the National Weather Service in Honolulu, said a "ramp up" of surf on the Big Island was expected late Monday.

Early 2007 saw record-breaking extreme weather: U.N. (Reuters)

The world experienced a series of record-breaking weather events in early 2007, from flooding in Asia to heatwaves in Europe and snowfall in South Africa, the United Nations weather agency said on Tuesday.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said global land surface temperatures in January and April were likely the warmest since records began in 1880, at more than 1 degree Celsius higher than average for those months.

There have also been severe monsoon floods across South Asia, abnormally heavy rains in northern Europe, China, Sudan, Mozambique and Uruguay, extreme heatwaves in southeastern Europe and Russia, and unusual snowfall in South Africa and South America this year, the WMO said.

"The start of the year 2007 was a very active period in terms of extreme weather events," Omar Baddour of the agency's World Climate Program told journalists in Geneva.

While most scientists believe extreme weather events will be more frequent as heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions cause global temperatures to rise, Baddour said it was impossible to say with certainty what the second half of 2007 will bring.

"It is very difficult to make projections for the rest of the year," he said.

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More than foot of rain floods Texas - (AP - Yahoo News)

GEORGETOWN, Texas - Torrential storms flooded parts of central Texas early Wednesday, stranding dozens of people on roofs, in trees and in vehicles, and the weather was so treacherous that some helicopter rescue attempts had to be abandoned.

The worst flooding was in Williamson, Lampasas and Burnet counties in the Texas Hill Country northwest of Austin.

"We got hard facts of 18-plus inches of rain in a couple of those places since midnight," Austin-Travis County emergency medical services spokesman Warren Hassinger said just after 7 a.m. More rain was expected, the National Weather Service said.

There were no immediate reports of deaths Wednesday, but it was the latest in a series of storms blamed for at least 11 deaths in the past week in Texas.

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Hawking flies weightless aboard jet (Yahoo! - AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Free of his wheelchair and tethered only to heart rate and blood pressure monitors, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking on Thursday fulfilled a dream of floating weightless on a zero-gravity jet, a step he hopes leads to further space adventures.

The modified jet carrying Hawking, a handful of his physicians and nurses, and dozens of others first flew up to 24,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean off Florida. Nurses lifted Hawking and carried him to the front of the jet, where they placed him on his back atop a special foam pillow.

The jet then climbed to around 32,000 feet and made a parabolic dive back to 24,000 feet, allowing Hawking and the other passengers to experience weightlessness for about 25 seconds.
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The astrophysicist hopes the zero-gravity flight is a step toward going on a suborbital flight, which may be offered by private space companies by the end of the decade.

"It's a test to see how well he can handle the g-forces that would be necessary in order to leave the atmosphere," said Sam Blackburn, Hawking's assistant. "That is very much one of the major purposes of this flight."

Awesome! I wish I could go! :)

Earthquake Near Solomon Islands Sparks Tsunami Alert

An earthquake of magnitude 8 struck near the coast of the Solomon Islands, spurring a tsunami warning for Australia and South Pacific island nations.

Residents of the coastal settlement of Gizo in the Solomon Islands retreated to high ground as waves damaged buildings, including a local hotel, Robert Iroge, editor of the Solomons Star newspaper said by telephone from the capital, Honiara, today. There are unconfirmed reports that five people are missing, Agence France-Presse reported, citing the Solomon Islands Office of Emergency Management.

Australia's Bureau of Metereology advised people to avoid beaches in the eastern states of Queensland and New South Wales. ``It is quite a dangerous situation,'' spokesman Rob Webb told Sky Television News. ``We are concerned about the entire east coast of Australia for the next two to three hours.''

The quake occurred at 7:39 a.m. Solomon Islands time, 45 kilometers (25 miles) south southeast of Gizo in the New Georgia archipelago and 345 kilometers west northwest of Honiara, at a depth of 10 kilometers, the U.S. Geological Survey said in an e-mailed alert.

"Sea level readings indicate a tsunami was generated,'' the warning center said on its Web site. "It may have been destructive along coasts near the earthquake epicenter and could also be a threat to more distant coasts.''

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Tsunami warning after powerful quake in Solomons (Yahoo News - AFP)

AFP - A powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 7.6 struck in the Solomon Islands Monday, prompting the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre to issue a tsunami warning.

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Experts warn of major quake in western Canada (Yahoo - AFP)

Seismologists warned that a "catastrophic" earthquake could strike the southwestern coast of British Columbia soon, Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper reported.
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The experts noted rumblings from deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, along Vancouver Island, which could foretell a giant quake. But they said the probability of a quake was still low.

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