- Putin’s Men Bomb Ukraine’s Stronghold In Donetsk; Unleash T-90M Tanks, Ka-52 Alligators | Watch Hindustan Times
- A Russian pilot landed a Mi-8 helicopter on a Ukrainian airbase in a daring defection, Ukrainian official says Yahoo News
- Amid a slogging counteroffensive, Ukraine sees a day of good fortune: a Russian air defense system was destroy Business Insider India
- Russia ‘Rules’ Bakhmut Battle With FPV Drones | Putin’s Men Flaunt Kupyansk Stronghold ‘Trophy’ Hindustan Times
- Russian forces destroy own tank, pass it off as Ukrainian loss Yahoo News
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: unleash
“This Can’t Be Safe. It’s Got to Have Bite”: Christopher Nolan and Cast Unleash ‘Oppenheimer’ – Hollywood Reporter
- “This Can’t Be Safe. It’s Got to Have Bite”: Christopher Nolan and Cast Unleash ‘Oppenheimer’ Hollywood Reporter
- Oppenheimer | Opening Look Universal Pictures
- Christopher Nolan Confirms Oppenheimer’s Budget, And It’s 80% More Than The Original Number Screen Rant
- Christopher Nolan & Emma Thomas interview on Oppenheimer at London premiere The Upcoming
- ‘Oppenheimer’ director Christopher Nolan says AI in film carries ‘responsibilities’ like atomic bomb creation Fox News
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Climate change did not unleash giant Antarctic iceberg, scientists say
Satellite imagery captured the break, which occurred about 10 years after satellite monitoring detected growth in a previously dormant crack in the ice known as Chasm-1, and almost two years after a slightly smaller iceberg named A74 separated from the same ice shelf. A chasm is a crack in the ice shelf that extends all the way from the surface to the ocean underneath, while an ice shelf is a floating piece of ice that extends from glaciers formed on land.
Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote in an email that while the iceberg “is a huge mass of ice, about 500 billion tons … it is far from being the largest iceberg ever seen, which rivaled Long Island.”
The calving event is not expected to affect the BAS’s Halley Research Station, which was relocated further inland in 2016 as a precaution after Chasm-1 began to grow.
However, “the new fracture puts the base within about 10 miles of the ocean, and new cracking could occur over the next few years, forcing another expensive move of the station,” Scambos wrote. The new iceberg is expected to follow a similar path to that of A74 into the Weddell Sea and will be named by the U.S. National Ice Center.
Unlike some previous icebergs and collapsed ice shelves that have been linked to climate change, the BAS press release said the break is a “natural process” and there is “no evidence that climate change has played a significant role.”
Rather, the chasm started to grow due to “stresses building up … because of the natural growth of the ice shelf,” said Hilmar Gudmundsson, a glaciology researcher at Northumbria University, in a 2019 BBC story.
Scambos compares the calving of the iceberg to a chisel on a board of wood. “In this case the chisel was a small island called ‘MacDonald Ice Rise,’” Scambos wrote. “The ice was driven against this rocky seamount by ice flow, forcing it to split and eventually break off the floating ice shelf.”
“These large iceberg calvings, sometimes as large as a small state, are spectacular. But they’re just part of how Antarctica’s ice sheet works,” Scambos said. “Most of the time they have nothing to do with climate change.”
Bomb cyclone blizzard to unleash Arctic blast, freezing temperatures
“Brief bursts of heavy snow, strong wind gusts, and rapidly falling temperatures will likely lead to sudden whiteouts, flash freezing, and icy roads,” the National Weather Service wrote. “Even in areas unaffected by snow, dangerous cold is expected.”
Nearly 70 million people are under winter storm watches or warnings in the Midwest, Great Lakes and Appalachians, and blizzard warnings have recently been hoisted in Minnesota.
Snow and strong winds could affect major airport hubs, including Chicago’s O’Hare International and the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County airports. The combination of snow and winds gusting over 40 mph will result in blowing and drifting snow that reduces visibility to near zero at times, particularly in a zone from western Kansas and Nebraska northward to Minnesota extending eastward through western New York.
“Whiteout conditions are expected … with travel becoming very difficult or impossible,” wrote the National Weather Service in Minneapolis. “This event could be life-threatening if you are stranded.”
Cities that could deal with blizzard conditions between Thursday and Friday — at least for a short interval — include Kansas City, Mo., St. Louis, Des Moines, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit and Buffalo.
In some places near the Great Lakes, including Buffalo, wind gusts could reach 50 to 65 mph, causing significant tree damage and power outages amid dangerously low temperatures.
Locations from the Rockies eastward that avoid snowfall will not escape near record-cold temperatures running some 40 degrees or more below normal. Wind chill watches, advisories and warnings affect about 90 million people, extending from the Canadian border to Texas and as far east as Tennessee, with subfreezing temperatures likely to plunge down to the Gulf of Mexico. In some places, temperatures will be the lowest in decades during the month of December.
Over the north central United States, actual air temperatures of minus-20 to minus-40 are expected, and wind chills could flirt with minus-60. The National Weather Service in Bismarck, N.D., is calling the cold “life-threatening.”
“The dangerously cold wind chills could cause frostbite on exposed skin in as little as 5 minutes,” it wrote.
That cold will make it to the East Coast on Friday, abruptly arriving as a flash freeze that could send temperatures plummeting 25 degrees or more in just a few hours. Coming after a morning of heavy rainfall and perhaps a short burst of snow, the flash freeze may turn some roadways into treacherous sheets of ice, potentially leading to extremely hazardous travel on major thoroughfares like Interstates 95, 84 and 81.
In the Northeast, the same storm system — which will intensify so rapidly it will qualify as a weather “bomb” — will push water against the coastline, causing coastal flooding.
An upper-air disturbance, characterized by a pocket of high altitude cold air, low pressure and spin, will dive out of British Columbia and Alberta over the central Plains on Wednesday and Thursday. It will explosively strengthen a surface low pressure zone pushing across the Plains, transforming it into a powerhouse storm system that will sweep up the Ohio Valley. By Friday night, it’ll be cruising into Quebec and Ontario en route to the Hudson Bay.
The storm will rapidly intensify as a bomb cyclone, a designation given to the most intense mid-latitude weather systems. Its pressure will drop from 1003 millibars Thursday night near the Indiana-Ohio border to 968 millibars Friday night — which is the approximate pressure of a Category 2 or 3 hurricane — over southern Quebec. Mid-latitude storms whose pressure falls 24 millibars in 24 hours are considered meteorological bombs — this storm’s pressure is projected to fall 35 millibars in that time. The lower the pressure, the stronger the storm.
Since low pressure systems spin counterclockwise, the system will draw in a tongue of mild air on its eastern side. That will keep most of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast predominantly rain. The exception will be in the Appalachians, specifically the Alleghenies of western Maryland, western Virginia and eastern West Virginia, where cold air entrenched in the mountains will be difficult to scour out.
The National Weather Service is warning of 4 to 7 inches of snow east of the Allegheny front, in addition to a quarter inch of ice from freezing rain. This will occur the first half of Thursday. That’s just round one of the storm before the flash freeze arrives Friday — not just for mountains, but also areas toward the coastal plain — including Washington and Baltimore.
A major Plains and Great Lakes blizzard
Farther west, however, the Plains, Upper Midwest and even parts of the Mid-South, perhaps as far south as Nashville, will see snow — and for some, a lot of it. The jackpot, which could feature a foot or more, looks to fall in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, with a secondary maximum downwind of Lakes Erie and Ontario.
Even in areas that only see a few inches of snow, travel is expected to still be extremely dangerous because of high winds that will limit visibility.
St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha and the Twin Cities are under winter storm warnings, with a general 2 to 6 inches of snow likely to fall — lesser south, more north. West of Minneapolis, a blizzard warning is in effect; the combination of 40-50 mph winds and moderate to heavy snow could make for whiteout conditions during the height of the storm Thursday night into Friday, while the wind and cold could lead to wind chills below minus-30.
In Chicago, Detroit and Indianapolis, a winter storm watch is in effect. That’s where confidence is lesser on just how much snow will fall. In the Windy City, totals will likely range between 3 and 6 inches, but will walk a steep gradient; accumulation will quickly climb as one drifts toward Michigan, with a foot or more likely falling in parts of the mitten.
In the storm’s wake, cold air blowing out of the west-northwest across Lakes Erie and Ontario could brew some lake-effect snows, although it’s not a classic wind direction for extreme accumulations, since it doesn’t blow lengthwise down the lakes. Instead, a foot or so is likely over the weekend, though meteorologists are still fine-tuning the details.
“Travel for the holiday weekend, including Friday, could be very difficult to impossible at times” through Monday, wrote the Weather Service in Buffalo.
Behind the storm, a plume of Siberian air will be shunted southward into the United States, lasting about 72 hours and affecting nearly everyone east of the Rockies. It will first creep across the Canadian border into early Wednesday, blasting south as a cold front that will drop temperatures 40 degrees or more in just under six hours.
The biting chill will blast into Denver on Wednesday night, dropping temperatures from 40 degrees to zero in just a matter of hours. By Thursday morning, it will be near minus-10 with wind chills around minus-30.
“Life Threatening Cold Arrives Late Wednesday,” tweeted the Weather Service office serving Denver. “We promise that’s not an exaggeration. This is likely to be the coldest day in 32 years in Denver so many people have not experienced a cold snap like this.”
Over the Dakotas, temperatures could dip to near minus-30 on Friday night. In Bismarck, they’ve been below zero since Sunday, and will stay that way until Christmas. Wind chills of minus-40 are likely. Breaking down in a vehicle without an emergency kit on hand could very quickly become deadly.
That cold will plunge southward, arriving in St. Louis on Thursday. Highs will peak in the mid-30s with snow, quickly falling to around minus-3 at night. Friday won’t climb above the single digits.
In Oklahoma City, Thursday won’t make it above 11 or 12 degrees. In the Texas Panhandle, temperatures could drop from highs near 50 on Wednesday to the teens by midnight. Locally, such fronts are known as “blue northers.”
The cold will blast all the way to the Gulf Coast by Thursday afternoon, transforming the ocean into a seemingly smoking lagoon. That will be due to “Arctic sea smoke,” or a unique type of fog which forms when frigid air blows over warmer waters.
Flash freeze in the eastern U.S.
The cold will reach the East Coast on Friday, but will do so abruptly. That will spell a danger for those driving on area interstates, particularly between Washington, D.C., and Hartford, Conn.
Temperatures on Friday morning will be in the 40s to near 50, with rain likely to fall as moisture swirls into the parent low pressure system to the northwest. As the cold front comes through around noontime, readings will plummet into the 20s, with temperature drops of 25 degrees or more likely in a three-hour window. At the same time, a very brief period of snow is possible.
Crews won’t be able to pretreat the roadways due to the rain, and any lingering moisture and puddles could quickly turn to ice. That could leave roadways highly treacherous. There’s some chance strong winds help dry roads before they can ice over, but pockets of dangerous travel are a risk.
UK’s Liz Truss will unleash billions of pounds to help with energy bills
The U.K.’s newly elected prime minister Liz Truss is expected to announce a multi-billion-pound stimulus package to help people with soaring energy prices.
Carl Court / Staff / Getty Images
LONDON — The U.K.’s new Prime Minister Liz Truss is set to announce a package worth tens of billions of pounds to help people to pay their energy bills on Thursday, but there are concerns over how it will be funded.
The policy announcement is expected to freeze the price of energy either at its current level or at £2,500 ($2,870). As it currently stands the cap coming into effect next month will raise the average energy bill from £1,971 to £3,549 a year.
Truss said she would “deal with the energy crisis caused by Putin’s war” in her maiden speech as prime minister on Tuesday evening. “I will take action this week to deal with energy bills and to secure our future energy supply,” she said.
The announcement is set to come as more than 170,000 people in the U.K. plan to cancel their energy bill payments on Oct. 1 in protest against the increased energy price cap.
The number of people in fuel poverty in Britain, defined as being unable to adequately heat a home, will hit 12 million households (42%) this winter if financial support isn’t put in place, according to the End Fuel Poverty Coalition campaign group.
£180 billion worth of support?
The exact details of the package have yet to be revealed. Initial projections suggested it may be around £100 billion worth of support, but the latest estimates from Deutsche Bank said it could be closer to £200 billion.
The Bank hiked up its expectations as reports suggested an energy bill freeze would sit at around the £2,500 level, which was “a substantially lower amount” than the bank had anticipated, it said in a research note Wednesday.
Reports also suggest a £40 billion package will be put in place to support businesses with their energy costs, according to the bank, bringing the total of the expected support measures to £180 billion.
It was initially anticipated that support would only be available to households.
The figure is almost half as much as was spent on providing financial support during the Covid-19 pandemic and just over 8% of gross domestic product, according to Deutsche Bank. It estimates the freeze will be in place from October.
‘Bill will eventually fall on taxpayers’
The package set to be announced by Truss might not be too dissimilar to a plan proposed by the opposition Labour Party on Aug. 14.
The main difference is that Labour had suggested funding the move through a windfall tax on oil and gas companies — something the new prime minister has ruled out.
“I am against a windfall tax,” Truss told the House of Commons during her first questioning session with fellow lawmakers on Wednesday.
“I believe it is the wrong thing to be putting companies off investing in the United Kingdom just as we need to be growing the economy,” she said.
Growing the U.K. economy through “tax cuts and reform” was one of three key mandates laid out by the new prime minister in her first speech Tuesday evening.
The others were tackling the energy crisis and improving Britain’s National Health Service.
The new energy package will likely be funded through additional government borrowing but the aftermath of the financial support could be felt for decades to come, according to Christopher Dembik, head of macro analysis at Saxo Bank.
“She will have to follow only one path: opening up the door for a massive stimulus package and, once the crisis is settled, increasing taxation,” Dembik said.
“It’s great news for the short term, though the bill will eventually fall on taxpayers in the long run and could take generations to pay off,” he told CNBC.
‘It’ll do nothing to help us in the winters to come’
An energy stimulus package would be a short-term solution to a longer-term problem for people in Britain, according to economist Jeevun Sandher.
“The plan as it is currently stated would stop the catastrophe coming but the crisis still exists,” he said, referencing the cost-of-living crisis already affecting many families and businesses in Britain.
“This energy price freeze might stop that catastrophe coming this winter, but it’ll do nothing to help us in the winters to come,” he said.
The gas sector may also feel the knock-on effects of a stimulus package, said Salomon Fiedler, an economist for investment bank Berenberg.
“If incumbent utility companies freeze prices now but individually keep them above costs in the future, they could be outcompeted by new entrants in the future which do not have to recuperate current losses and thus could undercut them,” Fiedler said.
“A further problem is that a general energy price freeze would remove incentives to reduce gas consumption for households,” Fiedler told CNBC. “This likely will make the policy very expensive and increase the scarcity of gas for sectors not covered by the freeze even further.”
There is also speculation as to the impact on the economy as a whole. While Truss’ low-tax and deregulation policies may bolster the economy, the benefits won’t be felt for several years, or even decades, Fiedler said.
“In the short run, additional fiscal stimulus, be it via tax cuts or support measures, would exacerbate inflation pressures (even as reported inflation rates will depend on the details of these measures) if they are not financed by … spending cuts elsewhere,” he wrote.
The cost of energy bills “is definitely the most important issue to voters right now,” Chris Curtis, head of political polling at Opinium Research. told CNBC.
“It’s important as a new prime minister to make a good first impression and Liz Truss is hoping that by having a big intervention on voters’ biggest priority, it’s going to go some way to making that positive first impression,” Curtis said.
“Most voters tell us that they still don’t know very much about her and opinions of her are quite weak, so it’s a really important moment for her to try and land well with the public,” he said.
‘Impossible challenges’ for the most vulnerable
With warnings that the next decade of winters could be “terrible” if serious action isn’t taken to control gas prices, some are asking if the upcoming package will be enough to protect the most vulnerable.
Freezing prices at their current level would cause energy needs to spike and worsen the situation, according to a research note from Sarah Coles, senior personal finance analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.
“While anyone paying with a direct debit will technically already be spreading higher costs throughout the year, those on lower incomes are more likely to be on prepayment meters, where they pay for the energy they use at the time they use it,” Coles said.
“If prices are frozen at a slightly higher level it will compound the impossible challenges facing the most vulnerable this winter,” she said.
European Central Bank could unleash a jumbo rate hike
With inflation in the euro zone projected to rise to at least 10% in the coming months, a “jumbo” rate hike of 75 basis points on is certainly a possibility.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
FRANKFURT, Germany — The European Central Bank is expected to frontload a series of rate hikes and sacrifice growth in the region due to the rising cost of living which is threatening to surge even higher.
ECB Executive Board Member Isabel Schnabel’s speech in Jackson Hole set the tone for the upcoming policy meeting this week. With inflation in the euro zone projected to rise to at least 10% in the coming months and the risk of consumer prices rocketing higher, a “jumbo” rate hike of 75 basis points on Thursday is certainly a possibility.
“As frontloaded hikes can have a bigger impact on inflation expectations than a more gradual approach, a 75bp move could make sense,” said ECB watcher and Berenberg’s Chief Economist Holger Schmieding in a research note.
“Although it is largely priced in, it could still exacerbate strains in the bond markets.”
The recent halt of gas deliveries to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline has not only pushed stocks lower and increased the risk of a recession in Europe, it’s also pushed Italian government 10-year yields to 4% — the highest level since mid-June before the ECB announced the creation of an anti-fragmentation tool. High yields for Italy — much higher than those in Germany — mean the government in Rome has to pay more to borrow, exacerbating concerns over its hefty debt pile.
Inflation in the euro zone hit 9.7% in August and with the continued pressure on energy prices it’s expected to reach double-digit levels in the coming months. At the same time the risk of a recession is looming large over the region’s economy as consumers feel the pain and scale back their consumption, and companies struggle with high energy prices.
“While governments will partially ‘foot the bill’, there are limits to what extent the private sector can be shielded from this income shock,” said Dirk Schumacher with Natixis in a research note to clients.
“The drop in consumer confidence to a record low over the last months, indicates that households are aware of these limits with respect to government support. There is also increasing evidence that companies in energy intensive sectors are reducing production.”
Quantitative tightening
Because of the inflation outlook, the ECB is expected to sacrifice growth in order to keep inflation expectations anchored, as this is the bank’s core mandate.
“A key take away from recent comments by ECB officials is that the hiking cycle will be less sensitive to recession than we thought,” said Deutsche Bank’s Chief Economist Mark Wall in a research note.
“We raised our terminal rate forecast by 50bp to 2.5%,” he added. The ECB’s benchmark rate is currently at zero.
The Frankfurt institution believes its “neutral” rate — an optimal level for a steady economy — to be between 1% and 2% and with inflation risk rising the ECB’s Governing Council might need to consider raising rates above that level into tightening territory.
That, of course, also raises the question about quantitative tightening — which is the technical description for shrinking the central bank’s balance sheet. Selling assets has not yet been discussed by the ECB.
“Given the threat to the ECB’s credibility, we also wonder why quantitative tightening is not discussed,” Anatoli Annenkov of Societe Generale, said in a research note. “Not using QT should imply higher rates.”
Tau Herculids meteor shower could unleash 1,000 shooting stars per hour
Meteor showers happen when the Earth plows through a stream of debris left in the wake of comets, asteroids or other celestial bodies. Most are the size of grains of puffed rice or small pebbles, and produce blazing displays as they burn up in our outer atmosphere. Meteor storms result when Earth enters an unusually dense and intense clustering of interstellar debris — akin to driving through a swarm of bugs on the highway. In an instant, your windshield would be covered with smears streaking into your direction of travel.
That’s why — in the unlikely event that things line up just right — an outburst of up to 1,000 shooting stars per hour may be possible.
Where the debris is coming from
Every meteor shower is connected to an object in space. In the case of the Perseids in August, the debris comes from Comet Swift-Tuttle, while the Geminids in December are sparked by an asteroid called 3200 Phaethon. Both displays result in 50 to 100 meteors every hour when viewed beneath clear, dark skies.
With the Tau Herculid shower, the parent comet is Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 (SW3), which made its closest approach to the sun on Oct. 16, 2011. Since then, it’s been in the process of fragmenting and disintegrating.
The comet was discovered in 1930 and orbits the sun every 5.4 years. It wasn’t seen again, however, until late 1979, making a series of clandestine passes by Earth. The comet unexpectedly graced the night skies in 1995 after having apparently fractured into four pieces.
Now there are more than a dozen pieces, and each fragment, particularly that of 1995, can result in billions of tiny bits of debris.
Because of the effects of mass, gravity and pressure due to sunlight, some of the gravel-sized pieces of debris may take smaller orbits that would put them ahead of the main comet, and on a trajectory for possible intersection with Earth’s orbit.
What are the chances it produces a meteor storm?
According to space.com, a number of astronomers are optimistic that a new meteor shower may be in the offing this year, and some even assert that meteor storm levels — corresponding to 1,000 shooting stars per hour — could be attained.
That said, astronomers don’t know how much the fragments have spread out, nor the dimensions of the debris cloud.
Meteor rates could range between one and 1,000 meteors per hour. If a meteor storm occurs, it would only last for perhaps an hour or two, and probably less.
“This is going to be an all or nothing event,” wrote Bill Cooke, who leads NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “If the debris from SW3 was traveling more than 220 miles per hour when it separated from the comet, we might see a nice meteor shower. If the debris had slower ejection speeds, then nothing will make it to Earth and there will be no meteors from this comet.”
If a storm occurs, you will not want to miss it.
Astronomers have pinpointed the most likely time for the peak of whatever display may or may not transpire to be around 1 a.m. Eastern time next Monday night/Tuesday morning. The shower’s “radiant” point, or the part of the sky from which meteors appear to emanate, will be high in the sky over North America at that time, so there’s no specific place in the sky to look.
Of course, you’ll want to isolate yourself from bright lights or obstructions and relocate to an area with a broad view of the sky. It will be weather-permitting, of course.
Meteor storms have occurred with the Leonid meteor shower, which happens each year in November. Ordinarily, the Leonids only sling a few shooting stars per hour overhead, making an unremarkable show. But once in a while, the heavens explode with sudden spikes of extreme activity and meteor rates of 100,000 per hour.
In A.D. 902, astronomers in northern Africa and China recounted stars falling “like rain.” Another meteor storm was sighted over present-day Venezuela in 1799.
It happened again in 1833. “At Boston, the frequency of meteors was estimated to be about half that of flakes of snow in an average snowstorm,” wrote Irish astronomer Agnes Mary Clerke, who stated that the storm lasted about nine hours. Clerke placed estimates of meteor rates at the unheard-of level of as many as 240,000 shooting stars per hour. That’s more than 60 shooting stars per second.
The Leonids again dazzled on the night of Nov. 13-14, 1866. One newspaper in Malta published an eyewitness report describing the scene as “truly grand and imposing … one of the most sublime that I ever beheld.”
Another meteor storm came in 1966, igniting an equally splendid fireworks show in the United States. Eyewitness Christine Downing, who drove north of Mojave, Calif., saw a couple of shooting stars every five minutes, which “at the time … seemed extraordinary.” At 12:30 a.m., it began “raining stars,” and by 2 a.m. “it was a ‘blizzard.’ ”
Her description, which can be read in full on a NASA Web page, is one of many from that night. “There was the unnerving feeling that the mountains were being set on fire,” Downing wrote. “Falling stars filled the entire sky to the horizon, yet it was silent.”
Additional, tamer outbursts took place in 1999 and 2001.
There aren’t any meteor storms from the Leonids or any other shower explicitly predicted in our lifetimes, nor are we likely to encounter anything close to what generations of the past saw — but next week might offer a taste.
‘Prepare’ for Putin to unleash nuclear attack
President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that the world should “prepare” for Russian leader Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons in his invasion of Ukraine – and urged air-raid shelters and anti-radiation medicine to be readied for the potential calamity.
In an interview with CNN that aired Sunday, Zelensky was asked whether Putin would deploy chemical or nuclear tactical weapons to further his military goals in Ukraine.
“Not only me – all of the world, all of the countries have to be worried because it can be not real information, but it can be truth,” Zelensky told host Jake Tapper in an interview from his presidential office in Kyiv.
“Chemical weapons, they should do it, they could do it, for them the life of the people, nothing. That’s why,” Zelensky said. “We should think not be afraid, not be afraid but be ready. But that is not a question for Ukraine, not only for Ukraine but for all the world, I think.”
In an interview with Ukrainian media Saturday night, Zelensky warned of the real possibility of a nuclear attack.
“We shouldn’t wait for the moment when Russia decides to use nuclear weapons. … We must prepare for that,” the Ukrainian leader said.
“Anti-radiation medicine and air raid shelters would be needed,” he said, noting that Russia “can use any weapon, I’m convinced of it.”
The Russian military has experienced a number of setbacks, including having to pull back from the area around Kyiv and its suburbs because of ferocious fighting by Ukrainian forces.
Following the retreat, Russia lost its most powerful naval ship, the guided missile cruiser Moskva, when it sank last week in the Black Sea after being hit by a Ukrainian missile attack.
CIA Director William Burns said last week that a desperate Putin, seeing his forces suffer heavy losses at the hands of the Ukrainians, may resort to using nuclear weapons.
“Given the potential desperation of President Putin and the Russian leadership, given the setbacks that they’ve faced so far, militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons,” Burns said during a speech last Thursday at Georgia Tech University.
Russian forces that withdrew from Kyiv have since regrouped and are preparing for a full-scale attack in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine where Russian-backed militias have been backing separatist groups since the invasion of Crimea in 2014.
Zelensky said that combat, which could be reminiscent of the open field battles from World War II, could “influence” the entire fight for Ukraine and vowed that his forces will not yield.
“This is why it is very important for us to not allow them, to stand our ground, because this battle … it can influence the course of the whole war,” Zelensky said on CNN.
“Because I don’t trust the Russian military and Russian leadership. That is why we understand that the fact that we fought them off and they left, and they were running away from Kyiv – from the north, from Chernihiv and from that direction – it doesn’t mean if they are able to capture Donbas, they won’t come further towards Kyiv,” he said.
San Andreas Fault’s creeping section could unleash large earthquakes
The middle section of the San Andreas Fault may have the capacity to host larger earthquakes than previously believed.
Between the towns of Parkfield and Hollister, the famous California fault undergoes something called aseismic creep. Instead of building up strain and then slipping in one earth-rattling moment, the two sections of fault move imperceptibly, releasing stress without causing large quakes. But looking back millions of years in time, researchers have found that this section of fault may have experienced earthquakes of magnitude 7 and higher. That is larger than the magnitude-6.9 Loma Prieta temblor that killed 63 people in the Bay Area in 1989.
It’s not fully clear how long ago the large quakes on the fault occurred, but they were within the last 3 million years, said Genevieve Coffey, an earthquake geologist at GNS Science in New Zealand.
“The central section should be considered as a potential source of earthquake hazard,” Coffey told Live Science.
The San Andreas Fault
The San Andreas Fault has three sections. The southern section runs from the Salton Sea to Parkfield, California, and has the capacity for large quakes. In 1857, for example, the magnitude-7.9 Fort Tejon quake shifted the ground at the fault a whopping 29.5 feet (9 meters). The northern section of the fault runs from the town of Hollister, through the Bay Area up to Cape Mendocino, California. This section of the fault is most famous for the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which had an estimated magnitude of 7.9.
Related: See stunning photos of the San Andreas Fault
In between Parkfield and Hollister, though, the fault hasn’t given rise to any recorded quakes larger than a magnitude 6. Geoscientists have dug into the fault, looking for signs in the shape of the sediment layers of long-ago earthquakes, and they haven’t found any large quakes in the last 2,000 years.
But even if the central San Andreas doesn’t build up enough stress to start a large earthquake, it could act as a conduit for quakes originating on the northern or southern section of the fault, Coffey said. She and her colleagues wanted to go back more than 2,000 years.
To do so, the researchers took advantage of the fact that when a fault slips, it generates friction, which generates heat.
“It’s like rubbing your hands together,” Coffey said.
This heat can spike the temperature of the rocks in the fault by more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius). And those temperature changes can change the structure of organic molecules that accumulate within sediments.
Historical quakes
The researchers analyzed a sediment core from the central San Andreas that was drilled as part of the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) project. Deep in the core, about 1.9 miles down (3,192 to 3,196 meters), the researchers found a spot where the biomarkers showed signs of heating.
“That patch of the fault also consisted of these really highly deformed siltstones, mudstones,” Coffey said. “It had lots of these small slip layers, so lots of scaley surfaces and shiny surfaces, which is what we would think of as rocks that had hosted lots of earthquakes.”
This zone of the fault may have hosted more than 100 quakes, Coffey and her colleagues reported Feb. 25 in the journal Geology.
Next, the researchers analyzed the quake-deformed section of rock with a method called potassium-argon dating. This method takes advantage of the fact that a naturally radioactive variation of potassium, potassium-40, slowly decays into argon gas. When something happens to heat the rock, this gas is released, resetting the “potassium-argon clock” to zero. By looking at the accumulation of argon, the researchers could determine how long it had been since the rocks were heated.
Their results suggested that the heating happened, at the earliest, 3 million years ago. But the quakes could have been far more recent, Coffey said. Part of the ongoing work done by Coffey’s collaborators involves improving the potassium-argon method for earthquake dating to narrow down that time span. However, the magnitude of the heating indicates that the central San Andreas can indeed undergo a lot of shaking — it’s likely that the earthquakes recorded in this section of the fault ranged from magnitudes in the mid-6s to low-7s, Coffey said.
“The work that we did was the first direct geologic evidence of earthquakes” in this region of the San Andreas, she said.
The quakes probably started on the southern portion of the fault and sped along the faultline like an unzipping zipper. Knowing that the fault has this capacity is important for understanding the earthquake hazard in central California, Coffey said.
The researchers plan to apply the potassium-argon method to other faults, including in the New Zealand bedrock, where there isn’t any organic material for traditional carbon-14 dating (which only works back to about 55,000 years) and where there are no sedimentary layers to show the marks of very old quakes.
“The potassium-argon tool is pretty interesting, because it really gives us access to a range of faults that we haven’t been able to date in the past,” Coffey said.
Originally published on Live Science.
Nor’easter forecast: A bomb cyclone with hurricane power will unleash snow this weekend
“The models continue to show a nor’easter with blockbuster potential for the weekend, mainly late Friday through Saturday,” CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller says.
There are still questions about how much snow will pile up and how extreme winds will get.
“Heavy snow is most likely in parts of New England,” the Weather Prediction Center said Wednesday morning. “Heavy snow is still possible farther south along the East Coast, including the major I-95 metropolitan areas from New York City to Washington DC, but that is more uncertain at this time.”
The National Weather Service in Boston on Wednesday afternoon issued a winter storm watch for eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, from Friday night until Saturday evening. Expected snowfall ranges from 8 to 16 inches, with wind gusts up to 60 mph.
Other NWS offices have yet to issue watches due to the uncertainty.
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The storm is expected to form in the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Georgia, then rapidly strengthen — a process known as bombogenesis — overnight Friday and track Saturday up the East Coast.
“Guidance indicates potential for this storm to undergo bombogenesis, meaning its central pressure drops at least 24 mb in 24 hours,” the Boston weather service office said earlier, referring to the unit of pressure known as millibars. “This creates a very tight pressure gradient, meaning strong, potentially damaging winds will accompany the snow.”
“This storm is likely to strengthen at a rate, and to an intensity, equivalent to only the most powerful hurricanes, so the high-end potential of this storm cannot be overstated. But with nor’easters, like in real estate, it will all come down to location, location, location,” Miller said.
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Uncertainty in the forecast is pretty common more than 48 hours before a storm even has formed, as the Boston National Weather Service office noted Wednesday on Twitter.
“Well, the average model error at this time range (3 days out) is over 150 miles! For example, where will the rain/#snow line setup? 150 miles could range from Cape Cod, MA to New Haven, CT. Hence, still too early.”
Both forecast models predict this strengthening, but their storm tracks up the East Coast are different, changing what people could expect from Washington, DC, to Boston.
Compare forecast models and delay information
“For those that have been following along, I know you’ve heard it repeated to death, but the key message continues to be the same: guidance is trending favorably for a big storm, but the exact track remains uncertain,” the Boston office said. “This track is what will tell us exactly where the greatest snow, wind, and coastal flooding concerns are.”
A “farther offshore track of the low will decrease snow amounts while a track closer to shore will increase snow amounts and if the low gets close enough to the coast, a wintry mix will be possible for some eastern coastal sections (This is looking less and less likely),” said the New York office of the National Weather Service.
Blizzard conditions, coastal flooding are on the table
While it’s too early to pinpoint exact totals, it looks like the storm will hit all metro areas along Interstate 95 from Virginia to Maine starting Friday and through the day Saturday. Philadelphia, New York and Boston could get a foot of snow — or much more.
Winds of 50 mph or more are likely throughout the Northeast, with even higher gusts possible, especially along the eastern coastlines. These strong winds combined with snow will create blizzard conditions.
“A closer track would also mean higher winds and potential for blizzard conditions near the coast,” the weather service office in Philadelphia said.
How to survive a blizzard
A blizzard happens when snow combines with winds gusting over 35 mph for more than three hours and creates visibility of less than a quarter of a mile.
“Significant coastal impacts are possible in the Northeast, including coastal flooding and beach erosion,” the prediction center said.
The stronger the storm, the greater the surge of water along the coast will be. Timing also matters a lot.
“Coastal flooding is a concern thanks to astronomically high tides on Saturday,” the Boston weather service office said. “The combination of strong northeast winds and high seas will bring storm surges that, if coinciding with high tide, would lead to minor or moderate coastal flooding.”
The difference in storm timing — even as few as six hours — would make a massive difference in impact on coastal flooding and erosion concerns.
One thing is sure: Meteorologists will be glued to computer forecast model runs all day Wednesday.
“Today’s trends will certainly be important,” the weather office in Philadelphia said. “Sampling will be steadily improving, and ‘big picture’ model solutions should start converging in the next 12 to 24 hours.”
In layman’s terms: We will know more details Thursday.