Possibly the largest tornado swarms in modern history have swarmed across the southern United States leaving 220 people dead at least. Tuscaloosa Alabama has been devastated. There were hundreds treated and 100 in the emergency room.
The north Alabama nuclear power plant lost power and is on diesel generators.
A total of 3 nuclear plants in Alabama were shut down, They are of similar nature to Japan’s Fukushima reactors. About 90 transmission lines are out of service.
It would be hard to venture a guess as to how much radioactive smoke now steaming out of the Fukushima reactors are mixed up in the storms.
Gee you know it is time we were real with each other again. Many scientists think this solar storm will come much sooner than 2012. I can tell you today in Florida the heat against your arm is very hot outside and it is April. Very unusual. I have to say after the Japan meltdown, our luck is not exactly on a Las Vegas roll is it
What are the chances that Cayce is right on the pole shift, the Mayans are right on the greatest earthquake the earth has ever known? As we ponder this now with radiation filtering around the globe, you have step back and think, probably pretty good odds they are all right.
That is just my opinion though. Dr. Chiappalone has the right idea. It is time to develop a philosophy if you haven’t already and come to terms with why is happening. Is it good or bad? Is there anything you can do about it? Obviously there isn’t. The world has been headed into a sort of Mad Max scenario for a long time. You have been invited to witness one of the most spectacular events in the cosmos and billions are here to experience it and are experiencing it now.
If you fancy yourself as simply a food consumer, you are going to be disappointed. If you view yourself as a spirit using the body as a learning vehicle, you will be much more at ease.
There is a storm coming, that is what many notable scientists predicted back in 2006 and it will by here according to Hathaway in 2010 or 2011. Well it is here. The last one happened around the time of Sputnik. A new one will affect many things from cellphones, car computers to appliances as well as industrial centers and manufacturing concerns. We have all just been made aware you do not want to see the power go out on nuclear reactors…. very bad. No computer is bad enough.
March 10, 2006: It’s official: Solar minimum has arrived. Sunspots have all but vanished. Solar flares are nonexistent. The sun is utterly quiet.
Like the quiet before a storm.
This week researchers announced that a storm is coming–the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). “The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one,” she says. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.
That was a solar maximum. The Space Age was just beginning: Sputnik was launched in Oct. 1957 and Explorer 1 (the first US satellite) in Jan. 1958. In 1958 you couldn’t tell that a solar storm was underway by looking at the bars on your cell phone; cell phones didn’t exist. Even so, people knew something big was happening when Northern Lights were sighted three times in Mexico. A similar maximum now would be noticed by its effect on cell phones, GPS, weather satellites and many other modern technologies.
Right: Intense auroras over Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1958. [More]
Dikpati’s prediction is unprecedented. In nearly-two centuries since the 11-year sunspot cycle was discovered, scientists have struggled to predict the size of future maxima—and failed. Solar maxima can be intense, as in 1958, or barely detectable, as in 1805, obeying no obvious pattern.
The key to the mystery, Dikpati realized years ago, is a conveyor belt on the sun.
We have something similar here on Earth—the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, popularized in the sci-fi movie The Day After Tomorrow. It is a network of currents that carry water and heat from ocean to ocean–see the diagram below. In the movie, the Conveyor Belt stopped and threw the world’s weather into chaos.
Above: Earth’s “Great Ocean Conveyor Belt.” [More]The sun’s conveyor belt is a current, not of water, but of electrically-conducting gas. It flows in a loop from the sun’s equator to the poles and back again. Just as the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt controls weather on Earth, this solar conveyor belt controls weather on the sun. Specifically, it controls the sunspot cycle.
Solar physicist David Hathaway of the National Space Science & Technology Center (NSSTC) explains: “First, remember what sunspots are–tangled knots of magnetism generated by the sun’s inner dynamo. A typical sunspot exists for just a few weeks. Then it decays, leaving behind a ‘corpse’ of weak magnetic fields.”
Enter the conveyor belt.
“The top of the conveyor belt skims the surface of the sun, sweeping up the magnetic fields of old, dead sunspots. The ‘corpses’ are dragged down at the poles to a depth of 200,000 km where the sun’s magnetic dynamo can amplify them. Once the corpses (magnetic knots) are reincarnated (amplified), they become buoyant and float back to the surface.” Presto—new sunspots!
Right: The sun’s “great conveyor belt.” [Larger image]
All this happens with massive slowness. “It takes about 40 years for the belt to complete one loop,” says Hathaway. The speed varies “anywhere from a 50-year pace (slow) to a 30-year pace (fast).”
When the belt is turning “fast,” it means that lots of magnetic fields are being swept up, and that a future sunspot cycle is going to be intense. This is a basis for forecasting: “The belt was turning fast in 1986-1996,” says Hathaway. “Old magnetic fields swept up then should re-appear as big sunspots in 2010-2011.”
Like most experts in the field, Hathaway has confidence in the conveyor belt model and agrees with Dikpati that the next solar maximum should be a doozy. But he disagrees with one point. Dikpati’s forecast puts Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011.
“History shows that big sunspot cycles ‘ramp up’ faster than small ones,” he says. “I expect to see the first sunspots of the next cycle appear in late 2006 or 2007—and Solar Max to be underway by 2010 or 2011.”
Who’s right? Time will tell. Either way, a storm is coming.
http://dublinmick.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/nasa-warning-super-storms-billions-could-die/
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