Sunday, May 30, 2010

Weird weather ~ / Signs in the heavens

Lightning knocks chunks off church
CANOE
By CHRIS KITCHING, QMI Agency A bolt of lightning struck the bell tower of a historic downtown Winnipeg church during a thunderstorm Friday morning

Lightning Bolt Causes Strange Chain Of Events In Northern Virginia

Alex Trevino

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (WUSA) -- A lightning bolt caused a man hole cover to blow off on Annandale Road and Beechtree Lane.

Adam Jeantet said, "It was pretty amazing to see pieces of the road had flipped over."

Nearby residents told 9 News Now, big chunks of asphalt torn out, were the result of a rare lightning strike.

Adam Jeantet said, he saw the bolt of lightning strike a transformer, three telephone poles down the street, from his bedroom window.

"Best we could tell it traveled through the telephone wire and came to the man hole cover and blew up from there," explained Jeantet.

Virginia Department of Transportation said, phone lines were damaged, disrupting land lines for a short period of time. Crews patched up the mess by noon on Friday.

The hole in the ground swallowed up part of a woman's car. That's when Jeantet and his roommates rushed to the scene to help the driver. "She had driven over because it was raining so hard she couldn't see what she was doing when she drove over this 8 inch piece of asphalt here and down into the big crater there,"said Jeantet. "She was actually alright, we helped her in gave her a towel because it was still raining pretty hard at that time and had her relax because that's a pretty crazy experience."

http://www.wusa9.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=101907&catid=188
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Ash-Covered Guatemala Lashed By Storm

Katie Cassidy, Sky News Online

Heavy rains in Guatemala blamed for the deaths of 12 people were threatening to turn ash from an erupting volcano into a double disaster for the country's capital city.

Tropical storm Agatha has battered the area three days after the Pacaya volcano began shooting rock and ash into the air.

Authorities were concerned the rains would mix with the ash and create a cement-like mud and block evacuation routes.

At least a dozen people are dead following the storm after it triggered deadly mudslides both in the capital and in a number of villages outside the major city.

In one instance, a large boulder came away in the sodden earth, landing on a house and killing two children and two adults who were inside.

While the storm has been downgraded to a tropical depression, the rain has not subsided and there were fears for other vulnerable hillside settlements.

Guatemala City's valley was deluged by more than four inches of rain (10cm) in a 12-hour period.

A man shovels ash off a footpath in Guatemala City

Cesar George, of Guatemala's meteorological institute, said almost 12in (30cm) of rain fell over the community of Champerico in 30 hours.

"It rained in one day what it usually gets in a month," he said.

President Alvaro Colom also warned that rivers in the country's south were flooding, or close to it.

More than 4,000 people were already in shelters, but officials said the number was likely to rise as figures come in from around the country.

But the crisis of the torrential rain was made worse by the continuing eruptions of the nearby volcano, located about 25m south of the capital.

Some 800 homes have already been destroyed by lava and Guatemala City had been covered in ash.

A clean-up effort has been mobilised in the capital, with residents lending a hand to sweep the ash off roads.