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Over 100 Evacuated After 9 Inches of Rain Flooded Ohio Rivers, Streets
Friday , July 28, 2006
EASTLAKE, Ohio -Flood water surged into homes and businesses, forcing people to rooftops to await rescue Friday morning after 9 inches of rain filled the rivers and streets of northeast Ohio.
Lake County, east of Cleveland, declared a state of emergency. County Administrator Kenneth R. Gauntner Jr. estimated at least 100 people had been evacuated and all available rescue boats had been pressed into service.
As much as 9 inches of rain fell Thursday and Friday in Lake County, the National Weather Service said.
Firefighters and Coast Guard crews were busy plucking stranded people from flooding homes and searching for a man who disappeared early Friday while moving marina equipment out of high water near the swollen Chagrin River, an outlet to Lake Erie.
Several storms have pounded the state over the past month, wreaking havoc on riverside homes and low-lying neighborhoods.
"It's just been a very active weather pattern for this part of the country," said Dan Leins, a weather service meteorologist in Cleveland. "When you have weather patterns like this, it's not uncommon to see showers and thunderstorms several nights in a row."
In Eastlake, officials opened City Hall as a temporary shelter.
In nearby Mentor, police helped remove more than 100 children from Ridge Pointe Child Care Center on Thursday as waist-deep water flooding the parking lot began seeping into the building.
Children were pulled through windows and bused to a nearby fire station, where their parents picked them up.
"It was the most organized chaos I have ever seen," said Tonja Schleicher, owner of the day care. "Some of the kids were a little upset, so we just hugged them a little tighter."
It's Even Warm At Night, But Never This Warm
July 24, 2006
By Scott Sistek
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SEATTLE - Erasers sure have been busy with the Seattle record books lately. And they don't even get any time off at night.
The high temperatures have been getting all the glory lately, but did you know Seattle just had the warmest night in their history Sunday night?
The low temperature Monday morning was a balmy 70 degrees. It's the first time the temperature has failed to drop under 70 since records have been kept in Seattle. The previous record for warmest night (or "highest low temperature") was 69 degrees set Sept. 2, 1974.
That record comes on the heels of a string of high temperature records the past few days.
The erasers first got their work in on Friday, when Seattle (97), Olympia (101), Hoquiam (90) and Stampede Pass (93) set record highs. Not to be outdone, Portland (104) and Vancouver, Wash. (104) also topped the charts. And Hillsboro, Oregon (just outside of Portland) tied their all-time record with 108 degrees.
Then, Saturday came along. Time to re-write more records.
Seattle (96), Hoquiam (91), and Stampede Pass (90) once again broke records. Olympia (99) tied theirs.
The record high temperature books sort of caught a break on Sunday. Even though temperatures were once again in the mid-upper 90s, it turned out in 1981, it was even hotter, and most records were near 100.
But! Seattle did tie a record for number of consecutive days at 95 or hotter at three. The last and only time it's happened before was in August of 1977.
Temperatures were on pace Monday morning to perhaps get to 95 again, meaning that record could be broken.
Going back to the "warm nights" theme, several of those daily records were broken this weekend as well.
Seattle (68), Olympia, (71), Hoquiam (60), Forks (58) and Bellingham (64) all set daily records for highest low temperature on Friday night.
Then came Seattle's 70 degree low Monday morning. That gave temperatures a great head start to try and reach the mid 90s once again for Monday afternoon, but cooler weather is promised Tuesday and through the end of the week.
Which is probably a good thing, since our eraser is getting really tired! :)
The Heat Wave, So Far
Just for those still curious, here's how the heat wave has stacked up so far:
Here's the official stats of the three day heat wave extravaganza:
| Friday | Saturday | Sunday | |
| Vancouver (WA) | 104 | 94 | 101 |
| Portland | 104 | 93 | 101 |
| Shelton | 102 | 101 | 99 |
| Olympia | 101 | 99 | 98 |
| Kelso | 100 | 97 | 99 |
| Bremerton | 99 | 93 | 95 |
| Bellevue | 99 | 99 | 95 |
| Seattle | 97 | 96 | 95 |
| Renton | 97 | 95 | 93 |
| Tacoma | 97 | 93 | 93 |
| Gig Harbor | 95 | 91 | 92 |
| Arlington | 93 | 91 | 91 |
| Friday Harbor | 92 | 90 | 89 |
| Port Angeles | 91 | 90 | 87 |
| Forks | 91 | 86 | 87 |
| Hoquiam | 90 | 91 | 80 |
| Everett | 90 | 89 | 88 |
| Bellingham | 88 | 85 | 84 |
Seattle broke the old record of 94 degrees today and Portland really Fried!
Vancouver (WA): 104
Portland: 104
Shelton: 102
Kelso: 100
Olympia: 100
Bremerton: 99
Seattle: 97
Renton: 97
Tacoma: 97
Arlington: 93
Friday Harbor: 92
Hoquiam: 90
Everett: 90
Forks: 89
Port Angeles: 89
Bellingham: 88
A burst of seismic activity at the mountain Sunday night likely corresponded to the collapse. "Certainly a big piece fell off - something like 65,000 cubic yards," said geologist Dan Dzurisin at the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash., about 50 miles from the mountain and 150 miles south of Seattle.
Bad weather had iced over scientists' cameras on the rim of the volcano, so the rockfall wasn't recorded on film, he said.
Now the fin is about the same height as it was before, but rock that was previously in the middle is now at the top.
"At that height, it becomes unstable and ... begins to collapse under gravity," he said. Boulders and finer rubble from the crumbling top surround the base of the fin.
"At that height, it becomes unstable and ... begins to collapse under gravity," he said. Boulders and finer rubble from the crumbling top surround the base of the fin. This is the seventh rock feature formed by lava in the crater since the 8,364-foot mountain reawakened with a drumfire of low-level seismic activity in September 2004. The crater was formed by the southwest Washington volcano's deadly May 18, 1980, eruption that killed 57 people and blasted about 1,300 feet off the then-9,677-foot peak. The most recent lava feature started growing in mid-October, Dzurisin said. The emerging rock takes different shapes, depending on what it meets at the surface. At the moment it's like toothpaste coming out of a tube. "As it emerges it's having to deal with its own debris, so we're seeing steeper-sided features looking more like spines," the geologist said. The pace of the lava extrusion has slowed since October 2004, he added. For the past few months, St. Helens has been pushing lava to the surface at a pace of about 1 meter per second, down from 6 meters a second. It's not yet clear whether it's slowing to a stop, or has reached a pace it can maintain for years or even decades, Dzurisin said. "St. Helen's loves to build domes," he said. "It's built many in its history and we suspect some of those went on for decades. "We might be in that situation - and then again we might not."
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Malaysian wildlife officials denied capturing a baby "Bigfoot," amid fevered speculation over the existence of the mythical creature in the nation's southern jungles.
The Berita Harian newspaper reported that a young Bigfoot was caught by a group of men thought to be from the Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) near the southern town of Kota Tinggi two weeks ago.
The paper quoted local residents as saying they had spoken to men who described shooting the creature with tranquiliser darts. The locals then peeked into the back of the their truck to see a large, hairy creature.
But the department's director-general Datuk Musa Nordin denied the report.
"During the period reported, Perhilitan did not mount any operation in the area," Musa said in a statement carried by the official Bernama news agency.
Freddie Long, the Tourism and Environment Committee chairman in southern Johor state, said that if a Bigfoot had been captured, it should have been given to local authorities for research.
Bigfoot fever erupted last December when some workers claimed to have spotted three of the beasts, two adults and a youngster, on the edge of a Johor forest reserve.
The tale was given wide coverage in the national press which also carried stories of other sightings, some dating back decades, and printed photographs of supposed footprints -- vague impressions in the jungle floor.
Local authorities treated the claims seriously, with plans for an official expedition to track down the mysterious beasts, and setting up a telephone hotline to report sightings.
Suggestions that the story has been cooked up to lure tourists to Johor have been denied.
Stories of mythical ape-like creatures have been reported in wilderness areas all over the world. They are known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch in the United States and Canada, and yetis in the Himalayas.
