tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50999182436383602752026-03-27T11:43:22.249-07:00A little bit of whatever the world has to offerThe Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-37326204573796009212011-04-18T20:05:00.000-07:002011-04-18T20:05:45.516-07:00

I had nice sunny weather today, folks.  Sunny weather!  I went out and worked on holes for the berry bushes we want to put in, and was in a generally good mood. I should have known better . . . URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE GREEN BAY WI 953 PM CDT MON APR 18 2011  A LATE SEASON STORM WILL BRING WINTER PRECIPITATION TO NORTHERN AND CENTRAL WISCONSIN.

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-77244043046729842502011-04-16T07:58:00.000-07:002011-04-16T07:58:30.252-07:00

 Over the past few days I finally managed to finish sheet mulching my expanded garden area.  Spinach, chard, carrots, and some extra snow pea seeds have all been sown as well.  However, since Sunday's storm went through the state the weather has turned cold again.  This past week we have only been creeping up to about 5-6 degrees C most days.  Then last night we

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-25149942692515899612011-04-12T08:20:00.000-07:002011-04-13T07:31:02.036-07:00

Merrill, WI, located in Lincoln County, is about 40 miles away from my current abode.  The storm that flooded my garden Sunday generated a tornado that went through portions of that small town. From what I am reading in various small town news, 65 homes were damaged around Lincoln County, three people were sent to hospitals with injuries, but no deaths were reported. The tornado, initially

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-10028557855503932022011-04-10T09:19:00.000-07:002011-04-10T09:19:48.117-07:00

We had a big thunderstorm roll through the area last night and it put down a good amount of precipitation.  Annoyingly, I didn't have my rain gauge out so I don't know how much, exactly, came down.  That said, there was enough rain that the section of the garden I had dug out the day before to turn the soil had filled up with water. There's a lot of standing water around the yard

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-45798074050641221522011-04-09T14:09:00.000-07:002011-04-09T14:10:25.787-07:00

After a late spring I am finally getting a start on my garden.  This means that my dear readership will be getting a few more posts of my puttering around my yard like the old man that I pretend to be. The main thing I need to get done is expanding my garden.  Last year I had a garden that was roughly 50 ft² and just grew peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes.  This year the garden is

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-35652807651116930092011-04-04T08:09:00.000-07:002011-04-04T08:10:03.855-07:00

It would seem my coverage of natural disasters has made some of my readership a little depressed and filled with an anxiety that the world is a cold cruel place that can kill us at a moments notice. To bring some levity back to the blog here's a video of my dog, Sheridan, playing in the snow. Tomorrow, or perhaps the next day that follow that, back to the drang und sturm.

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-89854146603475676662011-04-03T08:24:00.000-07:002011-04-10T14:35:50.063-07:00

A family caught on video a large ice-flow making its way down the Mississippi river near the town of Wabasha, MN.  The ice-flow was large, heavy enough, and close enough to the shore to destroy what appear to be several private boat launches. According to the Army Corp of Engineers the ice flow broke loose from Lake Pepin.  It hit the Highway 60 bridge, causing no structural damage of

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-32643797060977257002011-03-30T18:18:00.000-07:002011-03-31T06:48:24.721-07:00

Call 911 and then throw the phone away.  It might sound like a ridiculous plan to get rescued, but for one woman in Florida her lucky phone toss led to her rescue. The woman, Carla Chapman of Plant City, Florida was working in her backyard when she fell through the surface and into a sinkhole.  She had her cell phone on her, but the sinkhole created terrible reception and she kept

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-84809324360154809422011-03-24T12:54:00.000-07:002011-03-24T19:41:41.627-07:00

Burma (Myanmar to its BFFs) experienced a large earthquake in its backcountry today near its borders with Laos and Thailand. Initially reported as a 7.0M earthquake by the US Geologic Survey, the quake was later downgraded to a 6.8M. The earthquake occurred in a  relatively remote and sparsely populated region.  The death toll hours after the quake was reportedly low: a child in Burma,

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-90482657827614853842011-03-24T08:07:00.000-07:002011-03-24T08:07:59.956-07:00

The California Geologic Survey has made their coastal tsunami inundation maps available via a Google maps overlay.  There is also a KML overlay for Google earth.  As noted on the map page, the overlays are not as accurate the state's official tsunami inundation maps, however the official maps are also available online, and are viewable as pdf files by clicking on the red boxes in the

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-70794939228455299622011-03-24T07:45:00.000-07:002011-03-24T07:45:49.354-07:00

Following the earthquake and tsunami events in Japan, some US media outlets have been busy trying to drum up interest/fear that the victim of next "Big One" is going to be California.  Especially guilty of this is Simon Winchester, who wrote an article for Newsweek where he makes the assertion that earthquakes essentially create mirrors of themselves.  According to Winchester, Japan's

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-81113310817720370152011-03-21T10:09:00.000-07:002011-03-21T10:09:43.202-07:00

Residents of Sleman, in central Java, following mudflows into their village (source) Just a follow up post on conditions around Indonesia's Mount Merapi, whose eruption I was writing on last year. The Jakarta Post reports that recent heavy rains have sent a slurry of volcanic debris down the slopes of Mount Merapi over the weekend.  There has been no loss of life reported but 21 homes

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-19520190016097565442011-03-20T08:59:00.000-07:002011-03-20T20:19:07.467-07:00

Update: The U.S. Coast Guard has run an analysis of samples gathered from the sheen and found that is contained "only trace amounts of petroleum hydrocarbons, oil and grease." The Coast Guard added that, "at this point, the dark substance is believed to be caused by a tremendous amount of sediment being carried down the Mississippi River due to high water, possibly further agitated by dredging

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-3445817885410726112011-03-17T15:29:00.000-07:002011-03-17T17:24:25.939-07:00

I really haven't touched on the specifics of the nuclear situation occurring in Japan.   This has been intentional on my part as analysis of events by "experts" in the field have been all over the board and I'm in no position to really delve into any sort of deep criticisms of what is being said. That explanation out of the way, I just came across this video on reddit and had to share it.&

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-1788718843852448842011-03-16T17:38:00.000-07:002011-03-16T17:40:36.898-07:00

Over on their site, MapTD.com has a created a custom google map showing the global distribution of earthquake activity with the locations of nuclear power plants superimposed. Based on data from the USGS,  averaging 175,000 4.5+ magnitude earthquakes since 1973, they've create a heatmap of global earthquake activity.  On top of that heatmap they've placed the location of  248

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-72165416442470197162011-03-16T08:26:00.000-07:002011-03-16T08:27:23.559-07:00

The Jumping Jack Flash blog (translation) made a Google Earth kml file (download) that creates an animation of the swarm of earthquakes that occurred around Japan between 6 March and 13 March 2011. A quite well done video has been made of the animation, adding music and sound effects. 1 second in the video is equivalent to 1 hour. The animation starts on 9 March since the period between 6

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-31695600854910235212011-03-15T11:26:00.000-07:002011-03-15T20:13:46.457-07:00

Mount Sinmoededake, which lies near the center of the southern island of Kyushu, woke back up again after a few weeks of rest.  The newest eruption occurred on 13 March, two days after the 9.0 earthquake struck to the north off the shore of Honshu.  The volcano had last erupted on January 19th after being dormant for 2 years. The eruption tossed a 2 mile high cloud of ash into the sky

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-88240920091985775992011-03-12T09:26:00.000-08:002011-03-12T09:26:00.196-08:00

Earthquake and Tsunami damage, Sendai Japan-March 12, 2011 (DigitalGlobe) DigitalGlobe, a U.S.-based civilian operator of commercial remote sensing satellites, has released a few high-resolution images of the Sendai region following yesterday's devastating earthquake(s) and tsunami to their flickr feed.  They give a decent bird's eye view of a few locations that were damaged by the

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-20559118211419167402011-03-12T07:58:00.000-08:002011-03-12T07:59:08.511-08:00

Responding in a timely fashion to events in Japan, NASA's array of Earth monitoring satellites have been manuevered into position to gather image-based data regarding yesterday's earthquakes and their resulting tsunamis. The topmost of the two images (provided by NASA’s MODIS instrument which is mounted aboard their TERRA satellite) was taken on March 12, 2011, at 10:30 a.m. — nearly a day

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-21011075050192257792011-03-12T06:59:00.000-08:002011-03-12T06:59:58.965-08:00

PBS Newshour has offered up this fancy tool to keep tabs on all of the seismic activity occurring around Japan. I grabbed the following screenshot yesterday with the intention of posting about this then, but got distracted by shiny things and wandered off. You'll likely notice the largest of the orange circles a little right of center on the map.  That was the epicenter of yesterday's 8.9/

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-91565096833172224092011-03-11T08:47:00.000-08:002011-03-11T09:09:07.590-08:00

The now bent tip of Tokyo Tower (source) Police in Miyagi Prefecture have reported to the press that between 200 and 300 bodies of people who appeared to have drowned have been recovered near Sendai. Several hundred people (NHK is saying 500) are now reported as missing. I am also now getting estimates for the height of the Sendai tsunami: between 7.5 and 10 meters in height (24 to 33 feet)

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-86365956079909379412011-03-11T07:59:00.000-08:002011-03-11T08:12:10.589-08:00

(Source: abcnews) The first waves associated with the tsunami generated by the 8.9 magnitude earthquake off of Japan to reach Hawaii are far weaker than expected.  Local news in Hawaii reports that waves are only about a foot higher than usual. Kauai was the first island hit early by the wave, and it quickly swept passed the other islands in the chain.  However, bigger waves are

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-7368782657310924892011-03-11T06:42:00.000-08:002011-03-12T13:33:45.549-08:00

Fires rage in the town of Yamada in northeastern Japan after the 8.9-magnitude earthquake.( Yomiuri, Reuters / March 11, 2011 ) The largest recorded earthquake in Japan's recorded history struck on 11 March 2011 at 05:46:24 UTC/ 14:46 local time (March 10 2011 21:46:24 PST/). The quake struck about 130 kilometers off the coastal city of Sendai, generating a

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-38261489284868873222011-02-28T12:02:00.000-08:002011-02-28T12:02:03.570-08:00

One of those questions climate change denialist like to bring up is "if the climate is getting warmer why is it so cold this winter?" In this video, meteorologist Dave Eichorn explains in a very clear fashion how increases in average annual temperatures in the Arctic have resulted in colder temperatures and snowy weather in the mid-latitudes.

The Lazy Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03405577494779789697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5099918243638360275.post-22135980980734388962010-12-03T11:40:00.000-08:002010-12-04T13:16:45.968-08:00

Mbah Maridjan Volcanic activity on Mount Merampi has settled down in recent days and the alert level for the volcano has been lowered from a four to level three, but the possibility for more eruptions in the near future have not been ruled out. 353 people have been confirmed dead since the volcano first erupted on October 26.  Among those who died was Mbah Maridjan, who was the spiritual

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