|
Author
|
Topic: Locust, Hail, Fire, and Flood
|
Kindgo
Advanced Member
Member # 2
|
posted
This past week the news reports from around the world read like passages from the book of Revelation. Fire falling from the sky was the only phenomena missing. Here’s a condensed run down:
Their numbers swelled by the drought, grasshoppers and Mormon crickets are ravaging crops and pastures across the West in what could be the biggest such infestation since World War II.
A mild winter and hot, dry weather since the spring have sped up the maturation of some grasshopper species and allowed more of the insects and their eggs to survive the cold. The drought has also cut into the population of birds and rodents that prey on grasshoppers, and reduced the fungal diseases that normally keep the insects' numbers down.
Farmers in parts of Nebraska have counted 50 to 100 grasshoppers per square yard in their fields, compared with three or four during a typical year. Even worse, near Steamboat Springs, Colo., about 200 grasshoppers per square yard invaded rangeland in June, reaching about 1 million grasshoppers per acre.
In central China, a downpour of giant hailstones, some the size of eggs, killed 15 people and left hospitals overflowing with head-wound. The hailstorm struck northern parts of Henan uprooting trees, smashing car windscreens, cutting off electricity and destroying buildings.
Locals described it as the worst hailstorm in at least half a century, state radio said. Television news showed pictures of a gutted petrol station, uprooted trees and victims being loaded into ambulances. The violent hailstorm only lasted for half an hour but by the time it had finished, all the ambulances in the cities of Zhengzhou and Luoyang had been called out and emergency rooms were soon crammed full of people with head gashes.
After a spring and early summer of record forest fires, several blazes continue to consume thousands of acres. In Nevada, a 10,000-acre fire raged unchecked on the Nevada-Utah line 50 miles southeast of Ely, but no injuries or structural damage were reported.
In Utah, crews were battling 10 wildfires, including a 4,500-acre blaze in the Manti-La Sal National Forest in the center of the state that was drawing close to 30 homes.
In Wyoming, 14 fires burning in Yellowstone National Park was 10 percent contained. In Oregon A wildfire that threatened about 60 homes grew to 92,000 acres as firefighters braced for lightning storms.
In the southern parts of China, more than 800 people have died in floods and torrential rains across China this year and officials are now bracing for flooding worse than that of 1998, when the Yangtze River overflowed and deluges killed more than 4,000 nationwide.
--------------------
God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
| IP: Logged | 
|
|
|
Printer-friendly view of this topic
