At least one dead and three missing amid storm that has split wharf, wrecked boat and piled up debris
California residents are being warned to stay off wharves, piers and other waterside structures as 20-30ft waves are expected to batter the northern Pacific coast for the rest of the week.
The National Weather Service advisory comes after a 150ft section of the wharf in Santa Cruz collapsed amid high waves on Monday, and storm debris was blamed for the death of a Santa Cruz county man on a beach in Watsonville.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
12/26/2024 - 14:10
12/26/2024 - 10:05
Number hits record level but rate of growth slows as installers face delays to government funding
The UK installed a record number of public electric car chargers in 2024, although the rate of growth slowed as installers contended with delays to government funding.
Numbers rose by more than a third to reach 73,421 by 20 December, according to Zapmap, whose data the government uses. The increase of 19,600 was nearly equivalent to the total number of chargers at the end of 2020.
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12/26/2024 - 10:00
Belief in a supposed US government plot linked to aircraft condensation trails has been boosted by confusion over proposals to geoengineer a response to the climate crisis
A conspiracy theory that airplanes are leaving nefarious “chemtrails” in their wake due to a sinister government plot has been given fresh impetus in the US amid a swirl of concerns and confusion about proposals to geoengineer a response to the climate crisis.
State legislation to ban what some lawmakers call chemtrails has been pushed forward in Tennessee and, most recently, Florida. Meanwhile, Robert F Kennedy, who has expressed interest in the conspiracy theory on social media and his podcast, is set to be at the heart of Donald Trump’s new administration following his nomination as health secretary.
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12/26/2024 - 09:00
Environmental groups are also petitioning Biden to protect Sáttítla, Kw’tsán and Chuckwalla in California
Hidden amid a vast expanse of snow-brushed pines in northern California is a rare, half-million-year-old volcano called Sáttítla. Thousands of years ago, its flows created crystalline mountains of obsidian and dim grey bands of pumice rock, which from a bird’s-eye view look like ripples of taffy.
“When you’re there, you really do feel like you’re in another world, or on the moon or even another planet,” said Brandi McDaniels, a member of the Pit River Tribe in northern California, whose ancestral homelands encompass the area. “The way it glistens and twinkles – deep black, but shiny like diamonds.”
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12/26/2024 - 07:00
Grey seals are growing in numbers on England’s east coast as a result of environmental safe havens and cleaner North Sea waters
It is a cold winter’s day to be lying on a beach, but the seal pup suckling from its mother doesn’t mind. A few metres away, a pregnant seal is burrowing into the sand, trying to get comfortable, while a third seal, which has just given birth, is touching noses with her newborn pup.
The shoreline – a mass of seals and their white pups – is one of Britain’s greatest wildlife success stories: a grey seal colony on the east Norfolk coast.
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12/26/2024 - 07:00
Strips of native plants on as little as 10% of farmland can reduce soil erosion by up to 95%
Between two corn fields in central Iowa, Lee Tesdell walks through a corridor of native prairie grasses and wildflowers. Crickets trill as dickcissels, small brown birds with yellow chests, pop out of the dewy ground cover.
“There’s a lot of life out here, and it’s one of the reasons I like it, especially in these late summer days,” Tesdell said.
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12/26/2024 - 04:31
Group says people in rural areas have to walk on roads without pavement, which can be very dangerous
Give people the right to walk around the edges of privately owned fields, say campaigners seeking to open up more paths in the countryside in England and Wales.
Slow Ways, a group advocating for more access to the countryside, said people in rural areas often have to walk on roads that do not have pavements, which can be extremely dangerous.
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12/26/2024 - 03:04
The town hit 47.2C by mid afternoon, but locals are already well-versed in the art of staying cool
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It might have been the hottest place in the country on Boxing Day, but when the tiny outback town of Birdsville hit 47.2C by mid-afternoon, locals were already well-versed in the art of staying cool.
Bureau of Meteorology senior meteorologist, Dean Narramore, said Birdsville was “looking like it’s going to be the hottest in the country,” even though places across the Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia and New South Wales had reached the mid 40s.
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12/26/2024 - 01:00
Caring for God’s Acre mapped out 20,000 cemeteries and recorded 10,000 species
Churchyards are vital havens for rare wildlife including dormice, bats and beetles, according to an extensive audit of burial grounds around the UK.
The conservation charity Caring for God’s Acre mapped out 20,325 cemeteries, with 800,000 wildlife records submitted and more than 10,800 species recorded.
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12/26/2024 - 00:00
Rising temperatures are pushing these Arctic mammals ever farther into Greenland’s north. But eventually there will be nowhere left for them to go
Built like a small bison, weighing as much as a grand piano and covered in thick, shaggy coat, the musk ox is one of the most distinctive species in the high Arctic. But from a hill on Greenland’s tundra, they seem impossible to find.
Each bush, rock and clump of grass resembles a mass of wool and horns in the blustery chill on the edge of the island’s enormous polar ice cap. Scanning the shimmering landscape with binoculars, Chris Sørensen looks for signs of movement.
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