Hazard Roundup--June 2008

Welcome to the USGS CoreCast everyone, I'm of course Scott Horvath and this is the Hazard Roundup episode for June 2008...which was definitely a big month in terms of natural hazards occurring across the landscape.

Some of the biggest events were, of course, the floods in the Midwestern U.S. and the wildfires in Northern California. In the Midwest we had the major flooding that occurred throughout the month, and some parts down the Mississippi River are still feeling the effects from the flooding. The USGS put together a website to bring together all the various information, news, real-time water data, podcasts, high resolution photography, and more related to the flooding. We encourage everyone to visit usgs.gov/june08floods for all of this information. The link to that site can also be found directly on the USGS homepage in the Hazards section on the left-hand side of the page.

Regarding wildfires although fires continue to burn, over fourteen hundred fires have been contained by the relentless work of firefighters from California and throughout the nation. High pressure moving into California today will result in temperatures above normal, low relative humidity and minimal recovery overnight. Thunderstorm activity may increase across the southern end of the state on Wednesday, spreading further north and west Thursday and Friday as subtropical moisture moves into the area.

But wildfires and floods weren't the only thing happening in June. We also had several significant earthquakes throughout the world. There were two in California: a 3.9 in Northern California on June 4th, and a 3.5 in San Francisco on June 6th. There was also a 6.3 in Greece, June 8, a 6.9 in Eastern Honshu, Japan on the 13th, and some more recent ones including a 6.1 in Tonga on June 26, a 6.6 in the Andaman Islands, India Region on June 27th, and 7.0 in South Sandwich Islands Region on the 30th.

Regarding volcanoes, in response to the historic eruption of the Chaitén volcano on May 2nd in Chile, on June 13th the USGS signed a letter of intent with President Bachelet of Chile to help the nation establish a volcano early warning system. Chile's volcano early warning system will be modeled after a plan the USGS released in 2005 in the United States that systematically ranks the most dangerous volcanoes and assesses monitoring gaps at each volcano.

And last, but not least, Hurricane season officially began on June 1st. But Mother Nature doesn't really care too much for dates, because she sent the first named storm of the Atlantic season, Arthur, a day before June 1st right over Mexico soaking the Yucatan Peninsula. Also the first named storm of the Pacific season (which actually begins May 15) was Alma, which soaked Central America in heavy rains. The official hurricane seasons for both Atlantic and Pacific run through Nov. 30th.

And that's all she wrote folks. That does it for this episode of the USGS CoreCast. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to visit the Transcript/Details link for this episode at the CoreCast website (usgs.gov/corecast). 

CoreCast is a product of the U.S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior. Until next time, I'm Scott Horvath saying, "Keep it cool."

Mentioned in this segment:

• Midwest Flood Updates

Music Credit:

"A Mastermind's Plan of Evil", Edgen