Magnitude 5+ Earthquakes – Global
5.2 earthquake hits the Solomon Islands.
5.2 earthquake hits Neuquen, Argentina.
5.1 earthquake hits Mindanao in the Philippines.
5.0 earthquake hits offshore Atacama, Chile.
5.0 earthquake hits the Fox Islands in the Aleutian Islands.
Tropical Storms – Roundup of Tropical Storms:
In the Southern Hemisphere: Tropical cyclone (tc) 07s (Claudia), located approximately 270 nm northwest of Port Hedland, Australia, is tracking west-southwestward at 18 knots.
NewsBytes:
Afghanistan – Heavy snowfall has claimed lives of at least 16 people in Herat and Kandahar regions of Afghanistan. The death toll from the snowfall is expected to further rise in the coming days.
Dubai – The National UAE reports that rain fell throughout Friday and the early hours of Saturday. As a result, many roads were heavily waterlogged. Readings show that Dubai received 150mm of rain every hour for two-and-a-half hours. This is extremely out of the ordinary for Dubai as an average January experiences only 10mm of rain over the full month. Since Saturday, the third busiest airport in the world has had to deal with delayed, diverted and canceled flights as heavy rains have led to intense flooding. Dubai International Airport is scrambling to cope with the extreme weather, working to get its operations back to normal.
Venice, Italy – Just weeks after serious flooding caused widespread damage, the famous canals of Venice have been left almost completely dry due to exceptionally low tides. Two months ago the high tide in Venice peaked at 187cm (6.14ft), leaving around 70% of the lagoon city centre under salt water. But at high tide on Saturday the city was a very different sight, with its famous gondolas and boats almost beached at the bottom of canals.
Airdrops of Food of Australian Wallabies
The Australian government is using helicopters and airplanes to help feed starving animals displaced by the country’s wildfire crisis.
The New South Wales government used aircraft to drop more than 4,000 pounds of food, mostly carrots and sweet potatoes, to colonies of brush-tailed rock-wallabies that were left stranded as massive wildfires ravaged their habitat.
The brush-tailed rock-wallaby was already endangered in southeastern Australia before the fires began in September and government officials said their survival could be complicated further by the ongoing crisis. The fires are estimated to have killed more than a billion animals and scorched more than 8.4 million hectares — about twice the size of Maryland.
Measles – Tonga
In a follow-up on the 2019-2020 Tonga measles outbreak, the Government of Tonga reports six new measles case-patients in Tongatapu and Vava’u and 12 cases were added retrospectively, bringing the outbreak total to 630 confirmed or suspected cases.
Earth Report 