El Nino’s Other Victims

For the starving sea lion pups abandoned by their mothers along Chile’s central coast, El Nino’s warm currents are only the first part of their ordeal to survive. Shifting fish migration patterns caused by El Nino have sent the pups’ mothers to colder waters in search of food. The remaining offspring, cold from their lack of blubber, are turning to Chile’s beaches in search of warmth and rest. The lucky ones have been found by volunteers from the port of San Antonio who nurse them back to health. Others encounter the wrath of angry fishermen whose livelihood is in competition with the seals. “If I had a stick of dynamite, I’d blow them up,” said one fisherman near San Antonio after he booted away an emaciated sea lion that had been begging for food at his feet.

El Nino’s Wrath

The worst outbreak of tornadoes in Florida history left a corridor of death and destruction. At least 39 people perished in the whirlwinds that left 400 homes in ruins and more than 1,300 others seriously damaged. Florida normally receives only minor tornadoes because of a lack of the atmospheric factors responsible for the severe storms in “Tornado Alley” of the American Midwest. But El Nino strengthened the subtropical jet stream across Florida, providing fuel for the record tornado swarm.

Deadly Hailstorm

At least five people were killed by a severe thunderstorm that pelted eastern India’s Bihar state with large hail. The hail also tore down power and telecommunications cables, and destroyed large tracts of crops.

Earthquakes

An aftershock of the disastrous Feb. 4 Afghanistan temblor caused further damage in the region. One person was killed, and several were injured in neighboring Pakistan’s Swabi district. Glacial ice shifted by the quake destroyed 35 homes and a mosque in Pakistan’s Astore Valley.

Earth movements were also felt along the Nepal-Tibet border, and in Russia’s Lake Baikal region, eastern Indonesia’s Malaku Islands, New Zealand’s South Island, Taiwan, central Japan, the Kuril Islands, the Aleutians and northern Italy.

When the Cat’s Away

Rats have begun to cause widespread crop destruction across Vietnam because farmers and villagers are eating cats, owls and other predators that normally keep the vermin under control. In its first effort to control the rat problem, Hanoi closed down restaurants serving cat meat to stop a wave of cat theft that has left the rodents free to devour the country’s rice and cereal crops. Domestic cats have been disappearing at an alarming rate in recent years since new specialty establishments began selling the “little tiger” dishes. Nearly 200,000 acres of crops have been destroyed by the exploding rodent population so far this season, and residents are urged to catch and kill the rats by hand because it is safer for the environment than using rat poison.

Additional Sources: U.S. Climate Analysis Center, U.S. National Earthquake Information Center and the U.N. World Meteorological Organization.