Cumbria Floods November 2009

The BBC Cumbria website has a large amount of resources on the recent floods, including many, many photos which you can access here. You can read about the weather that caused the flooding here.

Year 11 Case Studies

The case study you are making this week is on the volcanic eruption at Mt St Helens, Washington, USA in 1980. Mrs Smith's group need to hand in the work on Tuesday 20th Jan, Mrs Nurton's group on Wednesday 21st Jan.

Useful websites can be found here and here.

Atlantic Hurricanes

2008 was forecast to be a busy hurricane season. You can see the predictions that were made in August here. The hurricane currently wreaking havoc in the Caribbean and threatening Texas, is Hurricane Ike - this one has already hit Cuba and Haiti, and is now heading for the USA. You can see the damage it has already done in the Caribbean here, and video footage of the enormous waves lashing Texas as the hurricane approaches, here. Accounts of the devastation that Ike has caused in Haiti, the poorest country in the Caribbean, can be found here. Haiti has already been hit by several tropical storms this season. You can follow the progress of this season's hurricanes on the National Hurricane Center website.

Earthquake in China

More bad news from Asia - a magnitude 7.9 earthquake has struck the SW of China. A day after the quake, the death toll stands at 12 000, but this figure is likely to rise. You can read about this disaster here and here. There are some pictures from China here - the BBC warns that you may find some of them disturbing.

There is an interesting article here about the contrasting responses to this disaster and the cyclone in Burma.

Cyclone Nargis

It is now over a week since Cyclone Nargis hit Burma in South East Asia. The death toll is likely to be the highest from a tropical storm for many years, and the disaster is far from over. You can look at an interactive explanation of what happened here. For an explanation of the causes of tropical storms, look here. For general information about the disaster, there are up to date news stories here and here. If you want to find out how you can donate to the disaster fund, click here.

Coastal Erosion in Yorkshire

Here is an article from today about a landslide in East Yorkshire that has swept gardens onto the beach and left houses very close to the edge!

Earthweek - A Diary of the Planet

This is a really useful website that summarises the major physical events that have happened each week. It tells you where there has been earthquake and volcano activity, storms, highest and lowest temperatures and other interesting things, such as a snake invasion in SE Australia this week!

Cyclone Sidr hits Bangladesh

In the last few days, Bangladesh has been badly hit by Cyclone Sidr. There is some really useful information here including interactive guides, photos, video footage and eye witness accounts. This would make a useful case study for GCSE, AS (Climatic Hazards) and A2 (Coasts - the cyclone caused a 5m storm surge). BBC coverage is here and includes information about the management of the cyclone here . There is also an animated guide to cyclones.

Hurricane Dean

Normally I'm a little bit jealous of my sister who lives in the Cayman Islands. However, over the weekend, she and her sons have had to leave the island because of the imminent arrival of Hurricane Dean. It is expected to hit Cayman today, at Category 4, possibly 5 (the Saffir Simpson scale which is used to measure hurricane strength only goes up to category 5!). You can track the progress of Dean here - http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/#DEAN - it's already hit Jamaica, and is on its way to the popular tourist resort of Cancun in Mexico. The BBC website has a number of links worth looking at, like http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6955163.stm(news story), http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/6952773.stm (eye witness accounts) and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6956117.stm(for pictures). Makes our dismal "summer" that we've had this year not seem so bad!!

Warning of bad hurricane season

The BBC reports that experts are again predicting a busy Atlantic hurricane season, with up to 17 named tropical storms forming - nine of which could become hurricanes. read the full article at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6524017.stm

Go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4588149.stm for an aminated guide on the formation of hurricanes and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/americas/2005/hurricane_katrina/default.stm has a whole section on Hurricane Katrina, which year 10 wll find particularly useful!

Landslides

A2 students are looking at mass movements as part of their Geomorphological Hazards and Processes unit. This video shows you about recent landslides in Newfoundland, Canada - not a good place to be!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news/science_nature/video/89000/bb/89981_16x9_bb.asx

(Photo above from CBC News)