CNN, 5/12/08:  “At least 3,000 people feared dead in earthquake in China’s Sichuan province, state-run news agency Xinhua says.”

USA Today, 5/12/08:  There is no “tornado season” as such, but twisters are more likely at certain times of the year in certain areas. This is because uneven heating of Earth’s surface creates seasons of advancing warmth and lingering chill that define battlegrounds where thunderstorms that can spawn tornadoes are more likely erupt.

Time of day of peak tornado occurence

Similarly, uneven heating throughout the day leads to times each afternoon when tornadic thunderstorms are more likely. But the peak time of tornado occurrence during the day across the nation only loosely corresponds to this, and some places — such as in the South — also have a significant number of tornadoes in the morning hours, which corresponds to the arrival of lines of thunderstorms that formed farther west the previous afternoon.

Intro:  A long time ago, during the Vietnam War there was rioting in the streets as anti-war protesters fought with Mayor Dailey’s police in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention.  The media were blitzing the airwaves with the protesters’ warning: “The whole world is watching,” as their heads rammed into the nightsticks of the cops.  This should be a an alarum to the pseudo-generals in Burma.  The whole world is watching as they continue to commit their crimes against humanity.

NY Times, 5/12/08:  When one of Myanmar’s best-known movie stars, Kyaw Dhyu, traveled through the Irrawaddy Delta in recent days to deliver aid to the victims of the May 3 cyclone, a military patrol stopped him as he was handing out bags of rice.

“The officer told him, ‘You cannot give directly to the people,” said Tin Win, the village headman of the stricken city of Dedaye, who had been counting on the rice to feed 260 refugees who sleep in a large Buddhist prayer hall.

The politics of food aid — deciding who gets to deliver assistance to those homeless and hungry after the cyclone — is not just confined to the dispute between Myanmar’s military junta and Western governments and outside relief agencies.

Even Myanmar citizens who want to donate rice or other items have in several cases been told that all assistance must be channeled through the military. That restriction has angered local government officials like Tin Win who are trying to help rebuild the lives of villagers. He twitched with rage as he described the rice the military gave him.

“They gave us four bags,” he said. “The rice is rotten — even the pigs and dogs wouldn’t eat it.”

He said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had delivered good rice to the local military leaders last week but they kept it for themselves and distributed the waterlogged, musty rice. “I’m very angry,” he said, adding an expletive to describe the military.

At least 1.5 million people were severely affected by the hurricane, and outside relief agencies fear the officially reported deaths, which rose on Sunday to more than 28,000, could escalate if the military did not allow foreign aid to flow in. But more than a week after the hurricane hit, the junta was still permitting only a few planeloads of supplies to land and was refusing to grant visas to most foreign aid workers.

For the generals, who have held power for more than four decades in Myanmar, the restrictions on aid and how it is distributed are part of their overriding priority of showing who is in control and of cultivating the image that they alone are the nation’s benevolent providers.

While the generals have permitted some token relief efforts by wealthy citizens, who could be seen Sunday handing out sweets and instant noodles from their cars to destitute families lining the roads near Yangon, the largest city, and elsewhere, the junta is clearly not allowing some prominent domestic donors to help for political reasons.

Kyaw Dhyu, for example, is perceived as unfriendly to the military because he assisted monks who protested against the government during the demonstrations last year — and was jailed for a month.

The military also appears to be trying to minimize any foreign presence or role in the relief effort. The United Nations World Food Program said Sunday that only one visa had been approved of 16 requested. The aid group World Vision said it had requested 20 visas but received 2. Doctors Without Borders, the French medical aid group, said it was still awaiting approval of dozens of visa applications for technical support staff aid coordinators.

Paul Risley, a spokesman for the World Food Program, said the volume of aid allowed by the Myanmar junta into the country amounted to one-tenth of what was needed.

The authorities here have agreed to permit a United States Air Force C-130 transport full of relief supplies to come on Monday. The plane was scheduled to leave Utapao airport in Thailand at midday, said a spokesman for the United States Pacific Command, Cmdr. Jeffrey A. Breslau. An American official in Yangoon confirmed that the plane as enroute and due to arrive Monday afternoon.

In Yangon, where 70 percent of the trees were uprooted by the storm, residents were struggling to return to some semblance of normality but most remained without power. In the street markets and stores, the prices of rice and candles have doubled and the cost of gasoline has tripled. The price of corrugated tin, used for roofing, has also doubled.

Privately, some residents showed flashes of resentment toward the military for monopolizing the distribution of basic necessities. “These military men are notorious,” said a college student in Yangon whose family had to buy seven panels of corrugated tin to repair their roof. “They get these supplies free. They are donated by other countries, then the military receives them and sells them to the people.”

Here in Ma Ngay Gyi, in the farthest southern reaches of the delta, a reporter was detained for an hour and a half on Sunday by soldiers who said they had orders to report foreigners in the area.

In what was emblematic of the wider tensions over the issue of aid distribution, an argument broke out in the village between the soldiers, who said any foreigner was suspect, and the village headman, Myint Oo, who solicited aid from the visitor for the rebuilding of a school flattened by the cyclone.

“The government told us that school must reopen June 1, if you have a schoolhouse or not,” Myint Oo told his visitor. “‘Teach under a tree if you have to,’ they said.”

When he began describing the devastation to the school and village, a portly man in a white T-shirt who also seemed to hold a position of power interrupted.

“Don’t tell these foreigners anything,” the man said.

Myint Oo replied that he wanted to talk to the visitors in the hope that they could help rebuild the village.

“They will send the facts to the world and show the weakness of the Myanmar government,” said the man in the white shirt.

He looked directly at Myint Oo and said in a loud voice, “Come outside!”

More than 250 people were killed by the cyclone in the village, which is reachable only by boat, and the stench of death lingers in the surrounding canals. Men in the village rushed to the reporter’s arriving boat and made the universal gesture of food, putting pinched fingers up to their lips.

As the visitors departed, a village woman asked a soldier holding an AK-47 assault rifle why they had detained the foreigners.

“These are orders,” the soldier replied. “Be quiet.”

USA Today, 5/12/08: 

The deaths of 98 people attributed to tornadoes this year has made 2008 the deadliest year thus far for tornadoes since 1998 and the seventh deadliest since modern recordkeeping began in 1950, The Weather Channel said.

Such a rate could make 2008 the year with the most tornadoes since 1950.

Storms remained active Sunday night as they swept eastward. The National Weather Service said tornado watches were in effect for southern Georgia into northern Florida, as well as south central Virginia, much of North Carolina and northern South Carolina.

The National Weather Service takes weeks to confirm actual numbers of tornadoes but The Weather Channel said it believes there were 47 separate twisters as of May 11 putting the count for the year at 636. That is second only to the No. 1 year of 1999, when 669 tornadoes hit through the same date, Forbes said.

As for deaths by tornado, this year has seen the most through May 11 since 115 were killed by tornado in 1998, Forbes said. That year ended with 130 total deaths because of tornadoes.

Meteorologists say wind conditions and weather patterns have been ideal for creating twisters this year.

The jet stream, a shifting river of air at high altitudes, has been moving from the southwestern USA toward the Great Lakes and pulling moist air from the Gulf of Mexico.

The contrast between the warm southern air and cold air aloft creates winds that can spin turn into twisters.

“We’ve had a very strong contrast in temperatures with cold air from the north, warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, and with that clash of air masses … (it) produces tornado outbreaks,” said Andrew Orrison, meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s national office at Camp Springs, Md.

Tornado season generally begins late winter and lasts through mid-summer. May is peak tornado period for the Southeast; the season then cranks up through July in the upper Midwest and northern Plains states.

Some southern states have been particularly hard hit this year.

Before this weekend’s storms, Forbes said Mississippi already had 49 tornadoes, exceeding the average over the past decade of 39 twisters for the entire year.

Alabama has had 45 twisters, exceeding its yearly average of 42, and Arkansas has had 49, already above its annual average of 48, Forbes said.

“We have quite a few states already above average for the year, and obviously the year is not nearly done,” Forbes said.

“We are on a pace that continues a record number” of twisters, said Greg Forbes, severe weather expert at The Weather Channel.

Violent storms over the weekend that spawned tornadoes left at least 22 people dead from the southern Plains states eastward to Georgia, including seven deaths in the tiny town of Picher, Okla., and 10 deaths in nearby Seneca, Okla.

CNN’s Breaking News:  Some 900 children buried under rubble after the 7.8 earthquake in China, Xinhua news agency says. 

The quake was felt 1000 miles away in Beijing.

Sichuan Earthquake Details

Source:  http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/

This table shows that a magnitude 7.2 earthquake produces 10 times more ground motion than a magnitude 6.2 earthquake, but it releases about 32 times more energy. The energy release best indicates the destructive power of an earthquake.

Source:  http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eqlists/eqstats.html#table_2.  Accessed 5/12/08.

Frequency of Occurrence of Earthquakes

Source: http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eqlists/eqstats.html#table_2