Rishav Kothari is Editor-in-Chief of The Watchers, where he runs the newsroom and covers earthquakes, volcanoes, severe weather and space weather.
When heavy booms woke Iris Caldentey in Palmer, Alaska, she went outside to check whether someone was breaking into the family’s cars. In Unalaska, Laresa Syverson initially blamed her cat. The real source was Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai, nearly 10 000 km (6 200 miles) away—even though much closer Hawai‘i reported no audible sound.
On 25 July 2001, brief, sharply localized showers began turning collected rainwater red across parts of Kerala. The phenomenon continued intermittently for about two months. Government scientists identified spores of the lichen-forming alga Trentepohlia, while physicist Godfrey Louis later argued that the cells had arrived in a disintegrating comet.
On November 3, 2002, the M7.9 Denali Fault earthquake ruptured about 340 km (211 miles) of central Alaska and displaced the ground beneath the Trans-Alaska Pipeline by roughly 4.3–5.8 m (14–19 feet), depending on how the distributed rupture is measured. The pipe slid across low-friction supports and flexed through its zigzag alignment; it did not rupture and no oil escaped.
Episode 56 of Kīlauea’s ongoing Halemaʻumaʻu eruption began at 12:10 HST (22:10 UTC) on November 5, 2026, and ended abruptly at 18:01 HST that day (04:01 UTC on November 6) after nearly six hours of continuous lava fountaining. Fountains reached about 200 m (660 feet), while the eruption plume rose to 5 500 m (18 000 feet) above sea level.
Iceberg A23a, the world’s largest freely floating iceberg through much of 2025, spent about 34 years pinned to the Weddell Sea floor, completed roughly 15 rotations above an undersea mountain in 2024, grounded again near South Georgia and finally collapsed in March 2026—months short of its 40th anniversary.
Texas’ main power grid spent 4 minutes 23 seconds below a 59.4 Hz protection threshold early on February 15, 2021, leaving 4 minutes 37 seconds before relays on approximately 17 GW of generation could begin tripping. Federal investigators said the resulting losses could have caused a total blackout across the ERCOT region; operators stopped the cascade by disconnecting thousands of megawatts of customer demand.
A rare November disruption of the Northern Hemisphere stratospheric polar vortex is underway, with the daily-mean wind at 60°N and 10 hPa weakening from 22.13 m/s (49.5 mph) on October 25 to 5.44 m/s (12.2 mph) on November 2. Forecast guidance continues to indicate a possible brief reversal during the second week of November, which would meet the defining wind-reversal threshold used to identify a major sudden stratospheric warming, while any surface-weather response remains uncertain.
ne of the fastest solar eruptions ever recorded reached Earth in about 14.6 hours on August 4, 1972. A 2018 analysis indicates that the resulting magnetic disturbance probably triggered sensitive US Navy sea mines off North Vietnam, where an aircrew witnessed 20 to 25 explosions in roughly 30 seconds. Declassified navy documents support this claim with naval investigators concluding that there was “a high degree of probability” solar activity triggering sensitive sea mines off North Vietnam on August 4, 1972.
An estimated 8 to 10 million tonnes of African dust settle over the Amazon basin each year, carrying phosphorus to nutrient-poor forest soils, according to atmospheric models checked against air measurements in South America. A 2015 satellite study put annual dustfall at about 28 million tonnes, although its uncertainty range included the lower estimates
A deep M6.2 earthquake registered by the USGS struck 43 km ESE of Port-Olry, Vanuatu, at 21:46:44 UTC on October 29, 2026. The agency is reporting a depth of 142 km (89 miles). EMSC is reporting the same depth and magnitude.
