The Watchers team and our contributors bring the latest on extreme weather, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, space weather, and all things science. We're all about making sense of the natural world and keeping you informed on what’s happening. Got a tip or a question? Hit us up using the form at newstips!
A total of 98 people were killed and 846 sustained injuries after severe storms swept through several towns in east China's Jiangsu Province on Thursday, June 23, 2016. 200 people are still in serious condition. More than 8 600 houses, two elementary schools,…
A new eruption of Costa Rica's Turrialba volcano took place at 03:37 UTC on June 25 (22:15 on June 24, local time). Dense fog is preventing estimation of volcanic cloud height. At the same time, volcanic ash produced by the fresh eruption of Guatemala's…
NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory – DSCOVR – has completed instrument validation after reaching the first sun-Earth Lagrange point (L1), approximately 1.6 million km (1 million miles) from Earth, and is ready to go operational on July 27, 2016, taking over…
Powerful storms that swept through parts of the US Midwest starting Wednesday, June 22, have now moved east over the Mid-Atlantic states and caused significant flash flooding in parts of West Virginia. Mudslides, rockslides, and flooding damaged homes, businesses,…
A new dark spot, dark vortex in the atmosphere, has been discovered on Neptune and confirmed this month by the Hubble Space Telescope. Though similar features were seen during the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune in 1989 and by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994, this…
During the last three days, there has been an increase in seismic activity at Chile's Calbuco volcano. A total of 161 volcano-tectonic (VT) earthquakes was recorded at distances between 1 to 4 km (0.62 to 2.5 miles) NW of the crater and between 8 and 10 km (5…
A powerful tornado accompanied by heavy rainfall and hailstones hit northern Jiangsu, eastern China at 06:30 UTC on Thursday, June 23, 2016, destroying houses, overturning cars and flattening power lines. As of 12:30 UTC, there were 51 reported deaths. This made the…
Ecuador's Instituto Geofisico (IG) reports a sharp increase in seismicity under the Cayambe volcano this month. It became more evident in the middle of June, but at the moment, the seismicity tends to decrease. The last known eruption of this volcano in 1786….
Solar wind parameters reflected a brief enhancement associated with the arrival of a co-rotating interaction region (CIR) and subsequent negative polarity coronal hole high speed stream (CH HSS) late June 22, 2016. A gradual increase in solar wind speeds began after…
South Asian country of Bangladesh is experiencing a surge of lightning deaths this year. As of June 22, 2016, 261 people have died from lightning, placing the country on track to beat last year’s 265 deaths. A similar surge is reported in the neighboring…
