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 severe hailstorm hit El Ejido, Spain on Monday, October 28, 2024, destroying 4 500 ha (11 000 acres) of greenhouses and losses reaching up to million dollars. This event took place just one day before the worst floods in Spain’s history hit Valencia, claiming the lives of over 200 people.
The latest version of the U.S. Drought Monitor released on Thursday, October 31, 2024, showed most of northern Indiana is under severe drought conditions.
A long march 2F rocket topped with the Shenzhou 19 crew spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on October 19, 2024, at 4:27 p.m. EDT ( 20:27 UTC), rising into a night sky above the spaceport.
New research published in Nature Communications suggests that Mars’ magnetic field, which may have helped retain the planet’s atmosphere and surface water, existed until approximately 3.9 billion years ago—lasting longer than prior estimates of 4.1 billion years. The updated timeline offers a clearer picture of Mars’ early environment, potentially shedding light on its habitability.
NASA engineers have successfully integrated the state-of-the-art Roman Coronagraph Instrument with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s Instrument Carrier at the Goddard Space Flight Center, marking a key milestone in the telescope’s assembly and readiness for its scheduled 2027 launch.
Researchers have developed a new machine learning and neural network model with a detailed feature matrix to improve earthquake prediction accuracy in Los Angeles, achieving a 97.97% success rate.
A recent study of High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory data showed a violent mystery in the Milky Way galaxy. Pat Harding, a physicist at Los Alamos and the Department of Energy’s principal investigator for the project said that the results are a glimpse at the center of the Milky Way to an order of magnitude higher energies than ever seen before.
Severe Tropical Storm “Trami” made landfall in Divalacan, Isabela, Philippines on October 23, 2024, causing widespread flooding and landslides in which at least 90 people died and 36 remain missing. Trami reached Vietnam on October 27 and made landfall in Thua Thien-Hue and Da Nang at around 03:00 UTC, with maximum sustained winds of 88 km/h (55 mph).
Recent research on the Dansgaard-Oeschger event provides a better understanding of climate tipping points during the last Ice Age. The researchers used multiple ice cores collected across Greenland with data spanning up to 120 000 years, providing a new understanding of these abrupt events, how they unfold, and what that might mean for the future. It is really important to understand such tipping points in the climate, because they may result in catastrophic and irreversible change, the lead author of the study said.
Heavy rainfall caused massive flooding and landslides leading to vehicles getting washed away and roads becoming rivers on Saturday, October 19, 2024.
