Meteor shower caught on tape in MILWAUKEE,from 16/04/2010 till 26/04/2010 start from 1am night to 5am .

MILWAUKEE A large meteor streaked across the Midwestern sky momentarily turning night into day, rattling houses and causing trees and the ground to shake, authorities said Thursday. There were no immediate reports of injuries.Witnesses say the meteor lit up the sky Wednesday about 10:10 p.m. National Weather Service offices across the Midwest said it was visible from southwestern Wisconsin and northern Iowa to central Missouri.Radar information suggests the meteor landed in the southwest corner of Wisconsin, either Grant or Lafayette counties, said Ashley Sears, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Milwaukee office. Officials in both counties said no one reported seeing a meteorite or crater.

Lafayette County Sheriff Scott Pedley said his office received multiple reports of a very bright light in the sky followed by houses and the ground shaking.”There were reports of four to five minutes of explosions or rumbling,” he said. He couldn’t say what the sound was but speculated it may have been a sonic boom if the meteor broke the sound barrier.

A dashboard camera in the squad car of a Howard County sheriff’s deputy in Iowa caught a glimpse of the fireball. In the video, the object streaks toward the ground, then swells and brightens in an apparent explosion before disappearing behind a distant clump of trees.As large as the halo seems, history suggests the object might only be the size of a softball or basketball, said James Lattis, the director of the University of Wisconsin Space Place in Madison.

“These things are surprisingly small,” Lattis said. He noted meteor showers can produce streaks visible from miles away even though the objects that are burning up might be the size of a grain of sand.Lattis said because Wednesday’s meteor apparently exploded, it’s possible it will never be recovered. Unless the fragments landed on a rooftop, car, yard or other prominent place, they could be virtually indistinguishable from other rocks and pebbles on the ground.

“In that case it will just be luck if anyone happens to recognize it,” he said.Lattis said there’s even a chance the sighting wasn’t a meteor, noting an object such as a broken satellite part could create a similar effect. A message seeking comment was left with NASA.Sean Thompson was watching television in his Iowa City, Iowa, apartment when a bright light caught his eye for about 10 seconds before it disappeared.”It was somewhat alarming to me,” Thompson said. “I’ve seen shooting stars, but I’ve never seen something jetting across the sky with flames shooting off it.”

http://www.youtube.com/v/TR2uNajroOM&rel=0&fs=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/It4cBYN3eP8&rel=0&fs=1

Some initially speculated the object was part of a two-week-long meteor shower currently under way. But Lattis said it most likely wasn’t part of the Gamma Virginids shower because it came from the opposite direction.The Gamma Virginids shower began April 4 and is expected to last through April 21. Thursday is expected to be the second straight day of peak activity.Meteors are caused by bits of space debris, such as that left by a comet. Dust and debris burn up in the atmosphere and create streaks of light. Unlike other celestial sightings that require a telescope or binoculars, the best way to watch a meteor shower is with the naked eye.

The storm that hit Southern California early Monday dumped between ¾ to 2 inches of rain across the region

The storm that hit Southern California early Monday dumped between ¾ to 2 inches of rain across the region. Downtown Los Angeles received just under an inch, and up to 2 inches fell on the Station fire burn areas in the foothills, although no mudslides were reported.

Only light showers were expected Monday afternoon, said Jamie Meier, a meteorologist with the NWS in Oxnard. “The average rainfall for April is about an inch, so it’s certainly not out of the question to see a storm like this,” Meier said.No rain is expected for the remainder of the week, when temperatures are expected to hover below normal, barely reaching 70 degrees, Meier said.

earthquake has rattled northern Pakistan and Afghanistan but there are no reports of injuries or damage

ISLAMABAD A moderate earthquake has rattled northern Pakistan and Afghanistan but there are no reports of injuries or damage.Pakistani government meteorologist Qamar Zaman Chaudhry says the quake happened at 4:21 a.m. Pakistan time on Sunday (2321 GMT; 6:21 p.m. EDT on Saturday).It was felt in northern Pakistan and in Kabul, the capital of neighboring Afghanistan.

The U.S. Geological Survey says it was magnitude 5.7, and was centered in the Hindu Kush mountains 110 miles (175 kilometers) northeast of Kabul.Earthquakes often rattle the region. A magnitude 7.6 quake on Oct. 8, 2005, killed about 80,000 people in northwestern Pakistan and Kashmir and left more than 3 million homeless. (AP)

Winter storm plods through West, (MidwestDust Storm Accidents)

Winter storm plods through West/ Dust Storm Accidents

DENVER  A fast-moving winter storm is promising to bring a white Christmas to parts of the West and Midwest, but not without threatening to cause long delays and tough driving conditions for countless holiday travelers.The storm is expected to dump more than a foot of snow on parts of Colorado and Southern Utah by midday Wednesday, and blow east into the Plains states through Christmas Day. Blizzard warnings were likely on Christmas Eve in Kansas.”Pretty much the entire central and southern Rockies are going to get snow, and then it’s going east and will drop more snow,” Stan Rose, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Pueblo, Colo.With the snowstorm looming, holiday travelers scrambled Tuesday to adjust their plans.

In Denver, Sarah McAnarney and her husband planned to leave town Wednesday to visit family in Ozark, Mo., with their springer spaniel, Olive. But forecasts prompted them to skip a day of skiing in the Rockies and start driving a day early.

McAnarney said she was caught in a blizzard two weeks ago in the Rockies and needed four hours to drive 100 miles from Vail to Denver. She said she didn’t want to repeat the experience.”I was driving through a whiteout,” she said Tuesday at a truck stop east of Topeka, Kan. “You couldn’t see over your headlights.”

On Tuesday, blustery weather was already snarling traffic in Arizona, with blizzard-like conditions shutting down roads and causing a pileup involving 20 vehicles. South of Phoenix, a dust storm set off a series of collisions that killed at least three people.A tropical jet stream pumping in moisture from the storm’s south was likely to cause plenty of snow as the storm heads into the Plains states.South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds declared a state of emergency Tuesday, giving his state more flexibility to prepare.

A winter storm watch was in effect for most of southeast Colorado, the panhandle of Oklahoma and north Texas through Thursday. By Tuesday afternoon, light snow was falling in Salt Lake City. No major airport delays were reported there or in Denver, but holiday travelers across the region were warned to check with their airlines before arriving for flights.In western Nebraska, a Colorado woman was killed Tuesday on Interstate 80 when her SUV apparently hit black ice and slid across a median.

In Nevada, multiple wrecks were reported in and around Reno as snow blanketed the area shortly before the Tuesday evening commute. No serious injuries were reported, the Reno Gazette-Journal newspaper reported.

Meanwhile, many holiday travelers in the region decided to adjust their plans. Craig Rueschhoff and his girlfriend, Brenna Larson, planned to leave Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday evening instead of Wednesday night to make the 210-mile drive to Columbus, Neb., to visit his parents.Rueschhoff, 35, said they also planned to visit Larson’s parents in western Iowa on their way back to Des Moines but thought about skipping the annual trip.

“We’ve had both my mom and her mom encourage us not to come if the weather is too bad,” he said. “They wouldn’t feel bad if we didn’t come. We’ve gotten their blessing.”

The winter conditions follow a weekend storm that dropped record snowfall and interrupted holiday shopping and travel on the East Coast. Delays from that storm sparked an unruly crowd that included passengers still on standby Tuesday at the Delta Air Lines terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. Police were called to help with crowd control.

Rose said holiday revelers in the West and Midwest should worry about the cold as well as the snow. Temperatures across Colorado on Christmas were not expected to get out of the 20s, with single-digits expected in the mountains.“It’s going to be cold to begin with, and then it’s going to get even colder,” Rose said.