Most Amazing Places And Culture: 5 Mar 2012

Baby dropped in field by tornado dies,Tornado girl's entire family killed

Baby dropped in field by tornado dies

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- When rescuers found 15-month-old Angel Babcock alive last week in an Indiana field after a deadly tornado killed her parents and two siblings, it appeared as a ray of hopeful news amid the tales of death and destruction.
But the New Pekin, Ind., toddler died of her injuries Sunday, bringing to 39 the number of people killed by the storms that devastated fives states.
The National Weather Service said the tornado that struck New Pekin measured an EF-3 on the enhanced Fujita scale, while another tornado that struck nearby Henryville, Ind., measured an EF-4 and packed winds of 175 mph.
As residents picked through the rubble and made plans bury their dead, they also began trying to find a semblance of normalcy as officials continued to assess the damage.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A blonde, blue-eyed 2-year-old girl found alive in a field after tornadoes swept through southern Indiana is the sole survivor of her immediate family, a hospital official said Saturday.

Angel Babcock

The child -- initially unidentified -- was taken to a hospital in Salem before being airlifted to Kosair Children’s Hospital in Louisville, Ky.
Cis Gruebbel, a spokeswoman for Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville, Ky., said the girl's mother, father, 2-month-old sister and 3-year-old brother all died Friday. Gruebbel says the toddler is in critical condition.

NBC News affiliate WAVE reported identified the toddler as Angel Babcock, and her dead parents were 21-year-old Joseph Babcock and 20-year-old Moriah Brough. Angel's 3-year-old brother, Jaydon, and 7-week-old sister, Kendall, also perished in the twister, WAVE Gruebbel could not confirm the identity.The storms have claimed the lives of at least 37 people so far in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Alabama and Georgia.elissa Richardson, a spokeswoman for the hospital in Salem, Ind. where the child was first taken, said the child's family is from New Pekin, Ind., and she was found near her home

The Top Ten US Killer Tornadoes and Their Effects

The United States gets about 1000 recorded tornadoes every year. Today, only a few are killers, but that has not always been so. About 200 US tornadoes have killed 18 or more people. Of those, about 150 occurred in the 70 year period between 1879 and 1949. There have been about 45 tornadoes since 1950 that have killed 18 or more people. In the 1950s, there were 18 tornadoes that killed 18 or more people. In the 1960s, there were 12 tornadoes that killed 18 or more people. In the 1970s,there were 11 tornadoes that killed 18 or more people. And in the 1980s, there were only 2 tornadoes that killed more than 18 people. In spite of an ever-burgeoning population, death figures continue to go down as improved forecasting, detection, communications, and public awareness increase.

Rank	State(s)	Date	Time	Dead	Injured	F-Scale	Town(s)
1	MO-IL-IN	March 18, 1925	1:01PM	695	2027	F5	Murphysboro,Gorham, DeSoto
2	LA-MS	May 7, 1840	1:45 PM	317	109	F?	Nachez
3	MO-IL	May 27, 1896	6:30PM	255	1000	F4	St. Louis, East St. Louis
4	MS	April 5, 1936	8:55 PM	216	700	F5	Tupelo
5	GA	April 6, 1936	8:27 AM	203	1600	F4	Gainesville
6	TX-OK-KS	April 9, 1947	6:05 PM	181	970	F5	Glazier, Higgins, Woodward
7	LA-MS	April 24, 1908	11:45AM	143	770	F4	Amite, Pine, Purvis
8	WI	June 12, 1899	5:40PM	117	200	F5	New Richmond
9	MI	June 8, 1953	8:30 PM	115	844	F5	Flint
10	TX	May 11, 1953	4:10PM	114	597	F5	Waco

New Island Rising from Earth's Red Sea

The Red Sea has a new inhabitant: a smoking island.

The island was created by a wild eruption that occurred in the Red Sea earlier this month. It is made of loose volcanic debris from the eruption, so it may not stick around long.
According to news reports, fishermen witnessed lava fountains reaching up to 90 feet (30 meters) tall on Dec. 19, which is probably the day the eruption began, said Erik Klemetti, a volcanologist at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.
Ash plumes were seen emanating from the spot Dec. 20 and Dec. 22 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. The Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA's Aura satellite detected elevated levels of sulfur dioxide, further indicating an eruption. By Dec. 23, what looked like a new island had appeared in the Red Sea off the west coast of Yemen.
"I am surprised about how quickly the island has grown," Klemetti, who writes Wired's Eruptions Blog, told OurAmazingPlanet.
The volcanic activity occurred along the Zubair Group, a collection of small islands that run in a roughly northwest-southeast line. The islands rise from a shield volcano (a kind of volcano built from fluid lava flows) and poke above the sea surface.
Scientists will keep a close eye on the new island to see if it has staying power.
"Many times the islands are ephemeral as they are usually made of loose volcanic debris, so they get destroyed by wave action quite quickly," Klemetti said. But the volcanic activity could outpace the erosion due to the wave action.
Newly emerging islands aren't unheard of. Other newly emerged islands include Surtsey off of Iceland, Anak Krakatau in the caldera of Krakatoa in Indonesia, and Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha`apai in Tonga in the South Pacific.

On December 19, fishermen working off the west coast of Yemen reported a 30-meter (90-ft.) fountain of lava bursting forth from the Red Sea, amid a group of small islands known as the Zubair Group.
Over the course of three days, NASA satellites detected the ash plume and increased levels of sulfur dioxide. But on December 23, high-resolution images revealed that more than an eruption had taken place — an island had been born.