Where Has The Ocean Gone?

Hurricane Irma is currently dominating the news as one of the strongest hurricanes ever to grace the Americas – and now it’s dominating the news for a completely different reason.

As the Bahamas are largely spared from the large scale destruction that Irma has wrought through much of the Caribbean, the Bahamas are reporting something rather strange – the ocean has gone.

This apparently isn’t uncommon with strong hurricanes, as the strong winds effectively suck the surrounding seawater up and end up displacing it; it’s almost like you sucking water up through a straw, just without the associated wind.

I think the Bahamas are lucky to escape with just a bit of lost seawater!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4869268/Rare-phenomenon-sucks-water-Bahamas-beach.html

The Flexible Earth

As the Americas are currently being plagued by the first trio of hurricanes since 2010, it has come to light that the immense amount of rainfall that Hurricane Harvey unleashed in Houston, Texas has actually caused the lithosphere (the earth’s crust) to sink by 2cm.

Known as isostatic rebound, this occurs when a significant load is placed on the earth’s surface, causing it to sink; as this load is removed, the land rises again. Believe it or not, but the earth is still experience this rising and sinking of the land after the last ice age, when thick ice sheets moved towards the equator; in the northern hemisphere, it has lead to the slow rise of the land in Scotland and the sinking of England.

As the rainwater starts to evaporate and leave the surface of Houston though, the earth isn’t likely to need thousands of years to bounce back.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/harvey-hurricane-houston-sink-rainfall-heavy-floods-a7935401.html