Space.com - Joe Rao, 9/21/12

The arrival of the autumnal equinox this Saturday (Sept. 22) signals a transition from northern summer to fall in an astronomical sense. But it also signals the start of aurora-watching season.

From now through the end of October, the chances of sighting the glow of the mysterious northern lightswill be reaching a peak.

Weather.com - Matt Sampson, 9/12/12, Associated Press

SITKA, Alaska — A fisherman who spent a night adrift in a 4-by-4 foot plastic fish bin after his boat sank off Alaska says he gave himself pep talks and sang “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” to keep his spirits up. His fellow crewmember managed to get into a survival suit and washed ashore on a beach after his own night afloat.

A Coast Guard helicopter hoisted Ryan Harris, 19, of Sitka, from his plastic “lifeboat” on Saturday, more than 24 hours after the boat sank on Friday, the Daily Sitka Sentinel (http://is.gd/bgoPcT) reported Monday.

Weather.com - AP, Jim Suhr, 9/20/12

Barge Heading Southbound on the Mighty Mississippi

A barge eases southbound in a Mississippi River channel toward a lock that remained shut down Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012, in Granite City, Ill., causing a traffic jam of dozens of tugboats and hundreds of barges.

GRANITE CITY, Ill. -- Crews scrambled to make repairs Wednesday near the busiest Mississippi River lock shut down because of damage blamed partly on the summer drought, snarling hundreds of barges and tugboats in a backlog that was growing worse by the hour.

Workers closed Lock 27 just north of St. Louis last Saturday after discovering that a protection cell -- a vertical, rock-filled steel cylinder against which barges rub to help align them for proper entry into the lock -- had split open, spilling into the channel tons of the rock that ultimately obstructed passage.

Source: Phys.org. - 9/20/12

Roughly 1,100 years ago, the Changbaishan volcano that lies along the border between northeastern China and North Korea erupted, sending pyroclastic flows dozens of kilometers and blasting a 5-kilometer (3-mile) wide chunk off of the tip of the stratovolcano.
The eruption, known as the Millennium eruption because of its proximity to the turn of the first millennium, was one of the largest volcanic events in the Common Era.

In the subsequent period, there have been three smaller eruptions, the most recent of which took place in 1903. Starting in 1999, spurred by signs of resumed activity, scientists established the Changbaishan Volcano Observatory, a network to track changing gas compositions, seismic activity, and ground deformation. Reporting on the data collected over the past 12 years, Xu et al. find that these volcanic indices each leapt during a period of heightened activity from 2002 to 2006.

Source: The Extinction Protocol

September 20, 2012 – AZERBAIJAN - Baku. Kamala Guliyeva – The Lokbatan mud volcano erupted in the morning has weakened, Executive of Mud Volcanism Department under the Geology Institute of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences Arif Huseynov told APA. Huseynov said that the eruption process is being studied.

The volcano accompanied by a rumble at 05.00 spew flames at 09.00: “According to the preliminary observations, the eruption was powerful and mud spread across the area of more than 2 ha. The exact information will be announced after the measurements. But this eruption was more powerful than the eruption in 2010. At that time, the mud covered about 2 ha area.” Husyenov says that no flame is being observed in the area: “The volcano has already weakened. It is not likely to flame again, as it’s weakened.”

The Lokbatan mud volcano is the most active volcano in Azerbaijan and in the world. Last time the volcano erupted in 2010. This is the 24th eruption of the volcano. Fortunately there aren’t any houses in the area, but there are oil wells. -APA