Looks like the guys over at the web bot project are calling the alarms on what's going on with the weather, especially regarding the flooding in Australia. Yesterday, Clif High released a note about what they've been calling for since at least last summer - issues with dams...one, in particular, being a near failure scenario. Evidently, the data they're working with currently is literally screaming about this dam - specifically, screaming that this dam is about to be "shifted off it's base" in some way. Official water levels for the dams in that area are nearly all at 100%, and many are already spilling over. Should be interesting to see if this comes to play out. One thing's for certain, the flooding there in Australia is beyond anything ordinarily imaginable and it will likely be stretching on for days or weeks yet. Hopefully the part about this being a "near" failure is true.
Unfortunately, flooding of this magnitude wont be confined to Australia. Already, there are massive floods in various places all around the world that are causing damage and loss of life. A quick look around the news this morning shows severe flooding has been occurring in Brazil, Sri Lanka, the Philipines, and South Africa. The potential for flooding in Oregon and Washington over the next few days as well as a lot of talk about the impact of the snow melt for most of the western states this spring is also in the news - record snowfalls do usually mean record melt and runoff. This on the heels of the record flooding experienced just last month in southern California...
Meanwhile, of note is the SST anomaly map that shows the waters between Canada and Greenland still so much warmer than normal that I'm really starting to get panicky. Water temperatures between 60W and 40W, 45N up to 70N, are ranging up to 5*C above normal. Translated to Fahrenheit, that's up to 9* warmer than they should be for this time of the year. This has been going on all winter so far, with no sign of letting up. This could spell complete disaster for the Atlantic currents, which we already know are in bad shape. Also, as expected, down here in the Gulf of Mexico the water temps are generally hovering about 1*C below normal with some areas reaching down to nearly 4*C below normal. Looks like no help on that persistent trough that keeps setting up for the east coast of the US. Expect more blizzard scale nor'easters over the next few weeks. In fact, the one slamming the north east this morning has already dropped over 20 inches of snow in parts of Connecticut.
Back to the web bots, however, as another interesting and very unnerving update from Clif is pointing to some pretty violent shaking in the markets over the short term. Specifically, Clif is mentioning phrases like "basket" and "bad foods", and is saying this appears to be a "planet wide" event that will be described by mainstream media as a "boil over" situation. Also of note, he's seeing some serious issues related to precious metals and/or gold where some kind of derivative fails due to a crises. My mind, of course, races with thoughts of JP Morgan and the COMEX being fully and publicly exposed for their fraudulent activities. If that's the case, now would certainly be the time to move all your investments out of cash and paper and into gold and oil. I wish I had something to move myself!
And that brings me back to our favorite puppet, Julian Assange of Wikileaks. For the record, I'm pretty convinced at this point that he's been an unknowing, as opposed to knowing, participant in this whole grand scheme. In an interview with John Pilger for NewStatesman, Assange has reassured the world that he has "insurance" files that will be released in the event he's imprisoned or worse, sentenced to death. Evidently, Assange's lawyers are concerned about him facing the death penalty if he's extradited to the US. I'd also be more than a little concerned about the potential for "accidents" to happen - fatal car and plane crashes definitely come to mind. Of course, Assange isn't just warning TPTB about his insurance files, but also warns about hundreds of embassy cables relating to a particular "broadcasting organization" (BBC perhaps?) as well as some specifically about News Corp's Rupert Murdoch of all people.
The question is, will the mainstream media even care enough to cover more Wikileaks releases? The latest shows a certain lack of excitement on that front, as CNBC is already looking to soften the impact of the coming bank documents release. Whatever the case, they're stepping up efforts to get this stuff out soon and, my guess is, it wont be more than a week before we see the first wave of these bank documents come to light.
