• Amir Cohen / Reuters

    A Roman statue stands on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in the southern city of Ashkelon on Dec. 14. The statue, which had been buried for centuries, was unearthed by the winter gales that have raked Israel's coast. The marble figure was found in the remains of a cliff that crumbled under the force of winds, waves and rain, the Israel Antiquities Authority said.

    Violent storm reveals ancient art on the coast of Israel

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    This week's storm in the Middle East wreaked havoc with scores of archaeological sites along Israel's coast — but it also uncovered a treasure: a headless, armless statue of a woman in a toga and sandals, made of white marble.

    The figure was found half-buried in the sand by a resident walking near the shore in the southern city of Ashkelon. In addition to the statue, experts identified pieces of a mosaic floor from what's thought to have been a Roman bathhouse. The artifacts are part of a cliffside archaeological site that collapsed when high winds and waves hit the shore.

    "The sea gave us this amazing statue," Yigal Israel, an archaeologist with the Israeli Antiquities Authority, told Reuters. The statue stands about 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall and weighs about 440 pounds (200 kilograms). It's thought to date back to the Roman occupation of what was western Judea, between 1,700 and 2,000 years ago. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted Israel as saying the statue "was apparently imported from Italy, Greece or Asia Minor, and may have represented the goddess Aphrodite."

    The statue, which is to be placed on museum display, brought little joy to Israeli archaeologists. They say the storm washed away other artifacts from the site, and did serious damage to the ruins of coastal Caesarea. "We don't see this discovery as such good news," one of Israel's colleagues at the antiquities authority told Reuters. "Better than relics remain hidden and protected than that they be exposed and damaged."

    For another perspective on the discovery, check out The Associated Press' report in our Science section.

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  • NASA via AFP - Getty Images

    This satellite image from NASA shows Hurricane Igor and Julia churning in the Atlantic Ocean today, with Tropical Storm Karl forming in the Caribbean.

    Storms look scary ... even from space

    You may be able to debate which monuments are visible from outer space, but there's no debating this picture: Three storms dominate the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico in the image from the GOES-13 satellite, which is managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and provides data to NASA. From left to right are Tropical Storm Karl, which is heading for Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula; Hurricane Igor, a Category 4 storm that forecasters say will arc northward through the Atlantic; and Hurricane Julia, a Category 1 storm expected to parallel Igor's path.

    Igor looks particularly scary: The CIMSS Satellite Blog offers a series of amazing animated images showing monstrous clouds churning around the hurricane's well-defined, 20-nautical-mile-wide eye.

    Hurricane Igor

    Ed Olsen / NASA / JPL

    Color-coded infrared imagery from the AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite shows Hurricane Igor with a clear and large eye, with very strong convection (purple) and high, powerful thunderstorm cloud tops around the center. The dark orange areas indicate ocean temperatures well over the 80-degree-Fahrenheit threshold needed to maintain intensity.

    An infrared image from NASA's Aqua satellite illustrates in psychedelic colors just what it is that keeps the storm going. The satellite's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, or AIRS, detected temperatures that dropped to 90 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-68 degrees Celsius) at Igor's cloud tops (shown in purple). The big chill suggests that the clouds are rising to the top of the troposphere, driven by strong winds.

    Meanwhile, the water surrounding Igor is very warm. The deep orange colors represent sea surface temperatures in excess of 80 degrees F (27 degrees C) — warm enough to keep Igor in business for days. In a news release, NASA notes that the temperature difference between the cold cloud tops and the warm waters that are powering the storm exceeds 170 degrees Fahrenheit, or 95 degrees Celsius. That's just about equal to the difference between boiling and freezing water.

    To keep track of these scary storms in the days ahead, click into the Weather section and check out our whiz-bang Hurricane Tracker. And for a quick primer on hurricane science, take a spin through our "Birth of a Hurricane" interactive.


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