Mother Nature is apparently saving the best, or at least the biggest, for last. Chicago residents expected to find themselves in the midst of a storm that could wind up dumping as much as 10 inches of snow in the area before the end of Tuesday - the most since the 2011 blizzard and its more than 20 inches of snow. "This will be the biggest widespread storm of the winter," National Weather Service meteorologist Amy Seeley said. The forecast is for 8 to 10 inches throughout northeastern Illinois and northwest Indiana, a far cry from last March, which saw less than a half-inch of snow and was the warmest one on record in Illinois. Hardware stores in and around the city did brisk business Monday, selling salt and snow shovels at a time many usually turn their thoughts toward gardening and baseball.

"Everybody's got a little comment with every bag they're buying," said Mike McIntosh, who works at Dressel's Hardware in Oak Park just outside Chicago. Workers had started to stock the shelves with tools and supplies associated with spring and summer, only to find the shovels and salt they thought they'd hold for another year were still in demand. "Everybody's a bit surprised, but it's good for us, we've got a lot of this stuff to move," he said. On Monday, the system moved across the Dakotas and Minnesota, dropping up to a foot of snow in some areas and freezing rain in others. Some schools closed and officials warned motorists to stay off the roads.

Sulfur dioxide emissions from moderate volcanoes around the world can mask some of the effects of global warming by 25 percent, a new study has found. A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder looking for clues about why Earth did not warm as much as scientists expected between 2000 and 2010 now thinks the culprits are hiding in plain sight. The study results essentially exonerate India and China, two countries that are estimated to have increased their industrial sulfur dioxide emissions by about 60 percent from 2000 to 2010 through coal burning, said lead study author Ryan Neely. Small amounts of sulfur dioxide emissions from Earth's surface eventually rise 12 to 20 miles into the stratospheric aerosol layer of the atmosphere, where chemical reactions create sulfuric acid and water particles that reflect sunlight back to space, cooling the planet, researchers said.

Neely said previous observations suggest that increases in stratospheric aerosols since 2000 have counter balanced as much as 25 per cent of the warming scientists blame on human greenhouse gas emissions. "This new study indicates it is emissions from small to moderate volcanoes that have been slowing the warming of the planet," said Neely in the study published in journal Geophysical Research Letters. The new project was undertaken in part to resolve conflicting results of two recent studies on the origins of the sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere, including a 2009 study led by the late David Hoffman of NOAA indicating aerosol increases in the stratosphere may have come from rising emissions of sulfur dioxide from India and China.

20-pound chunks of ice falling on a sunny day? It's no urban myth.

Climate experts have long warned that global warming could bring an increase in extreme weather, such as hurricanes and drought. They never mentioned 20-pound chunks of ice falling from the clear blue sky, tearing through roofs, shattering windshields, and gouging impact craters. Yet reports of such "clear-sky ice fall events" have been on the rise worldwide in recent years, and in February Spanish researchers offered further evidence that the increase could be due to climate change.

A caravan was left with huge holes in its roof and floor when a shard of frozen human waste plunged through the vehicle after falling from a passing plane.

The huge icicle crashed through restaurant owner Caroline Guy's static caravan leaving an 18-inch hole.

Miss Guy, 52, was woken up by what she thought was an 'explosion' on Saturday morning, initially thinking she was being burgled.

The mother-of-two investigated her home but could not find anything suspicious until later that day when she went to clean the static caravan which is positioned on her land.

It was then that she discovered the hole in the caravan's roof, aw sell as another similar hole in its floor.

Officials in Seffner, Florida, are investigating a second sinkhole that has formed less than two miles from the one that opened up underneath a house on Thursday and killed Jeff Bush.

The sinkhole is located behind a home and is roughly 10 feet deep. Officials for Hillsborough County Code Enforcement say there are no injuries nor structural damage at this time, WFLA-TV reported.

The hole is straddling across a fence, affecting at least two properties, USA Today reported.

Experts say thousands of sinkholes form yearly in Florida because of the state's geology, though most are small and deaths rarely occur.

"There's hardly a place in Florida that's immune to sinkholes," Sandy Nettles, who owns a geology consulting company in the Tampa area, told the Associated Press. "There's no way of ever predicting where a sinkhole is going to occur."

The effort to find the body of a Florida man who was swallowed by a sinkhole under his Florida home was called off Saturday and crews planned to begin demolishing the four-bedroom house.

The 20-foot-wide opening of the sinkhole is almost completely covered by the house and rescuers feared it would collapse on them if they tried to search for Jeff Bush, 37. Crews were testing the unstable ground surrounding the home and evacuated two neighboring homes as a precaution.

Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill said heavy equipment would be brought in to begin the demolition Sunday morning.

"At this point it's really not possible to recover the body," Merrill said, later adding "we're dealing with a very unusual sinkhole."

A late-winter storm was expected to gum up travel Tuesday as it crept slowly across the Central and Midwest U.S. before heading east later in the week, forecasters said Monday.

The storm was expected to peter out by the time it hits New York and Boston later in the week, but not before it creates a mess for commuters from Upper Mississippi and Ohio River valleys eastward to the Atlantic Coast.

Significant snowfall will make travel dangerous Monday night and Tuesday in the Upper Midwest, especially around major cities like Minneapolis, Indianapolis and Chicago. The Weather Channel warned that major delays were likely Tuesday at O'Hare and Midway airports.

Chicago is expected to get its biggest snowfall of the season - as much as 10 inches by Tuesday evening. The National Weather Service said accumulation rates of one to two inches an hour beginning Tuesday morning would make "snow removal difficult and travel extremely dangerous."

"Consider only traveling if in an emergency," it said in issuing a winter storm warning for the city.

Unseasonably warm temperatures Monday melted some of the winter's snow in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul - just in time for a new blast of winter that could drop as much as 7 inches of new snow overnight and Tuesday.

Have you noticed anything strange about the weather these past couple of years? Record cold, record snowfall, record heatwaves, tornadoes happening all year round and in places they never appeared before, constant flooding and persistent drought... it's as if the predictions made by Al Gore about catastrophic man-made global warming are coming true.

But 'man-made global warming' is an explanation that leaves so much unexplained. Our sun clearly plays an important role in regulating the planet's climate, but increased numbers of earthquakes, rising volcanic activity and indications that 'climate change' is taking place on other planets in our solar system clearly point to some other factor driving these changes.

In last week's SOTT Talk Radio show, we looked back at periods of 'climate change' in the course of human history, noting that increased fireball flux also occurred during such times. Does the recent Russian overhead meteor explosion portend similar environmental catastrophe for humanity today? Are we on the cusp of another Dark Age?


Here's the transcript:

Australia's weather went "on steroids" over a summer that saw an unprecedented heatwave, bushfires and floods, the climate chief said Monday, warning that global warming would only make things worse.

The Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed the three summer months ending February 28 were the hottest season ever recorded in Australia, leading the government's Climate Commission to label it the "Angry Summer" in a new report.

"The Australian summer over 2012 and 2013 has been defined by extreme weather events across much of the continent, including record-breaking heat, severe bushfires, extreme rainfall and damaging flooding," the report said.

"Extreme heatwaves and catastrophic bushfire conditions during the 'Angry Summer' were made worse by climate change."

Coastal residents near Santa Monica awoke to a foul odor Sunday that probably was caused by a large release of methane in the ocean, authorities said.

Fire departments in Los Angeles and Santa Monica began receiving calls shortly after dawn from residents as far north as Sunset Blvd. and south of Venice Beach reporting a rank smell blowing in off Santa Monica Bay.

A Santa Monica fire hazardous-materials team took readings off the coast near San Vicente Blvd. and found methane in the water, said communications officer Justin Walker.