Sheets of rain, floods and hail left a path of destruction all over the world, and the northern hemisphere still got snow in June.

The unbelievable amount of precipitation during the past months can be explained with the increasing amount of charged particles in upper layers of the atmosphere.

When meteors and meteorites pass through our lower atmosphere, or when our planet goes trough a comet dust stream, charged particles accumulate between the ionosphere and the surface of the earth causing storms to intensify, clouds to grow and more rain to fall. Wildfires and volcanic eruptions, for example, also contribute to this accumulation of particles.

At the same time, rain can conduct the accumulated electrical charge of the ionosphere to the ground, which increases the occurrence of other electrical phenomena, as tornadoes, hurricanes and plasma formations.

The accumulation of charged aerosols and increasingly colder temperatures in upper layers of the atmosphere - caused by the current solar minimum - can also be responsible of the increasing amount of hail and unseasonable snow around the world.

Charged particles influence weather much more than has been appreciated.

Heavy rain and raging floods took the life of hundreds and affected millions in south China, and destroyed 1,470 houses and 3 bridges in Gorontalo Province, Indonesia. Heavy floods also hit Assam, India leaving 16 dead and over 253,000 affected.

While Romania got its second coldest day in June, Montana got more than 1 foot of snow and southeast Wyoming got 6 inches... just at the beginning of summer.

Siberia got a share of extreme weather this month, from tornadoes to floods and extreme temperature swings.

A 7.5-magnitude earthquake rattled large swaths of southern and central Mexico, killing at least five people. No major damage was reported.

Locusts continued to ravage Africa, India, Brazil, Argentina and the Middle East, with no sign that they'll be gone soon.

All that and more in our SOTT Earth Changes Summary for June 2020:

Topsy-turvy summer swings from Saudi-heat to freezer in Arctic north of Russia's largest region of Yakutia.

Abnormally cold weather has been recorded in the north of Yakutia with residents of Verkhoyansk district waking up to fresh snow on 5 July.

Just days before that, locals were complaining about the hot and dry beginning of July, with air temperature heating up to +27C on 1 July, and wildfires raging.

Earlier, on 17 June this district saw a world record for the Arctic of 38C.

After an unusually warm June, Norway's July summer holidays got off to an extremely chilly start over the weekend. Strong winds, heavy rain, hail and even some snow caught many tourists by surprise.

Slippery roads and as much as 30 centimeters of snow in the mountains prompted warnings from state highway officials that motorists shouldn't drive over mountain passes without snow tires on their vehicles. One mountain lodge, Sognefjellshytta, reported a new record low temperature for July of minus-7.2C late Saturday night, and so did several other weather stations in the mountains of Southern Norway.

Also larger concentration of sea ice than in 1980.

Sea ice extent now is 700,000 sq km (270,272 sq miles) greater than in 1980.

In case you're having a hard time reading the numbers, here they are:

Parts of Australia have shivered through their coldest night of the year so far as temperatures plummeted below 0C.

It was a chilly start to the working week, with most capital cities across the nation still in the single digit temperatures at 8am on Monday.

South-east Queensland shivered through a second consecutive morning of freezing temperatures after 30 towns across the region recorded their coldest temperatures of the year on Sunday.

Residents in the state's Southern Downs region felt the the biggest brunt of the winter chill on Monday, where Applethorpe woke up to a frosty -2.1C while Warwick recorded -1.1C.

Wellcamp Airport recorded -1.4C at 5.20am, while further north the mercury dropped to 0.5C in Kingaroy.

Brisbane airport dropped to a low of 7C, while the CBD was slightly warmer at 8.1C, two degrees lower than average.

The Fonna (Folgefonn) Glacier in Norway was closed today due to a big snowstorm that deposited at least 35cm (14 inches) of fresh snow on the area (pictured above this morning).

The road up to the glacier was closed due to the snow.

Fonna is one of three glacier areas currently open to skiers in Norway and one of 11 in Europe.

It opened for the season about two months ago after teams took around two months to dig out exceptionally deep snow burying the road to it.

It's not common, but it does happen, and it coincided with a few days of markedly cooler-than-normal temperatures in Western Canada.

Though we normally expect summer-like warmth in Canada by July 1st -- and indeed, parts of Central Canada were cooking in temperatures at or above the 30-degree mark -- an unwelcome cooldown is never completely out of the question provided the right ingredients are there.

In the case of this year, much of Western Canada found itself beneath an upper-level low that brought some unstable conditions and noticeably cooler temperatures.

Arctic reached 100F last week of June 2020, but 99.1F in 1988, so many climate anomalies as this Grand Solar Minimum intensifies so we need to look back at 1177 B.C to find a deep cooling that ended that civilization.


Sources

Herdsmen in Tekes County, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have endured heavy losses after Monday's blizzard froze to death over 400 livestock animals across the county.

The snow also disrupted traffic in Nilka County of Ili Kazak Autonomous Prefecture. Over 400 tourists in 130 vehicles were either stranded in the Tangbra Mountain or on the Dushanzi-Kuche Highway, which runs through the Tianshan Mountain from its south end to north end.

Following a disastrous 2019 growing season across the U.S., particularly in the Midwest, the cold and wet spring of 2020 along with "burnt" farmers has resulted in reduced planting of this year's crops, too.

The weather proved so cold and wet in 2019 that many North Dakota farmers' corn harvest lasted more than six months — and a few still haven't finished it, reports thedickinsonpress.com. And now, following last year's challenging conditions, North Dakota's 2020 corn acreage is down more than 30% year on year, with potato planting also drastically reduced.

ND corn acreage this spring is pegged at 2.4 million, 31.5% lower than the 3.5 million planted in 2019, according to the USDA acreage report released Tues, June 30-a report based on surveys of farmers during the first two weeks of June.

The combination of a never-ending 2019 harvest and unfavorable planting conditions this spring likely discouraged many farmers across the Midwest from planting.

Frayne Olson, NDSU Extension marketing specialist, says farmers didn't again want to risk planting beyond the optimal time, and end up with immature corn that they will have to harvest in spring 2021.

"Farmers said 'I got burned last year,'" says Olson.

Nationwide, farmers planted 92 million acres of corn in 2020 — and while that's a fraction more than last year, it took the trade by surprise because, earlier this spring, U.S. farmers had indicated they would plant 97 million acres in 2020-an organized attempt to make up for the Midwest's poor 2019 harvest.