Long traffic jams built up on motorways in several regions of Germany due to the freezing conditions, leaving hundreds of people stranded in their cars.

The worst log jam came on the A2 motorway outside Bielefeld, in North Rhine-Westphalia where an enormous 37 kilometre line of traffic built up on both sides of the road on Monday night. The queues stretched all the way into the state of Lower Saxony and had still not been cleared by Tuesday morning.

The A2 was blocked in both directions due to trucks coming to a standstill in the snow and not being able to get out. Police reported that hundreds of drivers had to spend the night in their cars.

Video footage showed shivering drivers huddled in their vehicles, complaining of going for hours without food as temperatures plunged to minus 12 degrees Celsius.

The last time a mockingbird was spotted in the UK was in the 1980s - the first in 1982 at Saltash, Cornwall, and the second in 1988 at Horsey Island, in Essex.

Northern mockingbirds are the only mockingbird commonly found in North America. While they're predominantly a 'home bird', some may move south in the harsh winters - so been spotted as far away as Europe is a pretty huge feat. But now Chris Biddle, from Devon, claims to have made an incredible sighting at the weekend in Exmouth, Devon.

Posting images of the bird on Twitter, he questioned whether he had in fact spotted a northern mockingbird.

He wrote: "Spotted this little chap in our garden in Exmouth over the last few days, mainly in the holly and palm flowers. We think a northern mockingbird, any ideas?"

The sighting is the first record of mockingbirds being seen anywhere in Britain or the Western Palearctic in more than 30 years - and birdwatchers were delighted with the find.

Conservationists have blamed a summer cold snap for the widespread deaths of a small native bird in Western Australia's South West.

A low pressure system brought unseasonal cold temperatures and heavy rainfall to southern WA for several days from the weekend.

Parks and Wildlife conservation officer Ben Lullfitz said after the cold weather people had found dead tree martin birds from Augusta to Bunbury.

"It's a small bird which looks a bit like a swallow, basically they are insect feeders which don't like cold weather in the summer ... which has caused them to get into quite a bit of distress," he said.

Mr Lullfitz said the birds were unable to feed or regulate their body temperature during the cool conditions.

"We don't know how many exactly have died but it's been a widespread event," he said.

At least 28 people have died as a result of flash flooding in northern Morocco.

Flash floods struck in the city of Tangier on 08 February 2021, inundating streets and buildings including an illegal textile factory in a basement of house where over 40 workers were trapped.

As of late 08 February, state media reported the bodies of 28 of the workers had been found. Around 17 people have been rescued and transferred to hospital. A search was ongoing for more survivors.

Farmers and communities across large swathes of inland eastern Australia are being hit by their worst mouse plague in almost a decade, threatening to undermine post-drought recovery efforts.

Mouse populations have spiked over the past 12 months as crop-growing conditions have improved across rural Australia and provided the rodents with favourable conditions for eating and breeding.

Elevated mouse populations have been recorded from Central Queensland down to northern and central west NSW and into western Victoria.

In some areas, problems with mice have reached plague-level proportions.

CSIRO mouse researcher Steve Henry told AAP mice feast on the stubble of crops and reproduce roughly every three weeks once they reach six weeks old, making population control a near-impossible task.

In Kazakhstan's Almaty region, a stunning ice volcano standing 45 feet tall attracted many thousands of people for its incredible formation.

Despite the thick blanket of snow in the area and the harsh weather, tourists were not stopped to visit the ice volcano formation. The frozen structure was formed from an underground spring that spouted water, freezing it once released.

Although this is not the first time an ice volcano formed in Almaty, as small ice volcanoes also formed last year, locals said that the recent ice volcano in the area is the first to continuously spout water from its top opening that mimics a lava-filled volcano. The continuous water spout has created a small ice rink near its base.

A local shared online that the area is usually covered with greenery during summer, but the iceberg increases to 14 meters and creates a picturesque location during winter.

The climate crisis is multiplying the miseries faced by people with allergies, with new research finding that the pollen season in North America is now an average 20 days longer than it was three decades ago.


Rising global temperatures are helping lengthen the period of time, typically in spring, when pollen is released by plants, trees and grasses, according to the study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


In an analysis of 60 pollen-collecting stations across the US and Canada, the pollen season is now 20 days longer on average than it was in 1990. The season is also becoming more intense, with significantly larger quantities of pollen being detected.

A polar vortex continues to bring bitter cold to the Prairies, resulting in cancellations of schools and buses in all major Prairie cities.

A mass of cold air arrived on Sunday, setting daily temperature records in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

According to Environment Canada, 22 cold-weather records were broken throughout the three provinces.

The coldest temperature was recorded in Uranium City, about 1,045 kilometres northwest of Regina, where it was -48.9 C, breaking a previous record of -40 C set in 2019.

In Alberta, the lowest temperature was recorded in Fort Chipewyan, about 710 km northeast of Edmonton, where it was -47.3 C, breaking the previous record of -45.6 C set in 1936.

In backcountry areas across the United States, from Alaska to Colorado to New Hampshire, hundreds of avalanches rumbled down mountains in early February, ending in the most deadly week for avalanches in more than a century.

Between Jan. 30 and Feb. 6, 15 people died in avalanches in the U.S. — the most in that time frame since 1910, when 96 people died on the west side of Stevens Pass in Washington in a massive avalanche.

In total, 21 people have died in avalanches in the country in the 2020-2021 season as of Monday, including:

Winters are becoming harsher and lengthier, impacting basic infrastructure and crops around the world. It's clear that we are not properly prepared for the coming ice age.

The most impactful winter snowstorm in the US so far caused a rapid decrease in temperature and dumped snow from the Midwest to the Northeast, affecting hundreds of millions. More than half the US was covered in snow and some cities received up to 19 inches. The US is seeing winter storm after winter storm with no relief.

Iowa got hit by a new record snowfall this month with 19 inches dumped in Des Moines, the snowiest January for the last 130 years. Extreme snowfall also buried Texas and the Mississippi Valley, leaving 150,000 people in the dark.

15 inches of rain, floods, up to 100 inches of snow, mudslides, a massive landslide, and wildfires hit California. Again, extreme weather is disrupting the lives of millions of Californians contributing to a 'mass exodus' from the state.

Europe and Asia also experienced one of their most intense winters in recent years, with temperatures in some areas dropping as low as -46.2 degrees Celsius.

Storm Filomena hit Spain this month, producing the coldest night for at least 20 years when the temperature plunged to -25C in Molina de Aragón, and Teruel, and a record snowfall since 1971 killed half a million trees in Madrid. All this was accompanied by a supercell storm with winds of 150 km/h in Lleida, flash floods in the south, and a M4.4 earthquake in Granada. Two meteor fireballs were also recorded over Galicia and Granada.

Siberia again broke the global cold temperature record this month, with -58°C at one locality, meanwhile, Mongolia faced one of the most extreme winters on record with temperatures as low as -50 C.

South Korea got hit by the season's harshest weather as a cold wave with heavy snow and strong winds brought traffic to a stop and grounded planes. The temperature in Seoul dropped to -16.1 C, with a wind chill of -25.3 C.

Many meteor fireballs were witnessed or recorded during the day this month, while a small meteorite fell on a house in Indonesia. A sign of increased cometary activity?

Heavy rains and floods continued to hit east and southeast Asia, with millions affected. The worst flood in half a century hit Malaysia prompting the evacuation of 50,000 people, while Chennai, India recorded the highest rainfall for a January day since 1915.

All this and more in our SOTT Earth Changes Summary for January 2021: