Earth Changes
The Federal Aviation Administration said lightning struck the air traffic control tower at 2:21 p.m. Thursday. The FAA suspended arrivals and departures until about 4:45 p.m., according to a BWI spokesman.
John Dunkerly, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said that he had just left the tower when the lightning strike, which he said hit a runway, occurred. He said a traffic management coordinator who was turning on equipment in the tower was shocked when the electricity traveled to the tower.
Dunkerly says the worker was taken to a hospital. An FAA official said the worker did not appear to be seriously injured.
The Boulder County Sheriff's Office said officials planed to evacuate the town of about 2,000 around daybreak, according to KDVR in Denver. The Colorado National Guard has been called into to help.
According to Andina news agency, the area covered by the state of emergency are the Moquegua districts of Ubinas, Matalaque, Chojata, Omate, Coalaque, Ichuña, Lloque, Yunga, and the Arequipa district of San Juan de Tarucani.
Furthermore, Peru21 reports today that the village of Querapi will be permanently relocated within a year. Querapi, a small town populated by about 25 families, has been hit hard by the recent eruptions from Ubinas. As a short-term solution, regional authorities are planning on evacuating the residents of Querapi to a safe-zone before deciding on a permanent relocation plan.
A spokesman with the Rescue Co-ordination Centre says the incident happened late Sunday afternoon on Flores Island in Clayoquot Sound, about 20 kilometres northwest of Tofino.
He says the 60-year-old victim, who lives on the remote island, was attacked from behind by the big cat.
A medevac helicopter could not reach the site because of poor weather so coast guard members stationed in Tofino rushed to the scene to transport the woman to Tofino by boat.
She was then airlifted to hospital elsewhere on Vancouver Island.
There's no word on her condition, but rescue officials say the woman's husband fought off the cougar and injured it, forcing it to retreat into the bush.
A person was struck by lightning along Boulevard Avenue in Scranton's Green Ridge section.
Witnesses said a woman was helping flag down cars while other people pushed stalled cars out of a flooded section of the street, when the lightning struck.
One of the most prescient indicators clearly shows it, namely the Danish Meteorological Institute's daily mean temperatures for the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel. They have been measured for over 50 years which shows a long-term average of 90 days with the air temperature above freezing.
The Year 2013
The year 2013 has seen a dramatic departure from that routine. In 2013, the summer (above freezing temperatures) lasted for only 45 days, one half of the average number of days. Not only did the frost-free days start much later than on average this year, they also ended much earlier, see the figure below. In fact, the frost-free period seen this year was significantly shorter than in other year since 1958, when the recordings began.
The new data corroborate other findings of no global warming for the last 18 years. In fact, not a single of the 20-plus climate prediction models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) even shows the recent temperature developments as within their model uncertainties. It begs the question: Is another ice age imminent?
Looking at the data for the last decade or so, one thing stands clear: Global temperatures have been showing many more signs of cooling than warming. Already we are sensing that global temperature has lost the battle to stay up. The HadCrut data series above shows that cooling has gained the upper hand. Indeed warming is now in the history books, having died some 15 years ago.
Intriguingly, the current solar cycle shows a striking similarity with solar cycle 5 which was also very weak, with the same double peak as the current cycle, and ran from approximately the mid 1790s to around 1810.
Solar cycle 6 was weaker still and stretched from around 1810 to the early 1820s.
Solar cycles 5 and 6 were so unusual that they were named the Dalton solar minimum after meteorologist John Dalton and coincided with a period of increasingly cold winters and poor summers.
This type of climate is a result of a jet stream that's positioned further south than normal - caused, it's thought at least in part, by the behaviour of the sun.
The mechanism as to why weak solar cycles may affect the position of the jet stream is poorly understood.
But a more southerly positioned jet stream is the reason why the UK has recently seen a return of cold snowy winters and a run of poor summers.

The US NSIDC monitors Arctic sea ice extent on a five-day mean. The 16 September 2007 record low falls below the previous minimum set on 20-21 September 2005, by an area roughly the size of Texas and California combined, or nearly five UKs.
Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.
Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss.
Instead, days before the annual autumn re-freeze is due to begin, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia's northern shores. The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific has remained blocked by pack-ice all year. More than 20 yachts that had planned to sail it have been left ice-bound and a cruise ship attempting the route was forced to turn back.
Some eminent scientists now believe the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century - a process that would expose computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming as dangerously misleading.
The disclosure comes 11 months after The Mail on Sunday triggered intense political and scientific debate by revealing that global warming has 'paused' since the beginning of 1997 - an event that the computer models used by climate experts failed to predict.












Comment: This comes as no surprise to SOTT's regular readers since we've been disputing so-called global warming for years. Here's just a few recent articles to add to the mix:
Ice delays supply barge for Western Arctic communities
Tom Coburn: I'm a 'man of science' and the Earth is moving into a 'mini-ice age'
Record cold in parts of Alaska
South American countries gripped by snow