Earth ChangesS


Snowflake

Rare snow in the Azores, Portugal

snow on Pico mountain, Azores
© euronews (screen capture)
Snow is a rare thing in the Azores, Portugal. Pico Montain is the highest mountain in Portugal, and now it is covered with snow.

It is like a snow cone in the middle of the ocean, and a rare thing to see.

Pico Is a stratovolcano located on Pico Island, in the mid-Atlantic archipelago of the Azores. It is 2,351 metres, (7,713 ft), above sea level, and is one of the highest Atlantic mountains; it is more than twice the elevation of any other peak in the Azores.

"Snow at Pico Mountain is a rare thing. When people arrived today...and I told them that we were going to climb the highest mountain in Portugal...with these unique conditions.....snow at the top...and the typical green of the Azores...and then see the ocean...completly blue...It's different to everything else in the whole world," says mountain guide Renato Goulart.


Comment: Another indicator of an impending Ice Age? Data shows that the entire planet is seeing serious cooling: NOAA's own data reveals that global climate has cooled over 10 years

A small selection of recent related articles include:


Ice Cube

Super-colony of 1.5 Million Adélie penguins discovered on Danger islands, Antarctica

Super-Colony of 1.5 Million Adélie Penguins discovered on Danger island, Antarctic
© Thomas Sayre-McCord, WHOI/MITQuadcopter aerial imagery of Adélie penguin breeding colonies on Heroina Island, Danger Islands, Antarctica
Captured in satellite images, the white stretches of penguin poop stood in stark contrast to the brown rocky surface of Danger islands, a remote archipelago located off the northernmost tip of the Antarctic peninsula. It's not commonly thought to be a popular penguin spot, but the poop was a telltale sign that the black and white birds waddled nearby.

Even so, as Jonathan Amos and Victoria Gill report for BBC News, when scientists ventured out, what they found surprised them: Around 1.5 million Adélie penguins were thriving in these far flung nesting grounds, grouped in some of the largest known colonies of the birds in the world.

A team of scientists led by ecologist Heather Lynch of Stony Brook University in New York first spotted signs of penguin activity in 2014 when using an algorithm to search through images from the Landsat satellite, a craft jointly managed by the USGS and NASA. Though Landsat does not offer particularly clear images, the researchers were surprised when they saw such a large area spotted with penguin poop, Robert Lee Hotz reports for The Wall Street Journal. A year later, another team visited the location and discovered a far larger population of Adélie penguins than they had ever imaged.

Comment: While we are seeing a decline and mass mortality events in some species, others seem to be thriving, and unsurprisingly, as we enter an ice age, in those adapted to cold:



Snowflake Cold

Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Bomb cyclone USA - Super freeze blizzard across UK (VIDEO)

UK snow
© MercurySnow on Saddleworth, Greater Manchester, UK where many people have become trapped
Another Bomb Cyclone approaches the USA also known as a Bombogenesis, which is forecast to bring sleet, floods, blizzard conditions and feet of snow over the next three days to the East coast of the USA. The European superfreeze in the UK where storm Emma collides with the beast from the east, bring blizzard conditions with drifting snow and power outages as the UK stretches it all time power consumption descending into a -7C weekend. Weather patterns setting up for 1960's repeat.


Comment: See also:


Windsock

At least six dead as Nor'easter slams US East Coast with violent wind, rain, snow and floods

winter storm riley floods
© Scott Eisen/Getty ImagesA stop sign sits on a flooded-out road in Scituate, Mass. as a large coastal storm bears down on the region Friday.
Residents along the East Coast on Friday battened down as heavy rain and gusting winds pummeled states from Maine to North Carolina.

The Nor'easter was predicted to bring damaging winds - up to hurricane strength in some areas - along the Atlantic through Friday, according to the National Weather Service, which issued numerous severe-weather warnings and advisories lasting into Saturday.

At least six people were killed when fierce winds brought trees crashing down on roads, homes and other buildings. In the Putnam Valley area north of New York City, an 11-year-old boy was killed when a tree fell on a home, officials said. In Newport, R.I., a 72-year-old man was killed by a falling tree. In Baltimore County, Maryland, a 77-year-old woman was killed when a branch fell on her outside of her home. A 44-year-old man was killed in James City County, Va., when a tree branch fell on a car he was in. And in Chester, Va., a six-year-old who was asleep in bed was killed when a tree came crashing down into his family's home. And in Connecticut, one person was killed in a carnear the Stamford-Greenwich line.

Nearly two million people up and down the Eastern seaboard lost power on Friday: 392,000 in Massachusetts; 332,538 in Virginia and part of North Carolina; 323,000 in New York; 308,164 in Washington D.C. and Maryland; 224,242 in New Jersey; 143,000 in Rhode Island; 120,000 in Eastern Pennsylvania, and more than 40,000 each in Connecticut and Delaware.

Throughout the day Friday, at least 3,200 flights at airports between Washington to Boston had been canceled. At New York's LaGuardia airport, which suspended all flights on Friday afternoon, 729 flights had been grounded by the end of the day.


Comment: Below is a map of the many storms recorded by Sott during the past year from across the globe (which also includes lightning, waterspout and tornado events).




X

The terrifying phenomenon plummeting species towards extinction

Dead Antelope
© ReutersDead saiga antelopes in a field in Kazakhstan.
There was almost something biblical about the scene of devastation that lay before Richard Kock as he stood in the wilderness of the Kazakhstan steppe. Dotted across the grassy plain, as far as the eye could see, were the corpses of thousands upon thousands of saiga antelopes. All appeared to have fallen where they were feeding.

Some were mothers that had travelled to this remote wilderness for the annual calving season, while others were their offspring, just a few days old. Each had died in just a few hours from blood poisoning. In the 30C heat of a May day, the air around each of the rotting hulks was thick with flies.

The same grisly story has been replayed throughout Kazakhstan. In this springtime massacre, an estimated 200,000 critically endangered saiga - around 60% of the world's population - died. "All the carcasses in this one of many killing zones were spread evenly over 20 sq km," says Kock, professor of wildlife health and emerging diseases at the Royal Veterinary College in London. "The pattern was strange. They were either grazing normally with their newborn calves or dying where they stood, as if a switch had been turned on. I've never seen anything like that."

Arrow Down

12 meters wide sinkhole appears in southern Seoul, South Korea

The sinkhole found on the road near Intercontinental Seoul COEX, Thursday
© YonhapThe sinkhole found on the road near Intercontinental Seoul COEX, Thursday
A sinkhole 12 meters wide has appeared on a road near Intercontinental Seoul COEX in southern Seoul, firefighters said Friday.

According to firefighters, the hole was reported at around 10:31 p.m. on Thursday by a person who saw smoke coming out of it.

A rupture in a concrete sewer pipe was the cause, firefighters said.

There have been no reports of injuries or traffic accidents caused by the hole.

But the hole caused traffic jams and safety concerns.

Cloud Precipitation

Winter storm hammers almond orchards in Tracy, California

Glenn Moore/Tracy Press
Hail and slush cover a section of Lehman and Linne roads Monday night.
A cold winter storm swept over Tracy on Monday evening pummeling orchards and rural roads with rain and hail that triggered at least one car accident on Bird Road.

Hail blanketed roads and orchards southeast of Linne Road leaving drivers looking for traction across the icy pavement.

Rain fell sporadically throughout the day on Monday with reports of hail falling to the south in rural Tracy starting at about 5 p.m. According to a Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network measuring station in west Tracy, .45 inches of rain dropped between 8 a.m. Monday and 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Some roads were covered by a thick coat of hail pebbles that in some areas obscured the road markings.

The hail gave way to rain and sleet making for slick roadways for evening commuters.

Almond growers south of Tracy are still assessing how much damage was caused to their crops by Monday's severe hail storm, which covered orchards and fields with two inches or more of hail.

X

Large sinkhole closes rural highway in central Michigan

Sinkhole in rural MI
© Rachel Greco/Lansing State JournalA large sinkhole, at least 11 feet wide and eight feet deep, is the result of recent flooding and an aging drainage structure beneath the roadway, and has prompted the closure of a section of rural roadway on North Cochran Road, officials said.
The section of road still intact across the other lane isn't safe to travel over and won't be until the county replaces the "antique" drainage structure that's been in place there since at least 1930, Ballou said.

"It is not going to be a quick process, measured in hours or days," Ballou said. "I think it will be measured in weeks. We have to replace the whole structure."

Ballou said the Wright-Parlee Maxson Drain runs underneath the roadway. The drainage structure at the sinkhole is a combination of corrugated pipes and remnants of an old concrete bridge that was put in place in the 1950s, he said.

Cloud Precipitation

Heavy rainfall triggers flash floods in Honiara, Solomon Islands

The damaged road at Naha 4
The damaged road at Naha 4
Heavy rain between 28 February and 01 March triggered flash floods in Honiara, capital of the Solomon Islands, and surrounding areas.

Honiara recorded 171 mm of rain in 24 hours, most of it falling during the daytime on 01 March.

Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC) said stormwater drains, creeks and roads to be flooded by water coming off high ground trying to find its way to the sea. Some main roads in Honiara were flooded by mid-morning 01 March.

SIBC said that roads were damaged and left strewn with flood debris.

Arrow Down

Massive sinkhole in Michigan forces road to close indefinitely

Sinkhole in Oxford, MI
© 2018 Scripps Media, Inc.
A large sinkhole in a neighborhood in Oxford caused a road to close indefinitely.

Wood Trail South of Drahner closed due to the sinkhole, which is causing flooding for some of the residents.

Crews are currently using a pump to bypass the broken section to prevent water damage to homes.

At this point, it's not clear when the road is expected to reopen to traffic.