It started with the Farmer's Almanac. We've been hearing lots of talk about another brutal winter being in store.

Although seasonal forecasts are speculative at best, meteorology indeed has advanced to a point where it is possible to get an idea of what direction the upcoming season is tending towards. Farmers have been doing this successfully for centuries.

Meteorologist Joe Bastardi in his Saturday Summary at the 7-minute mark looks at the latest NCEP NCAR global winter forecast for 2013/14. The charts point to another "brutal winter for Europe". The forecast sees blocking and a negative NAO. Joe also tweeted that "SST analog package combined with low solar, and climate cycle (similar to early 50s) argue for nasty Euro Winter".

Strange sounds outside in Surbiton,United Kingdom, about 2:30 in the morning 8/9/2013. It lasted for about 20 minutes. It was very loud. This is the last 2 minutes, so it is not as loud.

Changthang, India - The famed pashmina shawl that keeps the cold away - in style and at a price - could itself have become the victim of winter. Thousands of goats whose fine wool is woven into pashmina have perished in extreme cold being associated with climate change.

Pashmina is drawn from Changra goats found in Ladakh region of Kashmir state and a part of the Tibetan peninsula, more than 14,000 feet (4,267 meters) above sea level. The peninsula is often called the Roof of the World.

Little grows in these areas where the temperature can drop to minus 35 degrees Celsius. The local Changpa nomads live off their herds of sheep, yak and goats.

The Changthang region of the larger Tibetan Peninsula does not normally see heavy snowfall. That may be changing, given the heavy snowfall earlier this year that deprived the Changpas of fodder for their animals.

"In the past five years this is the second time I have seen such heavy snowfall," Bihkit Angmo, 53, who rears goats, told IPS outside her tent in Kharnak, a nomadic settlement 173 kilometers east of Leh, capital of Ladakh. "This new trend of snowfall several feet high has left us quite worried."

Summer last year brought its own problems, leaving areas parched and barren. "It was terrible. We had to go long distances to find suitable pasture for our livestock," said Angmo.

I was dozing off and hear a loud sound all around my apartment. I instantly thought of all those stories of sounds coming from the sky so The second time it came about I'm guessing 10 seconds after the first time I got it recorded. Sorry about the wind but it you listen you can hear it. Scary business!

Canadian author Naomi Klein is so well known for her blade-sharp commentary that it's easy to forget that she is, above all, a first-rate reporter. I got a glimpse into her priorities as I was working on this interview. Klein told me she was worried that some of the things she had said would make it hard for her to land an interview with a president of the one of the Big Green groups (read below and you'll see why). She was more interested in nabbing the story than being the story; her reporting trumped any opinion-making.

Such focus is a hallmark of Klein's career. She doesn't do much of the chattering class's news cycle blathering. She works steadily, carefully, quietly. It can be surprising to remember that Klein's immense global influence rests on a relatively small body of work; she has published three books, one of which is an anthology of magazine pieces.

Klein's first book, No Logo, investigated how brand names manipulate public desires while exploiting the people who make their products. The book came out just weeks after the WTO protests in Seattle and became an international bestseller. Her next major book, The Shock Doctrine, argued that free-marketeers often use crises - natural or manufactured - to ram through deregulatory policies. With her newest, yet-to-be named book, Klein turns her attention to climate change. Scheduled for release in 2014, the book will also be made into a film by her husband and creative partner, Avi Lewis.

Klein's books and articles have sought to articulate a counternarrative to the march of corporate globalization and government austerity. She believes climate change provides a new chance for creating such a counternarrative. "The book I am writing is arguing that our responses to climate change can rebuild the public sphere, can strengthen our communities, can have work with dignity."

First, though, she has to finish the reporting. As she told me, speaking about the grassroots response to climate chaos: "Right now it's under the radar, but I'm following it quite closely."

People in Oklahoma are dealing with an infestation of crickets. And while the swarm of the bugs might make your skin crawl, experts say it's completely natural. In Oklahoma towns, it happens every year, and is always a mess.

Thousands and thousands of crickets pile up on streets, sidewalks and porches, and hang off walls and windows of homes and businesses. While people might not like it, it's perfectly natural for all those crickets, who this time of year have one thing to do.

The signal to gather and mate comes from the change of seasons and the weather, which this year, dry in the spring and wet in the summer, was just right! It's good for business if you're an exterminator.

Calls for service are flooding in. At just one car dealership in Claremore, Oklahoma, exterminators found enough crickets to fill a thirty-pound bag. Some good news is that while people aren't happy, the rest of the animal kingdom is having a feast.

Micah Holmes from the Oklahoma Agriculture Department says, "birds eat them, frogs eat them, lizards, small mammals; they're a little protein, protein pack for animals."

Some even better news is that this year's cricket plague won't last forever. In a few weeks, when the weather gets colder, they'll all be gone, until the new generation comes to town next year.

Two researchers and their pilot were rescued Friday from a remote Alaska volcano after freezing rain left thick ice on their helicopter's blades.

Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said the rescue came at about 5 p.m. Friday. The three were caught in a freezing rainstorm Wednesday evening. Pilot Sam Egli, United States Geological Survey geophysicist John Paskievitch, and University of Alaska-Fairbanks researcher Taryn Lopez were not injured.

They were attempting to monitor volcano equipment when "the weather moved in," Egli said. The work is part of an assignment to also repair permanent monitoring equipment on volcanoes in the area known as the Valley of 10,000 Smokes. Freezing fog enveloped the research area and iced over the helicopter's rotator blades.

"We were unable to produce enough lift to take off at that point," Egli said. "The weather didn't clear up after that."

Without any means to heat the helicopter blades, the trio was stuck. On Friday afternoon, a rescue helicopter lifted Egli and the researchers to safety. Peters said the helicopter remains on Mount Mageik about 280 miles southwest of Anchorage at Katmai National Park and Preserve.

Asked how they passed the time for more than two days, Egli said "we just yakked."

"There wasn't anything to do," he said. "We work together, we've got things in common, so we just talked about that."

The three were well-equipped with survival gear and food. They remained in the helicopter until they were rescued.

West Boothbay Harbor, Maine - A six-clawed lobster captured off the coast of Hyannis has a new home.

The lobster, picked up recently by the crew of the Rachel Leah, Captain Peter Brown and lobsterman Richard Figueiredo, was donated to the Maine State Aquarium in West Boothbay Harbor this past Thursday.

It weighed in around four lbs.

The aquarium has a number of other rare or strange-looking lobsters on display. Lola, as the lobster has been named, is expected to join the others when she grows accustomed to her new surroundings.

© CBS New York

New York - Chunks of ice apparently fell from the sky on an 80-degree day in Brooklyn. The question is, where did they come from?

Terry Blasi and Louie Vitale said they were sitting on Blasi's porch on Wednesday when something the size of a softball crashed through the trees.

"All of a sudden something had come down through the trees really loud and then a loud thump on the ground," Vitale told TV 10/55′s Dick Brennan on Friday.

The pair raced to the street and found a chunk of ice.

"It must have come through really fast and then thud. It sounded like a bowling ball went through," Blasi said.

Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 (as amended), an Unusual Mortality Event (UME) has been declared for bottlenose dolphins in the Mid-Atlantic region from early July 2013 through to the present day. A much higher number than usual of strandings of Bottlenose dolphins has occurred in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
These Bottlenose dolphin strandings are more than seven times the historical average for the month of July for the Mid-Atlantic Region. All age classes of bottlenose dolphins are involved and strandings range from a few live animals to mostly dead animals with many very decomposed.

As yet, there are no unifying gross necropsy findings although several dolphins have presented with pulmonary lesions. Preliminary testing of tissues from one dolphin indicates possible morbillivirus infection, although it is too early to say whether or not morbillivirus may be causing this event.