© Chris MoultonValdez city hall
All the experts say the effects of climate change will be felt most in Alaska, home of the ex-governor who contends climate change is no big deal.
Good thing she wasn't in Valdez this week when the citizenry got buried under a record snowfall. We're not talking about your ordinary little dump here. That was in Copenhagen, where world leaders were meeting to discuss what to do about global warming and the Bloomberg news service was warning that Barack Obama and the rest would "face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.''
Four inches overnight? Valdez got more than four inches per hour at the height of the snowstorm that began there Monday and ran through the week. By the time the citizens of Alaska's only oil port finally caught a break, the snow was piled 5 feet, 8 inches deep.
© AFPTemperatures dropped as low as -33C in parts of northern Europe
Dozens of people have died across Europe as days of snow storms and sub-zero temperatures swept the continent, causing traffic chaos for millions.
At least 29 people froze to death in Poland as temperatures fell far below freezing, while in southern Germany a figure of -33C (-27F) was recorded.
Moscow said it was deploying 9,000 snow ploughs to clear the city's streets.
Air, rail and road transport links were disrupted across northern Europe where more snow was expected in coming days.
Eurostar services between the UK and the continent were suspended on Monday for a third day, as the company launched an immediate review into train breakdowns which have stranded and delayed tens of thousands of passengers since Friday.
© APTemperatures in Ukraine are expected to improve by Wednesday
XinhuaSun, 20 Dec 2009 17:58 UTC
An earthquake measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale rocked northeast China early Monday morning, the national seismological network said.
The tremor occurred at 5:31 a.m. at the border area between Tongyu and Changling counties in Jilin Province and Horqin Left Wing Middle Banner in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
The epicenter, with a depth of eight kilometers, was located at 44.5 degrees north latitude and 123.0 degrees east longitude.
XinhuaSun, 20 Dec 2009 17:49 UTC
Three Austrian citizens froze to death on their way home from local bars this weekend nights in Steiermark and Salzburg, states of Austria, the first death victims dying of cold in the country this winter, Austrian press Agency (APA) reported on Sunday.
One pensioner from Salzburg seriously hurt himself after falling down a slope. He was frozen to death when a hunter found him on Sunday.
Two men at the ages of 19 and 43 from Steiermark had the same cause of death. They were on their way home from bars and fell down.
The youngest one was lightly dressed, only a pullover and jeans covered his body when he fell.
© UnknownLuggage piles up at Saint Pancras station, as Passengers wait amid further disruption to the Eurostar service in London.
Aside from disrupting train and air transport, snowstorms and freezing temperatures have killed at least 19 people across Europe.
Most of the deaths occurred overnight in Poland, where 15 people perished in icy temperatures.
In Germany, some areas recorded -33C temperatures and the country's third busiest airport, Duesseldorf International, was forced to close on Sunday due to relentless snowfall.
Meanwhile, Eurostar, the operator of high-speed passenger trains between London, Paris and Brussels, canceled services for a second day following electrical failures due to extreme condensations.
While weather is expected to have slightly improved by Christmas Day on Friday, forecasts across the continent predicted more snow and freezing rain over the next couple of days.
© HurriyetFour Turkish men died on Friday when a minaret collapsed in the village of Yukariyagcilar, Balikesir province
Six people have died, including four who were crushed by a toppled minaret, as a result of heavy storms coupled with a tornado that hit Turkey.
Four men waiting to enter a mosque for evening prayers lost their lives in Yukariyagcilar village in the western province of Balikesir late on Friday when a minaret collapsed under strong winds, the daily
Hurriyet reported.
Two injured men were rescued from the rubble.
A twister in the western Turkish town of Menemen, in Izmir province uprooted a security booth at a residential complex, injuring the guard inside. Nearby, officials later found the body of a shepherd believed to have died when the booth struck him.
And heavy rain in the southern town of Antakya in Hatay province caused a wall to collapse on Saturday, killing a man.
Frank Phiri and Katrina Manson
ReutersSun, 20 Dec 2009 08:07 UTC
A four-year-old boy and his grandmother were killed on Sunday and up to 200 people were injured when a 6.0 magnitude earthquake destroyed buildings in Malawi's northern Karonga district.
Another quake struck the southwestern region in neighboring Tanzania, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said, but initial reports indicated no serious damage or injuries.
The Malawi quake, which occurred at 0119 a.m. local time (6:19 p.m. EST) and was 9.4 miles deep, was the latest in a series of tremors in the uranium-rich Karonga district this month. On December 8 a one-year old was killed.
"Two people have died, a 4-year old child and his grandmother after the house they were sleeping in collapsed on them," police spokesman Enock Livasoni told Reuters.
Chris Michaud
ReutersSun, 20 Dec 2009 13:39 UTC
© Brian Snyder/ReutersA pedestrian peeks out from under her umbrella while trying to cross a street during a nor'easter winter snow storm in Boston, Massachusetts December 20, 2009.
The Northeast began digging out on Sunday from a massive snowstorm that buried cities from Washington to Boston under as much as two feet of snow, creating travel chaos and hampering Christmas shopping.
Nearly two feet of snow piled up in the Baltimore-Washington area on Saturday in the largest snowstorm to hit the region since February 2003, while New York City saw totals up to a foot before the monster storm churned into New England.
Boston and Cape Cod areas were expected to see as much as a foot snow before the storm moved out to sea. Areas of eastern Long Island had blizzard-like conditions and nearly two feet of precipitation.
The storm gave Washington its snowiest December on record, said Weather Channel meteorologist Mike Seidel.
Global warming fears aside, all students of climate science know that the Earth is presently in an Ice Age and has been for approximately the past 2 to 2.5 million years. This Ice Age has been characterized by successive advances and retreats of a glacial ice sheet, originating in Greenland and extending across the northern portions of the North American and Eurasian continents. Just 12,000 years ago, the undisputed geological evidence shows that New York, Chicago, and all of North America up to the Arctic regions were under a sheet of ice, estimated to have been from 1 to 2 miles thick. Mountain glaciers also extended downward from the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians in regions further to the south than the main glacial mass. A similar situation prevailed over most of Germany, northern France, the British Isles, Scandinavia, Poland and other parts of eastern Europe, and Russia.
Such had been the state of things on Earth for probably at least 100,000 years. Before that, a short period known as an interglacial had allowed for a warm climate somewhat like the present, and before it another extended period of glacial advance. The thaw which produced our present geography--the Great Lakes, the southward flowing Ohio River, and much else we take for granted--was not completed until about 8,000 to 9,000 years ago, according to the best estimates of geologists and climatologists. Not only were there changes in the internal geography, but the continental boundaries were also greatly changed during the glacial period. Calculations of the volume of water that must have been contained frozen in the continental glaciers, indicate that the global sea level, was lower by as much as 300 to 400 feet at times of glacial advance. A glaciation does not mean sea level rise, but a sharp fall in sea level exposing the continental shelf for miles out to sea. Much of the coastal-dwelling civilization of the past 100,000 or more years, thus lies buried offshore beneath hundreds of feet of ocean.
Can this happen again? The most plausible theory of the causes of the ice ages, the theory of astronomical determination, suggests that the time is ripe for it to happen sometime soon. A Jan. 11 article in the online edition of the Russian daily Pravda was titled "Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age."
Thomas Biesheuvel and Chris Bourke
BloombergSun, 20 Dec 2009 06:00 UTC
Eurostar Group Ltd., operator of high-speed passenger trains between London, Paris and Brussels, canceled all services for a second day, citing unseasonably cold weather in northern France.
The company can't guarantee that a full service will resume before Christmas, Eurostar Chief Executive Richard Brown said in a BBC interview today. The approximately 28,000 passengers affected by today's suspension can request a refund or reschedule their journey, London-based spokesman Paul Gorman said.
All services were suspended yesterday after four Eurostar trains broke down in the Channel Tunnel the previous night. A special service bringing passengers back from Paris broke down in the southeast English county of Kent. Brown said in an interview with Sky News that the temperature change on entering the tunnel created condensation that caused the electrical systems in the locomotives to fail.