Earth Changes
The extratropical storm saw its central pressure fall to a record 921 millibars from 972 millibars in 24 hours, making it the strongest storm in that basin in at least 60 years, and also setting records for Alaska and the Bering Sea in its path onwards.
Meanwhile, a global record for the highest mean sea-level pressure was broken in Mongolia, central Asia, barely days before. A recording of 1094.3 millibars came hand-in-hand with bitingly low temperatures of -45.5C (-50F) in Tsetsen-Uul in the western Zavkha province.
This year, on the other hand, opened with a disruptive ice storm across the midwest and Great Lakes of the US. Ice storms, or freezing rain, occur as raindrops falling vertically through the atmosphere move into a thin layer of sub-freezing air near the earth's surface. This allows the droplets to become supercooled and freeze upon contact with any objects, creating extremely hazardous conditions such as ice coats the ground. In the southern hemisphere, the first storm of the season was birthed. Tropical Cyclone Imogen made landfall in the Shire of Carpentaria in Queensland, Australia, on Monday, with reports of over 260mm of rain falling in Karumba.
The cold weather has also brought thousands of motorists up into the mountains in search of rare wintry scenes.
They haven't been disappointed, but authorities are urging caution: people here are unused to driving in snow.
Parts of the world have been struck by extreme cold and snowfall.
Spain saw a record MINUS 34-point-1 degrees Celsius in the Catalan Pyrenees on Wednesday their lowest temperature in history.
The BBC reports snow and "nasty" wet and wintry conditions are expected in the country and neighboring Portugal,... over the next few days.
It says cold air originating in Russia is moving across Europe.
In China, temperatures plummeted to minus 19-point-six in Beijing,... the lowest since 1966.

A1M Motorway in County Durham is currently grid locked with traffic queuing for miles
An arctic blast from Greenland has left the country shivering as snow was dumped overnight and leaving treacherous conditions on the roads.
Temperatures fell to -15C in some spots, with yellow warnings issued for most of the country today by the Met Office.
It comes as another Beast from the East is set to arrive next week, with snowstorms and extreme temperatures expected to batter Britain in the cold blast.
Despite emergency services performing vigorous CPR on the victim, who was in her early 20s, she died at the scene.
A rāhui has been placed around the area by local iwi as whānau gathered to mourn at a Coastguard building at the Bowentown end of Waihī Beach on Thursday night, where the victim's body was believed to be laying.
As the night came to a close, a group of locals and holidaymakers lit candles and had drinks in memory of the victim on the beach itself.
"This is a very rare event," reports Gerd Baumgarten of Germany's Leibniz-Institute of Atmospheric Physics, whose automated cameras caught the clouds rippling over Rio Grande, Argentina (53.8S) on Jan. 3rd:
Comment: Another unusual sighting occurred in our changing atmosphere this week: Novel atmosphere phenomenon 'STEVE' makes ANOTHER appearance over Finland
See also:
- Noctilucent clouds almost completely missing over Antarctica
- Rare red noctilucent clouds photographed over Sweden
- Earlier, further south and 'cooler' than ever before: Noctilucent clouds appear across northern hemisphere
- Are noctilucent clouds increasing because of the cooling climate, and the rise of fireball and volcanic activity?
There were no injuries reported at the site, where firefighters say the sinkhole "affected an area of about 500 square meters" and has swallowed up several cars which were parked outside the hospital.
The epicenter, with a depth of 117.74 km, was initially determined to be at 20.735 degrees south latitude and 169.8807 degrees east longitude.
A powerful earthquake occurred on Friday in the sea near New Zealand's Kermadec Islands at a depth of 222.3 km. The magnitude of the tremor is 6.3, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
According to reports, the earthquake kick was registered at a distance of about 935.0 km northeast of the settlement of Ngunguru, New Zealand.
No possibility of a tsunami has been reported at the moment.
Comment: For more information on extreme weather events, check out SOTT's monthly documentary SOTT Earth Changes Summary - December 2020: Extreme Weather, Planetary Upheaval, Meteor Fireballs