Earth Changes
A report from the U.S. Geological Survey summarized reasons for the event, detailed its effects and illustrated its severity with maps, charts and rainfall data. City Engineer Steve Ruble says the study eliminates the possibility of a "smoking gun'' and proves the flooding came from rainfall on June 6 and 7.
Hundreds of schools were closed across Northern England and Scotland.
As much as 20cm of snow fell in the Durham Dales, and 17cm was recorded at Redesdale, Northumberland, with driving winds causing drifts on transpennine routes in what was the heaviest snowfall of the winter so fall.
Around 4,450 homes were without power in north-east Yorkshire and north Linclonshire by early evening.
You work with climate models, but you have issues with them too. Why?
The temptation to interpret model noise as forecast information invades our living rooms every night. TV weather-forecast maps look so realistic it is hard not to over-interpret tiny details - to imagine that the band of rain passing over Oxfordshire at noon next Saturday requires postponing a barbecue. Rain may indeed be likely somewhere in the area sometime on Saturday, but the details we see on TV forecasts are noise from the models. I think we are having exactly the same problem with climate projections.
Alyeska opened for business on November 26 and according to a press release, with "epic conditions that rival the best opening day on record."
Thursday, December 04, 2008 at 08:16:58 AM at epicenter
Location 38.566°N, 142.762°E
Depth 35 km (21.7 miles) set by location program
Distances 170 km (105 miles) ENE of Sendai, Honshu, Japan
190 km (120 miles) SE of Morioka, Honshu, Japan
220 km (140 miles) ENE of Fukushima, Honshu, Japan
420 km (260 miles) NE of TOKYO, Japan
Snow storms in the lower mountain range of the Rhineland region, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Taunus region in the state of Hesse brought traffic to a standstill during the morning commute. The sanitary department had been out in full force ploughing snow and salting streets, police said, adding that they still expected delays in heavy traffic areas.
Using GPS, field measurements, radar data and seismological records, a team of international researchers investigated the parameters and reconstructed the events of two massive earthquakes, measuring 8.4 and 7.9 on the Richter scale, which occurred in the Mentawai area in 2007.
Previous models of how earthquakes work had suggested that the same fault would rupture in the same way and at regular, predictable time intervals. But the researchers found that the 2007 quakes ruptured only a fraction of the area affected by the giant 1833 earthquake, indicating that a tectonic plate boundary can rupture in different patterns depending on local differences in stress.
The increasing prospect of a white Christmas forced bookmakers to slash their odds today after interest in the customary festive bet went into "overdrive".
The icy weather, which has already brought chaos to many parts of the country, is set to extend with forecasters predicting more snowfall.

Horses in the early morning snow on Holcombe Hill on the border between Greater Manchester and Lancashire.
Laura Gilchrist, forecaster at MeteoGroup, said: "Tonight a warm front of air from the west will hit a colder front, creating snow. By the early hours of tomorrow morning most parts of the country will be seeing either rain or snow."
Comment: For additional reading on the Climate debate: Climate Change Swindlers and the Political Agenda, Fire and Ice: The Day After Tomorrow and Forget about Global Warming - We're One Step From Extinction!.