Earth Changes
The overnight wintry blast left a light dusting of snow across the Victorian Alps including at Mount Hotham.
Chamber of Commerce president Steve Belli said while it was an incredible sight, it was not too unusual for snow to fall in February.
"[The weather] is a little bit unpredictable these days. You never know what's going to happen ... but it's Mother Nature, you've just got to work in with it," he said.
According to New Mexico State Police, Stanley Hartt, 64, was attacked about 8 p.m. Tuesday by five dogs, all mixed breeds, while walking on 11th Street near Gamble.
Hartt was pronounced dead on scene.
"One of the five dogs was euthanized by a Quay County Sheriff's deputy following the attack," said the sheriff's office.
Wild weather will cease, and there will be no more droughts, floods, cyclones, or snowstorms and no more plant and animal extinctions.
But the records written in the rocks tell a far different story about climate changes. Even when nature was in full control, it was not a serene place.
Long before the first steam engine puffed along the first railway, the Earth was periodically battered by natural disasters - earthquakes, tidal waves, pole shifts, magnetic reversals, volcanic eruptions, wild weather, and droughts.
Huge areas were covered by suffocating continents of ice, desert sands, massive flows of mud and lava, beds of salt, and thick coal seams. Thousands of species disappeared including dinosaurs, mammoths, and Australia's megafauna.
Modern humans are not immune to the threat of extinction, but it will not come from today's warm, moist atmosphere or from the gas of life, carbon dioxide.
It will probably come from the next glacial climate cycle of this era, where long bitter glacial eras are separated by short warm periods. These global weather cycles are triggered by changing orbits in the solar system.
Texas has been bearing the brunt of a dangerous ice storm that dumped several rounds of sleet and freezing rain, causing life-threatening road conditions in surrounding states including Oklahoma, Arkansas and the Memphis area in Tennessee.
On Wednesday, Texas reported a third person had died during the storm after losing control of her truck on an icy road north of Eldorado. One person was killed in Austin in a 10-car pileup, and another person died after their car rolled over in the Dallas-area city of Arlington, officials said.
And while Thursday is expected to bring some relief from the deadly storm as temperatures slowly rise, the piling of multiple layers of ice and sleet has snapped tree branches and limbs and led to power outages for nearly 400,000 homes and businesses in Texas as of Thursday morning, according to PowerOutage.us. That means thousands of people likely don't have proper heating or hot water as ice coats the ground.
Extensive searches took place after the incident, which happened on the east slope of Mount Hakuba Norikura.
Japanese authorities have not revealed their identity but confirmed they were from a group of five foreign skiers.
Local police said they believed the men were off-piste skiing separately from the rest of the group when the avalanche took place.
In early January, IDFG received several reports of coyotes chasing skiers at Schweitzer Mountain Ski Resort. Fish and Game staff worked closely with the resort staff to develop a plan to kill the coyotes in the interest of public safety. Still, unfortunately, one female skier was bitten before the animals could be caught. Although the injuries were reportedly minor, the Schweitzer Mountain Resort is taking the matter seriously and cooperating with IDFG to trap and kill the coyotes.
According to a post on Facebook, the victim was skiing in a group in the trees at Schweitzer Mountain. A coyote started chasing the skiers, and the victim was cornered at a tree and attacked her arm and leg. The skier, identified on social media as 'Sofia,' allegedly took the coyote in a headlock and screamed for help. Other skiers came to the rescue and fended the coyote off with their ski poles. Schweitzer Mountain Ski Patrol also went to the aid, and the female skier received rabies shots at the medical center as a precautionary measure.
Capt. Patrick Foy from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) didn't mince words when it came to the violence of the attack in the 1000 block of Tunitas Creek Rd. near the family's farm in Half Moon Bay at around 6:50 p.m. Tuesday.
"The attack was very, very vicious in nature," he told the San Francisco Chronicle.
The mountain lion took the boy to the ground and began biting into him. At that point, Foy said, the mother likely saved the child by charging at the mountain lion.
The animal released the boy and the mother scooped up him up, carried him to safety, and quickly called 911.
Houston police said the incident occurred on the 5500 block of Sheraton Oaks Drive.
When officers arrived, they found a 30-year-old man still being attacked by a dog in a backyard.
Officials said the officers approached and one of the dogs charged at the officer. The officer fired his weapon once and struck one of the dogs. At that point, the dogs ran through a fence.

A lone driver makes their way through icy road conditions at the LBJ 635 Freeway and North Dallas Tollway interchange on Tuesday.
Dangerous road conditions from bands of sleet and snow were blamed for six deaths as a winter storm snarled traffic across parts of the US, forcing the cancelation of flights and leaving hundreds of thousands without power in several southern states.
Watches and warnings stretched from Texas to Tennessee and Mississippi. Several rounds of mixed precipitation, including freezing rain and sleet, were in store for many areas throughout Wednesday, meaning some regions could be hit multiple times, forecasters said.
"It actually looks like it's going to be getting worse again across Texas, it is already a pretty big area of freezing rain across western and south-western Texas," said Bob Oravec, National Weather Service lead forecaster in Camp Springs, Maryland.
Oravec said the winter weather was expected to move north-east across parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas into western Tennessee and northern Mississippi, before starting to end.
The sun didn't bring much warmth.
NOAA reports showed wind chills of -50ºF and air temps of -18ºF.
The Tetons just received the most snow they've ever recorded in any 2 day period.
41″ in 48-hours
50″ in 50-hours.
52″ storm total.
Comment: Further south in the same state: Storm dumps 7 FEET of snow over weekend at Snowy Range, Wyoming