Earth Changes
Millions of orange and black monarch butterflies migrate to Mexico on a 2,000-mile (3,220-km) journey each year from Canada across North America.
But the butterflies occupied only 2.1 hectares in December 2020, compared with 2.8 hectares the previous winter season, the conservationist group WWF said in a statement.

People walk past stranded vehicles on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway during heavy snowfall, at Qazigund in Anantnag district of South Kashmir.
Fresh snowfall in Kashmir on Saturday brought back cold wave- like conditions in the valley where the day temperature for the past week was several degrees higher than normal for this time of the year, officials said.
Fresh snowfall was reported from most parts of Kashmir, including Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, the officials said.
Macchil and Z-Gali areas in remote Kupwara district recorded snow between one foot to 18 inches, while places like Gulmarg, Baramulla and Sonamarg recorded up to seven inches of snow, they said.

The circulation of the Atlantic Ocean plays a key role in regulating global climate. The constantly moving system of deep-water circulation, sometimes referred to as the Global Ocean Conveyor Belt, sends warm, salty Gulf Stream water to the North Atlantic where it releases heat to the atmosphere and warms Western Europe. The cooler water then sinks to great depths and travels all the way to Antarctica and eventually circulates back up to the Gulf Stream
Comment: For more information about cyclical climate change on our planet, see:
- Cyclical climate change: Major drought in the Middle Ages and its parallels with today
- Global cooling to replace warming trend that started 4,000 years ago - Chinese scientists
- Gulf Stream is 15% weaker, region south of Greenland coldest in 1,000 years
- Massive flooding in Europe during the Little Ice Age
- Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?
- MindMatters: The Holy Grail, Comets, Earth Changes and Randall Carlson
- Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Interview with Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Pierre Lescaudron

Paradise Ranger Station near the Jackson Visitors Center sits under nearly 19 feet of snow.
Paradise Ranger Station, at about 5,400 feet, typically sits under a massive snow blanket at this time of winter, but this La Nina winter, that blanket is especially thick.
Latest measurements show a snowpack up there of 225 inches (nearly 19 feet!) through mid-Friday morning with snow continuing to fall. That is over 4 FEET ahead of the average snowpack at the peak of the entire winter snow season -- usually around April 1.
In fact, if it holds close to that amount through the weekend -- which it should -- it will become the 6th highest snowpack on March 1 since records began there in 1927 and second-most since 1991, only behind the epic snow season of 1998-99.

A Denver motorist works to clear more than a foot of snow left by a late winter storm that swept over the region. The storm moved away from Colorado's Front Range communities and on to the eastern plains overnight.
Winter weather advisories advertising a run-of-the-mill snow event were quickly converted into warnings overnight as snow fell at rates topping two inches per hour.
Original forecasts called for an upslope snow event, which means air forced up the Front Range of the Rockies would deposit considerable snowfall at the base of the foothills. But that band ended up 20 miles farther east than expected, parking right over the heart of downtown Denver.
Between 10 inches and a foot fell in the city proper, with 15 inches reported in southeast Denver near Colorado Boulevard. Englewood, a suburb just south of downtown, tallied 16 inches of snow.
NORTHERN HEMISPHERE SNOW MASS JUMPS TO 700 GIGATONS ABOVE 1982-2012 AVERAGE
The latest data point from the Finish Meteorology Institute's (FMI's) "Total snow mass for Northern Hemisphere" chart has been plotted, and it reveals pow-pow across the hemisphere as a whole - excluding the mountains - is riding at some 700 Gigatons above the 1982-2012 average:
A 35-year-old man has died as a result of an avalanche near Valemount this week.
RCMP say a Fernie, B.C. resident's body was found Wednesday (Feb. 24) after a 3.5-size avalanche was reported in the Swift Creek Valley around 2:55 p.m. on Tuesday (Feb. 23).
Robson Valley Search and Rescue (RVSAR) were called in as a trio of 'experienced' backcountry skiers got caught in the incident, two of whom survived the incident and didn't sustain any injuries.
In Chelyabinsk, a record-breaking blizzard left 30,000 people without electricity and over 10 districts declared a state of emergency.
In St. Petersburg, the heavy snowfall has prompted over 1,000 workers and cleaning machines to take to the streets to clean up the snow, and in the republic of Dagestan, locals even had to to dig their cows out of snowdrifts.
Comment: Monarch butterfly population getting closer to extinction - less than 2,000 of western population counted wintering in California