30 passenger vehicles and four tractor-trailers were involved in a massive car crash that forced the closure of an icy highway in upstate New York, according to state police.

Photos and videos shared by motorists and passengers on social media show dozens of cars smashed together and splayed across the highway lanes in Jefferson County, New York.

Traffic is being re-routed after the multi-vehicle crash, while crews work to clear the area. It is not yet clear if there are any serious injuries. The crash was reportedly caused by severe winter weather and low visibility.

A pop-up shelter has been erected at a local fire department where drivers and passengers are being escorted. School buses have been sent in to transport those left stranded. Jefferson Country emergency officials have issued a travel warning for the southern parts of the country, local news reports.

This is the heart-stopping moment a runaway cow charged at a police officer and nearly trampled him.

Police were responding to a call about an escaped cow near the city of Jaromer, Czech Republic and this patrol car footage shows the moment an officer approached the angry animal.

What happened next is really scary, as the cow bows its head and runs at the officer.

The enormous animal even leaps on top of the patrol car and smashes the windscreen.

A time stamp on the video indicates that the attack happened on February 2nd at around 11am.

The officer was reportedly unharmed and the cow was returned to its owner with help of the local fire department.

Police officers put down a dog after it was seriously injured in an attack against its owner and his son, who were bitten several times Sunday afternoon, Chula Vista police said.

A family was in the backyard of their La Costa Avenue home near Masters Ridge Road when, for unknown reasons, a boxer turned on its owner's adult son and began biting him, police Lt. Kenny Heinz said. The owner tried to pull the dog away, and it began attacking him as well. Both men repeatedly tried to pull the dog off each other and were bitten a number of times in the process. Someone at the home called police about 2 p.m.

Firefighters got their first and tried to restrain the dog with "emergency equipment," Heinz said. When police arrived, they found the dog badly injured. An officer shot the dog to end its suffering and to protect against any other attacks, Heinz said.

"The family was extremely upset," he said. "They are totally shocked the dog would do this. It's a really upsetting situation."

The two injured men were taken to a hospital for their injuries.

"Within a few years winter snowfall will become a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren't going to know what snow is."

~ Dr David Viner, senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, UK, in March 2000.

"Ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes - or eventually 'feel' virtual cold."

~ David Parker, head of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, UK, also in March 2000.

Last month, phenomenal amounts of snow were dumped in the Northeastern and Southern US, Western and Southeastern Europe, the Middle East, Western China, and Far Eastern Russia. Saudi Arabia and the Southwestern US desert were hit with snow for the third year running. The US media has apparently dropped the term 'Polar Vortex' because Arctic conditions extending all the way to the Gulf of Mexico is now 'normal'. The one place where you might expect a lot of snow this time of year - Moscow - instead enjoyed its warmest January in 100 years.

The Great Lakes in North America aren't as frozen over as they were this time last year, but those 'ice boulders' returned to Michigan in January, and the Niagara Falls have again partially frozen. Up to half a million people were affected by the worst flooding Southeastern Africa has seen for decades. The Balkans were flooded for the 5th time in 20 months, and barely two months on from receiving 70cm of rain in one day, Sicily was hit with a similar quantity of hail. Among the spectacular meteor fireball sightings in January were a comet fragment breaking apart over the Russian Far East, and a fireball that turned night into day in Bucharest, Romania.

'Mystery booms' continue to freak people (and animals) out across the US. We suspect that some of them are shockwaves from overhead meteor explosions, but others occur in clusters and are picked up by seismometers (despite there being no known fault-lines), so we are probably looking at general and unusual seismic activity resulting from the slow-down in the planet's rotation. This would also be responsible for all these volcanic eruptions, of which there were more spectacular ones in January. 'Earth opening up' also saw sinkholes swallow moving cars in Florida and Maryland.

As you watch this video summary of events in January, keep in mind that we had to leave out so many other unusual events because they're now part of 'the new normal'!


Or watch on Sott.net's Vimeo Channel:

When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records - on which the entire panic ultimately rested - were systematically "adjusted" to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified.

Two weeks ago, under the headline "How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming", I wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming.

This was only the latest of many examples of a practice long recognised by expert observers around the world - one that raises an ever larger question mark over the entire official surface-temperature record.

Spokane - Rainfall described as milky-colored, dusty or dirty fell across parts of Washington, Oregon and Idaho, with its origin is unclear.

The National Weather Service received reports of the dirty rain from more than 15 cities from Hermiston, Ore., to Rathdrum, Idaho, on Friday. The weather service's Spokane office collected water samples that will be sent to a lab for testing.

The light gray dirt in the rainfall coated vehicles and windows across the region as a rainstorm that originated in the Pacific moved in.

A so-called "atmospheric river of rain" began falling on Northern California on Friday, bringing worries about flash floods, high winds and mudslides but offering little relief to a state that has been left parched by several years of drought.

The storm, also known as a "Pineapple Express" because it develops from a ribbon of moist air moving across the Pacific Ocean, was forecast to dump as much as 10 inches (25 cm) of rain in coastal mountains.

National Weather Service meteorologist Austin Cross said more than three inches (7.5 cm) of rain had been already recorded in the hills of western Sonoma County by early Friday afternoon.

Fire crews responded to flooding in Siskiyou County, near the Oregon border, placing sandbags to protect homes and minor mudslides were reported in Washington state. Flash flood advisories were also issued for Sonoma, Napa and Marin counties in Northern California.

High winds caused more than 80 flights be canceled and hundreds more delayed at San Francisco International Airport, knocked down trees and caused scattered power outages.

According to Pacific Gas and Electric, more than 114,000 homes and businesses lost power, although the majority of them had been restored by late-afternoon.

Hundreds of dead birds were found in an El Reno parking lot.

El Reno citizen Janince Wodrings told Passoth she like to watch the birds fly around near the Walmart on Country Club Drive just off I-40.

"Have you ever seen a school of fish? They will swirl and swoop, well that's the way the starlings look," Woodring said.

In the evening, they cover every tree and telephone wire. Most fly away during the day. That is when it is obvious that something is wrong. Friday morning, there were hundreds of dead grackle and starlings.

Thousands of starfish have been stranded on the beaches of South Padre Island after what investigators are calling a "perfect storm" for starfish.

It's thought that high winds and strong currents coincided exactly to wash up the creatures that had been close to shore feeding.

It's only the third time a case like this has ever been reported, the last being in 2009.

At first it was thought they were victims of the polar vortex, which swept the country during January but then investigators realised it was something else

A mother and her two daughters were taken to the hospital after being attacked by their own pit bull Thursday evening in McKinney.

The dog turned on the family just before 6 p.m. inside their home in the 3000 block of Kingsbury Drive, according to a McKinney police spokesperson.

One of the girls was attacked, but managed to escape the home with her sister.

One neighbor said she heard screams and saw the younger of the two girls bleeding in front of the home, with serious injuries to her lower legs.

Another neighbor was helping to apply pressure to her wounds.

The dog was still attacking the mother inside the home when officers arrived. Police said at least one officer shot and killed the dog to prevent further harm.