Earth ChangesS


Alarm Clock

Record Cold, Snow Envelop Japan Sea Coast


Kyodo News
Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:55 UTC
Frigid air swept through a wide area along the Sea of Japan on Thursday, dumping record snowfalls and setting record-low temperatures for December in northern parts of the country, the Meteorological Agency said.

Local observatories measured 93 cm of snow in Tsuruoka, Yamagata Prefecture, and 86 cm in the city of Akita in the morning, both breaking accumulation records.

The first snowfall of the season was recorded in warmer areas, including Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture, and the cities of Hiroshima and Fukuoka.

In Memuro, central Hokkaido, temperatures dipped to minus 25, the lowest reading ever recorded in December.

A number of cities saw the lowest temperatures of the season, including Sapporo at minus 7.1, Tokyo at 4.6, and the cities of Niigata and Miyazaki, where the mercury fell to 0.2.
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Bizarro Earth

Health Ministry: 27 People Froze to Death in Ukraine Due to Current Cold Wave


KyivPost
Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:52 UTC
The number of those who have frozen to death in Ukraine due the current cold wave has risen to 27 as of noon on Dec. 21, the Ukrainian Health Ministry's press service told Interfax-Ukraine. The country has been suffering for 5 days under Siberian winds, heavy snowfall, and daytime temperatures as low as minus 20 C.

Eleven people froze to death in Donetsk region, three each in Luhansk and Volyn regions, two each in Sumy, Kherson and Cherkasy regions, and one each in Ivano-Frankivsk, Kirovohrad, Rivne and Chernivtsi regions. Seven of them died at home in Donetsk region and one in Ivano-Frankivsk region.

A total of 671 people asked for medical aid due to frostbite, and 465 of them have been hospitalized.
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Bizarro Earth

Three People Freeze to Death in Bosnia


B92 News
Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:50 UTC
Sarajevo -- The bodies of three people believed to have frozen to death have been found in Sarajevo and Teslić, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The body of H.Đ., 55, was found in a broken-down house in Ilidža, Sarajevo, and the doctor confirmed that the victim had died of freezing.

Police also found a body of J.M., 74, from Sarajevo yesterday, while the body of M.P., 46, was discovered the same day by a local road near the town of Teslić.

Both victims were males and died from exposure to the freezing temperature.

Meanwhile, heavy snowfall has been paralyzing roads in Bosnia-Herzegovina for the last three days, with temperatures dropping as low as minus 25 degrees centigrade this morning.
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Bizarro Earth

European Weather Deaths Pass 100

Lizzy Davies
The Guardian
Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:45 UTC
Image
Soldiers shovel snow in Milan. Photograph: Antonio Calanni/AP
Freezing weather brings death and disruption in Germany, Italy and across eastern Europe

More than 100 people have been killed in the cold snap across Europe, with temperatures plummeting and snowfall causing chaos from Moscow to Milan.

In Poland, where temperatures have dropped to as low as -20C in some areas, police appealed for tip-offs about people spotted lying around outside. At least 42 people, most of them homeless, died over the weekend.

In Ukraine 27 people have frozen to death since the thermometer dropped last week. Authorities in Romania said 11 people had succumbed to the chill, and in the Czech Republic the toll was 12. In Germany, where temperatures have fallen to -33C in certain parts, at least seven people are known to have lost their lives in the freezing weather.
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Bizarro Earth

Record Cold Conditions Kill Nine People in Czech Republic

Jan Velinger
Cesky Rozhlas
Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:41 UTC
Record cold temperatures in the Czech Republic have taken a severe toll, with nine deaths from exposure recorded by the end of the weekend. Most of those who died were homeless, among them three people in Prague and four in Ostrava. Michael Raymond Stannett is the head of the Salvation Army in the Czech Republic; he described the situation on the ground.

"We have a night shelter that is full - 40 beds - and we also have a very large day centre which we've now opened up at night to allow people to sleep on the floor or in the chairs during the emergency cold period. Over the last week or so we've been allowing an extra 100 people to sleep on the floor in the day centre. With the hostel capacity at 52, and with the night shelter, you are talking more than 200 people sleeping in our accommodation."

I imagine this is something that is difficult to keep up in the long term...
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Igloo

Record Snowfall Blankets Moscow


The Voice of Russia
Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:37 UTC
Image
© Photo: RIA Novosti
Monday's heavy snowfall in Moscow of at least 19 centimeters beat the 2002 record of 9 centimeters for December 21, meteorologists say, citing 50-centimeter high snowdrifts still in place on the city's streets.

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Bizarro Earth

Winter Freeze Kills 79 in Poland


The Vancouver Sun
Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:34 UTC
Warsaw - Ten people have died of cold in Poland over the past day, taking the toll since winter set in earlier this month to 79, police said Tuesday.

A national police spokeswoman told AFP that 10 people had been found dead since Monday.

The majority of the victims were homeless men who died while drunk, police said.

Fifty-two of the 79 deaths recorded since December 1 occurred since Friday, as temperatures plunged to minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus four Fahrenheit).
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Bizarro Earth

Big Freeze Brings Misery and Death to Europe


BBC News
Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:28 UTC
Freezing weather which has killed more than 90 people is continuing to cause transport problems across Europe.

Air, rail and road services have been severely disrupted but some routes have now resumed.

Eurostar resumed a limited service and flights restarted from Europe's third-biggest airport - in Frankfurt - on Tuesday after it was closed overnight.

In Poland, where 10 people died in a single day, the winter death toll now stands at 79.
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Alarm Clock

Deadly Cold Across Europe and Russia

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Earth Observatory
Fri, 25 Dec 2009 20:49 UTC
Image
A wave of frigid air spilled down over Europe and Russia from the Arctic in mid-December, creating a deadly cold snap. According to BBC.com, at least 90 people had died in Europe, including 79 people, mostly homeless, in Poland. In places, the bitter cold was accompanied by heavy snow, which halted rail and air traffic for several days during the week of Christmas.

This image shows the impact of the cold snap on land surface temperatures across the region from December 11 - 18, 2009, compared to the 2000 - 2008 average. The measurements were made by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite.

Places where temperatures were up to 20 degrees Celsius below average are blue, locations where temperatures were average are cream-colored, and places where temperatures were above average are red. Light gray patches show where clouds were so persistent during the week that MODIS could not make measurements of the land surface temperature.
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Attention

St. Petersburg experiences heaviest snowfall in 130 years

Galina Stolyarova
The Saint Petersburg Times
Mon, 28 Dec 2009 20:41 UTC
More than 3,000 people have been recruited by City Hall to clear the snow as Governor Valentina Matviyenko said that St. Petersburg stands on the verge of collapse.

Around 1,000 civilians and more than 2,000 soldiers have been out on the streets on a round-the-clock basis saving the city from what some have described as a snow siege. According to the State Meteorological Center, over the past weekend St. Petersburg experienced its heaviest snowfall in 130 years. In some parts of the city there were over 35 centimeters of snowfall.

In most parts of the city parking was severely restricted, while traffic jams almost brought the city to a standstill. Average speeds on city roads since Friday have been under 30 kilometers per hour according to the traffic police. Many dual-carriageway streets have in effect been turned into single-carriageway thoroughfares as a result of the massive piles of snow on each side.
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