There is still a lot of sea ice in Hudson Bay, Foxe Basin, Davis Strait and Baffin Bay this week - more than average for this date - with slightly less than average in the Beaufort Sea. Past behaviour of Western and Southern Hudson Bay polar bears suggests the mean date that bears come ashore for the summer this year will be later than average due to the plentiful ice available, regardless of when polar bear biologists decide that "breakup" has occurred.
Hudson Bay, with almost 50% of the bay still covered in ice, has the third highest coverage this week since 1992 (after 2009 and 2004); Davis Strait has the highest coverage since 1992; and Foxe Basin and Baffin Bay have the highest coverage since 1998. For this week, the Beaufort Sea this week has the second highest coverage since 2006 (after 2013), and more ice than was present in 1971, 1982, 1987, 1988 and 1998 - among others.
Although data of the losses caused by the snowstorm last weekend are still being consolidated, regional deputy manager and head of the Civil Defense Operations Center Regional Emergency (COER), German Chaiña Quispe gave some preliminary scope.
He said that eight provinces received snowfall, with the hardest hit being San Antonio de Putina, Carabaya and Sandia.
Snow killed more than two thousand alpacas in Puno, while more than 2000 families and 73 thousand animals were harmed in the town of Ananea.
He added that the other affected districts are Quilcapunyo, Putina and Sina.
Rain in Albuquerque from 6 a.m. Monday to 6 a.m. Tuesday set a 24-hour record for the city, breaking a standard that dates to 1893 and positioning Albuquerque nicely for a wetter-than-average monsoon season.
"Pretty much all the climate indicators are calling for an average to above-average monsoon season," Brian Guyer, meteorologist with the Albuquerque office of the National Weather Service, said Tuesday.
In the first week, we've already had 60 percent of an average monsoon season, he said, so "I'm guessing we are headed to above average."
Albuquerque's official 24-hour rainfall total on Monday and Tuesday was 2.24 inches, besting the city's previous 24-hour total of 2.08 inches, set on Sept. 28, 1893.
That brings Albuquerque's total rain for the first week of this month to well over 2 inches. The average July rain total for Albuquerque is 1.5 inches, and the city's record total for the month is 4.9 inches, set in 1930. As of 6 p.m. Tuesday, Albuquerque's total rainfall for the year was 6.60 inches, 3.14 inches above normal.
Monsoon season runs from July 1 through September 30. Guyer said that Albuquerque's average rainfall during the period is 3.79 inches and that the city got more than 8 inches of rain in its wettest monsoon seasons, in 1988 and 2006. By contrast, Guyer said, Albuquerque's driest monsoon season was in 1953, when there was only 1.1 inches of rain.
"Typically, the wettest weeks of the monsoon season are the last week of July and the first week in August," Guyer said.
Last week a tourist on a whale-watching trip in Faxaflói, just outside Reykjavík, was attempting to photograph a humpback whale when a bird interrupted the shot.
Upon further inspection, the bird was discovered to be an albatross, and likely an Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross, a rare sight so far north.
Bird-watching enthusiast Mike King shared the photo, taken by his nephew Jared Mein, on Twitter, where it was noticed by Birding Iceland.
"Albatrosses are rarely found in the Atlantic region of the northern hemisphere. The species that live in the Atlantic are all native to the southern hemisphere, and some are known to go into the northern hemisphere of the Pacific Ocean. So this is a bird far outside of its normal territory," ornithologist Gunnar Þór Hallgrímsson told RÚV.
A powerful tornado ripped through the Mira community in northeastern Italy, a couple of miles west of Venice, near the Adriatic Sea. Unaccustomed to the phenomenon, the Italians were shocked, disconcerted and alarmed by the event.
A video posted on Facebook by Carlotta Menegazzo shows a classic cone-shaped whirlwind twisting across the town of 40,000 citizens, sucking up everything it can, damaging houses and businesses.
An eyewitness in a car made a video of the scene as debris lashed against the vehicle. The passengers in the car are arguing with the driver telling him he should drive away and get out of the tornado's path. But then they approach too close and the voices in the video start to become somewhat hysterical.
Finally. Elusive noctilucent clouds, nature is so not completely elucidated by science, lit up the capital on Wednesday night. Noctilucent clouds are the first of June to 15 July, at other times they do not see. This year, they were seen in the north of Russia and the Urals, and in Moscow - all was not and was not, and seemed to take place and the season without them. But suddenly bright, complex layered structure of noctilucent clouds appeared about 23 hours in the northwest. It was a really beautiful: the left is still a young moon, the right calling Venus and Jupiter, and between them as though someone has sketched out a silver wool.
On the noctilucent clouds science for a long time I did not pay attention. But in mid-June 1908 in the Tunguska meteorite struck the earth, which is still hotly debated. In St. Petersburg, after his fall came the night suddenly so light that even accustomed to the night light Petersburgers were stunned. The light came from the unknown clouds. When the researchers calculated the distance to them, it turned out that they hang over the planet at an altitude of 80 km! That is already far into the stratosphere! Where there is a cloud?
Check out this awesome viewer video of a waterspout spinning off the coast of Boynton Beach -- sent to us by Melanie Calise on our WPBF 25 News Facebook page!
The funnel clouds over water tend to occur due to friction over the water and usually happen with very light winds, like those in play this morning.
They spin up typically from cumulonimbus clouds. They are small, rotating columns of air over water.
Residents from the Southern Plains to the Ohio Valley could see more dangerous flash flooding again Wednesday, forecasters say.
On Tuesday, heavy storms dumped hours-worth of rain in pockets across these regions. First responders pulled people from vehicles and homes in three separate states: Texas, Kentucky and Missouri.
Downpours slammed Indianapolis on Tuesday evening, prompting evacuations west of the city.
Here's the very latest from the impacted states:
Indiana
Nearly 4.5 inches of rain was recorded at the Indianapolis International Airport Tuesday afternoon, according to weather.com meteorologist Linda Lam, breaking a 100-year-old record. The city of Plainfield, just west of the airport, received 5.4 inches in less than four hours.
Wayne Township was hard hit. WISH TV reported about 20 homes were flooded and up to 60 people were evacuated.
A 6-year-old boy died after being attacked by a dog Tuesday at a North Carolina home, deputies said.
The incident was reported around 4:15 p.m. near Hendersonville, sister station WYFF reported. The boy was pronounced dead at the scene.
Henderson County deputies said the dog, which they identified as a pit bull, was so aggressive that they had to shoot and kill the animal before getting to the child.
Emergency officials also had to push down a fence to get to the child, deputies said.
Hurricane season may be quiet in the Atlantic for now, but the Pacific Ocean is pulling off an impressive feat.
At some point this week, you could see not one, not two, but as many as five tropical cyclones spinning in the Pacific Basin. Although it's not unheard of to see multiple storms at the same time, five is impressive on any scale.
Three tropical cyclones -- Chan-hom, Linfa and Nangka -- formed in the western Pacific within three days of each other last week. Two of those became typhoons, and all three remain active.
That's busy enough, but it doesn't end there.
Tropical Depression Four-E formed Tuesday night well east-southeast of Hawaii.
Another disturbance over 1,000 miles southwest of Hawaii now has a good chance of developing into a tropical depression.
If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.
