In a week that has produced hundreds of reports of severe weather and over 60 reports of tornadoes, the threat for more damaging storms continues into Thursday night across the Plains and the Midwest.

Update at 4:15 p.m. CDT Thursday: Severe storms are erupting from Wisconsin and Michigan to Oklahoma and Arkansas. Several tornadoes with damage and injuries have been reported in Arkansas. Tornado reports have also come out of Oklahoma. Follow the latest information in our live blog.

The threat of severe storms extends over a large area from North Texas northward into Wisconsin and Minnesota, including Minneapolis, Des Moines, Omaha, Wichita and Oklahoma City. The greatest threat for tornadoes will extend from northern Missouri southwestward into northeastern Oklahoma, including Kansas City, Springfield, Mo., and Tulsa, Okla.

The risk of strong to severe storms has expanded rapidly eastward late Thursday and includes Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis and Little Rock.

President Obama issued this threat to the American people in his 2013 State of the Union Address (SOTU): "But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change....Now, the good news is, we can make meaningful progress on this issue while driving strong economic growth....But if Congress doesn't act soon to protect future generations, I will."

President Obama talks as if only he was reelected in 2012. He fails to recall that the entire House of Representatives was on the ballot with him. And the American people elected a majority of Republicans to the House, not to be a rubber stamp on anything Obama wants, but as a check on Obama excesses, which is what they serve as.

Obama cited as support for his threatened global warming regulatory jihad, "Yes, it's true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15." The fact is also, however, that years of decline from a peak in global temperatures, as occurred in 1998 due to the entirely natural El Nino effect that year, can also be among the warmest on record. (That global temperature record he is talking about only goes back about 125 years, most of which has been reflecting recovery of global temperatures from the "Little Ice Age" occurring roughly from 1350 to 1850.).

A tornado struck in northeastern Milan, Italy, on Wednesday, and you don't need a translator to understand the reactions of those who captured the amateur footage posted above, while riding in a vehicle alongside the twister.

The dramatic mobile phone footage shows the funnel of the tornado tearing through an industrial area in Cavenago, around 27km from Milan on Wednesday morning

The video shot from the nearby A4 highway shows the swirling mass of air filling with debris.

"It's destroying all the roofs," a man off camera says.

"No it's not possible... this is really crazy... I've never seen anything like this."

The Institute of Vulcanology warned that the eruption could intensify with ash rising as high as 1000 to 2000 metres, posing a threat to air traffic at Guatemala's international airport.

"Ash could spread over Guatemala City due to the direction of the wind," the country's disaster response office said in a statement.

The last major eruption of Pacaya, in May 2010, claimed the life of a television journalist, drove thousands of people from their homes and forced the closure of the Guatemala City airport for five days.

The 2552 metre-high Pacaya is 50 kilometres south of the capital and one of three active volcanoes in Guatemala.

Around 1250 A.D., historical records show, ice packs began showing up farther south in the North Atlantic. Glaciers also began expanding on Greenland, soon to threaten Norse settlements on the island. From 1275 to 1300 A.D., glaciers began expanding more broadly, according to radiocarbon dating of plants killed by the glacier growth. The period known today as the Little Ice Age was just starting to poke through.

Summers began cooling in Northern Europe after 1300 A.D., negatively impacting growing seasons, as reflected in the Great Famine of 1315 to 1317. Expanding glaciers and ice cover spreading across Greenland began driving the Norse settlers out. The last, surviving, written records of the Norse Greenland settlements, which had persisted for centuries, concern a marriage in 1408 A.D. in the church of Hvalsey, today the best preserved Norse ruin.

Colder winters began regularly freezing rivers and canals in Great Britain, the Netherlands and Northern France, with both the Thames in London and the Seine in Paris frozen solid annually. The first River Thames Frost Fair was held in 1607. In 1607-1608, early European settlers in North America reported ice persisting on Lake Superior until June. In January, 1658, a Swedish army marched across the ice to invade Copenhagen. By the end of the 17th century, famines had spread from northern France, across Norway and Sweden, to Finland and Estonia.

Reflecting its global scope, evidence of the Little Ice Age appears in the Southern Hemisphere as well. Sediment cores from Lake Malawi in southern Africa show colder weather from 1570 to 1820. A 3,000 year temperature reconstruction based on varying rates of stalagmite growth in a cave in South Africa also indicates a colder period from 1500 to 1800. A 1997 study comparing West Antarctic ice cores with the results of the Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two (GISP2) indicate a global Little Ice Age affecting the two ice sheets in tandem.

According to predictions of the French Canal Meteo, there is a 70% chance of a complete absence of summer in Western Europe this year, making it one of the coldest and wettest summers since 1816 - almost 200 years.

This would occur because this year's long, late winter has cooled the ocean, which, coupled with weak solar activity in recent months, could have a direct effect on the climate.

The last time this happened was in 1816, known as the "year without a summer" or "the year of poverty." At that time the sun was in the midst of the Dalton Minimum, when magnetic activity was extremely low, and Tambora volcano erupted in Indonesia with a column of smoke so thick that it caused a decline in world temperatures.

It's been a cold 2013 so far in Central and Western Europe. Last weekend snow fell in Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
Europeans are wondering whatever happened to global warming. Climate institutes, who just years ago predicted warm, snow-less winters, have turned 180° and are now insisting that the Little Ice Age-like conditions that have gripped Europe over the last 5 years are actually signs of global warming after all! Fortunately, very few people believe them.

If you've been looking forward to spending your Spanish summer sunning yourself by the pool, don't pack away your winter clothes just yet.

France's main weather channel has announced that there is a 70 percent chance of this summer being cold and wet across Spain, France, Portugal, Germany and Austria.

Cold maritime fronts and weak solar activity during the winter months have not only given us a chillier Spanish spring than normal, they're also going to make the summer months unusually dreary and rainy.

According to Meteo, June and July are only likely to have short periods of summer heat which will in turn bring heavy storms in August.

September and October are likely to register higher average temperatures and less rain, the French weather agency announced on Monday.

The year without summer, 1816, is not an old wives' tale.

Overcast skies and cold temperatures across the northern hemisphere led to severe crop failures and food shortages in France, England, Ireland and the US during the summer months of that year.

The National Guard has helped evacuate residents from a small community in Alaska's interior where a river ice jam caused major flooding, washing out roads and submerging homes and other buildings. State officials estimate several hundred people have left the town of Galena, which remained mostly underwater Tuesday with the Yukon River ice jam firmly in place, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.
National Weather Service meteorologist Christopher Cox said 90 percent of the community's roads were flooded, and many buildings had 7 feet of water in them. Some of the people who were displaced said they escaped in rafts battered by ice chunks and floating debris.

After rising floodwaters breached a wall protecting the Galena airport, the National Guard flew in to evacuate any remaining residents who wanted to leave the community of nearly 500, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

Evacuee Shane Edwin stepped off a flight to Fairbanks on Tuesday afternoon and described the scene he left behind as "a whole bunch of chaos." "The roads are all gone," he said. "The houses are flipped over. It's just trashed. I couldn't grab anything, not even my ID. The water came so fast."

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