Date-Time:
Monday, December 20, 2010 at 18:41:59 UTC

Monday, December 20, 2010 at 10:11:59 PM at epicenter

Location:
28.439°N, 59.098°E

Depth:
12.4 km (7.7 miles) set by location program

Region:
SOUTHEASTERN IRAN

Distances:
213 km (133 miles) SW (236°) from Zahedan, Iran

283 km (176 miles) SE (136°) from Kerman, Iran

310 km (193 miles) ENE (63°) from Bandar-e Abbas, Iran

538 km (334 miles) N (5°) from MUSCAT, Oman

• Up to eight more inches of snow to fall today
• Severe delays on London Underground during rush hour
• Man dies after falling through ice on fishing lake
• BA cancels 70 of 130 departures and 89 of 133 arrivals this morning
• Eurostar urging passengers not to travel unless absolutely necessary
• Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen airports open but expecting delays
• Furious AA said thousands of ungritted roads resemble 'ski jumps'
• Key train services suspended as workers try to shift snow from tracks

Millions of Christmas travellers face further chaos today with an extra eight inches of snow expected to fall.

Much of the transport network is still paralysed - threatening to ruin the festive period for millions of families.

Temperatures plunged again overnight, with a UK low of -19.6c, recorded in Chesham, Buckinghamshire.

A record low for Northern Ireland was seen in Castlederg, County Tyrone, where the mercury plunged to -17.6c.

A wet pre-winter storm dumped as much as 7 inches of rain on parts of Southern California over the weekend, with several more inches expected to fall in the days leading up to Christmas.

Rainfall that began Saturday morning continued relentlessly throughout the day Sunday. It wasn't expected to let up until sometime Monday, then resume again on Tuesday and Wednesday, said Stuart Seto of the National Weather Service. After a brief break at the end of the week, more rain was likely to arrive on Christmas Day, Seto said.

A flash-flood warning was in effect for parts of Southern California, particularly mountain areas burned in recent years by wildfires.

Australia normally experiences temperatures of 86F (30C) at this time of year, but the chances of a rare white Christmas have increased after plunging temperatures and snow swept across the east of the country.

Freezing winds from Antarctica, blown up to Australia by a low-pressure system in the Southern Ocean, gave the country a taste of the conditions that are causing havoc across Europe.

Some 11 inches of snow fell at the ski fields in New South Wales, raising the prospect that parts of the country could experience a white Christmas.

"It's white, everything is white," Michelle Lovius, the general manager of the Kosciuszko Chalet Hotel at Charlotte Pass, said.

Well, folks, it's tea-time on Sunday and for anyone involved in keeping people moving it has been a hell of a weekend. Thousands have had their journeys wrecked, tens of thousands have been delayed getting away for Christmas; and for those Londoners who feel aggrieved by the performance of any part of our transport services, I can only say that we are doing our level best.

Almost the entire Tube system was running yesterday and we would have done even better if it had not been for a suicide on the Northern Line, and the temporary stoppage that these tragedies entail. Of London's 700 bus services, only 50 were on diversion, mainly in the hillier areas. On Saturday, we managed to keep the West End plentifully supplied with customers, and retailers reported excellent takings on what is one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

We have kept the Transport for London road network open throughout all this. We have about 90,000 tons of grit in stock, and the gritters were out all night to deal with this morning's rush. And yet we have to face the reality of the position across the country.

It is no use my saying that London Underground and bus networks are performing relatively well - touch wood - when Heathrow, our major international airport, is still effectively closed two days after the last heavy snowfall; when substantial parts of our national rail network are still struggling; when there are abandoned cars to be seen on hard shoulders all over the country; and when yet more snow is expected today, especially in the north.

In a few brief hours, we are told, the snowy superfortresses will be above us again, bomb bays bulging with blizzard. It may be that in the next hours and days we have to step up our de-icing, our gritting and our shovelling. So let me seize this brief gap in the aerial bombardment to pose a question that is bugging me. Why did the Met Office forecast a "mild winter"?

2010′s world gone wild: Quakes, floods, blizzards:

The Associated Press has published one of the most biased pieces of environmental science journalism in a long time, and that's quite a feat in itself. Indeed, there are some serious journalistic integrity issues with this clearly biased piece: the authors intersperse anecdotes with specific scientists' quotations while playing fast and loose with the facts in order to push an agenda. Undoubtedly, there is a considerable amount of scientific ignorance on the part of the authors, but using the human suffering associated with 2010′s natural disasters as talking points in this narrative is a new low for the Associated Press.

This article by Seth Borenstein and Julie Reed Bell deserves a thorough fact-checking and deconstruction. Keep your vomit bags and pitchforks at the ready, and hold onto your seats on this Pulitzer-prize winning fictional roller coaster...

This is an absolute masterpiece: quotations are in the boxes, comments are mine.

This was the year the Earth struck back.

Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 - the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined.

"It just seemed like it was back-to-back and it came in waves," said Craig Fugate, who heads the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. It handled a record number of disasters in 2010.

"The term '100-year event' really lost its meaning this year."

And we have ourselves to blame most of the time, scientists and disaster experts say.


Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly, costly, extreme and weird year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes.

Poor construction and development practices conspire to make earthquakes more deadly than they need be. More people live in poverty in vulnerable buildings in crowded cities. That means that when the ground shakes, the river breaches, or the tropical cyclone hits, more people die.

Heavy snow on Sunday shut down European airport runways, forced fast trains to slow down and left cars skidding through icy, slushy streets on a weekend where many people were trying to head home for the holidays.

London's Heathrow Airport stopped accepting arrivals. Frankfurt airport canceled around 40 percent of flights.

Paris' Charles de Gaulle cut air traffic by a quarter as heavy snow blanketed the French capital - a rarity that has occurred several times in recent days during an unusually cold winter. Many passengers slept overnight in makeshift dormitories there, at Amsterdam's airport and at Heathrow, Europe's busiest hub for air passengers.

"The bars were open and some people were drinking and got quite nasty," passenger Sue Kerslake, who was stuck at Heathrow, told the BBC.

Heathrow said no planes would land on its runways on Sunday and that only a small number of flights would likely depart.

There was chaos in the tunnels leading from the underground station to Heathrow terminals, with hundreds of travelers told by airport staff to go back and call their airlines for updates.

• Millions begin the big Christmas and New Year getaway early as the AA urged motorists to beware of the 'worst driving conditions imaginable'
• Quarter of train services disrupted, travel warning in Kent
• Experts warn of a backlog of up to 4 million of parcels which could remain undelivered this Christmas
• The NHS issues an urgent appeal for blood donors as concerns grow over shortages
• Councils reveal plans to share grit amid fears the cold snap could last until January 14
• Odds shortened even further on a 'White Christmas' in some parts of the country next Saturday

Swathes of Britain skidded to a halt today as the big freeze returned - grounding flights, closing rail links and leaving traffic at a standstill.

And tonight the nation was braced for another 10in of snow and yet more sub-zero temperatures - with no let-up in the bitterly cold weather for at least a month, forecasters have warned.

The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond and as temperatures plummeted to -10c (14f) the Met Office said this December was 'almost certain' to become the coldest since records began in 1910.

An increased frequency in extreme weather events, a cooling North Atlantic, and growing Arctic sea ice were viewed as signs of climate change. The odds of a warmer climate in the future, according to one scientist, were "at best 1 in 10,000″ (see below). That's what Der Spiegel wrote about in a 3700-word article back in 1974, warning the world of a coming ice age.

In that issue Der Spiegel described a series of "weather extremes" occurring all over the world, claiming they were unmistakable signs of a climate change to cooling: deluges of rain in West Germany, severe thunderstorms that uprooted trees and blew off roofs in Berlin, the worst storm in 100 years devastating much of Lower Saxony, hurricane Agnes inflicting 3 billion dollars in damage, floods in Japan and Peru, temperatures in Argentina, India and South Africa dropping to their lowest levels in 300 years.