More than 25,000 lightning strikes were recorded in France over the past day, according to the French storm and thunderbolt observatory on Sunday.

Massive lightning strikes occurred during the stormy weather conditions that started Friday afternoon, Keraunos said on Twitter.

With more than 25,000 strikes in 25 hours, France saw an average of 1,041 lightning strikes per hour.

A total of 69 departments are on yellow alert for the risk of thunderstorms in the country, according to media reports.

Nearly 500,000 people in Jiangxi have been affected as heavy rains lashed the province from Friday through Sunday, and about 14,000 of them have been evacuated, the provincial flood and drought control headquarters said on Sunday.

Southern China is facing a major flood challenge this year due to uneven distribution of rainfall.

As of 4 pm on Sunday, 497,000 people in seven cities in Jiangxi, including Fuzhou, Ji'an, Yichun and Xinyu, were affected and crops covering an area of 67,700 hectares damaged, with the estimated direct economic losses being around 520 million yuan ($75.2 million), local authorities said.

According to the National Meteorological Center, most areas to the south of the Yangtze River were expected to receive heavy rain on Monday, and the monthly precipitation was expected to approach or exceed the maximum rainfall ever recorded in May.

A minke whale died Saturday after washing ashore Long Sands Beach in York County.

The York Police Department said that crews were unable to remove the whale until the tide went out and advised the public to stay away from the whale.

"We understand that this is very upsetting to many of you, but if there is any good that comes of this situation, please help make it so that our community did the right things to help take care of this unfortunate situation," York police said.

Marine Mammals of Maine removed the dead whale.

Minke whales can reach nearly 30 feet long and weigh 18,000 pounds.

The government of the province of South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reports catastrophic flooding has caused widespread damage and loss of life in the province over the last few days. Media reports suggest between 60 and 70 bodies have been recovered, with many more feared dead.

In a statement, the provincial government said heavy rains on 04 May 2023 caused several rivers including the Cibira/Cabondo and Nyamukubi to overflow, flooding villages including Bushushu and Nyamukubi in the Kalehe Territory.

The town of Kalehe sits on the shore of Lake Kivu, around 50 km (30 miles) across the lake from the Western Province of Rwanda where over 100 people have died in floods and landslides over the last few days.

Swat valley and Lower Dir also receive hailstorm and damaged crops

Chitral city—located at the foothold of Hindukush mountain range—received rare snowfall in May and blanketed mountain tops.

Reportedly Upper and Lower Chitral areas receive snowfall and snowfall dropped the mercury considerably and forced people to wear 'warm clothes'.

A young couple died in a lightning incident at Bujibagh village in the Pampore area of south Kashmir's Pulwama district on Saturday evening.

The deceased have been identified as Hilal Ahmed Hanji, 25, son of Abdul Hamid and his wife Rozia Jan, 21, wife of Hilal Ahmad, residents of Bujhbagh Pampore. The couple married some eight ago.

After receiving information about the incident, SDPO Pampore Mir Imtiyaz Ahmad and Additional SHO Pampore Syed Aqeel Shah rushed to the spot. SDPO told Kashmir Reader that the young couple was tending their fields when the lightning struck them. "Both of them were shifted to Sub District Hospital Pampore where doctors declared them dead on arrival," he said.

The warm-mongers blame the residual activity of La Niña for the record cold and snow in April in some parts of the northern hemisphere. But as much as they would like to blame la Niña, there has been an ENSO-neutral state for some time now.

In addition, there is data suggesting a 60% chance of a transition to El Niño in May-July 2023, and that it could trigger a new spike in global temperatures. So, if things get warmer in some parts of the world and the media and "climate authorities" blame it on global warming, pay no attention to them. It's El Niño.

We would like to remind our readers that the global climate is primarily controlled by solar activity, not by human activity or man-made C02. The same applies, of course, to phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña:

It is not out of the question that there are physical links between energetic solar eruptions and El Niños. Whether these lines of reasoning turn out correct or spurious is of no import regarding the practical results of this investigation. They leave little doubt that solar activity and ENSO events are closely connected to such a degree that long-range forecasts beyond the 12-month lead time are now possible. The consequences of these results for the hypothesis of anthropogenic climate change are far-reaching. As stated in the beginning, ENSO events are the strongest source of variability in the global climate system and explain most of the global temperature anomalies. Our result that solar activity regulates these powerful climate phenomena shows clearly that the impact of the sun's variability has been underestimated in a way that reverses the proportions. Recent research published by H. Svensmark and N. Calder corroborate this statement. Actually, solar activity turns out to be the dominant factor in climate change. IPCC scientists can no longer uphold their contention that "solar variability over the next 50 years will not induce a prolonged forcing significant in comparison with the effect of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations."

It is worth noting that we had 2 X-class solar flares on April 19 and April 20.

Now, the total temperature, measured from the surface to the higher layers of the atmosphere, continues to decrease in accordance with the solar minimum. Always remember that we cannot trust the official data as it has been largely manipulated:

"From February 2016 to February 2018, "global average temperatures dropped by 0.56 degrees Celsius." That, he notes, is the biggest two-year drop in the past century."

Doctored data, not real temperatures, set 'global warming' record: "In 2007, a blogger named Steve McIntyre asked NASA why they had taken raw temperature data and made past temperatures lower and recent temperatures higher. NASA was actually forced to admit they were lying and rename 1934 as the hottest year. They are doing this globally as well."

There was the study published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate showing that climate models exaggerate global warming from CO2 emissions by as much as 45%. It was ignored.

A study in the journal Nature Geoscience found that climate models were faulty, and that, as one of the authors put it, "We haven't seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models."

Findings from the University of Alabama-Huntsville showed that the Earth's atmosphere appears to be less sensitive to changing CO2 levels than previously assumed.

And how about the fact that polar bears populations are increasing?

All this data manipulation makes sense, as they need to justify the push for nonsensical Net-Zero and green policies that would fuel fear profiteering and means of control like 15-minute cities and climate lockdowns. Or at least that's their agenda, but it's looking more and more like they're shooting themselves in the foot; just ask Germany, which has no efficient nuclear power plants and has to rely on coal plants and expensive imported electricity from France.

Without further ado, here are the record snow events for April in the US:

• Snowbird Resort, and Solitude Mountain Resort, Utah: All-time record - 809 inches of snow.
• Casper, Wyoming: 40-year snowfall record - 26 inches of snow.
• Wisconsin: 22 inches of snow.
• Central Colorado: 6 inches of snow after weeks of unusually low temperatures.

Around the world:

• The Alps: 40 inches of snow in 5 days.
• South-west China: All-time record for April with 9 inches of snow.
• Balkans - 15.7 inches and record-breaking low temperatures for April.
• Romania - Unseasonable snow and low temperatures with wind gusts of 75 to 85 km/h.
• Reykjavík, Iceland: Rare "spring snowfall".
• Taif, and Al Baha, Saudi Arabia - Unseasonable snow.

All this and more in our SOTT Earth Changes Summary for April 2023:

Parts of the Upper Midwest flooded after the Mississippi River overflowed due to a stint of heavy snow followed by extreme heat.

After rapidly overflowing its banks and pouring into homes and businesses along its upper reaches, the Mississippi River has crested in much of the Upper Midwest, easing fears of a record disaster, even though major flooding is forecast to continue in the region through mid-May.

The river was peaking Wednesday at Dam 17, just north of New Boston, Illinois, said Mike Welvaert, a service coordination hydrologist with the North Central River Forecast Center. "We're looking for the crest between Keokuk (Iowa) and St. Louis over the next two to three days."

Heavy rainfall in the southern part of South Korea caused property damage Friday, the Children's Day holiday, while also forcing multiple flights and ship services to be canceled.

According to municipal officials in Gwangju, some 270 kilometers south of Seoul, the platform at Airport Station on Gwangju Metro Line 1 was flooded with muddy water Friday afternoon, forcing trains to pass without stopping at the station for over an hour, starting at around 4:45 p.m.

Gwangju said its western district of Gwangsan had received 39 millimeters of rain per hour, as of 4:30 p.m., which flooded facilities and roads.

A week of record hot weather in western Canada has forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes, as wildfires rage in parts of Alberta and rapid snow melt triggers flooding across interior British Columbia.

By Friday, more than 13,000 people were under evacuation orders in Alberta, as 78 fires burned. Among the worst-hit areas was the territory of the Little Red River Cree Nation, which comprises three communities in the north of the province, where the 1,458-hectare (3609-acre) Fox Lake fire consumed 20 homes and the police station.

The entire 7,000-strong population of Drayton Valley, 140 km (87 miles) west of the provincial capital Edmonton, was also ordered to evacuate late on Thursday night.