Extreme Temperatures
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Snow Globe

Colorado avalanche: Deadliest in 50 years

On Saturday afternoon, the wet snow piled in the mountains of the Loveland Pass gave way, creating a fatal avalanche.

Adding to the already 19 deaths by avalanches during the 2012-13 winter season, five people were trapped and killed on Saturday.

A sixth snowboarder managed to escape the snow and go to get help.

Despite now being in the latter half of April, the slopes definitely don't look like it out in Colorado.
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© Colorado Avalanche Information CenterThe eastern flank of an avalanche in Colorado that killed several people in April 2013.
Colorado Avalanche Information Center executive director Ethan Greene said "We are very much in a winter snowpack right now. The calendar may say it's April, but the snowpack looks more like February..."

That is due to the heavy snow that Colorado has seen for the start of spring, making it still feel like winter.

Gusting winds following the heavy, wet snow of these storms has risen the avalanche danger in the central Rockies, which is typically uncommon for this time of the year.

The last avalanche to cause this many deaths was back in 1962, when seven people were killed at Twin Lakes in January.

Igloo

Happy #$&*!? Earth Day

Earth Day
© m4gw
Well it's earth day again, and here in Minnesota we are supposed to get 6 to 9 inches of global warming over the next 24 hours. We are breaking all kinds of snow and cold records in this state, it was 14 degrees below zero in Embarrass Minnesota Saturday morning and Duluth Minnesota got 41.7โ€ณ of snow in April (so far) making it the snowiest April ever.

Meanwhile the Greeny Weenies are having an Earth Day Rally at the capital in St. Paul Minnesota pushing for carbon taxes to stop, you guessed it, GLOBAL WARMING!!

Arrow Down

Which way is up? According to leading experts, Global Mean Temperature has dropped 1ยฐC since 1990!

Climate science/renewable energy critic Rainer Hoffmann has researched the literature on mean global surface temperature.

Stunningly, he shows that something is not right with the figures coming from the world's leading climate experts. The figures tell us the mean global surface temperature has dropped 1ยฐC over the last 25 years. At that rate, we'll be in an ice age by the year 2100!

Snow Globe

Canada: Reports of many deer dead along Saskatchewan highways

Search for food leads to carnage after long winter

It's always a good idea to keep an eye out for animals such as deer and moose along Saskatchewan highways.

At this time of year the animals are hungry after a long winter of deep snow, and the winter has been longer and harsher than usual this year.

With the snow starting to melt, deer are finding some grass in ditches along the roads.

That is leading to carnage, according to many reports on social media. Drivers say they have spotted unusually high numbers of dead deer in ditches along Saskatchewan's highways.

[View the story "Deer dying in ditches across Saskatchewan " on Storify]

Snow Globe

Enduring winter tough on migratory birds in Great Plains

A rare sequence of spring snowstorms across the northern Great Plains is causing difficulties and even starvation for some migratory birds.

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© Eric Landwehr, South Dakota State UniversityBirds that normally winter in the Dakotas, like this Junco hyemalis, are having a tough time scavenging for food as winter refuses to end, even in April.
While it's not unusual to get a single snowstorm in April, the weekly storms during late March and the first half of April are taking their toll on wildlife, according to bird expert Kent Jensen of South Dakota State University.

He and others beneath North America's Central and Mississippi migratory "flyways" have found dead robins in their backyards, with the birds emaciated and even having burned up their breast muscles for nutrition in a last-ditch effort to survive.

"The ground to the north in North Dakota and Canada is still frozen, and we're only getting occasional thaws that allow the birds to feed from the ground here in eastern South Dakota," Jensen tells Earthweek.

He said many species are holding back far to the south, but the early-arriving robins have been forced to eat the wax coating of cedar berries to keep their fat supplies up.

Frozen lakes are also holding back migratory waterfowl, which could mean they are using up energy during their unplanned layover that they need for successful breeding this summer, Jensen says.

The fat supplies those birds need for laying eggs high in the Arctic is also being depleted as the birds hold back to the south, waiting for spring to finally arrive.

Snow Globe

Snow storm: Sheep death toll reaches 20,000 in Northern Ireland

More than 20,000 sheep were lost in the recent snow blizzard, and it may be next month before all the dead animals are found and counted.

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Many farmers faced serious dangers as they tried to reach their animals
The news emerged at a meeting of the agriculture committee at Stormont.

It is estimated that almost 800 farms were affected by the severe snow storm.

With snow still lying in some high parts of Northern Ireland, dead animals are still being recovered, but the committee heard that one sheep was found alive 25 days after the blizzard.

An official from the Department of Agriculture told the committee that as of 14: BST on Tuesday, the number of dead animals collected was:

20,179 sheep (including 15,195 lambs)
603 cattle

Sun

Ice Age cometh: Sun halo appears over Cuba

Those having a beer at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Havana Cuba today, will be hoping they wake up tomorrow remembering their time there.

For above the newly-refurbished and somewhat iconic bar, high in the sky occurred an atmospheric phenomenon known as a 'sun dog'.

The sun was surrounded by a bright ring, caused by a refraction of sunlight by small ice crystal in the atmosphere.
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Bright spark: An atmospheric phenomenon known as a 'sun dog' is seen in the sky over Sloppy Joe's Bar, Havana, Cuba
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Put down your pint: The rare halo around the sun is caused by the refraction of sunlight by small ice crystals in the atmosphere

Comment: It's actually a sun halo; a sun dog is something like this.

So sun halos around the sun are appearing in Cuba now? Well that rules out the earlier 'explanation' that they were the result of ice crystals forming in cold environments such as the Arctic Circle.

In fact, they have appeared in the UK and Russia recently.

This is more evidence that the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere have rapidly cooled in recent years.


Ice Cube

Is the UK heading for ANOTHER Arctic winter? Met Office calls emergency meeting to discuss if melting ice is causing Britain to freeze

Britain's winters are getting colder because of melting Artic ice changing global weather patterns, the Met Office has claimed.

Forecasters are concerned that high levels of ice melt in the Arctic in recent years could be behind Britain's increasingly bitter and longer winters.

The organisation's leading climate change expert, Dr Julia Slingo, is to convene experts from around the world to establish whether this explains why Britain has been experiencing the coldest temperatures for almost 100 years.
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Springtime in London: April snow showers in Kensington Gardens come amid Met Office claims that high levels of ice melt in the Arctic in recent years could be responsible for Britain's bitter winters

Ice Cube

Ice Age cometh: Global cooling consensus is heating up - cooling over the next one to three decades

Blizzard
© NOAACooling seems to be the trend
As winters get harsher and the snow piles up, more and more scientists are now warning of global cooling. Reader Matt Vooro has compiled a list (see below) of 31 prominent scientists and researchers who have words that governments ought to start heeding.

Are we headed for global warming or cooling?

For many years now a good number of non-AGW scientists, meteorologists, engineers, researchers and the like have looked at the possibilities of a cooling planet. I enclose some of the ones that I have noted in my research. Indeed there is a significant number of scientists, academics, meteorologists and researchers who disagree with IPCC's belief that the globe is very likely headed for unprecedented global warming due to man-made greenhouse gases.

The climate of this planet oscillates between periods of approximately 30 years of warming followed by approximately 30 years of cooling. Rather than 100 years of unprecedented global warming as predicted by IPCC, the global temperatures have leveled off and we seem to be heading for cooler weather.

Igloo

Ice Age Cometh: Russian Academy of Sciences experts warn of imminent cold period: "Global warming is a marketing trick"

Earth
© NASA (public domain)
The European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) here links to an article published by Stimme Russlands (Voice of Russia). The article is titled: Die Welt vor einer Eiszeit, in English: The World On The Verge Of An Ice Age.

Reports of global cooling are becoming more frequent. FLASHBACK: 30 experts predict cooling.

You'll notice that this Voice of Russia report is more than a month old, and so one wonders why it was never picked up by the western mainstream media.

The article writes that Russian scientists are predicting that "a little ice age will begin in 2014". The article adds:
They reject the claim of global warming and call it a marketing trick."
Wow! That's heavy.