A winter storm rolled into the area yesterday evening and blasted North Platte with snow. The snow began falling just around 5:00pm Thursday and as the evening progressed, the snow came flying down.

According to the National Weather Service, North Platte Office, a new single-day record was shattered when the weather service reported at 6:00am that 17.4" of snow was recorded. The previous record 13.9" that was set on January 18th, 2023.

Nebraska Department of Transportation crews are still clearing roads and travel is not advised. I-80 westbound is still closed from Paxton to Kearney while I-80 eastbound is closed from Sidney to Gothenburg. Highway 30 is also closed from Ogallala to Gothenburg. click here for the latest road conditions.

At approximately 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 6, an avalanche accident occurred on the north side of Gunsight Mountain (8,342′) in the Elkhorn Mountains near Anthony Lakes, Oregon.

Nick Burks, an avalanche forecaster with the Northwest Avalanche Center and a part of the snow safety team at Mt. Hood Meadows ski area, was killed due to trauma sustained in the slide.

The Central Oregon Avalanche Center shared the news of the slide on Thursday, March 7, writing on social media that its staff was deeply saddened to announce the death of Burks and stating that a full investigation and report will be forthcoming in the coming days.

Huge amounts of snow have fallen in parts of the south west Alps. An avalanche struck an open piste in Saas-Grund in Switzerland killing a skier.

A 16-year old boy died in Italy. Some resorts remain closed with disruption to transport. UPDATED

A skier was buried by an avalanche on the pistes in the Kreuzboden-Hohsaas area of Saas-Grund in Switzerland on Saturday.

The avalanche risk was at Level 3 - considerable.

According to the cantonal police an avalanche occurred at around 11:40 a.m. and hit the slope above the mountain restaurant in Hohsaas.

The avalanche caught a skier traveling on the 1a "Gletscher Hohkraut" run and buried him under a meter of snow.

A powerful blizzard that pounded the Sierra Nevada over the past several days dumped well over 100 inches of snow in some locations, according to the National Weather Service.

Here's a breakdown of how much snow piled up between 4 a.m. Thursday and 4 a.m. Monday in the following locations, per the weather service.

Sugar Bowl: 126 inches
Soda Springs Caltrans: 116 inches
Kingvale Caltrans: 106 inches
Palisades Tahoe: 93 inches
Dodge Ridge: 89 inches
Sierra Snow Lab: 75.2 inches
Boreal: 74 inches

Severe weather struck several parts of France at the weekend causing dramatic scenes, particularly in the south-east.

Heavy rain caused flooding in a number of towns and coastal gales brought down trees. Snow covered the lowest altitudes of the Alps and more than a metre fell in the Pyrénées.

A roadside assistance worker was killed near La Turbie, close to the French border with Monaco, after consecutive accidents on the A8.

The man was responding to an initial accident between two cars, caused by the rainfall, and was subsequently hit by a third vehicle driving too quickly in the heavy rain.

Four other people were injured, two severely, including another roadside assistance worker and two gendarmes.

Last month, in the February 2024 issue of the Kosmographia Newsletter I reported on new research correlating a series of large-scale igneous events which produced the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) and the Siberian Traps with mass extinction episodes. On February 8 another paper was published in the journal Global and Planetary Change which further supports correlations between mass extinction episodes with gigantic volcanic eruptions and catastrophic cosmic impacts. The lead author of the paper is Michael Rampino, who has for decades been in the forefront of researching catastrophic events in Earth history. I have been following his work since the early 1980s and hold him in high regard as a scientist who is willing to think outside established paradigms of Earth history. The abstract to the paper begins:

"We find that Large Igneous Province (LIP) volcanism, mostly continental flood basalts (CFBs), along with the largest extraterrestrial impacts show significant correlations with mass-extinction events in the Phanerozoic geologic record. The ages of the 6 major marine mass extinctions (≥ 40% extinction of genera) of the last 541 MY ̶ the end-Ordovician (~444 Ma), late Devonian (~ 372 Ma), end-Guadalupian (~259 Ma), end-Permian (~ 252 Ma), end-Triassic (~201 Ma), and end-Cretaceous (66 Ma) extinctions are significantly correlated with high-quality U — Pb zircon and 40Ar/39Ar ages of 6 continental flood basalts (CFBs) ̶ the Cape St. Mary's, Viluy, Emeishan, Siberian, CAMP, and the Deccan Basalts.

U — Pb zircon dating (Uranium-lead) is a widely used method for dating metamorphic rocks typically employing a thermal ionization mass spectrometer. Zircon is used because it includes uranium and thorium atoms in its crystalline structure when forming but rejects lead, so any lead found in a zircon crystal is radiogenic, meaning it results from radioactive decay. Argon dating can measure Argon isotopes from a single mineral grain. The ratio of Argon 40 to Argon 39 yields the age of the sample.

The extinctions listed above are considered to be major events in the history of life on Earth. A number of less severe extinctions have taken place, although these events are somewhat more difficult to discern in the geologic/palaeontologic record. Nevertheless, a correlation can be discerned between these extinctions and both volcanic eruptions and cosmic impact.

6 thousand people remained isolated after an avalanche in the Aosta Valley hit a tunnel in the municipality of Gaby, in the province of Aosta. The tunnel is located on regional road 44 in the Lys valley and, due to the fall of an impressive snow avalanche, it has been closed for a few hours now. The two municipalities further upstream are completely isolated from the rest of the region.

Italy is currently affected by a strong wave of bad weather. Cyclone Fedra gives no respite in the North, where, on Monday 4 March 2024, the orange alert has already been triggered, in particular in Piedmont and Emilia Romagna.

145mph winds and tornado warnings force ski resorts to shut amid avalanche fears

California authorities shut down 100 miles of Interstate 80 on Friday as the biggest snow storm of the season bore down on the Sierra Nevada.

Residents were urged to take shelter and stay off roads as they prepared for up to 10 feet of snow in some areas and damaging winds up to 145mph.

'AAANNNDD WE'RE CLOSED!!' the California Highway Patrol posted on X, saying the closure was due to 'spin outs, high winds, and low visibility. No estimated time of reopening the freeway.'

Authorities closed the interstate in both directions after 5pm on a day when the majority of more than a dozen ski resorts around Lake Tahoe were closed, a tornado touched down in central California and visitors to Yosemite National Park were told to leave.

At least nine people have died in Afghanistan and two have suffered injuries after the conflict-battered country was hit by heavy snowfall and storm, the Taliban's caretaker government said on Friday.

The bad weather combined with snow and sub zero temperatures has hit provinces running from northern Afghanistan to southern parts of the country.

"Due to cold weather and rainfall in Kandahar, Helmand, Badghis, Sar-e-Pol, Badakhshan and Jawzjan, nine people have died and two have been injured," said Janan Saiq, the spokesperson for the Taliban-led ministry of state for disaster management, reported Afghan news channel Tolo news.

He added that the extreme weather destroyed residential houses and livestock.

Visuals shared by Afghan journalist in exile Bilal Sarwary showed extreme snowfall in western Afghanistan which led to a local losing his cattle.

The landlocked country is no stranger to severe weather from December to March, when temperatures plummet as low as minus 50 degrees Celsius (minus 58 Fahrenheit) in some areas.

But this winter has been more severe than usual, with lower than normal temperatures and very heavy snowfall, the United Nations said in a recent report.

As of Monday, 2.1 million head of livestock had died from starvation and exhaustion, Gantulga Batsaikhan of the country's agriculture ministry said.

Mongolia had 64.7 million such animals, including sheep, goats, horses and cows, at the end of 2023, official statistics show.