Extreme Temperatures
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Cloud Lightning

Texas weather turns on a dime: Spring one day, thundersleet the next

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© CBS
If there was ever any doubt Texas weather can turn on a dime, it was crushed under the weight of thundersleet today.

After two balmy days in the 80s, temperatures crashed Sunday into the 20s. A precipitous drop with, yes, precipitation to go with it.

We've seen freezing rain and sleet on and off most of the day across North Texas, with some heavier pockets of thundersleet at times. Thundersleet is basically a thunderstorm that produces sleet instead of rain...but it still has lightning & thunder associated with it.
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© CBS

Ice Cube

Great Lakes approaching 100% ice cover - for the first time ever recorded

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Lake Ontario is the only major holdout, and the forecast there is for extreme cold during the next two weeks.

Igloo

Winter storm Titan forecast: Snow, ice spreads through East

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  • Thunder and lightning with snow, sleet and/or freezing rain reported in at least eight states
  • Snow pushes through Middle Atlantic and Central Appalachians into Monday afternoon, tapering off by evening.
  • 5+ inches of snow in Washington; 1 to 3 inches in Philadelphia; Little to no accumulation in New York City.
Winter Storm Titan will deliver its final round of winter weather to parts of the East on Monday.

Here are the latest forecast details.

48-Hour Snow Forecast Power Outage Potential Monday AM Forecast Monday PM Forecast Snow, Ice Impacts

Galaxy

Best of the Web: Signs of Change in February 2014

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Extreme flooding in Southwest England

Heavy snowfall in Europe causes misery - 6.0 earthquake in Greece, followed by a 6.1 a week later - More fireballs - Mt. Etna eruption - Deep freeze in America, heavy snowfall in south East, children stranded in schools - Bizarre tumbleweed invasion in Mexico - Massive floods in Italy, 2 meters of snow in the north - Indonesia volcano eruption kills 16 people - Heaviest snow in 50 years in Iran, 1.5 meters - 400 dead dolphins in Peru - Blizzards turn Slovenia to ice, and disrupt Serbia Croatia, Germany - 30 ft sinkhole in Buckinghamshire - Britain battered by a swath of storms, causing yet more extreme flooding, worst in 250 years - Blizzards blast north west US, while california suffers heavy flooding - Worst snowstorm in Japan in decades kills 13 people, heaviest in 78 years - Huge sinkhole swallows car museum - 130 year record broken for storms in Philadelphia - 49 out of 50 states covered in snow - Another eruption on Java island, Indonesia leaves 2 people dead - Carolina earthquakes - 103 earthquakes in Oklahoma. Mysterious boom in Philadelphia blows out windows - New jersey lake turns blood red - 22 Tornadoes strike states in Midwest...

Recent storms worldwide have been destroying records with an onslaught of precipitation leading to more 100 year events which devastated populated areas. This video includes rare, strange and extreme weather that had taken place over the last month or so and it's not getting any better since my last upload, it only worsen!


*This series does not mean the world is ending! These are documentaries of series of extreme weather events that are leading to bigger earth changes. If you are following the series, then you are seeing the signs.

Airplane

Brutal Winter is causing 'desperation' sez travel agent

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© Scott Olson/Getty ImagesSnow and ice covers the shoreline of Lake Michigan on Feb. 18, 2014 near Chicago, Ill.
Shannon Frauenholtz has had it with winter. Barely able to stomach the television news with its images of snowbound cars, she heads to the tanning salon, closes her eyes and imagines she's back in Mexico, where she's already vacationed once this winter.

She's toyed with the idea of joining her mother in Hawaii or just driving to an indoor water park, figuring that while the palm trees might be plastic and the "beach" smells of chlorine, at least it's warm.

"I don't need a vacation. I don't need the relaxation," said Frauenholtz, of New Ulm, Minn. "I just need the heat."

All over the Midwest and the East Coast, travel agents are being inundated with a simple request: Get me out of here. And travelers fortunate enough to have escaped are begging hotels to let them stay a little longer.

2 + 2 = 4

Record-low temperatures set in Michigan; schools close

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© Ryan Garza/Detroit Free PressAnne Cucchiara of Washington Township shields her face from the freezing temperatures and high winds while walking on Washington Blvd. in downtown Detroit on Friday, January 24, 2014.
Some Michigan schools are closed as record-breaking subzero temperatures plunge much of the state into a deeper freeze.

Detroit reached zero degrees, a smidge from the record of -1 degrees set Feb. 28, 1994. Flint, Saginaw and White Lake all broke records also set that year, according to the National Weather Service. White Lake got coldest overnight, at -18 degrees.

It's the most frigid winter in recent memory, and it isn't going anywhere yet.

"We're kind of locked and loaded in this pattern where we get these storms coming through, at least for the next week," weather-service meteorologist Deb Elliott said. "None of the data I'm looking at shows us warming up to normal, average temperatures this time of year."

The average temperature in Detroit this time of year is about 35 degrees, she said.

Wind chill advisories are in effect, and Detroit Public Schools are among those affected by closings. The high in Detroit today is expected to be in the teens.

Igloo

Kansas to Massachusetts: Up to a foot of snow to fall across 1,300 miles

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March may not come in like a lion everywhere across the nation, but winter will roar during the first several days of the month and impact more than 100 million people.

Snow will expand from the northern Rockies and central Plains to portions of the Midwest this weekend, reaching the Northeast early next week.

The adverse winter conditions will develop Friday into Saturday over the Plains and is forecast to shift slowly eastward Sunday and Monday.

People traveling by road or airways should expect major long-lasting delays as this area of snow expands eastward and crawls along.

Bizarro Earth

Northern Lights illuminate the UK

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© Brian DoyleThe display, which is caused by electrically charged particles from the Sun entering the Earth's atmosphere, led to scenes such as this one at the Stonehaven war memorial, Aberdeenshire.
The Aurora Borealis - better known as the Northern Lights - has been giving rare and spectacular displays over parts of the UK, from the north of Scotland to as far south as Essex and Gloucestershire.

The lights have also been clearly visible in places such as Orkney, Norfolk and south Wales.

Snowflake Cold

Near-record breaking subzero temperatures in Midwest U.S.

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70 Days With Subzero Temperatures


The number of days with subzero temperatures has reached record or near-record levels for many Midwest cities this winter. We have the rankings for several of these cities, starting with two locations that will log day 70 of subzero temperatures on Friday.

Note: A subzero day is one where the temperature fell below zero at any one point during a particular calendar day.

International Falls, Minn.
  • Number of subzero days this winter: 69 through Feb. 27
  • Friday will mark day number 70, tying the all-time record for the period of Dec. 1 to Feb. 28 set in 1977-1978.

Camera

NASA image shows Polar Vortex plunging southward into U.S.

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© NASA
NASA today released this image of the polar vortex, the weird atmospheric twitch that flooded into the United States last month. The purple wavy line above that wanders down from the Arctic shows the below-average temperatures that set cold records in many states.

From NASA's Facebook page:

"The Big Chill - Blistering cold air from the Arctic plunged southward this winter, breaking U.S. temperature records. A persistent pattern of winds spins high above the Arctic in winter. The winds, known as the polar vortex, typically blow in a fairly tight circular formation. But in late December 2013 and early January 2014, the winds loosened and frigid Arctic air spilled farther south than usual, deep into the continental United States. On Jan. 6, 2014, alone, approximately 50 daily record low temperatures were set, from Colorado to Alabama to New York, according to the National Weather Service. In some places temperatures were 40 degrees Fahrenheit colder than average."