Extreme Temperatures
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Snowflake

Mad blizzard swallows cars, streets, buildings in Far East Russia

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© Screenshot from YouTube user Евгений Шибин
Winter has come with a vengeance: Russia's snow-and-ice-bound Far East regions have declared states of emergency. Traffic chaos is rife, with cars stuck or sliding uncontrollably. Residents are trying to push cars, and also stop them with their bodies.

The cold and snowy season began in Russia's Far East - including the cities of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk - on Dec. 1, the first day of winter proper according to the calendar. Yet municipal services were not ready to deal with weather conditions, people on social networks complained.

Snowfall in Khabarovsk - reportedly the heaviest in decades - forced the city authorities to announce the state of emergency and call in military to aid with the storm's aftermath.

Harsh weather conditions caused traffic to come to a standstill, with people being unable to use either public transport or their own cars.


Challenged to not only find and then dig their cars out from under the snow, drivers also had to push their vehicles when they were stuck on snow and ice-covered roads, as well as stopping them from moving uncontrollably.

Comment:


Snowflake Cold

U.S. Lake Erie temperature at end of November coldest since 1976

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© NASANASA image of Lake Erie was taken the week of the dual lake-effect storms.
Lake Erie's water temperature at the end of November fell to 40 degrees. That's the coldest Nov. 30 reading in Buffalo since 1976, when the lake temperature was 38 degrees. Anyone old enough to remember November 1976 needs no further reminder of what happened the following January.

The lake froze, and sustained winds during the Blizzard of '77 blew 3 feet of accumulated snow off the ice and dumped it across the Niagara Frontier. Great Lakes scientists say it's too early to tell if the lake's present condition will lead to that kind of snow catastrophe this winter.

Until the lake freezes, there's always a chance for lake-effect snow. But as the water turns colder, there's less chance for a repeat of the heavy lake-effect snowfall that hit the area a couple of weeks ago. "It really depends on what happens now and over the next few weeks or month," said Eric J. Anderson, a forecaster at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Comment: Ice ages can start at any time and develop quickly. Are you prepared?


Ice Cube

Dramatic evacuation of Hohe Wande because of ice storm in Austria

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© einsatzdoku.at
In the last few hours on Wednesday afternoon, all access to the Hohe Wand was cut off by ice-covered boulders and broken tree branches, as a result of the ice storm.

Police and fire departments were busy all morning visiting residents living in the area to ask them to leave their homes, many of which are threatened by falling trees.

Some residents left voluntarily, while others refused to leave. Some elderly residents had to be evacuated for medical reasons.

Comment: See also: Rare ice storm strikes Waldviertel in Austria


Snowflake Cold

100,000 Czech railway travelers stranded due to freezing cold weather

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Around 100,000 passengers are stranded across the Czech Republic due to the disruption of the railway system
Around 100,000 passengers have been stranded across the Czech Republic due to the disruption of the railway service as a result of freezing cold weather.

"Several hundred passenger trains were cancelled or delayed," Czech Railways said on its website on Tuesday.

Czech railways authority said the disruption occurred after ice encased overhead power lines and brought railway traffic to a halt.

According to the officials, the freezing began on Monday and continued into Tuesday.

They added that people were forced to spend the night, when temperatures dropped to a low of minus 7.3 Celsius (19.4 Fahrenheit), in cold trains and at railway stations.

Calendar

Close to 9,000 daily record cold temperatures for November in the U.S.

8,977 Record Cold temps in November versus 2,022 record warm temps:
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© NCDC NOAA

Ice Cube

'Ice Volcano' forms on shore of Green Bay, Wisconsin

When you think of a volcano, you typically think "hot" - molten lava and ash, not ice. But the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has posted a video of a different kind of "volcano," this one made of ice, along the shore of Green Bay.

As the DNR explains, the "ice volcano" is formed when waves hit a shell of ice. At a weak spot in the ice, a hole forms, and water gushes through. The water splashes up and creates a mound with a hole in the middle, just like a volcano. The DNR says the volcano has disappeared naturally since the video was shot.


Ice Cube

Freezing rain blankets Budapest causing power outages to 40K homes

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The entire forest in the hills at Pilis, south-east of Budapest, was covered in cloud and fog, freezing the rain and fog solid on the branches.
About 40,000 homes on the outskirts of Budapest went without electricity on Tuesday as freezing rain blanketed the area and falling trees cut power lines, Hungary's Disaster Relief Agency said.

Heavy branches fell and entire trees toppled as ice as thick as 10 centimeters (4 inches) coated them, threatening entire forests in altitudes above 400 meters, according to people who ventured to higher-lying areas.

Forestry services closed off large tracts of land located higher than 400 meters above sea level to prevent injuries. No deaths or injuries have been reported.

One forestry worker who visited the Borzsony Mountains north of Budapest said the woods echoed with loud cracks and hissing sounds as branches and trunks gave way under tons of ice.

Snowflake Cold

Wheat kill-off in the U.S. heartland from extreme cold during November

2015-2035 Mini Ice Age - Extreme cold in the U.S. heartland where farming takes place
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With 130-year cold sweeping across the USA, temperatures -50F below normal are bound to have an effect on winter wheat seedlings that are just a few inches tall.

Temperatures dropped to -26F/-32C, which caused an 8% increase in wheat futures.

Thanks to David DuByne, who created this video.
"I think the cold will not be the regular interval of Dalton or Maunder Minimum type cold," says David. "I think we may be heading into a 5125-year cold cycle."

Comment: SOTT has been talking about this for quite some time: Fire and Ice: The Day After Tomorrow


Ice Cube

Rare ice storm strikes Waldviertel in Austria

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© APA/FF Ottenschlag/FichtingerFirefighters preventing a tree from damaging a power line.
The fire service was called out more than 200 times over the weekend in the district of Zwettl (Lower Austria) as a rare ice storm hit the region, bringing chaos with layers of frozen ice in trees.

Firefighters have been busy clearing away hundreds of trees from the vicinity of homes and power lines. The trees' branches had been bent almost double by the weight of the ice. The area near Ottenschlag has particularly been hit hard. A combination of very low temperatures and high humidity caused many layers of thick frost to form into heavy ice.

Motorists in the region have been asked to exercise extreme caution due to icy conditions on the roads. Northeast Fire Department spokesman Franz Resperger described on Sunday how many trees were destroyed by the ice, including some with trunks more than a meter in diameter.


Binoculars

Arctic snowy owls may be preparing for another irruption into the U.S.

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© Sean SimmersA snowy owl sits in the grass in a courtyard at Cedar Cliff High School in Camp Hill.
Cedar Cliff High School in Camp Hill was visited Tuesday by a snowy owl, one of several of the Arctic birds that have shown up in Pennsylvania in recent days. The large, mostly white birds may be the precursors of a repeat of last winter's mass invasion into Pennsylvania and several other states.

Scott Weidensaul, one of the owl researchers who organized the Project SNOWStorm banding and radio-tracking effort in response to last winter's record-setting irruption by snowies, said already this year owls have been spotted in the Gratz Valley of northern Dauphin County, near Morgantown in Berks County, on Presque Isle in Lake Erie and "a bunch on the coast."

Dozens of additional snowy owls have been reported throughout the Northeast, around the Great Lakes, and as far south as Illinois and Maryland.