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Scene at Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows ski resort: The snow is so high that it's burying chairlifts, forcing ski resorts to close.
At the Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows resort, seven feet fell in just the past week. The snow is so high that it buried chairlifts and ski patrol shacks.
Bristlecone pines
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© Dan Collins Top of Mt. Rose Highway on Feb. 19, 2017
In the first three weeks of January alone, the Lake Tahoe area received nearly a full winter's worth of snow, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal. Houses were buried, cars blanketed and driveways covered.
And then came February, and the Sierra Nevada was slammed yet again with moisture-packed storms fueled by atmospheric rivers. "We usually see three or four atmospheric rivers in a season," said Scott McGuire, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Reno. "We've already had 10. We've had so much snow to the point where it's getting hard to measure."
The base camera at Mount Mawson in Tasmania
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China has a four-colour warning system for severe weather, with red being the most serious, followed by orange, yellow and blue. In Beijing, the northern and western parts of the city could see heavy snowfall of approximately 3mm to 5mm, with the remainder of the city likely to have receive between 1mm and 3mm, according to a report from Chinanews.com.
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© International Research Institute for Climate and SocietyThe chance for various phases of El Niño.
With La Niña's end, sea temperatures have steadily warmed in the equatorial region of the central and eastern Pacific, and we're now in the neutral phase of the oscillation. As shown below, models currently suggest we'll be in the neutral category through the spring and into the summer months (June-July-August, or JJA), but after that, sea temperatures could be warm enough for El Niño conditions to take over.
© American Geophysical UnionUnusually high sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific in May 2015, compared to the 2002-2012 average.
The blob - which at its peak covered roughly 9 million square kilometres (3.5 million square miles) from Mexico to Alaska - was assumed to be mainly messing with conditions in the ocean, but a new study has shown that it had a lasting affect on air quality too.
"Ultimately, it all links back to the blob, which was the most unusual meteorological event we've had in decades," says one of the team, Dan Jaffe from the University of Washington Bothell.
The blob of warm water in the Pacific was first detected back in 2013, and it continued to spread throughout 2014 and 2015. While it was less obvious in 2016, there were some indications that it persisted well into last year too.
The vast, warm patch has been linked to several mass die-offs in the ocean during 2015, including thousands of California sea lions starving to death in waters more than 3 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Farenheit) above average, and an "unprecedented" mass death of seabirds in the Western US.
In April 2015, the effects could also be seen on land, with a bout of strange weather in the US being linked to the higher ocean temperatures, and the increased temperatures saw a massive toxic algal bloom stretch along the entire US West Coast.
"I can't truly give an explanation of what is going on right now," marine ecologist Jaime Jahncke from conservation group, Point Blue, said in late 2015.
Avalanche
The official also confirmed that the dead bodies of the seven persons who were mechanics and technical staff of Sambu Korean construction company had been recovered. Seven persons rescued were rushed to the District Hospital.
Deputy Commissioner Chitral Shahab Hameed Yousafzai informed APP, that avalanche triggered by continous heavy snowfall hit a nearby mountain rock on the top of a workshop of SAMBU Construction Company of Korea, working in construction of 8.5 km long Lawari tunnel.
Workshop was hit by land sliding and avalanche at 11.00 a.m as a result 14 people were burried under the debris and heavy stones and rocks. Chitral Levies, Chitral Scouts and Chitral Police along with local volunteers took part in rescue operation and they recovered seven bodies and seven other injured were rescued and were rushed to Peshawar for medical treatment.
This time round northern Faryab province bore the brunt of freezing temperatures and heavy snow. Ammanullah Zafar, director for security in the province, told Anadolu Agency the province's Kohistan district had been worst hit. "We can confirm that 25 people have died in this unprecedented heavy snow," Zafar said.
He said police along with National Disasters Management Authority teams were trying hard with their limited resources to save the lives of several residents in the area, particularly the stranded passengers on the inter-district highways and the people stuck up in the mountains.
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