Extreme Temperatures
S


Handcuffs

ICE agents arrest 245 alleged pedophiles; 44 children rescued

Jason Ryan and Jack Date
ABC News
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:47 UTC
Image
© Alex Wong/Getty ImagesU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton (R) speaks as National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) CEO John Ryan (L) listens during a news conference on Jan. 3, 2013 at the ICE headquarters in Washington, DC.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents announced today they have rescued 44 children from sexual abuse as part of a child pornography investigation that netted 245 arrests over five weeks late last year.

Agents have identified an additional 79 individuals who have been abused as children including 24 victims who now may be adults and are seeking the public's help to identify individuals who are alleged to be sexually abusing young children, with the images posted on the Internet.

"Many times, our investigations into people who possess and trade child pornography reveal new material that points to the ongoing sexual abuse of children. In these cases, our primary objective is to rescue the victim from their horrific situation. And our next step is to arrest and seek prosecution for their abusers," said ICE Director John Morton in a statement.

Among those arrested: Bradley Vaine from Fresno, Calif., who was allegedly abusing a 7-year-old girl who suffered from mental disabilities. Also arrested was Samuel Gueydan from Clovis, Calif., who allegedly had over 1.2 million images and 7,000 videos of child pornography on his computer, ICE said.

The investigation was dubbed Operation Sunflower to commemorate the anniversary of a case where agents discovered evidence that a child was in imminent danger of being raped by a relative. According to ICE, the tip initially came from Dutch investigators who found Internet postings suggesting the girl was in imminent danger.
Read More...
Igloo

Global Warming Strikes New Mexico!

Steven Goddard
Steven Goddard Wordpress Blog
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:09 UTC
You know that global warming is hitting hard, when New Mexico wakes up to -33C temperatures.
Freezing Temperatures
© Wunderground.com
Source
Read More...
Snowflake Cold

India: more than 100 die of exposure as temperatures drop in the north


Huffington Post
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 14:14 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Channi AnandA homeless child sits wrapped in a towel in his temporary home under a flyover in Jammu, India, on Jan. 2,2013.
Police say more than 100 people have died of exposure as northern India deals with historically cold temperatures.

Police spokesman Surendra Srivastava said Thursday that at least 114 people have died from the cold in the state of Uttar Pradesh. At least 23 of those died in the past 24 hours.

Srivastava said many of the dead were poor people whose bodies were found on sidewalks or in parks.
Read More...
Igloo

January 1 snow coverage sets new record for U.S.

Jillian MacMath
AccuWeather
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 09:15 UTC
Snow January US
© NOAA
With 67 percent of the contiguous U.S. covered by snow, the first day of 2013 marked the widest coverage of snow the U.S. has seen on Jan. 1 in the past ten years.

(Note: Percentages of snow coverage have only been calculated since 2004.)

The previous record was set in 2010, when the new year saw 61 percent of the U.S. beneath snow. That same season was marked by the blizzard nicknamed 'Snowmageddon,' in the mid-Atlantic, which set a long list of records in cities such as Philadelphia, DC and Baltimore.

"As far as New Year's Days go, I think that our snow cover is very healthy," AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist Jack Boston said.

The lack of snow coverage since record keeping began in 2004, with the exception of 2010, have been an anomaly, Boston explained.
Read More...
Igloo

Unseasonable snow falls in South Island, New Zealand

Rebecca Quilliam
The New Zealand Herald
Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:54 UTC
Collapse Bridge
© Hokitika Guardian A central section of this bridge near Harihari on the West Coast was carried away by the storm-swollen Wanganui River.
Gale force winds, torrential rain, thunderstorms and now unseasonable snow have pounded the South Island.

Snow fell on the Lindis Pass in Otago overnight, forcing travellers to abandon their vehicles near the summit.

Sergeant Mark Booth of southern police communications said Lindis Pass was closed and eight vehicles were stranded.

"But I imagine at this time of year the snow's not going to last long."

The centre of the island and the West Coast have "copped it" over the last few days, Mr Booth said.

The West Coast road via Lewis Pass through Murchison had closed, forcing travellers to make a seven hour detour around Blenheim and Kaikoura to get to the east coast of the island.

Last night severe thunderstorm warnings were issued for the Westport area as the last of the system moved through.

Nearly 600mm of rain has fallen on the West Coast in the past 48 hours.

A vital one-lane bridge on State Highway 6, just north of Harihari, was washed away yesterday.
Read More...
Ice Cube

'Forget global warming, Alaska is headed for an ice age'

Anthony Watts
WattsUpWithThat.com
Wed, 02 Jan 2013 14:01 UTC
Alaska is going rogue on climate change. Defiant as ever, the state that gave rise to Sarah Palin is bucking the mainstream yet again: While global temperatures surge hotter and the ice-cap crumbles, the nation's icebox is getting even icier. That may not be news to Alaskans coping with another round of 50-below during the coldest winter in two decades, or to the mariners locked out of the Bering Sea this spring by record ice growth.

Then again, it might. The 49th state has long been labeled one of the fastest-warming spots on the planet. But that's so 20th Century. In the first decade since 2000, the 49th state cooled 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit. But now comes cooling. Researchers blame the Decadal Oscillation, an ocean phenomenon that brought chillier surface water temperatures toward Alaska. Some contend the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is harming the state's king salmon runs, too.
Image
Full story here
Read More...
Igloo

Delhi: Coldest day in 44 years


CNN-IBN
Wed, 02 Jan 2013 12:47 UTC
Delhi witnessed its coldest day on Wednesday in the past 44 years, with the maximum temperature falling sharply to 9.7 degree Celsius. Residents woke up to a foggy morning, with the minimum temperature dipping to 4.8 degree Celsius.

Poor visibility affected schedules of nearly 30 flights and led to diversion of an international flight to Mumbai. In Uttar Pradesh, the death toll continued to mount, with 15 more people succumbing to the chill in various parts of the state.

Officials said four people died in Muzaffarnagar which remained the coldest place with 0.6 degree Celsius, followed by three in Mathura, two each in Agra, Bulandshahr, Etah and one each in Barabanki and Mirzapur.


With this, the death toll in the state this winter has reached to 107.

Night temperatures remained below normal in most parts of the state including Moradabad, Agra, Meerut, Gorakhpur, Lucknow, Bareilly and Kanpur divisions.
Read More...
Igloo

Frozen Alaska bucking global warming trend

Marc Lallanilla
LiveScience
Wed, 02 Jan 2013 10:24 UTC
Alaskan Weather
© Spc. Balinda O'Neal, Alaska National Guard Public AffairsAlaska National Guardsmen clear a building roof in Cordova, near Anchorage, on Jan. 9, 2012.
As the rest of the world contends with unusually warm temperatures and scorching drought, Alaska has been bucking the trend since 2000 by reporting some of the coldest winters on record.

Like most of the planet, the state has been heating up steadily over the past century and is frequently cited as one of the fastest-warming areas on the planet, according to the Alaska Dispatch, an online newspaper. The Alaska Climate Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks notes the state was warming at roughly twice the pace as the rest of the planet, particularly from the 1970s into the 1990s, reports the Dispatch.

But since 2000, nearly all the National Weather Service monitoring stations sprinkled across the vast state have reported colder-than-average temperatures. The station at King Salmon on the Alaska Peninsula, for example, experienced an average 4.5 degree Fahrenheit (2.9 degrees Celsius) drop in temperature over the course of the first decade of this century.
Read More...
Snowflake

So much for 'global warming': Snow coming to southwestern Texas

Matt Alto
accuweather.com
Wed, 02 Jan 2013 08:17 UTC
Image
The City of El Paso, Texas, where the snow line has reached in recent years, despite the global warmists' predictions that snow would soon be a thing of the past for places far to the north.
An upper-air disturbance slated to move into the southwestern United States has the potential of bringing wintry weather to portions of extreme southern New Mexico and the Big Bend Country of Texas beginning on Thursday.

While the best chance for snow will be across the Trans-Pecos, a general coating to perhaps an inch of snow will likely fall before it is all said and done.

The upper-air disturbance will begin to enter the Southwest on Wednesday night and slowly ride along the United States and Mexico boarder. This disturbance will likely stick around through Friday before lifting northeastward into the southern Plains.

As the system tracks into the Southwest, it will draw Pacific moisture from the south and Gulf of Mexico moisture from the east.
Read More...
Snowflake

As the U.S. digs out, even more snow on the way

John Schriffen
ABC News - Good Morning America
Fri, 28 Dec 2012 00:00 UTC

While communities from the Midwest to the Northeast and even the southern U.S. are digging out after a massive storm blanketed much of the country, the Northeast is now bracing for more snow over the weekend.

Two storm systems will combine into one and bring light snow to the major cities in the Northeast. Most areas in the northeast will see 1-3 inches of snow with isolated amounts of 4 inches in the higher elevations Saturday morning from Philadelphia to New York and into New England.

This week's winter blast is accounting for at least 15 deaths -- most of them on the nation's roads.

"This is really bad out here. I see accidents everywhere. There are police everywhere. It's no joke," an Ohio woman told Good Morning America.
Read More...