Extreme Temperatures
S


Attention

An Ice Age indicator? Unusually high number of snowy owls migrate early to Wisconsin

Image
Snowy owls, such as this one spotted in the Milwaukee area in 2012, have arrived again in the state.
Several strong cold fronts in November helped deliver a wintry landscape to Wisconsin earlier than many would have liked.

If you're looking for a positive, here's one: the new whiteness isn't just snow.

At least 31 snowy owls have been recorded in Wisconsin this month, according to Ryan Brady, research scientist with the Department of Natural Resources and bird monitoring coordinator for the Wisconsin Bird Conservation Initiative.

Like the early snow accumulation, the number of owls is unusually high for this time of year, according to Brady.

"It's probably a record," Brady said. "Thankfully, it's the kind of record that doesn't require shoveling and plowing."

The number of snowies in Wisconsin this month is even more extraordinary considering last year - which featured the largest number of the birds in the U.S. in decades - only one snowy owl had been seen in the Badger State by mid-November.

Snowy owls are large, charismatic birds that breed in the Arctic in summer and disperse in varying degrees to the south in winter.

Igloo

Winter is coming - Ice age fever

Iceage_1
© drsircus.com
The news of this winter has not even begun because we are still five weeks away from that equinox. Yet you would never know it watching what is going on in upstate New York and the rest of the United States that recently saw record-breaking cold in all fifty states.

Like all kids, growing up I heard of such things as ice ages and that we were overdo for one. You know once in every 10,000 years kind of trip, and I thought well ok, that is the pattern, but must take a long time to come on so I will never have to worry about it in my lifetime!

But not so, says Professor William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his colleagues. Using the most precise record of the climate from paleo history ever generated they tell almost the same story we saw in the movie The Day After Tomorrow, when the world went stone cold from one week to another. Buffalo looks like act one on our screens.

Patterson, a world expert, also thought it would take time to come on but lo and behold, the scientific evidence suggests otherwise. Robert Felix, author of Not by Fire but by Ice, thought that ice ages begin in less than 20 years. His site is the best place to keep up with the cooling news, which is heating up, according to religious disciples of manmade global warming that never was.

Snowflake Cold

Cold weather in Jacksonville, FL breaks record set in 1873; 1,998 records broken over the past 7 days

Thursday morning not only broke an "ancient" record from 1873, but we also dropped to the second coldest temperature ever recorded in the month of November in Jacksonville.

According to the National Weather Service, for the second morning in a row, Jacksonville set a new cold weather record. Thursday mornings temperature dropped to a bone chilling 24 degrees breaking the old record of 30 degrees set in 1873.

If that wasn't cold enough for you, Thursday's 24 degrees also marks the second lowest temperature ever recorded in the month of November, beaten out only by the year 1970 when the mercury dropped to 21 degrees in Jacksonville in November.

Some areas around Woodbine, GA flirted with the upper teens as the temperature officially there dropped to 20 degrees.

Any thoughts that the winter of 2014-2015 wouldn't be as bone-chilling as last year's may have just been put on thin ice. And it's only November.

Tuesday morning was the coldest Nov. 19 across the United States since 1976, some 38 years, according to Dr. Ryan Maue, meteorologist with WeatherBell. The average temperature across the entire country was just 19.4°.

An astounding 226 million people in all 50 states, that includes the tropical paradise of Hawaii, were below freezing at the same time putting an exclamation point on an already paralyzing winter season -- that hasn't even officially started yet.
Image
© News4jax.comLocations approaching or surpassing record temperatures on Wednesday morning.
Even Florida didn't escape the icy grip.

Ice Cube

Shipping season ends on upper Mississippi as earliest ice on record surrounds locks and dams

shipping mississippi river
The shipping season on the upper Mississippi River will end on Thursday as ice surrounding locks and dams near Minnesota's Twin Cities forced the earliest winter closure on records that date back to 1969
The shipping season on the upper Mississippi River will end on Thursday as ice surrounding locks and dams near Minnesota's Twin Cities forced the earliest winter closure on records that date back to 1969, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said.

"There's so much ice through the whole system," said Bryan Peterson, navigation manager for the Army Corps' St. Paul district. "They're getting the barges they can out and not risking getting stuck there all winter."

There were two tow boats waiting to pass lock and dam No. 2 near Hastings, Minnesota. Once they moved down river, no more vessels were expected, Peterson said.

The shipping season typically ends around the beginning of December on upper portions of the Mississippi River in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois. In 1989, no more vessels reached the Twin Cities after Nov. 24, Peterson said.

Calculator

Largest U.S. power grid hits monthly record due to cold weather

Image
© Twitter
PJM Interconnection, the operator of the biggest power grid in the United States, said on Wednesday that demand for power hit a new record for the month of November due to the cold weather.

Peak demand on Tuesday reached 121,987 megawatts (MW), topping the 114,699 MW reached last November.

Last winter, several power plants in PJM and elsewhere in the U.S. Northeast were not able to operate on the coldest days in part because there was not enough natural gas to fuel both the power units and heat homes and businesses due to pipeline constraints.

PJM, which operates the grid in 13 states from New Jersey to Illinois, said it has been taking steps to prepare for the winter season, including more testing of generating equipment and improving coordination with the gas pipeline industry.

Source: Reuters

(Editing by Chris Reese)

Ice Cube

The Ice Age begins while warmists blither on

Buffalo snow
© Office of the GovernorNY Thruway near Buffalo.
This is the face of rapid global cooling, which will change life on our planet more quickly than anyone is yet prepared to acknowledge. All 50 states will see freezing temperatures on Tuesday and Wednesday with millions of Americans facing another bitter blast of unseasonably cold air.

A ferocious storm dumped massive piles of snow on parts of upstate New York, trapping residents in their homes and stranding motorists on roadways, as temperatures in all 50 states fell to freezing or below. Even hardened Buffalo residents were caught off-guard Tuesday as more than 4 feet fell in parts of the city. Authorities said snow totals by Wednesday afternoon could top 6 feet in the hardest-hit areas south of Buffalo, with another storm expected Thursday. The snow has gotten so bad in Western New York that Gov. Cuomo has called out the troops.

Bone-chilling nights will be followed by frosty cold days with highs struggling to reach the 20-degree mark over the regions on Monday and Tuesday. Some locations in the Central states are forecast to stay below 20 F until Wednesday afternoon.

Ice Cube

Former NASA consultant, climatologist John L. Casey: 'A radical shift in global climate is underway, 30-year cold spell coming'

ice age
With nasty cold fronts thrusting an icy and early winter across the continental U.S. - along with last winter described by USA Today as "one of the snowiest, coldest, most miserable on record" - climatologist John L. Casey thinks the weather pattern is here to stay for decades to come.

In fact, Casey, a former space shuttle engineer and NASA consultant, is out with the provocative book Dark Winter: How the Sun Is Causing a 30-Year Cold Spell, which warns that a radical shift in global climate is underway, and that Al Gore and other environmentalists have it completely wrong. The earth, he says, is cooling, and cooling fast.

And unless the scientific community and political leaders act soon, cold, dark days are ahead. Casey says the evidence is clear that the earth is rapidly growing colder because of diminished solar activity. He says trends indicate we could be headed for colder temperatures similar to those seen in the late 1700s and early 1800s when the sun went into a "solar minimum" - a phenomenon with significantly reduced solar activity, including solar flares and sunspots.

If he's right, that would be very bad news. Dark Winter posits that a 30-year period of cold has already begun. Frigid temperatures and the food shortages that inevitably result could lead to riots and chaos.

Comment: SOTT has been reporting this for years - though now it's becoming mainstream. Here are just a few of the more recent reports:

The Ice Age is coming, and corrupted scientists continue to lie through their teeth: Stronger winds explain puzzling growth of sea ice in Antarctica

Ice Age cometh: Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year; top scientists warn of global cooling

NASA stumped: Summer Arctic ice extent among highest this decade, Antarctica "headed toward record extent"

and read Fire and Ice: The Day After Tomorrow to learn about the reality of the situation.


Sun

Thousands of flying foxes drop down dead from trees in heatwave, Australia

Image
Looks like something out of a horror movie. Up to 5000 bats drop from trees during heatwave. http://t.co/JOGW3sQcQ3 pic.twitter.com/8RpTCIIBD7
- lorraine (@lorrainewhat) November 18, 2014
Soaring temperatures sent more than 5,000 dead bats falling to the ground in New South Wales, Australia.

Flying fox bat carcasses littered streets in the town of Casino after the temperature hit 44 degrees Celsius.

Some residents mounted a last-ditch effort to save the remaining bats by hosing them down with water.

A clear-up operation has been launched to remove the decomposing remains by the local council before the stench becomes over-powering.

Photographer Dee Hartin captured the mass deaths. She told Huffington Post UK: "What I saw when I got there was beyond belief. There were hundreds of them all over the ground everywhere I looked.

Ice Cube

U.S. - Weeks ahead of schedule, ice visible on Lake Superior

Cold temperatures and snow across the Great Lakes in November is certainly nothing out of the ordinary, but this morning, a layer of ice was visible on parts of Lake Superior in Ashland, Wis.
Image
© Via twitter@clkovalA thin layer of ice visible on Lake Superior in Ashland, Wisc., Nov. 15, 2014.
While this may not seem unusual given the current stretch of unseasonably cold temperatures, it is actually several weeks earlier than normal.

The first sightings of ice on Lake Superior and the Great Lakes overall usually occur during the beginning to middle of December. However, a perfect combination of last season's record ice coverage, cooler summer temperatures, and an early blast of arctic air this fall has allowed for areas of ice to form earlier than normal for the second year in a row.
Image
Last winter featured relentless, record breaking cold leading to the second highest ice coverage on record for the Great Lakes as a whole.

Lake Superior also set a record for the longest length of time that ice was observed on the lake. In 2013, ice was first observed on Nov. 25, and it did not all melt until early June 2014.

Comment: Break out your mukluks, the ice age cometh! To learn more about how humanity may be causing 'climate change', read Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.
"While official science portrays the crazy weather, more frequent sinkholes, increased meteor fireball activity, and intensifying earthquakes as phenomena that are unrelated, research put together by Pierre and Laura strongly suggests that all this (and more!) is intimately connected and may stem from a common cause.

In times past, people understood that the human mind and states of collective human experience influence cosmic and earthly phenomena. How might today's 'wars and rumors of wars', global 'austerity measures', and the mass protest movements breaking out everywhere play into the climate 'changing'?"
SOTT Talk Radio show #70: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?


Snowflake Cold

Harsh cold air to freeze U.S. Northeast, set records in South

The coldest air since last winter is set to move over the Plains and the East during the first half of the new week.
Image
The core of the cold air will focus over the northern Plains and the Great Lakes through at least Wednesday with overnight lows dipping down into the teens, and even the single digits in some normally colder spots.

Bone-chilling nights will be followed up by frigid days with highs struggling to reach the 20-degree mark over the regions on Monday and Tuesday. Some locations are forecast to stay below 20 F until Wednesday afternoon, including Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Temperatures this low can make it dangerous for outdoors activities if you are not wearing the proper clothing.

While much of the Northeast will escape the cold on Monday, the arctic air is expected to move into the region by Tuesday.

Highs temperatures from Washington, D.C., through New York City are forecast to stay near or below freezing on Tuesday, levels that would be considered below normal even during the heart of winter.

A biting wind from the northwest will make it feel even colder with AccuWeather.com RealFeel® staying in the teens throughout the day along the I-95 corridor.
Image
A significant lake-effect snow event will set up downwind of the Great Lakes as the arctic air blows over the comparatively warm waters of the lakes.