Extreme Temperatures
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Sun

Death toll nears 2,000 in Indian heat wave

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© Channi Anand / APAn Indian vendor sleeps under a temporary shed on a hot day on the outskirts of Jammu, India, Friday, May 29, 2015.
Showers and thunderstorms in parts of southern India on Saturday helped eased a weekslong summer heat wave that has claimed nearly 2,000 lives.

The heat wave, however, was expected to continue in some areas of worst-hit Telangana and Andhra Pradesh states for another 24 hours, said Y.K. Reddy, an Indian Meteorological Department director.

Heat-related conditions, including dehydration and heat stroke, have killed at least 1,490 people in Andhra Pradesh and 489 in Telangana since mid-April, according to state officials.

Daytime temperatures hovered between 40 and 45 degrees Celsius (104 and 113 degrees Fahrenheit) in the two states on Saturday, after soaring to as high as 48 C (118 F) earlier in the week, the meteorological department said.

Sun

More than 430 in hospital due to heat wave in Japan

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© AFP/File Children play in a park fountain to cool off from a heatwave in Japan.
More than 430 people in Japan have been admitted to hospitals nationwide in a current heat wave in several regions of the country, Japan's Fire and Disaster Management Agency (FDMA) said Tuesday.

FDMA, in charge of ambulance services, cites data between May 18 and 24. Cases of hospitalization because of heat were reported in Tokyo and Kyoto, as well as in the Saitama, Aichi, Fukushima and Fukuoka prefectures, among others.

The temperature in some regions of Japan is predicted to rise above 30 degrees Celsius [86 Fahrenheit] on Tuesday, according to Japan Meteorological Agency.

Experts warn about the dangers of outside overexposure and urge people to refrain from outdoor physical activity.

In May and June, a high probability of above-normal temperatures (above 40 degrees Celsius) on the islands of Okinawa and Amami is forecast.

Sun

Nearly 1,200 people dead in heatwave across India

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Children jump into the Ganga river to beat the heat on a hot day.
A relentless heatwave sweeping large parts of India has killed nearly 1,200 people, with most deaths reported from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, even as forecasts warned that the intense weather conditions are expected to continued till the weekend.

The death toll in Andhra Pradesh rose to 852, with the scorching weather claiming 202 lives in Prakasam district alone, officials said. Another 266 deaths were reported in Telangana where Ramagundam city recorded a maximum temperature of 44.5°C.

A total of 67 deaths were reported in Odisha, according to ANI. Titlagarh recorded a temperature of 47.6°C, the season's highest for the state.

Officials reported seven deaths in Gujarat's capital Ahmedabad this month, with the civic body issuing an "orange alert", indicating a prolonged heatwave with temperatures expected to rise to 43°C to 45°C over the next week.

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© Shankar Mourya/HT PhotoPeople resort to a glass of sugarcane juice or sherbet to beat the heat.

Cloud Precipitation

Large hailstones fall in Oman

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© Ali Al Baddaei/www.rthmc.net Rain and hailstorm fell in Fanja, a village about 64 km away from Muscat, at around 2pm.
Rain and hailstorm fell in Fanja, a village about 64 km away from Muscat, at around 2pm.

"It is heavily raining and wadis are overflowing. There was hailstorm too," said Bader Ali Al Baddaei, an administrator of www.rthmc.net, a local Web-based forum that discusses weather trends in Oman.

"Skies over Muscat are cloudy. Rain is expected," Bader added.

The Oman meteorological department had also predicted rain in eastern parts of Muscat and in Batinah.

Fish

Mass fish death in Siberian lake

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Thousands of carp washed up, but who or what killed them?
Shocked locals have posted pictures of the dead fish amid suspicions they were killed by explosions as officials melted winter ice to prevent flooding.

The disturbing scene was at Lake Khatyng, in the Sakha Republic, the coldest region in Russia. The fish - believed to be carp and grouper - were seen dead en mass on 14 May.

Locals in Tulagino village blamed the dynamiting of local rivers to prevent ice causing dams on rivers, so leading to flooding of villages. But representatives of the Ministry of Emergencies in the republic, also known as Yakutia, denied being responsible for the dead fish.

A spokesperson said: 'On 13 May we did blow up the ice, but the work was near the village of Namtsy, almost 100 km from Tulagino. Even if we assume that fish died because of the explosion, it is unlikely that they were carried such a distance.'

Snowflake Cold

Southern Ontario vineyards damaged by late brutal cold weather

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Grapes
The 2015 vintages from some southern Ontario wineries may be somewhat rarer than usual.

Vineyard owners in Prince Edward County and the Niagara region are assessing the damage from a record-breaking plunge into cold weather late Friday night and into Saturday morning.

Farmers were sent scrambling to prevent frost from killing their fruit. They rented helicopters, turned on wind machines and set bales of hay on fire in an attempt to save what they could.

Some smaller wineries say their crop was practically gutted in the deep-freeze.

Clark Tyler, manager at Harwood Estate Vineyards in Prince Edward County, estimates that a mere five per cent of grapes at his four-hectare vineyard survived the frost.

Snowflake

Weather chaos: Kashmir receives snowfall when other parts of India reel under severe heat

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Snowfall in Kashmir
While the rest of India continued to simmer under intense heat wave, higher reaches of Rajouri district in Jammu and Kashmir received fresh snowfall. It has been snowing in Rajouri intermittently since Sunday (May 24) causing the mercury to drop considerably.

People have once again pulled out their woolens. Though snowfall in Rajouri is unusual for this time of the year, no one seems to be complaining. Instead people from nearby areas of Shopian and Poonch are thronging the place to enjoy the weather.

The sudden change in weather has reportedly been caused by a prevailing western disturbance over the region. As a result of which, the lower reaches of Rajouri received snowfall. Heat wave in the rest of India has so far claimed many lives.


Ice Cube

Sudden onset of ice loss in Antarctica detected

Antarctic vessel
© Jonathan L. Bamber Research vessel deploying instruments on an Antarctic ice shelf.
A group of scientists, led by a team from the University of Bristol, UK has observed a sudden increase of ice loss in a previously stable region of Antarctica. The research is published today in Science.

Using measurements of the elevation of the Antarctic ice sheet made by a suite of satellites, the researchers found that the Southern Antarctic Peninsula showed no signs of change up to 2009. Around 2009, multiple glaciers along a vast coastal expanse, measuring some 750km in length, suddenly started to shed ice into the ocean at a nearly constant rate of 60 cubic km, or about 55 trillion litres of water, each year.

This makes the region the second largest contributor to sea level rise in Antarctica and the ice loss shows no sign of waning.

Dr Bert Wouters, a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Bristol, who lead the study said: "To date, the glaciers added roughly 300 cubic km of water to the ocean. That's the equivalent of the volume of nearly 350,000 Empire State Buildings combined."

The changes were observed using the CryoSat-2 satellite, a mission of the European Space Agency dedicated to remote-sensing of ice. From an altitude of about 700km, the satellite sends a radar pulse to Earth, which is reflected by the ice and subsequently received back at the satellite. From the time the pulse takes to travel, the elevation of the ice surface can retrieved with incredible accuracy. By analysing roughly 5 years of the data, the researchers found that the ice surface of some of the glaciers is currently going down by as much as 4m each year.

The ice loss in the region is so large that it causes small changes in the gravity field of the Earth, which can be detected by another satellite mission, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE).


"The fact that so many glaciers in such a large region suddenly started to lose ice came as a surprise to us," continued Dr Wouters. "It shows a very fast response of the ice sheet: in just a few years the dynamic regime completely shifted."

Comment: Antarctica, is it melting or not? Man made global warming can't explain this climate paradox


Sun

More weather chaos: Record heat in parts of Alaska

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© Climate Re-analyzer, University of MaineTemperature difference from normal May 22, 2015
Since Wednesday, high temperatures (well into the 70s) in Fairbanks, Alaska have outdone the highs (in the 60s to mid-70s) in Washington, D.C.

The Last Frontier is in the midst of an extended streak of record-challenging warmth that will continue through next week.

Alaska's warmest temperatures, with respect to normal, have actually focused north and east of Fairbanks.

Barrow - Alaska's northernmost city, located above the Arctic circle - has logged record highs four of the past five days, including a toasty 47 on Thursday. That's some 18 degrees above normal.

Eagle, Alaska - located about 200 miles east of Fairbanks - has recorded six straight days with highs in the 80s.

Snowflake

3 feet of snow blocks main road between west and east Norway

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© Espen BraatenStuck trucks in Hardangervidda , Norway
Trucks got stuck for 11 hours on the mountain passage Hardangervidda.

A column of eight trucks were stuck in the middle of Hardangervidda for eleven hours. Plowing crews worked on getting them off the mountain.

There has been very bad weather in the mountains in the last day.

Plowing crews report there is now up to a meter (more than 3 feet) of snow on the roadway.

See photo. There is a lot of snow.

Thanks to Alf Inge Fagerheim for this link