Extreme Temperatures
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Snowflake Cold

UK endures coldest autumn since 1993

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© Crown copyright
The UK Met Office report that the UK has just had its coldest autumn for nineteen years, leaving 2012 on course to be second coldest year since 1996.

Mean temperature in November was 0.4C below the 1981-2010 average, the third month in a row when temperatures have been well down on normal.

The average temperature for the autumn in the UK was 8.6C, compared to the long term average of 9.5C and the coldest since 1993. It is also the sixth coldest autumn in the last 50 years.

The year as a whole is currently running as the second coldest since 1996, beaten only by the exceptionally cold year of 2010. Temperatures so far in December are 2 degrees below normal, and the Met Office are forecasting that this will continue for the foreseeable future.

One of the features this autumn is just how persistent the cold weather has been. There have not been any exceptionally cold interludes, as, for instance, we saw with the heavy snow in November 2010. Instead, the weather has just been consistently cold.
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Figure 1

Snowflake Cold

UK braces for more snow as cold snap across Europe shows no signs of letting up

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© Anthony Chappel-Ross/PAA woman walks her dog through snow in Goathland, North Yorkshire, on Wednesday.
Overnight frosts will continue throughout next week, with increasingly wintry showers turning from sleet into snow

The cold snap gripping Europe shows no sign of letting up as the UK braces for snow next week.

Overnight frosts will continue throughout next week, with increasingly wintry showers turning from sleet into snow.

A few centimetres of snow could fall in the east and hilly parts of the south-east on Friday.

Snow is continuing to fall on higher ground across Scotland, but will struggle to settle after sleet showers.

The rain and sleet will move southwards over the country while other parts will stay dry after clear spells. A cold wind is expected to sweep the entire country as temperatures struggle to rise above 4C or 5C.

Arrow Down

Heavy snow collapses walkway in Turkey

Heavy snow in Turkey piled up on a pedestrian walkway causing it to collapse. Scott Pelley reports.


Bacon

Skeletons in Mediterranean cave show early settlers retained their hunter-gatherer lifestyles from last Ice Age

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The island of Favignana
Skeletal remains in an island cave in Favignana, Italy, reveal that modern humans first settled in Sicily around the time of the last ice age and despite living on Mediterranean islands, ate little seafood. The research is published in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Marcello Mannino and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany.

Genetic analysis of the bones discovered in caves on the Egadi islands provides some of the first mitochondrial DNA data available for early humans from the Mediterranean region, a crucial piece of evidence in ancestry analysis. This analysis reveals the time when modern humans reached these islands. Mannino says, "The definitive peopling of Sicily by modern humans only occurred at the peak of the last ice age, around 19,000 -26,500 years ago, when sea levels were low enough to expose a land bridge between the island and the Italian peninsula".

The authors also analyzed the chemical composition of the human remains and found that these early settlers retained their hunter-gatherer lifestyles, relying on terrestrial animals rather than marine sources for meat.

Snowflake

Global warming? Heavy snow brings Stockholm to a standstill

stockholm snow
© Jessica Gow/ScanpixA street in central Stockholm on Wednesday
Heavy snowfall in the southeast has disrupted traffic in Stockholm, where planes have been unable to take off and many bus and train lines stopped running. Several schools closed early on Wednesday. The snowfall is expected to continue through the night. The Transport Authority has advised people in the Stockholm region to avoid traveling by car.

The weather service issued a class 2 warning for Sweden's southeast due to the heavy snowfall and winds, meaning the weather could put the public in danger and disrupt infrastructure.

"Commuters can expect the snowfall to continue," meteorologist Linnea Rehn with the weather service SMHI tells Swedish Radio. There may yet be another 10 centimetres before this evening."

Igloo

Summer snow storm at Falls Creek, Australia

Summer Snow
© ABC/Audience submittedZoe 9, of Mt Beauty, makes the most of the summer snow at Falls Creek.
It is officially the fifth day of summer, but it snowed overnight at Falls Creek, in Victoria's north-east.

The ski resort received up to six centimetres of snow.

Resident photographer Chris Hocking says the wind chill took apparent temperatures to minus 6 degrees Celsius at times and the ground has turned white.

"We've probably seen four to six centimetres on the ground [and] a little more up high," he said.

"Temps are in sort of mid-winter chill and [it's] just amazing to see the ground turn pretty much white all around the resort."

Mount Baw Baw and Mount Hotham have also had snow. Gina Woodward from Mount Hotham says it is surprising, given temperatures in the north of the state broke heat records last week.

"[It's] pretty cold, minus 1.6C right now," she said.

Attention

Best of the Web: Connecting the global cooling dots

"The sun is the primary source of heat for the Earth... This is worth keeping in mind when the Secretary General of the United Nations or any other lying politician or alleged scientist tell you otherwise."
ice age
Winter doesn't officially begin until December 21, but winter has a mind of its own as does all of nature. While the United Nations charlatans gathered in Doha, Qatar to try to save its global warming hoax by first calling it "climate change" and then by fashioning a funding mechanism to transfer the wealth of developed countries to those who are not, winter has arrived "early" around the world.

That might just have something to do with the cooling cycle that has been active for the past sixteen years, "inconveniently" blowing a big hole in the global warming lies we've been hearing and reading since the late 1980s.

From IceAgeNow.info, a site by Robert W. Felix, the author of a book about ice ages (the Earth has been through quite a few in its 4.5 billion years), here are some recent news stories:

Snowflake

218 inches of snow in 4 days? Mount Shasta: Is U.S. snowstorm record in jeopardy?

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© USGS/Lyn TopinkaA 1984 file photo of Mount Shasta in northern California.
If anyone lived on the summit of California's Mount Shasta, they'd need a mighty big shovel to dig out of the snowstorm that will bury the mountain in astronomical amounts of snow through the weekend -- amounts that could flirt with world records. The Thursday morning National Weather Service summit forecast for Shasta predicted an incredible 33 to 39 inches of snow -- just for Thursday alone. (By comparison, Atlanta, Ga., has reported 38.9 inches of snow since March 1, 1989 -- a period of over 23 years.)

But it gets crazier.

Add in another 37 to 43 inches of snow Thursday night, and additional amounts ranging from 21 to 35 inches every 12 hours through Saturday night, plus a light dusting of 11 to 17 inches on Sunday... ...and you get a storm total of 176 inches. On the low end. Add up the high end of the numbers and you get a forecast maximum of 218 inches of snow in four days!

Snowflake Cold

Ice Age Cometh So Soon? Record-breaking snowfall in Moscow disrupts flights, wreaks havoc on roads

A record-breaking snowfall in Moscow has disrupted flights, created havoc on the roads, and forecasters say the storm will rage until Friday morning. Moscow's city hall said the Russian capital hasn't seen a bigger snowfall in November in about 50 years. The weather forecast service said on Thursday that a third of November's typical amount of snow had fallen in the past 24 hours, creating a 12 centimeter (4.7 inches) cover.

The roads in the capital were clogged up and about 70 flights from Moscow's largest Domodedovo airport were disrupter overnight. On Thursday, all three of the capital's airports are working normally.
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© APNov. 29, 2012: A bulldozer removes snow in Red Square in Moscow, Russia.

Snowflake

24-hour snowstorm gives Moscow record for heaviest November snow for 50 years

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© AFP/GettyA woman walks between two snow covered cars in central Moscow
Moscow has recorded its heaviest November snowfall for half a century with a 24-hour snowstorm that has blanketed the city in more than four inches of cover.

Officials in the Russian capital have called in 12,000 snow-removal vehicles to help combat the effects of the snow on the city's transport system but, in spite of lengthy efforts to minimise disruption, traffic jams have been reported to stretch back several kilometres on Moscow's roads.

"I was speaking with the forecasters, and it's been more than 50 years since Moscow's seen something like this," said Deputy Mayor Pyotr Biryukov on a television interview.

Further to gridlock in the city, flights from Moscow's airports have also faced major delays overnight. The capital's largest airport, Domodedovo, experienced over 70 flight delays, but was back to regular service by 5 a.m.