Extreme Temperatures
Both locals and tourists in Lao Cai Province said they woke up very surprised. They said it felt cold like winter, but it got warmer later in the day. According to AccuWeather, the minimum temperature will be between 14 and 16 degrees throughout the week. Luu Minh Hai, director of the province's weather forecast center, said the region has been suffering from a depression which caused long, heavy rains the past days.
The temperature in other mountains in the region also dropped to 16 and 17 degrees Celsius. Hai said such low temperature in summer has hardly ever been seen in Sa Pa. The town, which is the only place in Vietnam to have snow in winter, recorded temperature as low as 14.4 degrees Celsius in July 2005.
The cold weather is even stranger considering the country has been going through the hottest year in a decade, with heat wave gripping northern and central Vietnam for months now.
10 July 2015 - The Regional Council of Puno declared the state of emergency in the provinces of Sandia, Carabaya and San Antonio de Putina because of the damage generated by low temperatures, snow and ice.
On Thursday, the regional directorates of Transport and Communications, Agriculture, Health, Education, municipalities and other institutions announced that, to date, more than 171 850 alpacas died from the snow and ice.
In response, the regional government of Puno ordered the purchase of 15,000 bales of oats to feed the animals still alive despite the bad weather.
The regional governor of Puno, Juan Luque Mamani, said that compared with previous years, this year is the heaviest snowfall.
Thanks to Argiris Diamantis for this link

Montage of images of solar activity between August 1991 and September 2001 taken by the Yohkoh Soft X-ray Telecope, showing variation in solar activity during a sunspot cycle.
Beginning in about 1645, the Maunder minimum corresponded with the severest portion of the last "Little Ice Age."
Results of the new study were to be presented yesterday by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.
Many solar physicists think the solar cycle is driven by a dynamo caused by convecting fluid deep within the Sun. However, when Zharkova and her colleagues added a second dynamo close to the surface, they found that it completed the picture with unprecedented accuracy.
"Our predictions showed an accuracy of 97%," said Zharkova.
The model predicts that the waves from the two dynamos will become increasingly offset during Cycle 25, which peaks in 2022. During Cycle 26, from about 2030 to 2040, the two waves will become exactly out of synch, leading to a significant reduction in solar activity.

Sydneysiders could expect an average maximum temperature of 59F (15C) for four days – a two year record.
Strong cold winds, rain, snow and hail were expected to batter the nation's south-east for days.
Sydneysiders could expect an average maximum temperature of 59F (15C) for four days - a two year record.
And temperatures across the region were expected to drop three to seven degrees below average for up to five days, according to Weatherzone.
The NSW Bureau of Meteorology warned of a burst of cold weather caused by a series of cold fronts set to move through the state on Friday and continue over the weekend.
Snow was expected at higher elevations overnight on Thursday.
Hudson Bay, with almost 50% of the bay still covered in ice, has the third highest coverage this week since 1992 (after 2009 and 2004); Davis Strait has the highest coverage since 1992; and Foxe Basin and Baffin Bay have the highest coverage since 1998. For this week, the Beaufort Sea this week has the second highest coverage since 2006 (after 2013), and more ice than was present in 1971, 1982, 1987, 1988 and 1998 - among others.
He said that eight provinces received snowfall, with the hardest hit being San Antonio de Putina, Carabaya and Sandia.
Snow killed more than two thousand alpacas in Puno, while more than 2000 families and 73 thousand animals were harmed in the town of Ananea.
He added that the other affected districts are Quilcapunyo, Putina and Sina.
Thanks to Argiris Diamantis for this link
The day's high was 21.2 degree Celsius, paralleling with that on July 6, 1903, and the average temperature was 18.9 degree Celsius, making it the lowest average temperature in July in 142 years since 1873.
Meteorologist Zhang Ruiyi said the record low temperature is a result of days of rains under cold air mass as the city is in the middle of the monsoon season.
The weather is expected to get cooler as three typhoons are approaching coastal China, which may bring gales and rainstorms to an already flooded coastal parts of China.

Children play in the Salmon Street Springs fountain in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, July 1, 2015.
WASHINGTON
Seattle, not accustomed to prolonged hot weather, saw its hottest June ever.
The average high temperature each day in June was a record 78.9 degrees, breaking the 1992 record by more than 3 degrees, said Johnny Burg, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Seattle.
"Our high is supposed to be in the low to mid 70s at this time and lows in the mid-50s," he said.
Instead, the Seattle area is seeing highs in the 80s and lows in the 60s.
Because the Seattle area suffers few heat waves, many people do not have air conditioning.
The weather was also dry in the Seattle area in June, when only 0.23 inch of precipitation was recorded. That's the fourth driest June on record.
Comment: While the west coast of the US bakes and is bone dry, Europe is experiencing a heat wave of their own with all time record temperatures. At the same time it is snowing in parts of Russia! You can't get much more extreme than that. It is as if the earth is responding with extremes as the human activity heats up. For more on the theory that human activity has an impact on how the universe interacts in kind with humanity read Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.
The thermometer in Kitzingen in the southern state of Bavaria read 40.3 degrees Sunday, breaking the 2003 record by 0.1 degrees, the German Weather Service said. It was the highest temperature Germany has experienced since the start of record-keeping in 1881.
Weather service spokesman Uwe Kirsche said Monday that the record will not be official until technicians have manually checked the station.
But he says "we assume that our equipment worked properly."
The Russian town of Vorkuta saw a strange but nevertheless mesmerizing combination of green trees and white snow in the middle of summer.
Comment: Snow in Summer? Other regions that have experienced unusual snowfalls this Summer include Norway, which had 5 times more snow in June than normal, and "unprecedented" snowfalls on Scottish mountains.
Comment: See also: Winter is coming: Earth approaching 'mini ice age' in 15 year, solar cycle study suggest