Extreme Temperatures
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Snowflake Cold

It was so cold that a plane froze to the runway in Siberia

- 52C (-61.6F) in Siberia: Over 70 passengers 'push' frozen plane to runway

Freezing temperatures didn't stop intrepid passengers from "helping out" a Russian plane that couldn't move, because its wheels were frozen to the ground. The "selfie" won the day in a remote Siberian town beyond the Arctic Circle.

74 passengers, who were on board, offered the seven-member crew and technical staff to help move the frozen Tupolev Tu-134 plane to the takeoff runway on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the UTair company told TASS.

"The passengers disembarked to lighten the weight, and then they volunteered to move it," she said.


The temperatures in Igarka, in the Krasnoyarsk region, hit a low of about -52C. Locals, living some 163 km north of the Arctic Circle, are quite used to cold weather, but machines turn out to be more delicate.

Having spent over 24 hours on the tarmac, the airplane's wheels simply froze to the ground. However, the brake system wasn't harmed. According to the company, the ice-covered ground was the reason the plane couldn't be moved. The incident is currently under investigation, and will involve airport staff, the airline, crew and passengers.

Comment: The Russians have the right attitude to cold weather!


Snowflake

Nearly 60 million in path of East Coast, Appalachian snowstorm - 6-12 inches forecast

A storm with rain and heavy snow will cause major disruptions and delays for Thanksgiving travel on the East Coast and in the Appalachians.

According to AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Elliot Abrams, "In most cases, the worst time to travel in the mid-Atlantic and New England due to the storm will be on Wednesday and Wednesday night."

"The best time to travel will be through Tuesday night in these same areas, with the next best time on Thanksgiving Day."

Rain will initially spread northward along the Interstate-95 with snow and rain to start farther west in the I-81 corridor. However, a change to snow will take place from west to east from northern Virginia to New England.

The storm will bring mostly snow to the I-81 swath in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, I-84 in southeastern New York state, as well as much of interior New England, where a general 6-12 inches of snow are forecast.

In anticipation of delays or cancellations, several airlines, including US Airways, American and Delta, have announced they will waive change fees for passengers scheduled to fly into airports in the line of the storm.
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Some places across the Hudson Valley and New England could even have snow totals exceeding a foot.

"The storm should rapidly strengthen off the coast of New England on Wednesday night, leading to strong and gusty winds, especially near the coast," stated AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Ben Noll as he discussed the impacts in this storm scenario.

Comment: See video coverage courtesy of Accuweather here.


Igloo

U.S. Great Lakes ice cover develops earliest in over 40 years

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© Chris Clark/MLive.com
Here's what Lake Michigan looked like in February 2014.
Ice is already starting to develop on Michigan's Great Lakes. This is the earliest ice on some of the Great Lakes in at least 40 years. According to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, on November 20, 2014, three of Michigan's Great Lakes had ice starting to form. Lake Superior and Lake Michigan were one-half percent ice covered, while Lake Huron had one percent ice. Lake Erie was not reporting any ice as of Nov. 20, 2014.

Decent early season ice coverage records date back to 1973. Last Friday was the earliest date that all three Great Lakes already had ice since the better reporting of early season ice began. Lake Superior actually had ice forming on November 15th of this year. That is the earliest ice on Lake Superior in the good data set.

Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron had ice 10 days earlier this year than last year. Lake Superior only had five and a half months without any ice on the lake.

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



Attention

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

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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 19.4ยฐ.

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.
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© 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

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© 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.