Extreme Temperatures
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Snowflake Cold

Record low temperatures bring rare snow to rural South Australia

rare snow
Record low temperatures across regional South Australia brought rare snow to the Flinders Ranges on Friday, August 7, turning the red outback desert into a winter wonderland.

Records for the lowest daily maximum temperature were broken on Thursday at several locations including Hawker, Whyalla, Yongala, and Port Augusta. The Bureau of Meteorology expected more temperature records to be broken on August 7.

A cold blast of wintry air brought the conditions to Australia in early August, according to the weather bureau. Snow was reported in parts of Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales.

Videos posted by the Skytrek Willow Springs Station show snow blanketing the red desert around the outback station. Staff from the station told Storyful they had seen snow on the top of the hills around them before but never so much down in the valley.


Comment: Coldest temperature ever recorded for the island state of Tasmania, Australia


Snowflake Cold

Coldest temperature ever recorded for the island state of Tasmania, Australia

Senior Constable Dan Adams said police sometimes have to leave stranded vehicles until the snow melts.
© ABC News/Jessica MoranSenior Constable Dan Adams said police sometimes have to leave stranded vehicles until the snow melts.
If you thought it was cold this morning, spare a thought for Liawenee in Tasmania's Central Highlands — it is already one of the coldest places in Australia and has just broken its own record.

Temperatures dropped to -14.2 degrees Celsius just after 6:00am — a new record low for the state and even colder than Antarctica.

Michael Lasko from the Bureau of Meteorology said the Liawenee temperature was 2C colder than the town's previous record low of -12.2C, made back in 2013.

"But also it looks like that -14.2 is the coldest minimum for all of Tasmania," Mr Lasko said.

The previous record for Tasmania was -13C at Tarraleah and Butlers Gorge back in 1983.


Info

Volcanic or cosmic impact origin for the Younger Dryas mini ice-age?

On July 31st 2020, Sun et al. published a paper in Science Advances [1] that suggests the Younger Dryas cooling event nearly 13000 years ago was triggered by the Laacher See volcanic eruption rather than a cosmic impact, the usual explanation. Until now, over 60 primary peer-reviewed journal papers together with dozens of supporting responses all agree the Younger Dryas event was caused by Earth's collision with debris from a disintegrating comet. Only one paper has previously suggested it was caused by the Laacher See volcanic explosion - and that paper was thoroughly refuted only a year later.

In their new paper, Sun et al. focus on platinum group elemental abundances, and especially osmium isotope abundances and ratios, found in the sediment of Hall's Cave, Texas. The sediment in this cave, many meters deep, has accumulated over tens of thousands of years, providing a convenient record of environmental conditions near the cave over this time (see photo below). An easily visible transition in the colour of the sediment at a depth around 1.51 m signifies a dramatic change in climate, and has been suggested to indicate the onset of the Younger Dryas climate anomaly when the Northern Hemisphere experienced a sudden return to near ice-age conditions for over 1000 years. This view is supported by the discovery in this boundary layer of the same kinds of microscopic impact debris found at many other Younger Dryas boundary sites across four continents [2]. So, it appears that Hall's Cave is yet another record of this most dramatic and important cosmic impact event, thought to have reset human Cultures and extinguished many species of large animal across the globe. An event that is probably remembered by numerous extant religions, and might even have helped trigger the rise of our own civilisation [3].
Hall's Cave, Texas
© Nan Sun, University
However, the platinum group metal abundances in the sediment around the Younger Dryas boundary layer at Hall's Cave have not previously been investigated. If the prevailing view is correct, we should find anomalies in them very close to this layer, since cosmic impacts generally produce enhancements in several of these elements. For example, the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub impactor was particularly rich in iridium, and coated Earth in an iridium-rich layer of dust and debris. However, we know from analysis of the GISP2 ice core in Greenland, that the Younger Dryas impactor was instead rich in platinum.[4] Since that discovery peaks in platinum concentration within sediments have been used to locate the Younger Dryas boundary accurately at many other sites [5].

Snowflake Cold

'A historic event' - Aussie city blanketed in snow for the first time in 40 years

Tasmania snow

Australia's ever-intensifying Antarctic Blast is beginning to deliver. This morning (Aug 5), swathes of Tasmania received their first settling snow for 40 years.


As picked up by Yahoo News Australia, Tasmania's riverside city of Launceston was hammered by snow on Tuesday evening, as the mercury at the airport sank below-zero just after 9pm.

Bureau of Meteorology's Matthew Thomas said the settling snow in Tasmania's north is a weather event not seen for some 40 years.

"It's a very rare event for Tasmania," said Thomas.

"We saw some snow settled in Hobart, with the last two occurrences in 1986 and 2015. [However] the last time we saw snow settle in Launceston was in the early 1970s," he said.

Weatherzone meteorologist Ben Domensino described it as "a historic event for Tasmania":

Comment: See also:


Snowflake

Heavy summer snowfall in the Alps - 16 inches deep

Stelvio Pass, Italy
Stelvio Pass, Italy
There's been heavy snowfall up high in parts of the Alps overnight, where six glaciers are currently open for summer skiing.

Passo Stelvio in Italy (pictured above and below this morning, Tuesday 4th August) has reported 40cm (16 inches) of "heavy snow" above 2,700 metres altitude.

Other ski areas currently open in the Alps are Les 2 Alpes in France; Hintertux and Molltal in Austria and Saas Fee and Zermatt in Switzerland. The 'Matterthorn Glacier Paradise' ski area above Zermatt can also be accessed from Cervinia in Italy.


Comment: This is the 3rd summer in a row that substantial snowfall has hit the Alps in August. See here for a report from 2018 and here for 2019.

Indications of the beginnings of a much cooler longer-term trend perhaps...?


Snowflake Cold

Melbourne is set to shiver through its coldest four-day spell in 24 years

Australia cold front
The cold air mass has been described as 'exceptional' as it moves up towards Australia from Antarctica
Melbourne is set to shiver through its coldest four consecutive days in 24 years as a powerful wintery blast sweeps across Australia's southeast from Antarctica.

The weather will bring freezing temperatures to Tasmania overnight as snow falls at sea level, with the mercury plummeting to 0C in Hobart.

A trough is expected to bring cloudy conditions to Melbourne which will limit daytime heating and bring top temperatures of 11-12C from Tuesday to Friday.

This will be the city's first four-day period at or below 12C since 1996, Weatherzone's Ben Domensino said.

'Outside central Melbourne, temperatures could even get cold enough for snow to fall on some of the hills around the city,' he said.

'Snow is also likely in other low-lying parts of the state on Tuesday and Wednesday.'

The cold air mass has been described as 'exceptional' as it moves up towards Australia from Antarctica.

Snowflake

Summer snow in Beijing, China

snow
It snowed suddenly yesterday for some minutes in Beijing. It was not the first time. What a year!


Attention

Global warming alarmists alarmed typhoon trend falling! - First time in 70 years no Pacific typhoon formed in July

This year is the first time since 1951 the Pacific sees no typhoons in the month of July. Typhoons have seen downward trend since 1951.
Typhoon Numbers
© Japan Meteorological AgencyData source: JMA, here and here.
Global warming alarmists like to claim that tropical storms will intensify and become more frequent unless people stop using fossil fuels.

And recently these alarmists have had our attention steered to the Atlantic basin, where tropical storms this year have seen quite an active season thus far.

Another reason the focus has been on the Atlantic is because very little has been happening in terms of Pacific typhoons, and the alarmists don't want to talk about that.

In fact this July is the first July to have seen no typhoons formed in the Pacific at all since statistics on this began in 1951, according to the data from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).

Normally between 3 to 4 typhoons form in the Pacific in July. Up to 8 have formed in the past, e.g. on 2017 and 1971. But this year July failed to see a single typhoon form - the first time this has occurred since 1951.

Igloo

Record snowfall in Patagonia bury livestock alive

Historic snowfall could destroy sheep farming in the area for years. Five feet (1½ m) of snow and temperatures around 20 degrees below zero.
Can you imagine even trying to walk through snow up to your chin?

This climate combo, which has been taking place for 20 days in the region, left livestock farming in a critical state and led to the Rio Negro government this week declaring a state of Emergency and / or Agricultural Disaster in 6 departments of the western province.
Heavy Snowfall
© IceAgeNow
In the departments of Bariloche, El Cuy, Ñorquinco and Pilcaniyeu were hit by "extraordinary snowfall" that "have caused damage" in rural livestock farms in the area, leading to a crisis for many sheep farmers and other productions in Patagonia and the south of the country.

Snowflake

Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Beijing July snow, gold scarcity & unusual Arctic events

ice age
Summer snow in Beijing shocks the country as the worst flooding in 400 years submerges the central crop growing and grain storage areas, leading to a food crisis inbound.

U.S Mint reduces to almost nothing available sales of gold and silver and the 2nd lowest pressure reading for a cyclonic low in the Arctic ever recorded. The cosmic egg and dragon streamers return.


Sources