Satellite image of Etna volcano on 27 Feb 2017
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© Fond Du Lac Yacht Club
"We've had ice shoves, but nothing like this," said Jim Meisinger, with the Fond du Lac Yacht Club.
Winter Storm Donna's gusty winds shoved ice covering Lake Winnebago onto the shoreline; it piled up against the building.
"The whole side of the wall was completely engulfed in ice," said Tom Clausen, a board member at the Yacht Club.
The ice shoves were so severe the Yacht Club closed until the necessary equipment arrived to deal with the ice.
© NASAA NASA satellite captured snow on the Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa volcanoes on December 25, 2016
Most of the snow fell late Tuesday into early Wednesday, and a blizzard warning for Mauna Kea and its sister peak Mauna Loa was canceled Thursday. A few additional snow showers were forecast, with no accumulation expected.
While the summits received snow, the rest of the Big Island dealt with heavy rain and thunderstorms that pelted the lower elevations. Both Oahu and Kauai were under flash flood warnings. Temperatures were mild, with highs in the 70s and 80s.
Snow on Hawaii's peaks is not uncommon in the colder months because they are nearly 14,000 feet high. Mauna Kea has a sub-Arctic climate, the weather service said.
© Benjamin Spillman/Reno Gazette JournalHydrologist Jeff Anderson and district conservationist Jim Gifford of the Natural Resources Conservation Service Nevada ready a 20-foot tube used to measure snow depth in order to take a measurement of the snowpack on Slide Mountain on March 1, 2017. The pack measured 212 inches.
It's a problem that cropped up Wednesday when researchers sought to confirm snow depth at a data site on Slide Mountain at Mount Rose Ski Tahoe near Reno.
"We're not even close," hydrologist Jeff Anderson said after jamming an aluminum tube more than 16 feet into the snowpack hoping to reach the ground below.
The snow-measuring snafu provided real life confirmation of what scientific instruments on the site already showed.
The Sierra Nevada is wrapping up a historic winter and that's huge news for Nevada and California, states that have spent the past several years parched in drought.
"Who would have thought this two years ago when we were measuring the worst snowpack on record," Anderson said.
© Gunnar FreyrSnow blankets Iceland.
At least 54 people were killed in Afghanistan over the past few days. Officials expect the death toll to rise as nearly 170 homes have been destroyed. Over 50 people are injured as 22 Afghan provinces witness freezing weather and heavy snowfall. Officials in neighboring Pakistan have also confirmed the death of over a dozen people in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The region has been blanketed with over a meter of snow that's blocked most roads and led the closure of Chitral Airport. People in worst-hit areas are facing food and medicine shortages.
Dig that snow man
According to a report, the 12,000 people of the valley are still stranded as the long route to Chitral town was blocked off by huge avalanches. The people of the isolated area complained against the provincial government, for not clearing the sole road to of snow and boulders.
Village Council Chairman Sher Muhammad said, "Around 12,000 people in the valley are facing acute shortage of food, medicines and other essential commodities as there is no hospital. The local administration has reserved only one tractor to clear the road blocked by over 46 avalanches which is not possible."
© Michael Tercha / Chicago TribuneRecord-breaking temperatures draw Chicagoans outdoors.
Because the snow measurement is taken at 6 a.m. at O'Hare International Airport, small amounts of snow that may have fallen later in the day and melted were not recorded, said Amy Seeley, meteorologist with the National Weather Service. This occurred Feb. 25 when there was a trace of snow and Jan. 30 when there was 0.1 inch. The weather service has been keeping data on snow on the ground for 146 years.
The record near-snowless start was overshadowed Tuesday by severe storms moving through the state.
The National Weather Service forecast large hail, winds, localized flooding and tornadoes Tuesday evening. A tornado hit Ottowa on Tuesday evening, killing one person, and the weather service said its spotters had reported a number of other tornadoes.
More stormy weather was forecast for the week, including possible snow.
WGN-TV meteorologist Tom Skilling said he believes the 146-year streak in Chicago is part of climate change and emphasized that it does not occur linearly, meaning that there is potential for cold winters in the future.
© The Local
The unseasonal weather, due to a mass of dry, hot air moving up from Spain, meant it felt more like the end of April than February, with temperatures on the Swiss lowlands some 12 degrees warmer than usual for this time of year, said MeteoNews.
The cities of Nyon, Sion, Aigle and Neuchâtel all broke their previous February records. In Sion, the mercury rose to 21.2 degrees, smashing its previous record of 19.8 set in 1998. Nyon reached 18.4 degrees and Aigle 19.5.
Cities in German-speaking Switzerland were also affected, with Thun, Interlaken and Basel-Binningen all surpassing 20 degrees. Lucerne wasn't far behind with 19.9 degrees, Zurich reached 19.5 and Bern set a new city record for February with 18.5 degrees.
© Rob GowanA snowy owl flies over a field near Chesley.
As many as 40 of the birds have been spotted in an area north of Chesley over the past couple of weeks, attracting birders, photographers and others to the area.
"It is quite remarkable," said local birder Peter Middleton, who has been down to count and document the owls on a couple of occasions.
The flat open farmland in the area has traditionally been an area hot spot for the large, majestic birds whose traditional territory is the Arctic. But locals are reporting larger numbers of owls over the past couple of weeks than traditionally have made their way to the area, with some reports of over 40 owls in the area near Chesley and 65 across southern Bruce County.
Middleton said the reason why the birds have made their way to Bruce County recently is open to conjecture, but he believes it is related to a massive irruption of the birds on the Arctic tundra about three years ago.
"This is an irruptive species, which means it will move either according to weather or more normally in response to the presence of prey," said Middleton. "If prey is thin-spread they will move south in search of it."
Comment: Meanwhile other parts of the US such as California and Nevada are experiencing record-breaking snowfalls.
See also: SOTT Earth Changes Summary - January 2017: Extreme Weather, Planetary Upheaval, Meteor Fireballs