Extreme Temperatures
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Record low February temperature set in Cuba


caribbeannewsnow.com
Mon, 23 Feb 2015 14:59 UTC
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Cubans bundle up against a record low temperature in Havana
The Cuban Institute of Meteorology reported that early Friday morning it registered a temperature of one degree Celsius (33.8oF) in the town of Union Reyes, in western Matanzas province, the lowest temperature ever recorded in Cuba for the month of February.

This temperature was due to the strong influence of a very dry mass of cold air of arctic origin, in combination with low clouds in the interior of the western and central regions, which favoured heat radiation at night and caused again another remarkably cold dawn in parts of the interior of much of the country

There were several areas with less than 10 degrees Celsius (50oF) in Cuba's western provinces. In the rest of the country the minimum temperatures were between 11 and 15 degrees Celsius, higher in coastal areas.

The previous record in Union de Reyes was set on February 18, 1996, at 2.5 degrees. The absolute record in the town for any month of the year was also one degree, and happened on January 21, 1971.
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Attention

Rare Arctic bowhead whale seen for the first time in UK waters

John Ingham
Daily Express, UK
Sat, 28 Feb 2015 21:22 UTC
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© SeawatchThe bowhead was spotted with a mobile phone camera
The bowhead whale was photographed on a mobile phone off Par Beach on the remote island of St Martin's by diver Anna Cawthray who immediately suspected it was special.

But it took an international exchange of e-mails between experts in Britain and the United States to identify it as a young bowhead who was 2,000 miles from home.

Anna feared the whale - which was about 25ft long - could have been stranded but she said: "After about 15 minutes it swam away.

"Seeing it was a once in a lifetime experience."

Bowhead whales normally live in the high Arctic near the ice edge and their closest population is off Spitzbergen far to the north of Norway.

They can reach up to 70ft in length, weigh up to 90 tonnes and live for up to 200 years which makes them possibly the longest lived marine mammal in the world.

They live off small crustaceans and use their large heads to smash through pack ice.

Comment: See also: King crab from Arctic waters found on Redcar beach, UK

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Snowflake Cold

Cold world, cooling sun: Global warming is dead on arrival

Dr. Sircus
DrSircus.com
Fri, 27 Feb 2015 15:30 UTC
Hudson River
© Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesIce flows along the Hudson River in New York City on Feb. 20, 2015.
The cold crept in early on the 15th of Feb. 2015. By the 21st more than 100 million Americans were being impacted by the arctic blast known as the "Siberian Express" as record (low) temperatures were broken across the eastern third of the nation. Chicago experienced its coldest February since 1875. Last year it was the Polar Vortex and that took down GDP (Gross Domestic Product) quickly. This year the numbers are not in yet but we can expect economic activity to contract.

During this cold, more than 4,700 square miles of ice formed over the Great Lakes in just one night on the 17th. It was minus 41 in Minnesota at that time. "Great Lakes ice is now running ahead of last year and ice will increase with more brutal cold coming," says meteorologist Joe d'Aleo. "We are likely to have the most ice since records began."

Forbes magazine is now equating global warming proponents with snake oil salesmen. There was never any manmade global warming."Global warming activists are in full-throttle damage control, desperately claiming global warming causes record snow and cold," says Forbes. "When global warming alarmists claim winters will become warmer and free of snow, yet their predictions are proven false for 20 years in a row, at some point logical people come to realize that global warming alarmists are selling snake oil."
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Magic Wand

U.S. Climatology Lab and National Climatic Center hit new milestone in fake climate data

\Steven Goddard
Real Science
Thu, 26 Feb 2015 22:37 UTC
So far this year, more than 50% of USHCN data is fake, and NCDC is adjusting US temperatures upwards by more than one degree. New records for both.
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© Steven Goddard
Ushcn.tavg.latest.FLs.52i.tar.gz
Ushcn.tavg.latest.raw.tar.gz

Monthly temperatures which are marked with an "E" are "estimated" rather than measured. More than half of the current data for 2015 is fake.
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© Steven Goddard
As more data comes in, these numbers will go down some, but the point is that the more data is missing, the higher the temperature. This is likely due to to loss of rural data, and infilling with UHI contaminated urban data.

Comment: Ice age cometh: Brutal winters point to Earth turning colder

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Cloud Lightning

Thundersnow or meteor event the cause of flashes in Arctic sky over Alaska?

Carey Restino
Alaska Dispatch News
Sat, 21 Feb 2015 13:05 UTC
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Thundersnow
Facebook lit up almost as brightly as the sky over Kotzebue and other areas of the Arctic last Sunday morning, as people speculated about what the bright flashes in the sky were.

More than a dozen people reported seeing several bright flashes in the sky, unexplained by air traffic or other human activity. One thought neighborhood children were pulling a prank at first. Another suggested a meteor had split into three parts. Another reported hearing booms.

Then came a post showing a Chicago-based meteorologist on The Weather Channel standing in a blinding snowstorm with the sky flashing behind him. The ecstatic reporter hooted as he and his camera man captured "thundersnow" on camera several times in the course of a few minutes.

Though rare, thundersnow is a real phenomenon, a snow thunderstorm that occurs under circumstances similar to a thunderstorm as a cold or warm front moves into an area. The thunder is often muffled by the snow, but the flashes may still be visible.

"It's pretty rare, but it's not out of the question in the winter," said John Lingaas, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Fairbanks. "The conditions have to be just right."

Comment: See also: Weatherman goes berserk over 'thundersnow' in Boston

Freak 'thundersnow' storm wreaks havoc on Toronto

Rare thundersnow in Dallas, Texas: 'How is this possible?'

Virginia, US: 'Thundersnow' behind mysterious blue flashes of light?

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Arrow Down

Catastrophe-hopping Spiegel: German news magazine rolls out latest climate horror vision: A burning North Pole

Pierre L. Gosselin
No Tricks Zone
Fri, 27 Feb 2015 04:27 UTC
This week's hard copy of Spiegel features the front cover story dubbed "Der verheizte Planet" - The heated planet - (see image below). Thus, Spiegel is returning and keeping to its long tradition of promoting end-of world scenarios.

The following image sequence shows how the burning planet is just the latest and newest climate catastrophe designed to get an apocalypse-weary public to worry (and to buy its magazines). So far the reaction, however, has been a big yawn. The world is, after all, full with other real concerns.
Climate
© SpiegelSpiegel depictions over the last decades. 1986 and 2015 were even front cover images. 1974: cooling. 1986: sea level rise. Now, 2015: it’s a burning planet.
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Ice Cube

King crab from Arctic waters found on Redcar beach, UK

Dave Robson
The Gazette
Tue, 24 Feb 2015 22:24 UTC
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King Crab on Redcar beach

Red king crab could be first on our shores, crustacean is usually found in icy waters like the Arctic

He's spent his working life beneath the sea but even oceanographer David McCreadie was baffled by a rare visitor to Redcar.

For the formidable-looking red crustacean found by David's fiancee Diane Weinoski looks for all the world like a king crab - and they hardly ever stray from considerably icier waters.

Members of the lithododid family, king crabs are large, tasty and usually found in seas MUCH colder than Redcar's.

And despite having worked and played in oceans across the world since the mid-1960s, David has never heard of one being found this far south.
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Ice Cube

Deadly winter takes toll on waterfowl in Michigan

Tony Wittkowski and Liz Shepard
The Times Herald
Tue, 24 Feb 2015 20:14 UTC
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© Andrew Jowett / Times HeraldDucks sit on a shelf of ice Monday along the St. Clair River in Port Huron.
Harsh weather is taking a toll on the waterfowl concentrated in the St. Clair River.

Terry McFadden, a wildlife biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, said waterfowl across the state are dying because of the extreme cold and growing ice cover.

Below-zero temperatures have caused rapid ice formation, blocking ducks from food sources in the water and sometimes trapping the birds in the ice.

"Most likely it's going to be similar to last year, we lost quite a few last year," McFadden said. "We don't have a really good estimate, but it was in the thousands."

McFadden said waterfowl, including long-tailed and canvasback ducks, are concentrated in the St. Clair River, where some of the region's only remaining open water is located.

That large concentration of birds depletes available resources as the ice forms.

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Ice Cube

Massachusetts animal shelters report large numbers of suffering wildlife due to record cold weather

Bella English
The Boston Globe
Thu, 26 Feb 2015 19:51 UTC
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© John Tlumacki/Globe StaffA screech owl sat on a perch mending a fractured wing at the New England Wildlife Center in Weymouth.
The casualty list is wide ranging: possums with frostbite, a turtle frozen in a block of ice, a swan hit by a plow, a fox hit by a car.

If this month's record cold and snowfall have taken a toll on human residents in Massachusetts, they have also wreaked havoc on the animal population, particularly wildlife. Animal shelters are beyond capacity with weather-related injuries.

"This is the worst winter that we've seen in terms of straight-up starving animals coming in," said veterinarian Maureen Murray, who practices and teaches at the Tufts University Wildlife Clinic in North Grafton. "With this historic amount of snow and extremely low temperatures, animals need more energy to stay warm, but they're not able to find food sources for that energy, so it's a really big strain on them."

Although it's difficult to determine whether wildlife populations have suffered permanent damage, local experts say it's clear the animals are under extreme stress.
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Ice Cube

New York City waterways covered in ice floes


YouTube
Thu, 26 Feb 2015 14:42 UTC
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A tugboat tries to negotiate ice floes
The freezing temperatures that have plagued much of the eastern U.S. haven't spared New York City. The waterways around the island of Manhattan are filled with ice.

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