This won't be remembered as a good year for Nebraska's grape industry. The last few weeks of August are usually harvest season for Nebraska grape growers, but vineyards across the state have been affected by severe weather in the last fews months, losing crops to everything from late freezes in May to high winds and hailstorms in June and July.

Typically, grape growers have at least one severe weather event to contend with during the growing season, said Jennifer Montgomery, executive director of the Nebraska Winery & Grape Growers Association. But this year, there were at least four distinct weather events that damaged crops throughout the state.

"It's been a very interesting year," Montgomery said. "It depends on where you were. Maybe you were OK after winter, but then the wind damage did you in. (The damage) is pretty widespread. It's pretty much all over the board." Stefan Kegley, owner of George Spencer Tasting Room in Gibbon and president of NWGGA, said only 10 percent of his grape crop will be harvested this year. Kegley owns 16 acres of grapes around Gibbon and Kearney. He usually sells grapes to Miletta Vista Winery in St. Paul.

A vineyard he owns north of Kearney was ruined by the late frost and a good portion of the rest was wiped out by the July 9 storm that rolled through the Gibbon and pelted the area with large hail. "The vines were completely stripped off," Kegley said. "It looked like winter the next morning."

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Hikers should prepare for raw, winter-like conditions ... in August!

Up to 5″snow possible at 6,500 feet.

Temperatures 20 degrees below normal.

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National Weather Service - Missoula, Montana - 22 August 2014

An unseasonably cold and very wet weather system will bring significant impacts to outdoor activities & backcountry recreation plans beginning today and lasting through Sunday.

Temperatures in many locations will be 20 degrees below normal with widespread moderate to heavy valley rain and breezy winds.

Conditions will become even more variable throughout the higher terrain where snow levels will be lowering to near 6500 ft. in Glacier National Park and 7000 ft. along the Continental Divide.

Snow accumulations are expected to be light at Logan Pass, but confidence is increasing that higher elevations could see several inches or more through Saturday morning.

Anyone with plans to hike or travel throughout the higher terrain of western Montana should prepare for raw, winter-like conditions.

Thanks to Kenneth Lund for this link

Hazards common in arctic and alpine areas but described as "extremely unusual" in the UK during the summer have been found on Ben Nevis.

A team of climbers and scientists investigating the mountain's North Face said snowfields remained in many gullies and upper scree slopes.

On these fields, they have come across compacted, dense, ice hard snow call neve.

Neve is the first stage in the formation of glaciers, the team said.

The team has also encountered sheets of snow weighing hundreds of tonnes and tunnels and fissures known as bergschrunds.

The large, deep cracks in the ice are found at the top of glaciers.

A rare spotless day on the sun on July 17-18, 2014 triggered public speculation that an already stunted Cycle 24 was nearly over. Such is not the case. Defying the odds for so late in a sunspot cycle, another solar sunspot maximum was set last month. Another one is coming this month.

In other major news, a long needed revision to the 400-year sunspot record was proposed. It'll be the first change made to the sunspot record since it was first established by Rudolf Wolf back in 1849. The changes will affect long-term climate and other dependent scientific studies.

One effect of the proposal will be to reduce modern sunspot totals. That will wipe out the so-called "Modern Maximum" and make the current sunspot cycle, Cycle 24, the weakest in 200 years.

Bitter Arctic winds could plunge parts of Britain into the coldest spell of August weather for almost a century.

Thermometers are set to plummet as a stubborn band of low pressure drags air in from the north - with two weeks of wet, windy and cold weather on the horizon.

There is even a chance of snow and sleet over the mountains of Scotland as it dips to near freezing overnight. Government figures show the last time it was this cold in August was in 1919 when the mercury rose no higher than 8.9C for four days in Yorkshire and Cumbria.It is not expected to rise above 9C in parts of the north during the day all week with chilly winds making it feel much colder.

The Met Office said Loadpot Hill, in Cumbria, is unlikely to see a maximum daytime temperature of more than 8C on Thursday.

Forecasters blame an area of low pressure circling off the north of the UK for the cold and miserable week ahead. Met Office spokeswoman Charlie Powell said: 'The lowest daily maximum temperature we have is in Cumbria, Yorkshire and Shetland which was 8.9C in 1919. At the moment it looks like Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week will see temperatures in that bracket.' Laura Young from the Met Office said: 'It is going to be much cooler this week, unseasonably cool due to much colder air coming down from the north.

The Sydney Morning Herald carefully removed the scientific arguments from an article today. Are they afraid their readers are not smart enough to reach the "right" conclusions if exposed to the wrong information? Hey, but its only national policy and billions of dollars at stake.

Today Maurice Newman warned that we are not prepared for climate change (he's talking about the cold kind). The Australian published his thoughts citing Archibald, Usoskin, Svensmark, Brekke, Lockwood and Curry. Their readers are apparently clever enough to handle discussions of cosmic rays and large hadron colliders.

In Sydney Morning Herald, Latika Bourke and Lisa Cox write an article about Newman's views, but carefully omit all of the scientific arguments, as well as the potential problems with one sided science funding and the names and credentials of the scientists he talks about. The pair do, however, find space to repeat the litany of the IPCC's estimate of 95% "probability" (it's hard to believe Sydney Morning Herald readers have not heard this before). They don't mention that the IPCC estimate is a speculative and unscientific number which gets paradoxically higher as the IPCC's predictions are proven wrong. Nor did they interview Newman and ask him his opinion of this.

Rather than talking about possibilities that scientists are discussing, it was more important to remind SMH readers that Prime Minister Abbott once said climate change was "absolute crap". How that helps the nation decide on national climate policy is not made clear, though the implication is: skeptics only have dumb arguments. No doubt SMH readers will understand which opinion they are supposed to hold, and "lucky" for them, journalists Bourke and Cox are experts on atmospheric physics, particle collisions, and climate modeling. If only they'd explained the flaws in Maurice Newman's arguments instead of concealing them, the whole nation would have been better off.

One day, the poor SMH readers, like ABC viewers, might be shocked when they discover how they were fed propaganda lines by dutiful journalists who, no doubt, thought they were doing a good job. Still, one great thing about the SMH is that the citizens of Australia don't have to pay for it if they don't want to.

The Australian's readers already know the IPCC position. The editors there, dare to give us the other side as well:

After days of heavy rain, a band of low pressure will hit the UK on Sunday and bring cooler weather for much of next week, according to forecasters. The sweltering summer is about to become a distant memory with a dramatic plunge in temperatures.

The Met Office is expecting unsettled windy conditions, with a mix of sunshine and showers, and possibly even snow on higher ground in Scotland. Spokeswoman Nicky Maxey said today:"It's getting cooler, definitely. It's the end of the summer - autumn starts on September 1. We have some colder northerly winds coming in and temperatures will drop next week. We're looking at average or below average temperatures and the night-time low could be down to single figures."

From the University of Wisconsin-Madison
When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently requested a figure for its annual report, to show global temperature trends over the last 10,000 years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Zhengyu Liu knew that was going to be a problem.

"We have been building models and there are now robust contradictions," says Liu, a professor in the UW-Madison Center for Climatic Research. "Data from observation says global cooling. The physical model says it has to be warming."

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today, Liu and colleagues from Rutgers University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, the University of Hawaii, the University of Reading, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the University of Albany describe a consistent global warming trend over the course of the Holocene, our current geological epoch, counter to a study published last year that described a period of global cooling before human influence.

Extreme weather phenomena battered many parts of Russia in July. From waterspouts in the Black and Azov Seas, to super-sized hail on beaches, super-cells in Siberia, and deluges throughout the country, Russia is not used to such weather. Check it out...

Thirteen members of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) were trapped and in danger of freezing to death when their base, Halley VI, lost power. Power went down on July 30th and is now partially restored. The BAS waited to report the incident until power came back up, however now reports that the incident was so serious that all science activities have been suspended and emergency contingency plans to abandon some of Halley's eight modules and attempt to shelter in a remaining few have been prepared.

The incident is particularly serious, as the station is likely completely cut off from rescue for months.

The incident occurred during the height of the Antarctic winter while southern sea ice is at or near record highs (Marc Morano has details at Climate Depot).

One Survey member, Anthony Lister, managed to send a out a "tweet" when power came back up, reporting that the outage occurred while the station was experiencing record cold temperatures of -55.4° C (-67.72° F). (h/t Rai news)