Russia's St. Petersburg has witnessed an incredible light show by mother nature, which illuminated the sky with bright columns of light, turning the city into a winter wonderland.
Residents of Russia's 'Venice of the north' awoke early on Saturday morning to find the skyline glittering with strange colors. Yellow, red, blue and green laser-looking columns were visible across the city. At first, people thought that they were witnessing the northern lights, but the pattern of the luminescence suggested a different phenomenon.
With frosty weather showing no sign of ceasing in St. Petersburg, residents of Russia's northern capital have shared photos of an eyebrow-raising natural phenomenon.
St. Petersburg residents living in the city's Vyborg and Kalininsky Districts have spotted giant light pillars in the sky, which they first mistook for Northern Lights, according to local media.
This Instagram user published a photo of the light pillars under the northern lights hashtag, saying that the admiration "cannot be expressed in words."
Another user nicknamed "daryabat" also voiced joy about a "very beautiful phenomenon" which she said she first thought was Northern Lights.
Clearly our atmosphere is showing signs of serious change - evidently it's becoming colder:
Almost double the previous record, but "not one single media organization put the term 'record' in the title of their news," says reader David Taylor. Didn't mention the word "record" until 10 paragraphs down.
23 Feb 2018 - "Between eight and 10 centimetres of snow had accumulated in Vancouver by Friday afternoon, Environment Canada said, breaking the Feb. 23 snowfall record of 4.8 centimetres set back in 1940.
"As much as 11 centimetres of snow fell on parts of Richmond during the same time, and the North Shore saw as much as 13 centimetres in some areas.
"Vancouver's director of streets, Taryn Scollard, said even the city's own snowplows and salt trucks are getting stuck."
Wildlife officials in Oklahoma shared video from the rescue of an eagle that was unable to fly due to being covered in ice.
Oklahoma Game Wardens posted a video to Facebook showing the eagle sparkling on the Osage/Kay county line, where it was found covered in ice by ranchers.
Game Warden Spencer Grace responded to the location and determined the icy eagle was unable to fly more than a short distance after being caught in the recent ice storm.
Grace captured the eagle and brought it into his truck, where he used the vehicle's heater to thaw the frosty avian for about 45 minutes.
The long term forecast for Europe, where it is already colder than normal, shows temperatures plummeting to near -20°C in parts of Central Europe by early next week, extending what has been already a brutal winter.
Europeans longing for spring will just have to be patient for awhile. Indeed this winter has been a harsh one across the northern hemisphere with record cold temperatures being set from Siberia to North America to Japan. Also a number of places have seen record snowfalls.
The European Alps have had one of the snowiest winters in years as snow continues to pile up meters high.
Alex Sosnowski AccuWeather Fri, 23 Feb 2018 12:44 UTC
Warm air surges like the episode that sparked February records this week in the eastern United States do not mean that winter is over.
The weather pattern that produced hundreds of daily record highs and dozens of record highs for the month of February is probably on the order of a once-in-100-years orperhaps 200-years event.
More record warmth is forecast for the Southeast states into this weekend.
The Indiana Audubon Society says the winter of 2017-18 will go down in the record books as the highest number of Snowy Owls seen in Indiana in a single winter. To date, 139 Snowy Owls have been documented in Indiana this winter. The Indiana Audubon Society has been tracking sightings via submitted reports, social media sites, and birding websites, such as eBird.com. The new record breaks the old record of 121 owls that were seen during the winter of 2013-14.
Snowy owl numbers fluctuate year to year based on their primary prey, lemmings, giant mouse-like rodents, whose population also oscillates based on food supplies and weather conditions in the Arctic. When populations spike, the owls respond with higher than normal breeding, with some nests containing ten or more eggs. The subsequent invasions later that fall result in not so much a food scarcity, but because of the abundance of food earlier that summer. Young owls tend to leave the Arctic each winter, resulting in the larger than normal invasion occurring now.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has yet again been caught exaggerating 'global warming' by fiddling with the raw temperature data.
This time, that data concerns the recent record-breaking cold across the northeastern U.S. which NOAA is trying to erase from history.
A popular stop for migrating snow geese was more popular than ever this week.
The Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area hit its highest number of snow geese ever, topping out at an estimated 200,000 birds, the Pennsylvania Game Commission reported on its website.
The previous record of 170,000 birds was recorded in 2007.
Unfortunately, warmer temperatures caused a large number of geese to move north. Thursday's count was 65,000 snow geese, 4,000 Canada geese, and 5,500 tundra swans.
The 6,000-acre wildlife area in Lancaster and Lebanon counties is an annual destination for the waterfowl as they migrate north to their breeding grounds.
The course of life and labour reminds me of a long journey I once took on the railway. Suddenly, there was a breakdown ahead, and passengers took the event in various ways. Some of them sat still resignedly, and never said a word. Others again, went to sleep. But some of us leaped out of that train, and ran on ahead to clear the road of all obstructions.
Comment: More pictures from Instagram on Sputnik:
Clearly our atmosphere is showing signs of serious change - evidently it's becoming colder: