Extreme Temperatures
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Snowflake Cold

Minnesota reports subzero temperatures; coldest Thanksgiving since 1930


CBS News - Minnesota
Fri, 28 Nov 2014 13:01 UTC
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© CBS
Minnesotans woke up to subzero temperatures on Thanksgiving Day, and if the mercury doesn't make it up into the double digits, the day could be one for the record books.

As of 8 a.m., it was 2 below in the Twin Cities, and 20 below in Bemidji, in northern Minnesota.

Meteorologist Matt Brickman is forecasting a high Thursday afternoon of 10 degrees. And if temperatures don't rise higher than that, it will be the coldest Thanksgiving since Herbert Hoover was president, in 1930.

Snow will fall during the night in some areas, followed on Friday by the possibility of freezing rain.

Comment: Think the past winter was bad? Get ready for mini Ice Age

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Ice Cube

Surprise! Submarine drone finds Antarctic ice a lot thicker than previously thought


RT
Tue, 25 Nov 2014 02:59 UTC
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© Still from YouTube video/AntarcticSurvey
A new type of 3D mapping revealed Antarctic sea ice could be much thicker than previously estimated, shows a study done with the help of a yellow robotic submarine named SeaBed.

The new study, published in Nature Geoscience, showed that average ice thickness in Antarctica is between 1.4 meters and 5.5 meters. The maximum thickness recorded was 17 meters.

Also, 76 percent of the mapped ice has been tagged as 'deformed,' the study stated, which means that ice crashed together, forming a thicker layers of ice.

"Our surveys indicate that the floes are much thicker and more deformed than reported by most drilling and ship-based measurements of Antarctic sea ice," states the study. "We suggest that thick ice in the near-coastal and interior pack may be under-represented in existing in situ assessments of Antarctic sea ice and hence, on average, Antarctic sea ice may be thicker than previously thought."

SeaBed robot has been involved in two expeditions in Antarctica with scientists from the UK, the US and Australia. The yellow robot is an autonomous underwater vehicle (or AUV) equipped with upward-looking sonar to measure and map the underwater sea ice.

The two-meter robot moved in a "lawnmower" pattern so as not to miss any areas and bounced sound waves off the under-surface of the ice to make its estimates.

Two expeditions took place in 2010 and 2012 and included regions of Weddell, Bellingshausen, and Wilkes Land.

Comment: A dose of COLD reality: The ironic saga of the eco-campaigners trying to highlight global warming and melting ice caps trapped in the freezing Antarctic

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Attention

Manatee from Florida makes rare visit to Texas waters

Ben Hooper
upi.com
Tue, 25 Nov 2014 20:22 UTC
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The manatee is expected to be taken to Sea World San Antonio or a Marine Mammal facility in Galveston.

Authorities in Texas said they are working on a plan to assist an unusual visitor -- the first manatee to visit the Houston area in 19 years.

The Chambers County Sheriff's Office said a deputy spotted the male manatee swimming up a channel Sunday near Baytown and barriers were put in place once the sea mammal settled in a spot next to a warm water outlet.

Sheriff Brian Hawthorne said waters in the area are too cold for manatees this time of year.

"The cold water makes them stressed, it makes them really tired, just like if you or I were out in a snowstorm," he told the Houston Chronicle.

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Snowflake Cold

It was so cold that a plane froze to the runway in Siberia


RT
Wed, 26 Nov 2014 18:04 UTC
- 52C (-61.6F) in Siberia: Over 70 passengers 'push' frozen plane to runway

Freezing temperatures didn't stop intrepid passengers from "helping out" a Russian plane that couldn't move, because its wheels were frozen to the ground. The "selfie" won the day in a remote Siberian town beyond the Arctic Circle.

74 passengers, who were on board, offered the seven-member crew and technical staff to help move the frozen Tupolev Tu-134 plane to the takeoff runway on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the UTair company told TASS.

"The passengers disembarked to lighten the weight, and then they volunteered to move it," she said.


The temperatures in Igarka, in the Krasnoyarsk region, hit a low of about -52C. Locals, living some 163 km north of the Arctic Circle, are quite used to cold weather, but machines turn out to be more delicate.

Having spent over 24 hours on the tarmac, the airplane's wheels simply froze to the ground. However, the brake system wasn't harmed. According to the company, the ice-covered ground was the reason the plane couldn't be moved. The incident is currently under investigation, and will involve airport staff, the airline, crew and passengers.

Comment: The Russians have the right attitude to cold weather!

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Snowflake

Nearly 60 million in path of East Coast, Appalachian snowstorm - 6-12 inches forecast

Alex Sosnowski
Accuweather
Tue, 25 Nov 2014 15:13 UTC
A storm with rain and heavy snow will cause major disruptions and delays for Thanksgiving travel on the East Coast and in the Appalachians.

According to AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Elliot Abrams, "In most cases, the worst time to travel in the mid-Atlantic and New England due to the storm will be on Wednesday and Wednesday night."

"The best time to travel will be through Tuesday night in these same areas, with the next best time on Thanksgiving Day."

Rain will initially spread northward along the Interstate-95 with snow and rain to start farther west in the I-81 corridor. However, a change to snow will take place from west to east from northern Virginia to New England.

The storm will bring mostly snow to the I-81 swath in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, I-84 in southeastern New York state, as well as much of interior New England, where a general 6-12 inches of snow are forecast.

In anticipation of delays or cancellations, several airlines, including US Airways, American and Delta, have announced they will waive change fees for passengers scheduled to fly into airports in the line of the storm.
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Some places across the Hudson Valley and New England could even have snow totals exceeding a foot.

"The storm should rapidly strengthen off the coast of New England on Wednesday night, leading to strong and gusty winds, especially near the coast," stated AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Ben Noll as he discussed the impacts in this storm scenario.

Comment: See video coverage courtesy of Accuweather here.

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Igloo

U.S. Great Lakes ice cover develops earliest in over 40 years

Mark Torregrossa
Mlive.com
Mon, 24 Nov 2014 21:42 UTC
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© Chris Clark/MLive.com
Here's what Lake Michigan looked like in February 2014.
Ice is already starting to develop on Michigan's Great Lakes. This is the earliest ice on some of the Great Lakes in at least 40 years. According to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, on November 20, 2014, three of Michigan's Great Lakes had ice starting to form. Lake Superior and Lake Michigan were one-half percent ice covered, while Lake Huron had one percent ice. Lake Erie was not reporting any ice as of Nov. 20, 2014.

Decent early season ice coverage records date back to 1973. Last Friday was the earliest date that all three Great Lakes already had ice since the better reporting of early season ice began. Lake Superior actually had ice forming on November 15th of this year. That is the earliest ice on Lake Superior in the good data set.

Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron had ice 10 days earlier this year than last year. Lake Superior only had five and a half months without any ice on the lake.

Comment:
  • U.S. - Weeks ahead of schedule, ice visible on Lake Superior

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Attention

An Ice Age indicator? Unusually high number of snowy owls migrate early to Wisconsin

Paul A. Smith
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Sat, 22 Nov 2014 19:14 UTC
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Snowy owls, such as this one spotted in the Milwaukee area in 2012, have arrived again in the state.
Several strong cold fronts in November helped deliver a wintry landscape to Wisconsin earlier than many would have liked.

If you're looking for a positive, here's one: the new whiteness isn't just snow.

At least 31 snowy owls have been recorded in Wisconsin this month, according to Ryan Brady, research scientist with the Department of Natural Resources and bird monitoring coordinator for the Wisconsin Bird Conservation Initiative.

Like the early snow accumulation, the number of owls is unusually high for this time of year, according to Brady.

"It's probably a record," Brady said. "Thankfully, it's the kind of record that doesn't require shoveling and plowing."

The number of snowies in Wisconsin this month is even more extraordinary considering last year - which featured the largest number of the birds in the U.S. in decades - only one snowy owl had been seen in the Badger State by mid-November.

Snowy owls are large, charismatic birds that breed in the Arctic in summer and disperse in varying degrees to the south in winter.
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Igloo

Winter is coming - Ice age fever

Dr. Mark Sircus, Ac., OMD, DM (P)
Dr Sircus.com
Fri, 21 Nov 2014 02:06 UTC
Iceage_1
© drsircus.com
The news of this winter has not even begun because we are still five weeks away from that equinox. Yet you would never know it watching what is going on in upstate New York and the rest of the United States that recently saw record-breaking cold in all fifty states.

Like all kids, growing up I heard of such things as ice ages and that we were overdo for one. You know once in every 10,000 years kind of trip, and I thought well ok, that is the pattern, but must take a long time to come on so I will never have to worry about it in my lifetime!

But not so, says Professor William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his colleagues. Using the most precise record of the climate from paleo history ever generated they tell almost the same story we saw in the movie The Day After Tomorrow, when the world went stone cold from one week to another. Buffalo looks like act one on our screens.

Patterson, a world expert, also thought it would take time to come on but lo and behold, the scientific evidence suggests otherwise. Robert Felix, author of Not by Fire but by Ice, thought that ice ages begin in less than 20 years. His site is the best place to keep up with the cooling news, which is heating up, according to religious disciples of manmade global warming that never was.
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Snowflake Cold

Cold weather in Jacksonville, FL breaks record set in 1873; 1,998 records broken over the past 7 days

Blake Matthews
News4jax.com
Thu, 20 Nov 2014 09:06 UTC
Thursday morning not only broke an "ancient" record from 1873, but we also dropped to the second coldest temperature ever recorded in the month of November in Jacksonville.

According to the National Weather Service, for the second morning in a row, Jacksonville set a new cold weather record. Thursday mornings temperature dropped to a bone chilling 24 degrees breaking the old record of 30 degrees set in 1873.

If that wasn't cold enough for you, Thursday's 24 degrees also marks the second lowest temperature ever recorded in the month of November, beaten out only by the year 1970 when the mercury dropped to 21 degrees in Jacksonville in November.

Some areas around Woodbine, GA flirted with the upper teens as the temperature officially there dropped to 20 degrees.

Any thoughts that the winter of 2014-2015 wouldn't be as bone-chilling as last year's may have just been put on thin ice. And it's only November.

Tuesday morning was the coldest Nov. 19 across the United States since 1976, some 38 years, according to Dr. Ryan Maue, meteorologist with WeatherBell. The average temperature across the entire country was just 19.4°.

An astounding 226 million people in all 50 states, that includes the tropical paradise of Hawaii, were below freezing at the same time putting an exclamation point on an already paralyzing winter season -- that hasn't even officially started yet.
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© News4jax.comLocations approaching or surpassing record temperatures on Wednesday morning.
Even Florida didn't escape the icy grip.
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Ice Cube

Shipping season ends on upper Mississippi as earliest ice on record surrounds locks and dams

Michael Hirtzer
Reuters
Thu, 20 Nov 2014 03:43 UTC
shipping mississippi river
The shipping season on the upper Mississippi River will end on Thursday as ice surrounding locks and dams near Minnesota's Twin Cities forced the earliest winter closure on records that date back to 1969
The shipping season on the upper Mississippi River will end on Thursday as ice surrounding locks and dams near Minnesota's Twin Cities forced the earliest winter closure on records that date back to 1969, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said.

"There's so much ice through the whole system," said Bryan Peterson, navigation manager for the Army Corps' St. Paul district. "They're getting the barges they can out and not risking getting stuck there all winter."

There were two tow boats waiting to pass lock and dam No. 2 near Hastings, Minnesota. Once they moved down river, no more vessels were expected, Peterson said.

The shipping season typically ends around the beginning of December on upper portions of the Mississippi River in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois. In 1989, no more vessels reached the Twin Cities after Nov. 24, Peterson said.
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