Extreme Temperatures
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Fish

Nova Scotia aquaculture salmon killed by superchill

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© Canadian PressCooke Aquaculture's fish farm in Shelburne Harbour on Nova Scotia's South Shore is one of the sites where officials believe fish have died due to a so-called superchill.
Cooke Aquaculture sites in Annapolis Basin, Shelburne Harbour, Jordan Bay reporting mortalities

Fish at three aquaculture sites in Nova Scotia have died and a so-called superchill is suspected, the provincial Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture said Tuesday.

Cooke Aquaculture's sites in the Annapolis Basin, Shelburne Harbour and Jordan Bay are reporting mortalities, officials said.

A fish health veterinarian visited the Annapolis Basin and Shelburne Harbour sites and is expected to visit the Jordan Bay site in the next few days to investigate the cause of death, Fisheries and Aquaculture Minister Keith Colwell said in a statement.

"Our provincial fish health veterinarians investigate mortality events to rule out diseases of concern," he said.

The department said a preliminary investigation has found a superchill happened, meaning sustained cold temperatures dropped the temperature of the water to the level that fish blood freezes — around - 0.7 C.

Tides in late February and early March also tend to be high, the department said, contributing to to lowering temperatures in sea cages by flooding more shallow areas than usual. Low air temperatures cool the water and receding tides flush the cages with superchilled water.

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


Snowflake

From Massachusetts to Oklahoma, new storm brings snow, ice along 1,500 mile corridor; 100 million affected

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A new storm will spread a swath of snow and sleet spanning more than 1,500 miles from northern Texas and Oklahoma to southeastern New York state and Massachusetts during Wednesday into Thursday.

Daily activities will be affected for close to 100 million people.

Major travel disruptions are in store, ranging from snow-clogged roads to many flight delays and cancellations. The flight disruptions will likely extend well beyond areas directly affected by the storm as crews and aircraft are displaced.

The atmosphere is gearing up for a rare event. The new winter storm will occur during a press of cold air invading the Central and Eastern states in the wake a storm that produced snow and ice Tuesday night and rain Wednesday.

According to AccuWeather.com Chief Meteorologist Elliot Abrams, "Usually when cold air follows a storm, the atmosphere just dries out."

"Instead of a sweep of cold, dry air, we get the cold, but not the dry this time."

Rain will change to snow and sleet along much of the 1,500-mile swath as the new storm rides northeastward.

While snowfall will be light in northern Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, the snow will fall heavily at times from the middle part of the Mississippi Valley to the Ohio Valley, central Appalachians and mid-Atlantic coast.
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A large part of Kentucky and West Virginia will receive 6 inches of snow with locally higher amounts possible. This same 6-inch swath will also reach eastward across southern Pennsylvania and into New Jersey.

Ice Cube

Great Lakes ice cover over 88%, more than this time last year

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© Detroit Free PressGreat Lakes total ice cover: 88.3%
How rough a winter has it been on the Great Lakes? Ask the crew of the freighter Arthur M. Anderson — whenever they make it back to port.

The 767-foot bulk carrier, due in port a week ago, was only just west of St. Ignace in northern Lake Michigan as of Monday afternoon, making its way to its winter layover port in Sturgeon Bay, Wis. The Anderson — famously the last ship to receive communication from the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald before it sank during an intense storm on Lake Superior in November 1975, killing all 29 crew members — was stuck in ice west of the Mackinac Bridge all day Sunday. A U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker had to free it, the boatnerd.com reported.

Sun

Relentless heat plagues Boulia, Queensland

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© News.com.au
Here's how hot it is today near Boulia, a small town of 230 in the Queensland outback which locals like to tell you is halfway between Melbourne and Darwin.

It's so hot that even inside with the air-conditioning on, the floorboards are pretty much too hot to walk on. In fact, it's so hot that you can barely even tell when the air-conditioner is on.

"We have to walk outside to check," local grazier Ann Britton tells news.com.au. That's when the furnace hits you in the face.

Ann Britton runs Goodwood Station just outside Boulia with her husband Rick. It's half a million acres, give or take. Every summer's a hot summer in far western Queensland, but lately even the locals have been sweating.

Today the mercury is heading for 45 degrees, which is hotter than it has been most days. But it's not the temperature extremes that have made the last few weeks unbearable. It's the relentlessness of the heat. The fact it's there one day after the next after the next.

For 25 days straight now, the mercury has nudged or exceeded 40 degrees. "We normally get a break," Britton says. "Not this year. The heat just seems to be really claustrophobic, a really burning heat which just saps everything out of you.

Think about that for a minute if you live in one of the southern capitals. You know how we talk about heatwaves when it's been 40 degrees for a day or two? Well imagine it's been 40 for 25 days straight. Not only that, but it's been above 42 degrees for 10 days straight now. Don't mean to go all Crocodile Dundee on you, but that's not a heatwave, THIS is a heatwave.

The Brittons say they've turned a little Mexican in their attempt to beat the heat. "We get a bit of a reprieve from the heat in the morning so we're up early and work till lunchtime. Then we have a break in the middle of the day, a long siesta, and we might not go back to work till 4 or 5 in the afternoon."

Snowflake Cold

Impending Ice Age? North America braces for yet another winter snow storm

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© Reuters/Mike Segar A man stands in falling snow at the shore of the Hudson River in the New York City suburban town of Nyack, New York March 1, 2015.
Winter's relentless battering was poised on Monday to hit northern states across the nation with more snow and ice as the season's bitter weather stretched its reach into the early days of March.

A fresh storm was due to stretch from Wyoming to Michigan on Monday evening and cross all the way to Maine by Tuesday, meteorologists predicted.

Warmer air mixing in from the South will create messy conditions of icy rain in parts of the Midwest and Northeast, said Accuweather.com.

Icy travel conditions are expected in St. Louis, Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York and Boston, the weather website said.

Three to four more inches of snow is likely with the next storm in Connecticut and Massachusetts, the National Weather Service said.

Boston, which posted its coldest February on record and its second-snowiest ever, was likely to see two to four inches of new snow on top of the more than 102 inches recorded so far this winter.

Comment: Despite the desperate propaganda from the global warmists, this year's harsh winter shows no signs of abating soon.


Arrow Down

Record low February temperature set in Cuba

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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.

Attention

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

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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


Snowflake Cold

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

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© 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."

Magic Wand

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

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
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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


Cloud Lightning

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

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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?