In some areas the snow has already exceeded 30 inches.

Winter hits full-force. The eastern half of France is under code orange for snow, and in some areas the snow has already exceeded 30 inches.

Residents of the town of Saint Etienne were surprised and unprepared for the snow.

Their streets became impassable, and cars remained snowbound at the entrance to the city.

Thanks to Alex Tanase for this link

Perhaps you've been wondering why the alarmists have been so shrill lately? It's not because the climate is overheating, to the contrary it's beginning to cool - and so their sham is about to be blown out into the open for everyone to see.

Evaluated data from the Austrian ZAMG meteorological institute now unmistakably show that the Alps have been cooling over the last 20 years and longer, "at some places massively" thus crassly contradicting all the loud claims, projections, and model sceanrios made earlier by global warming scientists.

Over 50,000 people were mobilized Tuesday to clear snow in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, after the city's worst snowstorm in more than 50 years continued past 60 hours.

Since Saturday, Harbin proper has seen an average daily snowfall of 11.4 mm, the highest level since daily weather recording began in the city in 1961, according to Harbin's weather station.

Residents, police and volunteers have helped to clear snow and ice on the streets, and special snow clearing machines and vehicles have also been mobilized, according to the city government.

Education authorities requested that all kindergartens, primary and high schools in the urban area close on Monday and Tuesday, as the accumulated snow on streets exceeded 10 cm in some areas.

The National Meteorological Center on Tuesday issued a blue alert for snowstorms, forecasting continuous snow in the eastern part of Heilongjiang for the next 24 hours. Snowfall is expected to reach 10 to 14 mm by 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning.

Severe hail storms sweep across south-east Queensland with gale-force winds and hailstones the size of golf balls

Australia's Gold Coast has been hit by a heavy storm, sending golf ball-sized hailstones crashing to the ground and causing damage to cars and homes.

Video shows the hailstones plummeting to the ground in a garden. The balls fall with such force that they bounce a few feet up into the air again.

The State Emergency Service has received 350 calls for help after the storm hit in the afternoon with gusts of up to 86 mph.

The Gold Coast experiences substantial summer thunderstorms and heavy showers occasionally lasting up to a few weeks at a time giving locals "the Summer blues".

Long-range weather forecasters have warned that Britain should prepare for heavy and persistent snow for up to THREE MONTHS with winter 2013 set to be the worst in more than 60 years.

The latest detailed forecasts for winter 2013 ALL point towards months of relentless extreme cold with heavy snow 'extremely likely' across the country.

Arctic air will roar in from the North Pole later this week, triggering the start of the worst winter in many people's lifetimes.

Experts in long-range weather forecasting said the WHOLE of Britain should be prepared for this winter to be the most severe since 1947, which saw the UK hit by relentless snow and some of the lowest temperatures on record.

When you consider that a bunch of global warming propagandists, the 19^th Conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, to reduce "greenhouse gas" emissions has been meeting in Warsaw this month are still claiming that we are in the midst of global warming, you have a demonstration of how great a hoax has been perpetrated on the peoples of the world. These people and the scientists who supplied the falsified and inaccurate climate models to support the global warming claims have committed a criminal fraud.

Bit by bit, the truth in the form of increasingly cold weather is causing people to wonder whether they are being duped. The media has either buried the stories of extraordinary cold events or continues to tip-toe around the truth.

An example is a recent Wall Street Journal article by Robert Lee Hotz, "Strange Doings on the Sun", Hotz reported that "Researchers are puzzled. They can't tell if the lull is temporary or the onset of a decades-long decline, which might ease global warming a bit by altering the sun's brightness or the wavelengths of its light."

After describing the fact that the Sun has entered a period of reduced sunspot activity, always a precursor to a cooling cycle and even an ice age, Dr. David Hathaway, head of the solar physics group at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, is quoted as saying "It may give us a brief respite from global warming, but it is not going to stop it."

Plainly said, you cannot trust what government scientists have to say about global warming. The government's policy since the late 1980s has been that global warming is real and poses a great threat to the Earth. What Dr. Hathaway and other "warmists" are desperately trying to ignore is the fact that the Earth entered a natural and predictable cooling cycle around 1997 or 1998. It has been cooling ever since!

Winter weather brought frigid temperatures to Calgary on Saturday, with a little more snow expected to fall before the end of the night.

As blustery conditions dropped another layer of the white stuff on the city, police reported about 133 vehicle accidents by 7 p.m., six of which involving minor injuries, said Const. Stephen Vaney.

Outside of the city, meanwhile, the winter blast wreaked havoc on roads and highways, causing crashes and pileups.

A winter storm warning remained in effect for the Red Deer area, though Environment Canada ended its snow fall warning for Calgary, forecasting that about two centimetres would hit the city before the late evening. Temperatures dropped to nearly -13C, or -22 with the wind chill.

Earlier Saturday, havoc on roads and highways outside of Calgary kept emergency crews busy.

A 30-vehicle pileup near Crossfield on QE2 was caused after a semi-truck jackknifed and another crash closed lanes to travel for hours.

Stranded motorists were removed from the scene and some were taken to a Crossfield church to stay warm, police say.

Sunday marked the first measurable snow day in Valdez and it was a record breaker according to the National Weather Service.

A respectable 24.4 inches of snow fell Sunday, beating the old November 10 record of 19.1 inches set in 1994.

But before the Valdez Buccaneer Ski team trades in water skis for snow skis, it is worth mentioning that Sunday also broke the record for precipitation on that date, with the weather service reporting 2.10 inches of rain mixing with that record snow.

"The old record precipitation from November 10 was 1.77 inches from 1976," the weather service website said. "This brings the total precipitation for the year to 86.94 inches...which is the third highest annual total."

The mercury is set to plunge below -10C (14F) in parts with wintry showers poised to hit huge swathes of the UK.

Forecasters warned that a mass of bitterly cold air from the Arctic is set to smother the country.

Up to four inches of snow will carpet parts of the North while the first flurries are expected in central and southern regions.

The bleak news comes as long-range forecasters warn that Britain could be crippled by a "record-breaking and historical" big freeze this winter. Prolonged cold weather and relentless heavy snowfall threaten to grind the country to a halt until the beginning of spring.

Remote parts of the North - including the Cairngorm mountains in Scotland - could see the mercury plummet as low as -15C next Tuesday.

Jonathan Powell, forecaster for Vantage Weather Services, said the worst weather is due to hit during the middle of next week.

He warned that a ferocious "Polar plunge" of bitterly cold winds could see overnight temperatures dive to -10C with windchill in the North while the South will shiver in lows of -5C.

Athens broke a record low temperature Thursday that previously stood for over 100 years.

The temperature dropped to 23 degrees at 5:48 a.m. Wednesday morning in Athens which broke the record low of 24 degrees previously set in 1911.

The cold temperatures are a result of an arctic airmass that moved southward into the U.S. from Canada.

Atlanta did not break a record Wednesday, but did see its coldest temperature, 28, since March.