Autumn snow extent has been steadily increasing for 50 years, due to intrusions of Arctic air going further south. last year had the largest autumn snow extent on record.
Snow cover is well above normal again this year.

Snowy owls, the big, white birds that nest in the Arctic and sometimes fly south in the fall and winter, have begun showing up in Wisconsin over the last week, captivating wildlife watchers and raising questions among scientists.

About 30 snowy sightings were reported through Wednesday in Wisconsin, according to Ryan Brady, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Natural Resources who oversees the Wisconsin eBird website.

The reports are earlier in the season and higher in number than any year on record.

"It's unprecedented," said Tom Erdman, curator of the Richter Museum of Natural History at UW-Green Bay who began conducting snowy owl research in Wisconsin in the late 1950s. "It's causing us to ask 'Why?"

The first snowy of the season was sighted Oct. 15 near Ashland in Bayfield County on Lake Superior. The next day one was seen in Crawford County in southwestern Wisconsin. On Tuesday lone snowies were reported in Kohler and Milwaukee.

And on Cat Island in Green Bay earlier this week, six snowies were seen at once, Erdman said.

The snow has gotten off to an incredible start in Siberia, where a record snowfall has paralyzed many areas of the city of Omsk, with thousands of drivers hopelessly stuck in hellish snowstorm traffic for hours.

You might say it's nothing special for Siberia, but those who know - namely weather forecasters - believe it could be the most significant snowfall in 10 years.

Imagine parking your car safely outside your house in the evening only to find it gone the next morning. The streets and vehicles have nearly disappeared under the blanket of snow, with over 40cm falling overnight. All one can currently see in Omsk is snow, snow and nothing else

Seems like summer just ended. However, already ground frost and wintry snow are gripping large parts of Europe. Parts of northern Maine have already seen their first bout of wintry precipitation in the past few days. The National Weather Service said the 138-day period without a trace of snow in Caribou that began May 24 and ended Oct. 8 was the shortest such period on record for that location.

In Marquette, Michigan, where thermometers dropped to 27°F, about 2.5 inches of snow fell this past weekend. Snow was also experienced in Ohio, Maine, New Hampshire, western New York and northwest Pennsylvania. Even though winter does not officially start until December 22, freeze watches and warnings and frost advisories have been issued from Missouri to Massachusetts, according to the Weather Channel.

It is the middle of October and governments are still insisting that we are living through record warmth and politicians around the world are about to meet up again in Paris to see if they can turn the entire human race into carbon slaves. Reality does not count, as if it ever did to politicians.

The global warming (climate change) story is getting stranger because Nature is not cooperating. It is getting colder. The plan by climate alarmists to have other scientists imprisoned for their 'global warming' skepticism is backfiring horribly, and the chief alarmist is now facing a House investigation into what has been called "the largest science scandal in US history." What did they expect when they took the outrageous step of asking the White House and Justice Department to use the RICO Act to investigate and prosecute organizations like the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, Competitive Enterprise Institute and Heartland Institute ... for the "crime" of "deceiving the American people about the risks of climate change."

A record-breaking number of pink-footed geese have arrived at the Montrose Basin Wildlife Reserve in Angus this year.

At least 85,632 of the birds have flown in from the Arctic and Iceland to stay at the Scottish Wildlife Trust site for the winter months.

Their arrival marks the start of the wintering season for Scotland's wildlife.

Staff and volunteers at the centre monitor the goose population closely to check for changes and this year's number has broken the record set last year.

Last year saw 78,970 of the birds make it to the Angus attraction, which broke the previous 2010 record of more than 65,000.

The huge number of birds taking off en masse at the beauty spot at dawn and arriving back at dusk is proving to be a draw for bird spotters and wildlife photographers with visitors numbers also seeing a significant rise.

It snowed throughout the night in Moscow last Wednesday and snowed on and off up until yesterday. The late summer warmth that had lingered for so long in western Russia was swept away dramatically - two weeks earlier than last year.

The cold air that caused this sudden change of season for Moscow had been blowing across northern Europe throughout the past week. The wind had been cold, but beyond Russia, it had been too dry to bring snow. Temperatures have, however, dropped dramatically in its wake:

Minsk shivered down to a 4 degree Celsius daytime "high"; Warsaw went down to 6C with a wind-chill; Berlin managed 9C, but also with a wind-chill. Yesterday, Amsterdam failed to reach 10C for the first time since April.

This week, a big Mediterranean storm system swept vast amounts of rain into southeastern Europe, causing flooding in Italy, Albania and Macedonia. This weather then fed into the cold air over Slovakia and Poland and - rather than rain - snow started to fall.

The Alps, northern Bavaria, Thüringen, the Vogtland region and the Erzgebirge saw most of the snow. Snow in higher regions is normal for this time of year, but this time lower lying regions also obtained some snow and that is unusual. The north west of the country also experienced some snowfall and frost, but the snow soon melted again as the ground is too warm.

Germany's northernmost peak, the Brocken, is covered in snow. And with temperatures of minus 4 degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit), it probably won't melt. The heaviest snowfall, however, was in the Alps with 28 centimeters (11 inches) of new snow. But the ski season doesn't open there for another month or so.

"It doesn't happen every year that we get snow falling in flatter areas," meteorologist Christian Herold said. While it is normal for snow to fall in Germany in October, particularly in the central uplands, Herold described the low temperatures as very unusual.

Source: dpa

Does global warming cause kidney disease? According to a study published in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases, the root cause of a mystery illness which has killed 10s of thousands of sugar cane workers in Central America might be chronic dehydration, as a result of frequent hard, manual labour in extreme heat.

According to the study;

... Despite limited resources, we documented widespread decreased kidney function in coastal communities related to years of work on coastal sugarcane/cotton plantations. The high prevalence of eGFR <60 mL/min/1.73 m2 in the coastal communities, 18% of men aged 20-60 years, indicates the severity of the epidemic in a region where there is little to offer to patients and where CKD often progresses to ESRD and death. It is noteworthy that decreased eGFR also is related to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The risk of premature death from cardiovascular disease at CKD stages 3-4 is higher than that for reaching ESRD.38, 39 This study from El Salvador, as well as the recent Nicaraguan studies,23, 24, 25 provides important clues for etiologic studies, particularly heat stress.

It is urgent to assess the causes of this severe public health problem with properly designed etiologic and clinical research. A thorough medical workup including kidney biopsies and histopathologic examinations from a small group of affected individuals in rather early stages of CKD is needed to confirm the interstitial nature of the disease and provide clues with regard to pathogenesis. Etiologic research would use random samples from a proper study base and repeated measurements of all pertinent exposures with emphasis on heat exposure, environmental and water pollutants (particularly pesticide residues and heavy metals), and amount of water intake during work and rest.

Precautionary preventive actions must be implemented already at this stage, providing sufficient water and rest for workers in hot environments. There is a threat that global warming will dramatically increase populations exposed to hard work in hot climates. If heat stress is a causal factor for CKD, this disease will be an added health risk related to climate change.

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What is your position on the climate-change debate? What would it take to change your mind?

If the answer is It would take a ton of evidence to change my mind, because my understanding is that the science is settled, and we need to get going on this important issue, that's what I thought, too. This is my story.

More than thirty years ago, I became vegan because I believed it was healthier (it's not), and I've stayed vegan because I believe it's better for the environment (it is). I haven't owned a car in ten years. I love animals; I'll gladly fly halfway around the world to take photos of them in their natural habitats.

I'm a Democrat: I think governments play a key role in helping preserve our environment for the future in the most cost-effective way possible.

Over the years, I built a set of assumptions: that Al Gore was right about global warming, that he was the David going up against the industrial Goliath. In 1993, I even wrote a book about it.

Recently, a friend challenged those assumptions. At first, I was annoyed, because I thought the science really was settled. As I started to look at the data and read about climate science, I was surprised, then shocked.

As I learned more, I changed my mind. I now think there probably is no climate crisis and that the focus on CO2 takes funding and attention from critical environmental problems. I'll start by making ten short statements that should challenge your assumptions and then back them up with an essay.

Atmospheric CO2 has risen by 100 parts per million (one part per ten thousand) over the past century. That is equivalent to packing one extra person into this Bernie "everything will be free" Sanders rally.
Experts claim that this one molecule has heated the other 10,000 molecules up by more than one degree centigrade.

In order for one molecule to heat up 10,000 other molecules by 1°C, the effective temperature of that one molecule would have to be 10,000°C - about twice the temperature of the surface of the Sun.

Only a complete moron would believe something so ludicrous, which is why they say 97% of scientists agree on this utter nonsense.