Extreme Temperatures
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Health

Six people die as blizzards hit northern Japan


Agence France-Presse
Sun, 03 Mar 2013 09:17 UTC
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© AFP PhotoSnow-covered rooftops across a neighborhood in Tokyo on February 6, 2013. At least six people died in a spate of snow-related incidents as blizzards swept across the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido over the weekend, police and news reports said Sunday.
At least six people died in a spate of snow-related incidents as blizzards swept across the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido over the weekend, police and news reports said Sunday.

A 40-year-old woman and her three teenaged children were found dead late Saturday in a car buried under snow in the town of Nakashibetsu, eastern Hokkaido, a local police spokesman said.

They are believed to have died of carbon monoxide poisoning as the car's exhaust pipe and was blocked by snow and the windows were up, Kyodo News said, adding that snowfalls of more than two metres (6.6 feet) were recorded in the area.
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Ice Cube

Massive ice balls attracting attention along Lake Michigan


MyFox Chicago
Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:00 UTC
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Chicago - People in Michigan are enjoying a very cool winter sight.

Massive ice balls are washing ashore. They are created when pieces of ice break away from ice floes in the lake and are rounded off by waves.

Thousands of them have piled up near Good Harbor Bay where they have become quite an attraction for local residents and tourists.

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Snowflake

Record snowfall buries parts of Japan under 5 metres of snow


The Guardian
Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:35 UTC
Parts of Japan have been covered in more than five metres of snow this week. But the world record is still more than double that

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© The Asahi ShimbunSnow to the depth of 5.15 metres is recorded in Aomori, Japan on February 21st.
This is proving a freakish year for weather, but Japan is having an odder time of it than most. The country has had a record winter for snow, and northern Japan is currently coated by unprecedented volumes of the white stuff - more than five metres at higher altitudes, with houses turned into igloos and roads into snow tunnels.

In the Hakkoda mountains the depth of snow has been measured at 5.61 metres - a record for Japan. Even lower down, in the city of Aomori, snow is standing at almost 1.5 metres and bulldozers are having to work round the clock.

Comment: From the BBC:



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Snowflake Cold

Winter of discontent: Germany endures darkest winter in 43 years


Spiegel Online
Tue, 26 Feb 2013 07:01 UTC
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The days may be getting longer, but there's still not a hint of springtime sunshine in Germany. Weather data shows that this winter has been the gloomiest in 43 years. If the sun doesn't start shining soon, it will be the darkest winter on record. Here, a hiker in January in Bavaria, which is typically one of Germany's sunnier regions in winter.
The days may be getting longer, but there's still not a hint of springtime sunshine in Germany. Weather data shows that this winter has been the gloomiest in 43 years. If the sun doesn't start shining soon, it will be the darkest winter on record.

Winter in Germany is typically a grim affair, dark and steeped in the kind of chilly damp that goes straight to the bones -- and, unhappily, to the psyche. But many residents feel that this winter has been particularly hard to bear.

Meteorologists say that's because it has been the darkest winter in more than four decades. Less than an average of 100 hours of sunshine have been recorded so far over the course of the meteorological winter, which runs from December through February, said National Meteorological Service (DWD) spokesman Gerhard Lux on Monday. The winter average is an already measly 160 hours of sun.

That makes it the gloomiest winter in at least 43 years. The winter of 1970, with an average of just 104 hours of sunshine, was the bleakest since records began in 1951. But if the sun fails to show itself much more this year, the winter of 2012-2013, will "probably reach a new all-time low," Lux told news agency AFP.
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Germans like these runners in Dresden are accustomed to grim winters, but this one has been particularly hard to bear. The weather has become progressively gloomier since winter began. While sunshine levels nationwide were 10 percent below average in December, they dropped to 50 percent in December and are between 60 and 70 percent so far for February.
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Snowflake Cold

Global Warming? 'Truly a historic blizzard,' weather service says

Brad Lendon and Steve Almasy
CNN
Tue, 26 Feb 2013 00:00 UTC

Phillip Prince has been sitting in his tractor-trailer, stuck on Interstate 40 near Groom, Texas, for hours.

Nine hours and four minutes, to be precise.

Prince and his co-driver were due in California at 1 p.m. Tuesday, where they were going to drop off 25,000 pounds of frozen pizza.

But then they came upon what the National Weather Service is calling "a crippling, historic blizzard."

"It was pretty nasty when we first got into it," he said. "But then it turned into a whiteout."

Prince, who has been a long-haul driver for nine years, says he's never seen it this bad, as he explained his situation on CNN.com's iReport. The line of trucks is five to six miles long.

It's frustrating, the west-bound driver said, because he can see snowplows in the east-bound lanes. He hopes to get moving soon; he's down to eating his last box of Lucky Charms.

The good news is that it has stopped snowing. The winds are still 55 mph, but the skies are clear though the roads are not.

The storm has been moving east during the day, dumping records amount of snow along the way.

In Woodward, a town in northwest Oklahoma, firefighters were unable to reach a burning house because they ran into 4-foot snow drifts. The snowplow sent to dig them out also became stuck, Matt Lehenbauer, the director of Woodward, said Monday afternoon.
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Snowflake Cold

2 killed as blizzard blasts southern Plains, U.S.

Doyle Rice
USA Today
Mon, 25 Feb 2013 06:53 UTC
Blizzard warnings issued in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
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Emergency personnel help a stranded motorist on the I-40 service road Feb. 25 in Amarillo, Texas.
A ferocious blizzard blasted the southern Plains with heavy snow and high winds Monday, burying much of the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles under more than a foot of snow, wreaking travel havoc on the roads and in the air.

Overnight Monday and through the day Tuesday, the storm will slowly slog to the north and east, bringing a swath of snow across Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, the National Weather Service reported.

"This storm will have a huge impact, with additional heavy snows likely over portions of eastern Kansas and northern Missouri which received very heavy snowfall amounts last week," weather service meteorologist Robert Oravec wrote in an online bulletin.

The storm is being blamed for two deaths on Monday. In northwest Kansas, a 21-year-old man's SUV hit an icy patch on Interstate 70 and overturned. And in the northwest town of Woodward, Okla., heavy snow caused a roof to collapse, killing one inside the home.

Among the big cities that will see accumulating snow Tuesday are Kansas City, Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit, according to AccuWeather. The heaviest snow is forecast Tuesday around Kansas City, which should easily see a foot of snow. Chicago should receive about 3-6 inches of snow.

The storm will continue to dump snow across the Lower Great Lakes region Tuesday night and into northern New York State and northern New England on Wednesday, Oravec says.
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Snowflake

2nd blizzard in less than two weeks hits the U.S. Plains states - 'worse than the last one'


Yahoo! News
Mon, 25 Feb 2013 08:36 UTC
Blizzard conditions slammed parts of the central Plains Monday, forcing the closure of highways in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles and sending public works crews scrambling for salt and sand anew just days after a massive storm blanketed the region with snow.
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National Weather Service officials in Kansas and Oklahoma issued blizzard warnings and watches through late Monday as the storm packing snow and high winds tracked eastward across West Texas toward Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. Forecasters also warned of possible tornadoes further southeast.

Snow covered Amarillo, Texas, where forecasters said up to 18 inches could fall, accompanied by wind gusts up to 65 mph. Paul Braun, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Transport, said whiteout conditions and drifting snow had made all roads in the Texas Panhandle impassable. Interstate 40 was closed from Amarillo to the Oklahoma state line.

"It's just a good day to stay home," Braun said.

"This is one of the worst ones we've had for a while," he said. "And we kind of know snow up here."
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Igloo

Northern Hemisphere sets new, all-time record cold temperature: -96.1°F In Oymyakon Siberia !!

P Gosselin
NoToricksZone
Sat, 23 Feb 2013 00:09 UTC
That's -71.2°C, and it shatters the previous record of -68°C (-90.4°F) set in 1933! Hat-tip DirkH.

UPDATE: Russian media confirms the new record! (In Russian)

There's been a lot of confusion over the last couple of days concerning a record low temperature allegedly just recorded in Siberia. News reports in the mainstream media made it sound like the reading was recorded decades ago, or they just muddled it. For example The Mail had a feature here. No mention that it's a record set just days ago.

But now it appears that the record was actually set on February 19, in Oymyakon, Siberia.

The confusion is understandable, as the news just doesn't square with the global warming narrative.
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Snowflake Cold

Ice Age babies! The babies who nap in sub-zero temperatures


BBC
Fri, 22 Feb 2013 15:25 UTC
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Would you put your baby or toddler outside in the freezing cold for their lunchtime nap? Most Nordic parents wouldn't give it a second thought. For them it's part of their daily routine.

Daytime temperatures this winter in Stockholm have regularly dropped to -5C (23F) but it's still common to see children left outside by their parents for a sleep in the pram.

Wander through the snowy city and you'll see buggies lined up outside coffee shops while parents sip on lattes inside.

And if you are visiting friends and your child needs a nap, you may be offered the garden or balcony instead of a bedroom.
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Snowflake

Snow in Phoenix? Crazy weather hits Arizona


ABC15.com
Thu, 21 Feb 2013 07:44 UTC
The snow started falling around Arizona during the early morning hours Wednesday and by mid-morning was even falling near the Valley of the Sun.

Viewers were quick to grab videos of the snow falling outside their homes and send them in to ABC15.

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