Extreme Temperatures
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Snowflake

Army rescues 2,000 tourists stranded by sudden snowfall in East Sikkim, India

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Around 2,000 tourists stranded at Thegu in East Sikkim due to sudden snowfall were rescued and evacuated by the Army personnel.
Around 2,000 tourists stranded at Thegu in East Sikkim due to sudden snowfall were rescued and evacuated by the Army personnel of Black Cat Division, Army said today.

250 tourist vehicles with around 2,000 tourists were stranded at Thegu, below Nathu La, due to unexpected and sudden snowfall on Saturday, an Army press release said.

Troops stationed nearby, quickly rose to the occasion and helped to push the tourist vehicles across the steep slopes and rescued the tourists.

The weather deteriorated further in the evening and despite heavy snowfall and hailstorm, the troops cleared all the tourist vehicles by 7 PM on Saturday, the release said, adding all the tourists safely returned to Gangtok by nightfall.

Source: Press Trust of India

Snowflake Cold

Flagstaff hit by late spring snow in Arizona

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© Kathryn C. BolingerFrom Hidden Meadow Ranch in the White Mountains.

Flagstaff is blanketed in white after the National Weather Service confirms at least five inches of snow fell on Saturday.

Flagstaff hasn't seen this much snow since Christmas.

Conditions were most dangerous on the highways in the afternoon, with low visibility and blowing snow and winds up to 50 miles an hour in some spots.

In downtown Flagstaff, the aftermath left parked cars covered in snow, and locals breaking out the winter wardrobe again.

The huge temperature drop caught some people off-guard.

"It's snowing here, it's crazy!" said Sherry Neimier, who just moved to Arizona two weeks ago from Florida. "I didn't think I'd see snow, but I love it. It's cold as can be but it's awesome."

But some locals say they'll see snow on the mountains sometimes as late as July, so they're prepared for a storm anytime during the year in Flagstaff.

Igloo

Oh! The Irony! "Too much spring ice threatens Alaskan polar bears"

Five meters of ice - about 16 feet thick - is threatening the survival of polar bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea region along Alaska's Arctic coast, according to Dr. Susan J. Crockford, an evolutionary biologist in British Columbia who has studied polar bears for most of her 35-year career.

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Female polar bear with cubs.
That's because the thick ice ridges could prevent ringed seals, the bears' major prey, from creating breathing holes they need to survive in the frigid waters, Crockford told CNSNews.com.

"Prompted by reports of the heaviest sea ice conditions on the East Coast 'in decades' and news that ice on the Great Lakes is, for mid-April, the worst it's been since records began, I took a close look at the ice thickness charts for the Arctic," Crockford noted in her Polar Bear Science blog on April 18th.

"Sea ice charts aren't a guarantee that this heavy spring ice phenomenon is developing in the Beaufort, but they could be a warning," she wrote, noting that they "don't bode well" for the Beaufort bears.

"What happens is that really thick ice moves in because currents and winds from Greenland and the Canadian islands push it against the shore," Crockford told CNSNews.com.

Snowflake Cold

Winter remains in Romania - "It's as if we were preparing for Christmas - not Easter"

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Winter in April - In some places the snow measures 30 cm (12 inches).


(Google translate) - Just days before Easter , on April 14, it snowed like at Christmas. - road workers were out working just like in a regular month of winter !

Romania was under code yellow alert for snow and rain in 12 districts in the country !

Everyone hoped the snow would pass quickly, but on Friday it began snowing again, dumping 10 cm of snow on Predeal .

Tourist : "I got winter in the mountains, we came to leave for the summer and winter. I'm not ready , I had to change the tires.... two days of rain and sunny spring and summer and then two days - yesterday and today - two authentic winter days .

Snowflake Cold

Winter suddenly returns again for Russia's Urals

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© RIA Novosti/Aleksandr KondratukPedestrians cross the street during a heavy blizzard in Chelyabinsk, Russia
Russia's Urals region has been hit with freak winter weather, causing massive traffic jams, flight delays, power blackouts and school closures.

Just when everybody in the cities of Ekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk thought they had waved winter good-bye and was anticipating greener spring weather, blizzards dragging the region back to winter.

Having heard the forecast for snow, internet users were taking photos of the frail Urals spring that was proclaimed doomed by meteorologists.

Those would later be used in "before and after" collages with "goodbye summer" hashtags.

Arrow Down

UK Barn owls suffer worst year on record due to bitterly cold spring of 2013

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© Marlene Finlayson / AlamyA barn owl in flight.
Monitoring results show species struggled in the bitterly cold spring of 2013

Barn owls suffered their worst year on record in 2013 as they struggled in the bitterly cold spring, conservationists have said.

Results from barn owl monitoring schemes around the UK revealed the number of sites where nesting took place last year was significantly down in every area compared to previous years, and some surveys found no nests with eggs in at all.

Overall the number of occupied nests was down 71% on the average across all previous years, according to the Barn Owl Trust, which collated the information from 21 independent groups stretching from Jersey in the Channel Islands to south-west Scotland.

A survey in Berkshire which normally finds 14 nests in use and a surveyor in Yorkshire who normally finds 25-30 occupied nests both found none at all, while surveys in Buckinghamshire and Sussex were both down more than 90% on normal levels.

Conservationists described the situation as the "worst year ever recorded" for the flagship farmland species.

Ice Cube

Ice shifts bridge in New Brunswick, Canada

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Ice moving a Bridge In Sainte-Marie de Kent, New-Brunswick, Canada. The bridge has been moved 3 ft - 6 ft.

Ice Cube

Antarctic iceberg six times the size of Manhattan in open ocean tracked by scientists

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© NASA/REUTERSThe B-31 Iceberg as it separated from a rift in Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier
Scientists are monitoring one of the largest icebergs in existence, after it broke off from an Antarctic glacier and began to head into the open ocean.

The iceberg covers about 255 square miles, making it roughly six times the size of Manhattan - and is up to 500 meters thick.

Known as B31, glacial crack that created the iceberg was first detected in 2011 but the iceberg separated from Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier in November.

NASA glaciologist Kelly Brunt said that the iceberg is not currently presenting a danger, but needs to be continually monitored.

"It's one that's large enough that it warrants monitoring. There is not a lot of shipping traffic down there. We're not particularly concerned about shipping lanes. We know where all the big ones are."

Snowflake Cold

Third coldest start to a year on record in US

US temperatures through April 23 are the third coldest on record

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Generated by :

./ghcn.exe US23042014.txt through=0423 > US23042014_through_0423.csv

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YearTDeptUS.png (688ร—531)


Igloo

UN issues new 15 year climate tipping point - but UN issued tipping points in 1982 and another 10-year tipping point in 1989!

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© Space.com
According to the Boston Globe, the United Nations has issued a new climate "tipping point" by which the world must act to avoid dangerous global warming.

The Boston Globe noted on April 16, 2014: "The world now has a rough deadline for action on climate change. Nations need to take aggressive action in the next 15 years to cut carbon emissions, in order to forestall the worst effects of global warming, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

Once again, the world is being warned of an ecological or climate "tipping point" by the UN.

As early as 1982, the UN was issuing a two decade tipping point. UN official Mostafa Tolba, executive director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP), warned on May 11, 1982, the "world faces an ecological disaster as final as nuclear war within a couple of decades unless governments act now." According to Tolba in 1982, lack of action would bring "by the turn of the century, an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust."