Extreme Temperatures
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Igloo

China chills hit 28-year low, trapping ships in ice

Cold Freeze
© XinhuaResidents walk in snow in Dexing city, Jiangxi province on Jan 4. Snow and icy rain pelted Chinese provinces of Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Zhejiang and Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region on Friday and is expected to continue over the next three days.
Shanghai - Temperatures in China have plunged to their lowest in almost three decades, cold enough to freeze coastal waters and trap 1,000 ships in ice, official media said at the weekend.

Since late November the country has shivered at an average of minus 3.8 degrees Celsius, 1.3 degrees colder than the previous average, and the chilliest in 28 years, state news agency Xinhua said on Saturday, citing the China Meteorological Administration.

Bitter cold has even frozen the sea in Laizhou Bay on the coast of Shandong province in the east, stranding nearly 1,000 ships, the China Daily newspaper reported.

Zheng Dong, chief meteorologist at the Yantai Marine Environment Monitoring Center under the State Oceanic Administration, told the paper that the area under ice in Laizhou Bay was 291 square km this week.

Igloo

More than 100 dead as cold snap hits India

India Cold Snap
© AAP Police say more than 100 people, many homeless or poor, have died as a cold snap hits India.
Police say more than 100 people have died of exposure as northern India deals with historically cold temperatures.

Police spokesman Surendra Srivastava said on Thursday at least 114 people have died from the cold in the state of Uttar Pradesh, at least 23 of them in the previous 24 hours.

Srivastava said many of the dead were poor people whose bodies were found on footpaths or in parks.

The weather department said temperatures in the state were 4 to 10 degrees below normal.

Temperatures in New Delhi, which borders Uttar Pradesh, hit a high on Wednesday of 9.8 degrees Celsius, the lowest maximum temperature in the capital since 1969.

Igloo

Beijing gripped in cold snap

Cold Snap in Beijing
© Xinhua/Shen JizhongA citizen walks in snow on a street in Yantai, east China's Shandong Province, Jan. 2, 2013. Yantai witnessed the first snow in this year on Wednesday.
Beijing gripped in a cold snap is experiencing one of the coldest New Year periods in the local meteorological history, according to the municipal observatory on Wednesday.

The observatory issued the yellow low-temperature weather alert on Tuesday afternoon. The warning is second only to red alert.

It forecast that the cold snap in accompany with powerful wind would drive down the lower temperature to minus 14 degrees Celsius on Wednesday, approaching the extreme record of minus 16 degrees Celsius.

The temperature in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to the north of Beijing has dropped to minus 40 degrees Celsius with snow on ground piling up 50 centimeters in some areas of the Greater Hinggan Mountains.

The rare winter cold caused frost on expressways in eastern Shandong Province, which has also issued yellow icy road alert. The provincial observatory said the cold snap is likely to linger till Friday.

Igloo

Record cold snap grips Korean Peninsula

Cold Snap in Korea
© Yonhap News Agency
Seoul -- A prolonged cold spell sent the mercury plummeting nationwide on Thursday, with temperatures dropping to their lowest levels in decades, the country's weather agency said.

The South Korean capital city of Seoul recorded a temperature of minus 16.5 C in the morning, the lowest in 27 years since a minus 16.9 C was recorded in 1986, the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) said.

A cold wave watch for Seoul and its surrounding Gyeonggi Province, and a cold wave alert for the central part of the country have been issued, the agency said.

The morning low dropped to minus 24.3 C, the lowest temperature in the country, in Cheorwon, a mountainous town near the inter-Korean border, according to the KMA. Temperatures were recorded at minus 24.1 C in Paju, a border town in Gyeonggi Province, and minus 22.6 C in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province.

Handcuffs

ICE agents arrest 245 alleged pedophiles; 44 children rescued

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© Alex Wong/Getty ImagesU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton (R) speaks as National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) CEO John Ryan (L) listens during a news conference on Jan. 3, 2013 at the ICE headquarters in Washington, DC.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents announced today they have rescued 44 children from sexual abuse as part of a child pornography investigation that netted 245 arrests over five weeks late last year.

Agents have identified an additional 79 individuals who have been abused as children including 24 victims who now may be adults and are seeking the public's help to identify individuals who are alleged to be sexually abusing young children, with the images posted on the Internet.

"Many times, our investigations into people who possess and trade child pornography reveal new material that points to the ongoing sexual abuse of children. In these cases, our primary objective is to rescue the victim from their horrific situation. And our next step is to arrest and seek prosecution for their abusers," said ICE Director John Morton in a statement.

Among those arrested: Bradley Vaine from Fresno, Calif., who was allegedly abusing a 7-year-old girl who suffered from mental disabilities. Also arrested was Samuel Gueydan from Clovis, Calif., who allegedly had over 1.2 million images and 7,000 videos of child pornography on his computer, ICE said.

The investigation was dubbed Operation Sunflower to commemorate the anniversary of a case where agents discovered evidence that a child was in imminent danger of being raped by a relative. According to ICE, the tip initially came from Dutch investigators who found Internet postings suggesting the girl was in imminent danger.

Igloo

Global Warming Strikes New Mexico!

You know that global warming is hitting hard, when New Mexico wakes up to -33C temperatures.
Freezing Temperatures
© Wunderground.com
Source

Snowflake Cold

India: more than 100 die of exposure as temperatures drop in the north

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© AP Photo/Channi AnandA homeless child sits wrapped in a towel in his temporary home under a flyover in Jammu, India, on Jan. 2,2013.
Police say more than 100 people have died of exposure as northern India deals with historically cold temperatures.

Police spokesman Surendra Srivastava said Thursday that at least 114 people have died from the cold in the state of Uttar Pradesh. At least 23 of those died in the past 24 hours.

Srivastava said many of the dead were poor people whose bodies were found on sidewalks or in parks.

Igloo

January 1 snow coverage sets new record for U.S.

Snow January US
© NOAA
With 67 percent of the contiguous U.S. covered by snow, the first day of 2013 marked the widest coverage of snow the U.S. has seen on Jan. 1 in the past ten years.

(Note: Percentages of snow coverage have only been calculated since 2004.)

The previous record was set in 2010, when the new year saw 61 percent of the U.S. beneath snow. That same season was marked by the blizzard nicknamed 'Snowmageddon,' in the mid-Atlantic, which set a long list of records in cities such as Philadelphia, DC and Baltimore.

"As far as New Year's Days go, I think that our snow cover is very healthy," AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist Jack Boston said.

The lack of snow coverage since record keeping began in 2004, with the exception of 2010, have been an anomaly, Boston explained.

Igloo

Unseasonable snow falls in South Island, New Zealand

Collapse Bridge
© Hokitika Guardian A central section of this bridge near Harihari on the West Coast was carried away by the storm-swollen Wanganui River.
Gale force winds, torrential rain, thunderstorms and now unseasonable snow have pounded the South Island.

Snow fell on the Lindis Pass in Otago overnight, forcing travellers to abandon their vehicles near the summit.

Sergeant Mark Booth of southern police communications said Lindis Pass was closed and eight vehicles were stranded.

"But I imagine at this time of year the snow's not going to last long."

The centre of the island and the West Coast have "copped it" over the last few days, Mr Booth said.

The West Coast road via Lewis Pass through Murchison had closed, forcing travellers to make a seven hour detour around Blenheim and Kaikoura to get to the east coast of the island.

Last night severe thunderstorm warnings were issued for the Westport area as the last of the system moved through.

Nearly 600mm of rain has fallen on the West Coast in the past 48 hours.

A vital one-lane bridge on State Highway 6, just north of Harihari, was washed away yesterday.

Ice Cube

'Forget global warming, Alaska is headed for an ice age'

Alaska is going rogue on climate change. Defiant as ever, the state that gave rise to Sarah Palin is bucking the mainstream yet again: While global temperatures surge hotter and the ice-cap crumbles, the nation's icebox is getting even icier. That may not be news to Alaskans coping with another round of 50-below during the coldest winter in two decades, or to the mariners locked out of the Bering Sea this spring by record ice growth.

Then again, it might. The 49th state has long been labeled one of the fastest-warming spots on the planet. But that's so 20th Century. In the first decade since 2000, the 49th state cooled 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit. But now comes cooling. Researchers blame the Decadal Oscillation, an ocean phenomenon that brought chillier surface water temperatures toward Alaska. Some contend the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is harming the state's king salmon runs, too.
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