A bitterly cold air mass spread across the western states and into the Plains and Midwest during the first week of December. One of the coldest temperatures recorded happened the morning of Saturday, Dec. 7, when the temperature in Jordan, Montana dropped as low as -42!

In some cities, the frigid air mass has been the coldest seen in years or has broken daily record lows. Here's a few examples:

Feeling chilly? Here's cold comfort: You could be in East Antarctica which new data says set a record for "soul-crushing" cold.

Try 135.8 degrees Fahrenheit below zero; that's 93.2 degrees below zero Celsius, which sounds only slightly toastier. Better yet, don't try it. That's so cold scientists say it hurts to breathe.

A new look at NASA satellite data revealed that Earth set a new record for coldest temperature recorded. It happened in August 2010 when it hit -135.8 degrees. Then on July 31 of this year, it came close again: -135.3 degrees. The old record had been -128.6 degrees, which is -89.2 degrees Celsius.
Ice scientist Ted Scambos at the National Snow and Ice Data Center said the new record is "50 degrees colder than anything that has ever been seen in Alaska or Siberia or certainly North Dakota."

"It's more like you'd see on Mars on a nice summer day in the poles," Scambos said, from the American Geophysical Union scientific meeting in San Francisco Monday, where he announced the data. "I'm confident that these pockets are the coldest places on Earth."

In November 2013 the sun showed signs of more activity as sunspot number (SSN) was 77.6. This solar cycle month (the 60th of the current cycle) was therefore "only" 32% below the level of a normally active sun. Just as a reminder: February 2013 was 66% below the mean value of all the previous observed cycles 1-23! Compared to the mean (blue) the current cycle (red) appears as follows:

After cold rain and winds lashed the Southwest and other parts of the country Friday, millions of residents hunkered down for icy conditions expected to last through the weekend as the cold snap was forecast to continue causing problems and trekking northeast.

Face-stinging sleet, thick snow and blustery winds led to slick road conditions, school closures, power outages and event cancellations as the wintry blast dropped temperatures to freezing and below from Texas to Ohio to Tennessee on Friday.

In California, four people died of hypothermia in the San Francisco Bay Area while the region was gripped by freezing temperatures.

The weather created a strangely blank landscape out of normally sun-drenched North Texas: Mostly empty highways were covered in a sometimes impassable frost.

It forced the cancellation of Sunday's Dallas Marathon, which was expected to draw 25,000 runners, some of whom had trained for months. A quarter of a million customers in North Texas were left without power, and many businesses told employees to stay home to avoid the hazardous roads.

Meanwhile, around 7 inches of snow fell in northeast Arkansas and the Missouri boot heel, according to the National Weather Service in Memphis. Ice accumulated on trees and power lines in Memphis and the rest of West Tennessee after layers of sleet fell throughout the region Friday.

The storm dumped a foot of snow and more in some areas of Illinois, with police scrambling to respond to dozens of accidents and forced scores of schools to remain closed.

On Nov. 17, Cash Lambert filled this column with an alarming call to act now on global warming.

But Mr. Lambert fails to make his case. Why? Simply regurgitating "conventional wisdom" just doesn't suffice when that conventional wisdom is just plain wrong.

For example, did you know that ... 1) the earth hasn't warmed for 17 years? 2) the Pacific Ocean is cooling and Antarctic ice is at 30-year highs? 3) there's no conclusive evidence that man-made greenhouse gases cause warming? 4) higher CO2 levels and modest warming would be good for the planet? And 5) sea levels are extremely unlikely to rise materially in the intermediate term, if ever?

Why haven't you likely heard all this before? It's because of the conventional-wisdom sources - a powerfully vocal admixture of several interest groups: research scientists, thousands of whom would lose their livelihood if man-made global warming is invalidated; environmentalists trying to "save the planet"; and the mainstream media, which knows that crises, real or supposed, engage subscribers.

The alarmists' case rests on a three-legged stool: a strong, and accelerating, upward trend in temperatures; a rise in CO2 and other man-made greenhouse gases; and the harmful net effects justifying international policies to limit greenhouse gases.

Clearly, the failure of any leg invalidates proposed action calls.

Turns out, the hard facts - from a bevy of credentialed scientists - undermine all three legs.

Rising-temperature trends have been exaggerated

The earth has not warmed over the past 17 years (period). A prior 20-plus-year warming interval incubated the man-made global warming hysteria. But it was preceded by a 30-year global-cooling period - so substantial that many of the same alarmists (including The New York Times, Time magazine and Science Digest) were calling for global actions to stem the "coming ice age."

Hard data show that any Arctic melting has been dwarfed by the 2013 30-year record-high Antarctic ice cover.

Freezing weather in the U.S. gripped parts of Texas and Arkansas on Saturday, with hundreds of thousands of people coping in the cold without power after a winter storm made roads impassable and caused severe flight delays.

More than 3,300 travelers were forced to sleep on cots overnight at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, where workers had managed to thaw only two of its seven runways by Saturday morning.

Airlines canceled more than 350 flights from DFW that were scheduled for Saturday, the airport said in a statement.

At the height of the storm, some 267,000 electricity outages were reported in Texas, according to utility provider Oncor, but that number was down to about 130,000 early on Saturday. Oncor said it hoped to get power restored to "nearly all of its customers by Sunday night.

Forecasters predicted sub-zero temperatures and icy conditions in the region for the rest of the weekend, with layers of ice and sleet up to 3 inches thick around Dallas. The city has already canceled a marathon planned for Sunday.

Cold weather was due to roll into the Northeast on Sunday through Monday. Accuweather predicted a "wintry mess" of ice, freezing rain and some of the first snow accumulations of the season from Virginia to New England, which may cause further travel delays.

Source: Reuters

Data

They are doing great so far.

Have you noticed that this December is unusually cold so far? Could the fact that we have had a record number of volcanoes erupt in 2013 be responsible? Certainly an unusually calm solar cycle is playing a significant role in producing all of this cold weather, but as you will see below the truth is that throughout human history volcanic eruptions have produced some of the coldest winters ever recorded.

In fact, there have been some major eruptions that have actually substantially reduced global temperatures for two to three years. So should we be alarmed that the number of volcano eruptions this year was the highest ever recorded? Could it be possible that we are heading for a period of global cooling as a result?

And if the planet does cool significantly, could that lead to widespread crop failures and mass famine? Don't think that it can't happen. In fact, it has happened before and it is only a matter of time until it happens again.

I knew that we were seeing an unusual amount of volcanic activity around the planet so far this year. In fact, I wrote about it in my recent article entitled "Why Have 10 Major Volcanoes Along The Ring Of Fire Suddenly Roared To Life?" But I had no idea that we were on the verge of a new yearly record.

The 2013 hurricane season just ended as one of the five quietest years since 1960. But don't expect anyone who pointed to last year's hurricanes as "proof" of the need to act against global warming to apologize; the warmists don't work that way.

Warmist claims of a severe increase in hurricane activity go back to 2005 and Hurricane Katrina. The cover of Al Gore's 2009 book, "Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," even features a satellite image of the globe with four major hurricanes superimposed.

Yet the evidence to the contrary was there all along. Back in 2005 I and others reviewed the entire hurricane record, which goes back over a century, and found no increase of any kind. Yes, we sometimes get bad storms - but no more frequently now than in the past. The advocates simply ignored that evidence - then repeated their false claims after Hurricane Sandy last year.

Snow will fall on Victoria's Alps on Thursday as a cold blast of wintry air hits the state.
Between 10 and 20 centimetres could fall on the Alps while rain will continue steadily elsewhere, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

Already more than 30 millimetres of rain has fallen in Melbourne and regional areas.

"We'll see that snow falling, snow down to 1100 metres on Thursday," said Bureau forecaster Michael Efron.

"We'll see that really cold air arriving over the state."

Nearly 20 millimetres has fallen on Melbourne since rain began on Tuesday night.

Falls have been markedly heavier in the south-eastern suburbs, with Moorabbin receiving 30 millimetres and Mentone, Hampton and Sandringham 29.