Cardrona skifield staff members Kay Gall and Tessa Cross standing in the courtyard on November 22.
AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND
It's not often we include Australia and New Zealand in a late November snow wrap, but both countries had a blast of cold weather out of the south this week, with the Southern Lakes resorts in NZ getting 50cms of snow early in the week.
The result is Cardrona is going to open the McDougall's Chondola on December 1 for sightseeing and the beginners lift for lessons and snow tubing. This is the official start date to Cardrona's summer season, but there's too much snow on the biking and hiking tracks, so snow play is the go.
The first significant storm of November arrived in the northern Sierra Wednesday and battered the region through Thursday morning, covering roadways and piling up fresh powder.
Ski resorts, which opened only a week ago, were blanketed in snow with Kirkwood reporting 11 inches, Squaw 9, Northstar 7 and Heavenly 5.
Chain control was in effect on Highways 80 and 50 and other main thoroughfares in the mountains in the early morning, but by 11 a.m. a break in the storm made travel easier.
An unseasonable snowstorm hit Falls Creek, Victoria, overnight, leaving the alpine resort in a blanket of fluffy snow on the morning of Thursday, November 22.
A Falls Creek representative told Storyful it was abnormal to see heavy snow in November. "We do sometimes get January snow, however this snowstorm has seen around 10 cm which is massive!" they said. The ski season ended in early October, according to the Falls Creek website.
Social media users were delighted to see footage of the snow. "Nearly a white christmas in Australia! Wow now I've seen everything," one Facebook user wrote. Snow was still falling in Falls Creek at time of writing.
Five feet of snow Greece, Blizzard in Croatia, Slovenia with record snowfall, EF2 water spouts and 200K lighting strikes along new jet streams forming in our atmosphere. This is why the ancient cultures followed cycles in the stars, Sabians of Haran, Sumerians, Daoists and ancient cultures of the Adriatic.
From the Prairies to Prince Edward Island, a harsh fall harvest means Canada could be facing a serious potato shortage, one that may cause millions of dollars worth of Canadian potatoes to rot in the ground this year.
Record breaking snowfall, record setting low temperatures, -50 wind chills, impossible driving conditions amid freezing rain and ice. Sounds like the heart of the winter season doesn't it?
In reality, ALL of these harsh winter conditions have plagued different parts of the country this fall, leaving little to no areas untouched.
Will this be a sign of what's to come this winter or will Mother Nature start to loosen its frosty grip? More on what's happened (keep in mind we had to limit this to just a few main events because the wintry scenes have been endless) and what lies ahead this winter, below.
Continuous snow has swept Qinghai Province in northwest China since the start of November, accumulating record high precipitation in the region's 57 years of history of meteorological records.
Snow accumulation between Nov. 2 and 7 has reached 18 cm on the ground in Dulan County, Haixi Mongolian Tibet Autonomous Prefecture, where the height above mean sea level averages 3,180 meters.
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, known as the "roof of the world," is an important region to monitor climate changes with the weather and the glaciers as indicators.
A few weather systems with Michigan on the cold side of the storms and some lake effect snow have made most of Michigan have above normal snowfall so far in the early part of this cold season.
The eastern Upper Peninsula has the most deviation from normal snowfall amounts. Sault Ste. Marie has already shoveled 26.7 inches of snow. This is 17.7 inches more than normal to this date.
Marquette is on the fast track to 100 inches of snow, with 34 inches of snow already falling in this early part of the cold season. Marquette is 15 inches above snowfall normal today.
Here's a rundown of how much snow has fallen as of November 19, 2018 and the departure from normal.
After multiple sightings last winter, including some in Hancock County, snowy owls are again being seen in Indiana, according to the Indiana Audubon Society.
The all-white arctic owl only visits Indiana during cyclical "irruptions" occurring every four to five years, but often the year following an invasion, such as occurred last winter, can produce an "echo effect," bringing another smaller invasion of owls southward, the organization says in a news release.
Comment: This standard explanation of cyclical irruptions has broken down for the last 7 winters, when exceptional numbers appeared every year. See the links below covering the time period which amply demonstrate this point. Some other environmental and/or climate factors seem to be involved.
Snowy owl numbers fluctuate year to year based on their primary prey — lemmings, giant mouse-like rodents — whose population also oscillates based on food supplies and weather conditions in the arctic. When populations spike, the owls respond with higher than normal breeding, with some nests containing ten or more eggs. The subsequent invasions later that fall result in not so much a food scarcity, but because of the abundance of food earlier that summer. Young owls tend to leave the arctic each winter, resulting in the larger-than-normal invasions.
Comment: A sample of the many reports for the last 7 seasons:
More articles out about our planet cooling for a decade or two before the global warming march continues in 2030's. NASA saying look out for global cooling, beer prices doubling, 40 foot waves rip apart apartments Canary Islands, 30F below normal record breaking temperatures on tap for Canada and USA plus ice storms and crop destroying fronts in Asia.
"We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction."
~ US State Department, 1948
- George Kennan
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This interesting analysis from the Judge interview with Max Blumenthal [Link] Max Blumenthal: Hamas Still Stands.
Comment: A few days ago elsewhere in the southern hemisphere: Spring snow blankets lower South Island, New Zealand with more on the way