A rare glimpse of a "gigantic jet" - a huge and mysterious burst of lightning that connects a thunderstorm with the upper atmosphere - was made over China in 2010 and was recently described by scientists.

The gigantic jet took place in eastern China on Aug. 12, 2010 - the farthest a ground-based one has ever been observed from the equator, according to the research team.

Previous jets were mainly seen in tropical or subtropical regions, but this one took place around 35 degrees latitude, about the same as the southern part of Tennessee in the United States.

"This is the first report from mainland China," lead researcher Jing Yang, an atmospheric scientist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, told OurAmazingPlanet. The results were recently published in the Chinese Science Bulletin.

Researchers got a good look at the storm using a variety of tools, including Doppler radar data and weather pictures in the infrared band of radiation.

Blizzard warnings issued in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
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.

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.
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."

About 4,000 are isolated on the New South Wales' north coast as the region is hit with damaging winds, strong rains and flooding.

A severe weather warning is in place for northern NSW, with the Bureau of Meteorology warning of very heavy rains leading to flash flooding over the Northern Rivers, Mid North Coast, Northern Tablelands and Hunter forecast districts.

Late on Friday night, the NSW State Emergency Service said the extreme weather had isolated about 3500 people on the north coast.

An SES spokesman said the SES had received 1000 calls for assistance so far, and had completed nine flood rescues, including one in which three people were dragged from a car at Taree.

He expected the threat of flooding to increase on Saturday.

Four children were among 17 people killed over the weekend in central Indonesia after heavy rains triggered floods and landslides, officials said on Monday.The children, aged between two and nine, died along with 13 adults when flooding and landslides hit the northern part of Sulawesi island early Sunday, provincial disaster management agency spokesman Howke Makawarung told AFP. "We recorded 17 people killed. All bodies were found on Sunday," he said, adding that heavy rains had hit three areas, including the North Sulawesi provincial capital of Manado which saw water levels up to four meters (13 feet). Water, which inundated around 5,000 houses in Manado, had receded by Monday and residents had begun cleaning up their homes.


A landslide which hit the city killed a six-year old boy. "He was taking a bath in the morning when a landslide suddenly struck his house," the capital deputy mayor Harley Mangindaan told AFP. Indonesia is regularly affected by deadly floods and landslides during its wet season, which lasts for around six months. Environmentalists blame logging and a failure to reforest denuded land for exacerbating flooding. Heavy rains caused flooding in the capital Jakarta in January that left 32 people dead and at its peak forced nearly 46,000 to flee their homes. - Raw Story

It will be a messy weekend in the Northeast and the Deep South as the massive weather system that walloped 20 states with a snowstorm rolls off towards the Atlantic Ocean. A winter storm is expected to deposit up to 10 inches of snow in isolated pockets of western Massachusetts, and 6 inches to a foot in parts of southern Vermont and New Hampshire, and central Maine. This is not the same storm that blanketed the Great Plains, said CNN Meteorologist Pedram Javaheri, although it is part of the same overall system that spans the country from north to south. It will be much less intense, he said, and it should not affect the places hardest hit by the blizzard that plastered the Northeast two weeks ago, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of customers. Boston will likely see a slushy mix of rain and snow that could lead to downed branches and power lines, Javaheri said.

Rain will continue to soak the eastern United States from Washington, D.C., on down, especially Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. "Across the Southeast, some of the rainfall totals are going to be staggering," said CNN Meteorologist Karen McGinnis. Parts of the central Southeast should get 4 - 6 inches of rainfall. The outgoing system will have made its mark on virtually the entire country from the southwest corner of California to central Maine, leaving its deepest imprint on Kansas. Wichita saw its second-highest storm snowfall total on record with 14.2 inches over two days, the National Weather Service said. The town of Russell in the state's middle lay under a 22 inch layer of white by the time the storm roared by. Missouri was not far behind, with accumulations of around a foot in some places. The snow set a record at Kansas City International Airport, with 9 inches falling in a single day. The old record was 5.1 inches set in 2010. Some businesses and universities shut down Thursday as state officials urged residents to stay off the roads. The white blanket emptied the streets of Kansas City. - CNN

As many as 30 million people living from Oklahoma to the Ohio Valley are in the path of a storm moving east out of California that could dump several inches of snow in some areas and freezing rain and sleet elsewhere in the next few days.

According to the Weather Channel, the storm is caused by an "upper-level dip in the jet stream," on Wednesday.

Snow will also intensify and spread east in the Plains and Midwest Wednesday into Thursday. By that point, conditions will become favorable for a zone of freezing rain and sleet from Oklahoma and Kansas to the Ohio Valley and parts of the East.

Several hours of heavy rain and a thunderstorm in the Greek capital Athens have flooded roads and homes, caused traffic jams and disrupted the train and tram network, officials say.

The deluge inundated basements and forced authorities to close underpasses and a central subway station.

Violent thunderstorms and torrential rains have caused chaos across southern Europe.

In Italy, much of the Sicilian city of Catania was turned into a raging river with strong waters carrying away vehicles. Some 50 litres per square metre of rain fell in just half an hour.

Hundreds of firefighters were scrambled but only one person was injured.

The situation was worse in Greece where one woman died and dozens of commuters were trapped in their cars after a torrential downpour swamped the capital Athens.

Police said a 27-year-old woman died of a suspected heart attack after being trapped in her car in the northern suburb of Halandri.