Winter storm Cleon is heading toward the Pacific Northwest and, besides bringing chilly temperatures and cold winds, is expected to drop 2 to 3 feet of snow.

A winter storm dropped 30 inches of snow in Idaho Tuesday, and is forecast to bring temperatures well below zero elsewhere in the country as the week goes on.

Frigid temperatures swept across the northern Rockies and the northern Plains on Tuesday, and heavy sheets of snow are likely in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana and swaths of North Dakota. Parts of nine states were under winter storm warnings; nine other states were under various levels of advisories for current or future wintry precipitation.

Snow accumulation was racking up by Tuesday afternoon. By 3 p.m. ET, 30 inches of snow had fallen in Idaho's Saddle Mountain, and 22 inches had fallen north of Two Harbors, Minn. Stuart Mountain in Montana received 20 inches. Duluth had gotten 14 inches of snow and was forecast to receive another foot-plus as the flakes continued to fall.

Nearly two months after devastating blizzards hit parts of South Dakota and Wyoming, farmers are still recovering from the loss of cattle and the effect on their businesses.

The week before the storm, it had been wet and mild and the prairies of the Great Plains were deep in mud.

Then, the first winter snow came early and unexpectedly in an icy blast from the north-west.

Trapped in the mud, 30,000 cattle suffocated and froze to death. They were buried in 20ft (6m) snow drifts, entombed in ice in what ranchers call the "breaks and draws" - the slopes and valleys - of the rolling prairie hills.

Larry Stomprud is a tall, thin cowboy wearing a black leather waistcoat and slim-cut blue jeans. Grey hair peeps from beneath his brown cowboy hat.

He is a tough rancher who has spent half a century herding cattle. But his voice falters and there are tears in his eyes as he describes the devastation on his ranch.

"I looked at my grandfather's records," he says quietly. "It was the worst storm for 150 years." His throat is strangled with anguish and with sadness as he says: "God entrusted us with the care of these animals and we failed them."

Major flooding and landslides in India, a massive earthquake off Japan, a ferocious storm thrashing northern Europe, more mass animal die-offs, flash-flooding in Texas taking rivers to their highest levels in 100 years, canals turning red in The Netherlands, meteor fireballs seen the world over, a devastating super-typhoon wiping out parts of the Philippines, a deadly cyclone in Somalia, sinkholes swallowing more homes in Florida, a "second-season outbreak" of deadly tornadoes in the U.S. Midwest... just another month of strange and extreme weather and celestial events on a planet that's rockin' and rollin'.

The shock of electricity from the heavens was so powerful it lifted Wayne Lennan's vehicle OFF the ground before destroying it


This is the moment Australian Wayne Lennan was relaxing in a beach bar car park in Newcastle, New South Wales, before a bolt of electricity from the heavens completely wrecked his car.

The force of the impact was so powerful it lifted his car OFF the ground - but somehow he managed to walk away unharmed.

The incredible event was caught on video on by surfer Luke Flanders on his camera phone, and the footage has gone viral.

Luke Flanders was trying to get some cool pictures of a lightning bolt for his Instagram account when he switched his phone to video mode.

"I was filming for like 30 seconds and then BANG!" he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

"It hit the aerial of a car about 30 or 40 metres in front of me and just kind of exploded and orange sparks shot out everywhere."

Mr Lennan is still in shock at just how he managed to survive such a violent strike and admits the whole incident came and went in a blur.

"It was all a bit of a shock, the storm was coming in and it all happened very quickly,'' he said. "[When the lightning bolt hit] it lifted the car off the ground."

A local towing service came to the rescue to take the car to a garage but the vehicle has now been confirmed as a write off.

The entire UK has been told to brace for a record-breaking period of bitter Arctic winds, crippling snowfall and plunging temperatures. Long-range forecasts now point to winter 2013 now being the worst for more than 60 years with Polar conditions stretching right into the beginning of next spring.

The shock warning comes with the UK already shivering in an unseasonably early big freeze with temperatures plummeting to -5C and heavy snow sparking chaos in parts of the UK. Long-range forecaster James Madden, of Exacta Weather, said: "An exceptionally prolonged period of widespread cold is highly likely to develop throughout this winter and last into next spring.

"It will be accompanied by snow drifts of several feet and long-lasting snow accumulations on a widespread scale.

"This period of snow and cold is likely to result in an incomparable scenario to anything we have experienced in modern times.

The huge deadly winter storm that is barreling east is set to cause massive cancellations across the East Coat's major airports for Thanksgiving travelers trying to get home - and last up to 36 hours meteorologists warn. A combination of high winds and low clouds are likely to cause travel delays at all New York, Boston and Washington airports and parts of Pennsylvania and upstate New York, including Pittsburgh could likely experience up to 18-inches in snow.
Already the storm has been responsible for the deaths of 14 people from West to South to Midwest and is covering parts of Georgia, North Carolina and West Virginia in a blanket of ice this morning. Yesterday and through the evening, the storm hit parts of Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas swept toward the densely populated East Coast on Tuesday, threatening to disrupt the plans of travelers ahead of the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

The large system has already struck parts of Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas, but with temperatures creeping above freezing the outcome was less dramatic than forecasters had feared as it crossed the nation's midsection. The storm sprung out of the West and has been blamed for at least 11 deaths, half of them in Texas. It limped across Arkansas with a smattering of snow, sleet and freezing rain that didn't meet expectations.

Several cars of the New York City-bound Amtrak train with 218 people aboard flew off the tracks in South Carolina early Monday in freezing conditions. No one was seriously hurt but four passengers were taken to hospital with minor injuries after the derailment, in which seven cars left the track but thankfully remained upright.

Witnesses described terrifying scenes as the train tilted, bags flew around and jolted passengers clung to each other just after midnight on Train 20 from New Orleans.
Passenger Carrie Lambert told The Associated Press that she was at the back of the train when she felt the car start to sway and then tilt. 'The car felt like it was about to flip over... I was holding on to my brother for dear life,' the Atlanta woman told AP by phone. 'Bags went everywhere. It was crazy. Really scary.'

Rain records are falling like, well, rain, around Arizona on Friday, the start of a what is expected to be a very wet weekend.
More than an inch of rain has dropped on Sky Harbor Airport, the most in a single day since 1973. The previous mark was a half-inch. The airport rain gauge hadn't measured any rain since Sept. 9. Rain began falling Thursday night.

The National Weather Service in Phoenix has issued a flood watch, which will be in effect until 11 p.m. Heavy rain has already forced closure of southbound Loop 303 from Peoria Avenue to Camelback Road. Motorists had already been trapped in flooded areas before 7 a.m.

Snow and whiteout conditions were reported on State Route 87 north of Flagstaff. Thursday, Yuma broke a 129-year-old single-day mark with more than a third of an inch. Forecasters said the storm system from the West could last 18 hours.

Half a year's worth of rain fell in an hour and a half Monday night in the Italian island of Sardinia, flooding streets and killing at least 16 people.

Sardinia was pummeled by 17.3 inches of rain Monday by Cyclone Cleopatra, a drenching that Franco Gabrielli, head of Italy's Civil Protection Agency, called "an exceptional event." According to Italy's Civil Protection Agency, so far 2,500 people have been displaced by the storm and more than 10,000 have lost electricity. The Italian government has declared a state of emergency on the island and has allocated about $27 million in rescue and relief aid.

Marco Vargiu, councilor for tourism in Olbia, a Sardinian city, told CNN that the city had been among the hardest hit - in some places in the city, water levels reached 10 feet.

"The worst conditions are here in Olbia," he said. "There are rivers of water in the town. In lots of houses the ground floors are full of water, one or two meters of water, and a lot of families have lost everything - their house, their car, their clothes, the furniture."

Gianni Giovannelli, Olbia's mayor, said the rain was so intense that it was like a "water bomb" and described the storm as "apocalyptic."

Sardinia wasn't the only region hit hard by flooding this week. Over the weekend, four people were killed when 0.79 inches of rain fell over 12 hours in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh. The rainfall tally may not seem like much, but it's double the average November rainfall for the city. And since Riyadh has a desert climate, seemingly small amounts of rain can be cause for major concern.

"Typically, desert cities do not invest the same resources in drainage as do cities in wetter climates - much as warm-weather cities do not invest much in snowplows or road salt," weather.com meteorologist Nick Wiltgen said. "As a result, rainfall amounts that might seem numerically insignificant in a place like Miami or New York can lead to major impacts in a desert metropolis."

Aerial photos of Washington, Illinois, show the heartbreaking scale of the description visited on the town after tornadoes touched down there Sunday night.

Eighty one separate twisters were reported across the Midwest. The devastating storm outbreak brought winds of up to 200mph that flattened hundreds of homes and killed six people.

Residents of Washington, a downstate town of 15,000, were left to pick up the pieces Monday and begin recovering from the disaster.

Bits of American flags and insulation from destroyed houses clung to trees that had been stripped of most of their branches and remaining leaves by the twister.