Back-to-back storm systems and widespread cold will bring more harsh winter weather to the eastern two-thirds of the nation this week.

One storm will spread snow and rain along a path from the Tennessee Valley to the Northeast from today through Tuesday, while the next storm will bring significant snowfall to the central and southern Plains from late tonight into Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a new blast of arctic air will spread southward and eastward, with subzero low temperatures extending over a large area from the Plains to the Northeast on Tuesday night.

Recent events provide us with a great case study of the cosmic forces that may lie behind large storms such as cyclones, hurricanes, blizzards and much more. The recent events I speak of include the major blizzard that swept across the Midwestern and Eastern US as well as the punishment Cyclone Yasi inflicted on eastern Australia earlier last week. Both of these storms grew to enormous sizes during a time period that coincided with the Earth being lashed by a solar storm just following a New Moon. As strange as this may sound, this isn't the first time that celestial alignments along side of solar activity have spurred such events. If a correlation between these factors exists, as we suspect, then this overturns much of what is commonly believed about Earth weather and, as we'll see, even geology.

To understand how this all works, let's start with the sun. On January 31st a massive coronal hole opened up on the sun, hurling another sledgehammer of charged particles in the direction of Earth. This was due to impact us sometime between February 2nd and February 4th. Not only this, but we recently passed through a new Moon on February 2nd. But why is the Moon of any significance here, one might ask?

As James McCanney explains in an interview he did for Spectrum Magazine in 2003:

The [New] Moon moves in front of Earth, breaks that electrical flow [between the sun and Earth], and then moves out of the way. It gives us tremendous bombardment after that Moon moves out of the way, the first and second day after the New Moon. That's the condition that has been identified as being one of the leading causes of kicking-off major hurricanes and storms. What it does is: The Moon is interacting with the solar electric field. It's that CHANGE which causes the storms, and causes the environment around Earth to change, and thus affects Earth weather.

So the picture we're painting is this: The sun blasts a massive front of solar wind in the direction of the Earth. As the New Moon moves out of the way of the sun and Earth, this, by itself, creates a significant increase in charged particles hitting the Earth. With the excess of charged particles from this solar storm hitting us near simultaneously, all of this excess charge ends up in the radiation belts surrounding the Earth. The Earth then finds ways to discharge this imbalance such as these two major storms we've seen. One storm takes the form of a massive blizzard covering about half of the US. The other takes the form of a cyclone storm, Yasi, that pounds the already flooded east coast of Australia. Increased volcanic and earthquake activity was also noted during this time as well.

Another huge snowstorm moved through the mid-Atlantic and Northeast states last week, and forecasters are calling for more snow this week and possibly next. In New York City last Thursday, 19 inches of snow landed in Central Park. That snowfall brought the city's January snowfall total to 36 inches, well above the 1925 record of 27.4 inches. The snowy winter has people upset because previous winters have not been so bad, although last year when a blizzard descended on Washington, D. C., President Obama was moved to describe the storm as a "snowmageddon." He was quick to point out that his daughters didn't quite understand why school was cancelled since in Chicago this was a normal winter experience.

This winter has brought 51.5 inches of snow to Boston, easily topping the city's winter average of 42.3 inches. The record snowfall for the city was experienced during the 1995-1996 winter when Boston was buried under 107 inches of snow. New York so far this winter has experienced 56 inches of snow, although its record was also experienced in 1995-1996 when 75 inches fell.

Besides the dramatic snowfall records this winter, average temperatures also have been colder than normal. Importantly, the winter weather has impacted much more of the United States than normal. On January 11th, every state except Florida had snow on the ground, including Hawaii where there were seven inches atop the dormant volcano Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii. Slightly over 70% of the nation's aerial extent was snow covered that January day as shown in Exhibit 6.

Torrential rain boosted by the remnants of tropical cyclones Yasi and Anthony led to flash floods in Victoria, with parts of Melbourne battered by high winds and people rescued from rising waters in Mildura.

Lightning strikes cut power to 30,000 homes when a belt of storms hit late yesterday.

The Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigade said it was overwhelmed by calls for help from disabled people.

In one emergency, fire crews helped a wheelchair-bound man who was up to his hips in water inside his home in the suburb of Mulgrave. Firefighters also rescued a girl swept away in a flash flood who managed to grab a tree branch in Ashwood, south-west of Melbourne.

Many roads in regional Victoria were cut, and the Monash Freeway was closed outbound at Toorak Road, with traffic causing long delays last night.

Between 50 and 100 millimetres of further rain was forecast for the weekend.

A severe weather warning has been issued for parts of South Australia as the downgraded Cyclone Yasi sweeps into the state.

State Emergency Service (SES) duty officer Darryl Wright said reports were coming in on Friday afternoon of heavy rains in many parts of the Flinders Ranges, north of Adelaide.

The Bureau of Meteorology was forecasting rainfall of between 50 and 100mm in some areas, increasing to up 200mm in the northwest pastoral district, north of Coober Pedy.

The bureau said a severe thunderstorm warning and a flood watch was current for some districts.

"We have received reports that a number of creeks in the northern Flinders Ranges, including the Bandioota Creek near Blinman, have started to flow," Mr Wright said.

MARK COLVIN: Victorians are being warned to prepare for heavy rain and possible flash flooding this weekend as a tropical air mass from Cyclone Yasi moves south.

North-east and central Victoria are expecting to be the hardest hit and some of those areas still haven't recovered from flooding in January.

Samantha Donovan reports.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Many Victorians are still cleaning up after flooding rains last month. But with an air mass from ex-tropical Cyclone Anthony and Yasi feeding into a strong Southern Ocean weather system, the north-east and central areas in particular are facing a new flood threat.

Tim Wiebusch is with the Victorian State Emergency Service.

TIM WIEBUSCH: The north-east of the state is our main concern given the likelihood of seeing at least between 100 to 150 mils and maybe localised totals up to 200 millimetres. This will result initially in flash flooding and then, potentially, right through to major riverine flooding along the Goulburn, Broken, Mitta Mitta, Kiewa, Ovens Catchments and may affect places like Benalla, Wangaratta and right through the Ovens valley, including places like Bright and Myrtleford.

Football fans whose flights had been canceled struggled Saturday to get to Dallas for Sunday's big game, while those already in town for the Super Bowl were contending with temperatures and snow typical of Pittsburgh and Green Bay but unusual in Texas.

A fresh blast of snow and ice canceled hundreds of flights Friday, transformed highways into ribbons of white and caused dangerous sheets of ice to fall from Cowboys Stadium, sending six people to the hospital. It was enough to turn the biggest week in American sports into a Super Mess.

The injured included private contractors the NFL hired to prepare the stadium for the game, authorities said. One man was hit in the head, another in the shoulder. None of the injuries was considered life-threatening.

Alison Crombie, a spokeswoman for Getty Images, said Saturday one of its photographers, Win McNamee, also was hurt. He was flying home and would be assessed by his doctor there, she said.

Snow and ice hampered travel in parts of Texas as a winter storm closed Dallas Love Field and gave more students another day off.

Love Field, home to Southwest Airlines, closed early Friday. City of Dallas aviation spokesman Jose Luis Torres told The Associated Press that crews were working to clear snow from the runways.

About 120 flights were canceled Friday at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport as a winter storm warning covered much of North Texas.

After weeks of persistent cloud cover, the skies above Brazil finally cleared enough for satellites to take stock of the mudslides that devastated the states of Rio de Janeiro, Santa Catarina, and São Paulo in mid-January.

The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA's EO-1 satellite captured these true-color images of the hills north and west of Teresópolis, Brazil, on February 2, 2011 (top), and May 24, 2010. In both images, forested land is dark green, while land that has been cleared is light green. The 2011 image shows dozens of tan stripes where the hillsides have been overrun by mudslides, usually within or adjacent to those light green patches.

Nearly a month's worth of rain - 26 centimeters (10 inches) - fell on January 12 in the Serra do Mar mountain region and the nearby cities of Teresópolis and Nova Friburgo. The downpours provoked flash floods and sent rivers of mud flowing down steep hillsides, killing 860 people and leaving at least 8,700 homeless. 429 people have not yet been accounted for, according to Agencia Brazil, the state news service.

The unusually heavy rains were attributed by some meteorologists to La Niña, but human activity likely exacerbated the scale of the disaster. Rapid population growth in the area has led Brazilians to build favelas (self-built settlements) on the steep slopes above Teresópolis. Those structures have been built on previously forested land, so the reduced tree cover has diminished the ability of the soil to hold water and the hills to hold onto the soil. Many of the houses lost, according to reports, were built on slopes of 45 degrees or more or in the buffer zones around rivers and streams. The Brazilian Forest Code officially forbids building in such areas.

Zamboanga City, Philippines - At least seven persons, including three children, downed in floods that swept through three Mindanao towns on Wednesday and Thursday, officials said Friday.

Five of the fatalities were reported to have died in downtown Jolo Thursday evening as heavy rains, big waves and three coastal tornadoes battered the capital of the island province of Sulu, said the Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council and a Roman Catholic priest.

Jolo Mayor Hussin Amin said reports reaching him indicated that three people, two of them children, were killed and two others were missing. It was not immediately known if the new figure released by the provincial disaster coordinating council included those missing.

The council said 25 persons were injured.

Amin said it was the first time a flood of that magnitude - up to eight feet deep in the Asturias and San Raymundo areas - hit the town.

"This is the first time I witnessed this kind of flooding," he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer by phone.

Amin described the situation in Jolo as akin to that experienced by some places in Metro Manila during the passage of Tropical Storm Ondoy in 2009.