* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Freak Weather

Blobrana · L

Scotland has suffered some of the coldest winter months in almost 100 years, the Met Office has confirmed.
By combining the temperatures of January and December it showed they were the coldest since 1914 - the year data started being logged.
Elsewhere, it was the coldest December and January in Northern Ireland since 1962/63 and the coldest in England and Wales since 1981/82.
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Blobrana · L

Think the recent wild weather that hammered California was bad? Experts are imagining far worse.
As torrential rains pelted wildfire-stripped hillsides and flooded highways, a team of scientists hunkered down at the California Institute of Technology to work on a "Frankenstorm" scenario - a mother lode wintry blast that could potentially sock the Golden State.
The hypothetical but plausible storm would be similar to the 1861-1862 extreme floods that temporarily moved the state capital from Sacramento to San Francisco and forced the then-governor to attend his inauguration by rowboat.
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Blobrana · L

According to a recent review conducted by a panel of experts in charge of global weather and climate extremes within the WMO Commission for Climatology (CCl) the record of wind gusts not related to tornados registered to date is 408 km/h during Tropical Cyclone Olivia on 10 April 1996 at Barrow Island, Australia. The previous record was of 372 km/h, registered in April 1934 across the summit of Mount Washington, USA.
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Blobrana · L

Australia city has hottest night in 100 years

Melbourne is struggling in a heatwave that last night reached a record temperature.
By 6am on Tuesday the mercury had not moved much, dropping only to 32C.
The overnight temperatures equalled the record of February 1, 1902.

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Blobrana · L

Great Britain blanketed by snow on the 7th January, 2010.

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Credit NASA

Blobrana · L

The thermometer plunged to a new winter low overnight as temperatures reached -22.3C in the Scottish highlands - almost as cold as the South Pole.
The temperature - the lowest for 15 years - was reached at Altnaharra, in Wester Ross in the northern Scottish highlands.
It was only marginally warmer than the -22.9C currently at the South Pole.
Such temperatures are still a little way short of the coldest British temperature on record, which was -27.5C in Altnaharra in December 1995.
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Blobrana · L

In the north-eastern Russian Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the village of Oymyakon is commonly called the coldest populated place on Earth. Situated in an area of Siberia nicknamed "Stalin's Death Ring" (a former destination for political exiles), Oymyakon boasts an average winter temperature of -45C, with a one-time world record low of -71.2C.
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Blobrana · L

Last month was the coldest December in almost 30 years according to readings taken at the Armagh Observatory.
The mean temperature was 1.5C, the coldest average measurement since 1981.
However December was sunnier and drier than normal with 53.3 hours of sunshine, about 40% more than normal for the time of the year.
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Blobrana · L

Aid agency Oxfam warns that a failure of rains across swathes of East Africa is putting millions of lives at risk.
This is the sixth successive season of failed rains in an area already hit by its worst drought in 20 years.
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