Heavy Snow Sweeps Northern India; Summer “Cold-Snap” Grips Eastern Australia; Record Cold From Canada To Trinidad; + Full-Blown Arctic Outbreak To Engulf Europe Starting Sunday

Heavy Snow Sweeps Northern India

Heavy accumulating snow is causing chaos across Northern India this week, blocking major highways in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and the Kashmir valley’s–with the latter now cut-off from rest of the country, with flights also grounded.

Avalanche warnings are also in place in ten districts of J&K and Himachal.

In Himachal alone, more than 500 roads were closed due to the heavy snow, with the key Manali-Keylong road completely blocked. The southern entrance to Himachal’s Atal tunnel received 90 cm (3 feet), with Solang valley logging 70+ cm (2.3 feet).

In Uttarakhand, the Gangotri and Yamunotri national highways were closed, with at least 10 link roads blocked.

Power supply to over a dozen Uttarakhand villages was also hit.

Likewise in across Himachal, daily life has been disrupted in Shimla, Lahaul and Spiti and Kinnur districts where 180, 158 and 73 roads, respectively, were blocked, with a combined 908 power transformers and water works also affected.

In Kashmir, Gulmarg received 60 cm (2 feet) of snowfall over the past 48-hours, with 1.5 m (5 feet) settling at higher elevations.

The J&K Disaster Management Authority warned of “high danger level” avalanches in Doda, Kishtwar and Poonch districts; and “medium danger level” in many other regions. While in Himachal, avalanche warnings are in place in for Manali-Leh axis, Dhundi and Beas Kund, with a “partial unsafe” warning issued for the Bajnjar-Jalori-Khanag area of Kullu district.

Tragically, the deaths are mounting.

At least two foreign skiers died this morning (Feb 1) in an avalanche at Gulmarg:


While on Monday, two girls were buried alive in an avalanche in Kargil, with rescue attempts hindered by both air and road connectivity with the Kashmir Valley being unavailable. The bodies were recovered with the help of locals.

Below is footage of avalanche in a nearby region earlier in the month:


Accompanying the snow has been exceptionally low temperatures, with the famous Dal Lake in the main city of Srinagar partially frozen:

Snow and ice covers the famed shikara (houseboats).


Traversing north –quite a bit north– and into Russia, the far-east district of Yakutia endured an abnormally cold January. 

This has been the case for much of Asia, as I’ve reported on extensively, but focusing on Yakutia, the district’s official Olenyok weather station has confirmed that last month was the Republic’s coldest January since at least 1980, averaging -45.2C (-49.4F),

Elsewhere in Yakutia, the Russia port city of ‘Yakutsk’ suffered a January some 7C below the multidecadal average, with the second-half of the month failing to exceed -40C (that’s daily highs).


Summer “Cold-Snap” Grips Eastern Australia

Another region of the planet holding unusually-cold has been Australia, particularly southern and eastern states.

To recap: The Aussie continent posted a colder-than-average-winter in 2022–coldest on record for the likes of Brisbane; its coldest spring in decades–coldest-ever Nov for the likes of Forbes and Ivanhoe; and its lowest-ever summer temperature on Dec 9–the -7C  (19.4F) at Perisher Valley (with NSW seeing its fifth-coldest Dec in books dating back to the 1800s, with a nationwide anomaly of -0.85C).

For many, the chills have spilled-over into 2023, with Sydney, for example, seeing its longest spell of days below 30C in 140-years.

This week, the warm-mongering BoM is forecasting another “unseasonal summer cold snap” for the south and east.

A strong polar front is moving up from the south, bringing with it “a mass of very cold air” due to arrive Thursday in Tasmania, South Australia and Victoria, and early Friday morning in southern New South Wales — something the GFS is also picking up on:

GFS 2m Temperature Anomalies (C) Feb 1 to Feb 4 [tropicaltidbits.com]


The BoM is even forecasting summer snow across the higher elevations.


The AGW Party is keen to blame Australia’s persistent and historic cold on a rare third-consecutive La Niña. Fair enough. But what they fail to mention is that their global warming hypothesis decreed El Niño to be the dominant ENSO pattern moving forward.

La Niñas, on the other hand, are tied to planetary cooling.

This real-world observation shocked the climate modelers, who themselves admit that they are now scrambling for answers:


Australia is cooling, as confirmed by the satellites — at a rate of -0.132C per decade since 2013:


Record Cold From Canada To Trinidad

North America’s polar blast is intensifying and is continuing to take out records from northern Canada to the Caribbean.

Across Canada, a plunging ‘polar vortex’ is delivering hazardous cold, heavy snow and even frost quakes.

A lobe of the vortex is swirling over Hudson Bay currently, reports theweathernetwork.com, and there’s high confidence that it will be directly over the Maritimes by Saturday — an unusual trajectory for such severe cold.

The Network sees the brutalist of the brutal cold striking on Saturday, with record-challenging lows (in the -30s) expected across the likes of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island — to name just three locales.

The Network has “tremendous confidence in this extreme cold” with its model guidance also revealing a “dangerous red flag”.


Traversing the border, and into the United States, historic lows and record snows are falling here, too, with much more to come.

Residents of Massachusetts –for example– have been told to brace for their coldest days in decades. Lows of -10 to -20F are forecast Saturday morning across the state, with the City of Boston excepted to suffer its coldest temperature since Jan 15, 1957 (10F will do it). Also, a long-standing daily low is almost assured of falling in Boston on Saturday: the 2F from way back in 1886.

Already, the combination of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and Arctic air spilling south from Canada is resulting in a long-duration ice storm for millions of people across at least eight states: Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, West Virginia and Virginia — with at least two people dying in Texas as icy conditions snarled travel in Dallas on Tuesday.

“Dangerously cold temperatures” were recorded across Colorado Tuesday morning, with the NWS confirming that a weather sensor along the North Platte River at Northgate, Jackson County logged an astonishing -41F, at 2:15 AM and again at 5 AM.

Staying in CO, the month of January averaged just 25.2F in Denver, which is 6.5F below the norm.

As hinted at above, conditions expected to worsen as the week progresses, as the Arctic Outbreak intensifies:

GFS 2m Temperature Anomalies (C) Jan 31 to Feb 3 [tropicaltidbits.com]


The freeze is also impacting Mexico.

And further south, too, into the Caribbean. Here, following the likes of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Barbados and Curacao, Trinidad and Tobago has posted “a record-breaking cold night,” according to the country’s Meteorological Service (TTMS).

Monday cooled to 18.3C (65F) at Piarco Airport: “The lowest temperature recorded at Piarco for January during the last decade, since 2012,” confirms TTMS. “This was due to colder air from the north encroaching on Trinidad and Tobago where the winds were mostly calm, with pre-existing very dry conditions and almost cloud free skies for most of the night”.

For reference, Piacro’s coldest-ever temperature remains the 61F from 1964, followed by the 62F from 1976.

Looking ahead, TTMS is forecasting a further temperature drop over the weekend–and so into all-time record-breaking territory. As a result, the service is “urging persons who are susceptible to lower temperature and who experience respiratory problems to be proactive and wear warm and/or extra clothing.”


Full-Blown Arctic Outbreak To Engulf Europe Starting Sunday

Atmospheric conditions have been hinting at it for weeks, now the weather models are finally forecasting it. Joining the likes of Asia and North America, the European continent is set to endure for its own full-blown Arctic Outbreak.

Western Europe has been freezing for the past 2-or-so weeks (my frozen water pipes here in Central Portugal can attest), but latest GFS runs are forecasting a continent-encasing and long-lasting polar plunge staring this Sunday, Feb 5, sweeping from the UK to Turkey, from Norway to North Africa:

GFS 2m Temperature Anomalies (C) Feb 5 to Feb 14 [tropicaltidbits.com]


The accompanying snows totals look equally jaw-dropping, and narrative-crushing:

GFS Total Snowfall (cm) Feb 1 to Feb 17 [tropicaltidbits.com]


Seeing this forecast, Europe’s gas prices have rebounded due to the inevitable surge in household heating demand.

The Dutch TTF soared 11% per megawatt-hour at the opening of trade in Amsterdam on Tuesday. Prior to that, prices were also supported on Monday thanks to an unplanned outage at a key Norwegian gas processing plant.

Europe’s gas stores will likely see it through this winter–though the upcoming freeze will certainly put a strain on things; however, and as the oil CEO’s have forewarned us, it is next winter that the continent’s energy crisis is expected to hit proper.


Sunspots

Today, solar activity is low.

Just five small sunspots visible on the solar disk, all of which are stable and quiet, and pose no threat of flaring.

Sunspots, Feb 1 [SDO/HMI].


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