ICE AGE NOW: Global Cooling Continues Relentlessly - Significant Snowfall Closes Roads In Mexico; Arctic Blast Blankets Fort St. John, BC With RECORD SNOWFALL; Volcanic Aerosols Verify Imminent GLOBAL COOLING; Hundreds Evacuated From The Raging Snowstorm In Kazakhstan; And Lake Huron In Canada Shows Near HISTORIC Ice Cover! [PHOTOS + VIDEOS]

"Report snowfall # Temosachic , # Chihuahua at 9:30 pm"© Via twitter@conagua_clima

March 10, 2016 - EARTH - The following articles constitutes several of the latest reports on heavy snowfall, low temperatures and snow storms as global cooling continues across the Earth.

White Spring? Significant snowfall closes roads in Mexico

Chihuahua, Sonora and Durango reported snowfall and road closures. In some municipalities the snowfall is "significant".

On 8 March 2016, the State Coordination of Civil Protection in Chihuahua reported snowfall in 17 municipalities:

- Uruachi 20 cm (8 inches),
- Ocampo, 18 cm;
- Maguarichi, 15 cm;
- Bocoyna, 12 cm
- Guerrero, 12 cm

The governor, Cesar Duarte, asked the public to exercise caution before the arrival of a new cold front.

Snowfall was reported in Madera, Buenaventura, Matachi, Temosachi, Bachíniva, Farias, Ignacio Zaragoza, Ocampo, Bocoyna, Moris, Uruachi, Guerrero, Carichi, Maguarichi, Guazapares, Guachochi and Chínipas.

#Chihuahua. Cierre total de circulación por #Nevada km 183 Ctra. Fed. Chihuahua-Madera, tramo Cuauhtémoc-La Junta pic.twitter.com/5SfeW2XKtW

— Policía Federal Mx (@PoliciaFedMx) March 8, 2016

Me mandaron esta increíble imagen de la nevada de hoy en Madera ¡Chihuahua no deja de sorprendernos! pic.twitter.com/s8EtCLQSl8

— César Duarte Jáquez (@GoberDuarte) March 8, 2016

WATCH: Snow at 19°N Mid-March Southern Mexico.

- Ice Age Now.

Arctic blast blankets Fort St. John, BC with record snowfall

City crews clear snow at 102nd Street and 105th Avenue in Fort St. John Tuesday morning following Sunday's record snowfall. © Bronwyn Scott

It was a snowy weekend in Fort St. John and there's a new record to prove it.

According to Environment Canada, a total of 17 centimetres of the white stuff blanketed the city over the weekend, with a record 9.8 centimetres falling on Sunday on top of the seven centimetres that fell on Saturday.
Dawson Creek had only a light dusting of snow on Saturday, but saw 6.5 centimetres fall on Sunday.

"It was a good little Arctic front that passed over you guys," said Matt MacDonald, meteorologist with Environment Canada.

"It's been not the snowiest of winters up there, and, as I always caution people, March typically comes in like a lion, and I think it was a perfect example," he said.

The previous snowfall record for March 6 in Fort St. John was 6.6 centimetres in 1966.

El Nino Weakening, Expect La Nina Next year

Warmer temperatures are in the forecast for the rest of the week, with a high temperature of 7 C predicted for Wednesday in Fort St. John. The normal high for this time of year is -1 C, MacDonald said.

"So that's a good seven, eight degrees warmer than normal," he said.

It's typical of what we've seen this winter - "It's been very mild, been one of the mildest winters on record, and that's all owing to good old El Nino," he said.

El Nino, characterized by warmer than usual water temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, peaked at the end of January and is now decreasing in intensity, which is typical for the weather phenomenon.

"It usually reaches its strongest values towards the end of January, and climate models have all been in really good agreement suggesting that we return to neutral conditions by about May," MacDonald said.

In terms of what to expect for spring, the trend of warmer conditions will continue, despite El Nino weakening - "It's still there," MacDonald said.

"The warm air is here to stay ... I think the beginning of summer we can expect closer to normal conditions, so by the time El Nino fizzles out, we could expect normal conditions for the month of May and June."

While we've appreciated a mild, low-snowfall winter in the Peace, we're in store for a colder, snowier fall and winter next year with La Nina, El Nino's opposite, making a comeback for winter 2016-17.

"Instead of the waters in the equatorial Pacific being warmer than normal, they're going to now be colder than normal. Typically, La Nina falls and winters mean colder than normal conditions and snowier than usual," MacDonald explained. - Alaska Highway News.

Volcanic Aerosols Verify Imminent Global Cooling

Several studies show that when abundant aerosols from multiple or volcanic eruptions they create a feedback loop of reflected radiation and cooling commences. This is directly related to a weakened magnetosphere due to the new grand solar minimum.

WATCH:  Unusual clouds globally tell the story.

- Adapt 2030.

Lake Huron in Southern Ontario, Canada shows near historic ice cover

WATCH: Stunning footage of Lake Huron's ice cover.

- Earth Sky.

Hundreds evacuated from raging snowstorm in Kazakhstan

© tvoygorodpskov.ru

In the North-Kazakhstan region about 630 people have become hostages of bad weather, said the news agency Novosti-Kazakhstan.

Employees of emergency services evacuated 700 people and hundreds of cars on the Buran highways .

Rescue work is continuing on the roads of North Kazakhstan, Akmola and Kostanay districts (oblasts), said an official from the Committee for Emergency Situations.

Akmola evacuated 444 people, including 11 children, and towed 174 vehicles, where the snowstorm was raging.  - Ice Age Now.

ICE AGE NOW: Great Lakes Ice Cover Is The Largest We've Seen This Century - 78.7 PERCENT Covered! [PHOTOS+GRAPH+MAP]

February 14, 2014 - GREAT LAKES, UNITED STATES - One effect of the persistently cold winter of 2013-2014 is showing up on the world's largest group of freshwater lakes.

MODIS satellite image of the Great Lakes on Feb. 7, 2014. Bright white in this image shows mainly clouds over
the Great Lakes, however, you can see lake ice in southern and western Lake Michigan, southern Lake Superior,
and far western Lake Erie. (UW-SSEC/Google Earth)

According to an analysis by NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, ice covered 78.7 percent of the Great Lakes on February 6. Not since early 1996 has ice been so widespread on the Great Lakes.

This is an abrupt turn around from the past four winters, during which the peak ice coverage remained around 40 percent or less. As you can see in the graph below, the 40-year average is just over 51 percent.

Dating to 1973, the two years with the largest ice coverage were 1979 (94.7 percent peak) and 1994 (90.7 percent).

Yearly peak Great Lakes ice coverage (percent) from 1973-2013. (NOAA/GLERL)

Ice on Lake Michigan as far as you can see to the horizon in Feb. 2014.
(Louise Olson via The Weather Channel Facebook page)

When looking at individual lakes, just over 92 percent of Lake Superior, just under 88 percent of Lake Huron, almost 95 percent of Lake Erie, and around 53 percent of Lake Michigan is ice covered. Much deeper Lake Ontario is only about 29 percent of ice covered.

As a result, caves near the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore are now open to foot traffic, thanks to sufficiently thick ice on Lake Superior.

Winter weather expert for The Weather Channel, Tom Niziol, noted the current Great Lakes ice cover was pacing quite close to that from early February 1977, another year in which the peak ice cover topped 90 percent.

Latest Great Lakes #ice comparison to winter 1977, its getting closer!! @TomNiziol

Let's compare the current ice cover to the early February ice cover in the two standard-bearing years mentioned above:

• Feb. 5, 1979: 66.8%
• Feb. 7, 1994: 83.6%

So, we're pacing ahead of 1979 but behind 1994.

Will the cold persist to allow the ice to continue to spread?

Through most of the upcoming week, temperatures will remain generally much colder than average over the Midwest and Northeast.

Beyond that, there are some preliminary indications the cold may finally ease up the following week, but that outlook remains too uncertain at this time. - TWC.

EXTREME MONUMENTAL WEATHER: Drought Ravaged Lake Michigan At Lowest Level Ever Recorded!

March 20, 2013 - UNITED STATES - Lake Michigan is at its lowest level ever recorded and according to the Alliance for the Great Lakes, it all depends on climate.

A rare cloudless satellite view of the entire Great Lakes region, April 24, 2000,
with the names of the lakes added. © Wikipedia.

The alliance says the biggest factors that regulate the level of the highly-prized resource is rainfall and evaporation.

Last year we experienced severe drought conditions here in the Midwest and other parts of the country and with hot temperatures came even more evaporation.

What we can expect, says the alliance, is the trend toward more extremes in lake levels and storms.

The alliance said the amount of fresh water we take from Lake Michigan for drinking and other purposes is minimal compared to how rainfall and evaporation regulate the level of the lake. - WGN.

WATCH: Lake levels dropping due to drought, evaporation, says group.

Two of the Great Lakes have hit their lowest water levels ever recorded, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday, capping more than a decade of below-normal rain and snowfall and higher temperatures that boost evaporation.  Measurements taken last month show Lake Huron and Lake Michigan have reached their lowest ebb since record keeping began in 1918, and the lakes could set additional records over the next few months, the corps said. The lakes were 29 inches below their long-term average and had declined 17 inches since January 2012.  The other Great Lakes — Superior, Erie and Ontario — were also well below average. 

"We're in an extreme situation," said Keith Kompoltowicz, watershed hydrology chief for the corps district office in Detroit.  The low water has caused heavy economic losses by forcing cargo ships to carry lighter loads, leaving boat docks high and dry, and damaging fish-spawning areas. And vegetation has sprung up in newly exposed shoreline bottomlands, a turnoff for hotel customers who prefer sandy beaches.  The corps' report came as shippers pleaded with Congress for more money to dredge ever-shallower harbors and channels. Shippers are taxed to support a harbor maintenance fund, but only about half of the revenue is spent on dredging. The remainder is diverted to the treasury for other purposes. Legislation to change that policy is pending before Congress.  "Plunging water levels are beyond anyone's control, but the dredging crisis is man-made," said James Weakley, president of the Cleveland-based Lake Carriers' Association.  Kompoltowicz said the Army corps might reconsider a long-debated proposal to place structures in a river to reduce the flow of water away from Lakes Huron and Lake Michigan, which are connected.  Scientists say lake levels are cyclical and controlled mostly by nature. They began a steep decline in the late 1990s and have usually lagged well below their historical averages since then.  But studies have shown that Huron and Michigan fell by 10 to 16 inches because of dredging over the years to deepen the navigational channel in the St. Clair River, most recently in the 1960s.

Dredging of the river, which is on the south end of Lake Huron, accelerated the flow of water southward from the two lakes toward Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean.  Groups representing shoreline property owners, primarily in Lake Huron's Georgian Bay, have demanded action to slow the Lake Huron and Michigan outflow to make up for losses that resulted from dredging, which they contend are even greater than officials have acknowledged.  Although the Army corps produced a list of water-slowing options in 1972, including miniature dams and sills that resemble speed bumps along the river bottom, nothing was done because the lakes were in a period of above-average levels that lasted nearly three decades, Kompoltowicz said.  The corps has congressional authorization to take action but would need money for an updated study as a first step, he said.

The Detroit office is considering a funding request, but it would have to compete with other projects nationwide and couldn't get into the budget before 2015.  "It's no guarantee that we're going to get it, especially in this budget climate," Kompoltowicz said. "But there are serious impacts to navigation and shoreline property owners from this extreme event. It's time to revisit this."  Scientists and engineers convened by the International Joint Commission, a U.S.-Canadian agency that deals with shared waterways, issued reports in 2009 and last year that did not endorse trying to regulate the Great Lakes by placing structures at choke points such as the St. Clair River. The commission has conducted public hearings and will issue a statement in about a month, spokesman John Nevin said.  Roger Gauthier, a retired staff hydrologist with the Army corps, said a series of "speed bumps" could be put in the river at a reasonable cost within a few years. Without such measures, he warned, "it would take years of consistent rain" to return Lake Michigan and Lake Huron to normal. - Yahoo.

WATCH: Great Lakes reach record low.

EXTREME MONUMENTAL WEATHER: Persistent Drought - U.S. Great Lakes Hit Lowest Water Level Ever On Record!

February 08, 2013 - UNITED STATES - Two of the Great Lakes have hit their lowest water levels ever recorded, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday, capping more than a decade of below-normal rain and snowfall and higher temperatures that boost evaporation.  Measurements taken last month show Lake Huron and Lake Michigan have reached their lowest ebb since record keeping began in 1918, and the lakes could set additional records over the next few months, the corps said. The lakes were 29 inches below their long-term average and had declined 17 inches since January 2012.  The other Great Lakes — Superior, Erie and Ontario — were also well below average. 

"We're in an extreme situation," said Keith Kompoltowicz, watershed hydrology chief for the corps district office in Detroit.  The low water has caused heavy economic losses by forcing cargo ships to carry lighter loads, leaving boat docks high and dry, and damaging fish-spawning areas. And vegetation has sprung up in newly exposed shoreline bottomlands, a turnoff for hotel customers who prefer sandy beaches.  The corps' report came as shippers pleaded with Congress for more money to dredge ever-shallower harbors and channels. Shippers are taxed to support a harbor maintenance fund, but only about half of the revenue is spent on dredging. The remainder is diverted to the treasury for other purposes. Legislation to change that policy is pending before Congress.  "Plunging water levels are beyond anyone's control, but the dredging crisis is man-made," said James Weakley, president of the Cleveland-based Lake Carriers' Association.  Kompoltowicz said the Army corps might reconsider a long-debated proposal to place structures in a river to reduce the flow of water away from Lakes Huron and Lake Michigan, which are connected.  Scientists say lake levels are cyclical and controlled mostly by nature. They began a steep decline in the late 1990s and have usually lagged well below their historical averages since then.  But studies have shown that Huron and Michigan fell by 10 to 16 inches because of dredging over the years to deepen the navigational channel in the St. Clair River, most recently in the 1960s.

Dredging of the river, which is on the south end of Lake Huron, accelerated the flow of water southward from the two lakes toward Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean.  Groups representing shoreline property owners, primarily in Lake Huron's Georgian Bay, have demanded action to slow the Lake Huron and Michigan outflow to make up for losses that resulted from dredging, which they contend are even greater than officials have acknowledged.  Although the Army corps produced a list of water-slowing options in 1972, including miniature dams and sills that resemble speed bumps along the river bottom, nothing was done because the lakes were in a period of above-average levels that lasted nearly three decades, Kompoltowicz said.  The corps has congressional authorization to take action but would need money for an updated study as a first step, he said.

The Detroit office is considering a funding request, but it would have to compete with other projects nationwide and couldn't get into the budget before 2015.  "It's no guarantee that we're going to get it, especially in this budget climate," Kompoltowicz said. "But there are serious impacts to navigation and shoreline property owners from this extreme event. It's time to revisit this."  Scientists and engineers convened by the International Joint Commission, a U.S.-Canadian agency that deals with shared waterways, issued reports in 2009 and last year that did not endorse trying to regulate the Great Lakes by placing structures at choke points such as the St. Clair River. The commission has conducted public hearings and will issue a statement in about a month, spokesman John Nevin said.  Roger Gauthier, a retired staff hydrologist with the Army corps, said a series of "speed bumps" could be put in the river at a reasonable cost within a few years. Without such measures, he warned, "it would take years of consistent rain" to return Lake Michigan and Lake Huron to normal. - Yahoo.

WATCH: Great Lakes reach record low.

EXTREME WEATHER: Persistent Drought - New Water Lows For Great Lakes Could Drain Local Economies!

January 15, 2013 - UNITED STATES - Chris Berkey makes his living plying the often treacherous waters of the Great Lakes, delivering staples like cement to industries nestled in the myriad harbors that dot a coastline that's equal to nearly half of the circumference of the globe.  It's not glamorous work, but it is critical to the U.S. economy. And it's getting harder.  Water levels in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron fell to record low levels for December, and are expected to break the all-time low sometime in the next few months.  Cargo ships like Berkey's are being forced to lighten their loads, some harbors have already been forced to close and the tourist trade is bracing for an impact as well.  "In years past, there was always a buffer," he said. "That buffer's gone."

 Water levels in Lake Michigan, pictured, and Lake Huron fell to record low levels for December.

It's not a new problem. Lake levels have been below average for at least 13 years, said Keith Kompoltowicz, chief of watershed hydrology for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Detroit.  But it is an increasingly serious one:  -- The coal trade on the Great Lakes declined 8.2% in 2012 from the previous year, and down a quarter off the 5-year-averge -- in large part due to falling water levels and a $200 million backlog in necessary dredging throughout the lakes, according to the Lake Carriers' Association. -- Commercial fishing boats are finding it increasingly difficult to navigate some harbors, risking a downturn in a vital part of the Great Lakes economy, said Mark Breederland, an educator with Michigan SeaGrant, which works with coastal communities on water-level issues, among other things. -- Charter boat operations and other businesses in coastal communities that depend on tourism fear the impact lower water levels will have from spring to fall, when tens of thousands of people flow into the state to boat, fish, eat out and shop.

Fishing lure
In Frankfort, Michigan, a popular salmon run on the Betsie River draws tourists drawn by the lure of fishing a rare naturally replenished population of the prized fish, said city manager Josh Mills.  "We see people from Texas, from Georgia, from Ohio, Illinois, other areas of Michigan," he said.  But low lake levels last year dried up the run, leaving salmon flopping in the mud, and forcing the state Department of Natural Resources to close to run to protect the population.  It appears a good number of the fish made it to their spawning grounds, but if water levels don't recover in the spring, the narrow channel through which the fish pass could dry up once again -- prompting tourists to find someplace else to go, Breederland said.  Also of concern: potential access problems at some of the private marinas dotting Betsie Bay, Mills said. Despite efforts to diversify the city's economy in recent years, such problems would be a huge blow to the tiny community of 1,300, the city manager said.  "I'm confident the community will step up," he said. "But if there's no water, we're going to miss out on a lot of activity."

Precipitation and evaporation 
The problem is a long-term cycle of too little water from melting snow and rain to counter the effects of evaporation on the lakes, Kompoltowicz.  Last winter, too little snow fell on the Great Lakes region to fully replenish the lakes. While Lake Michigan and Lake Huron typically rise a foot after the spring melt, the lakes only rose four inches last spring, Kompoltowicz said.  Add that tiny rise to a very hot, very dry summer that sucked water out of the lake like a straw, and you have a recipe for the decline in lake levels under way today, eh said.  There's too little data to say the problem is a product of global warming, he said. It's also a cycle that's been seen before.  Lake levels were nearly this low in December 1964, and it's the March 1964 record that's likely to fall in the next few months.  There is hope, he said. Records dating back to 1918 would seem to indicate a cyclical pattern that could well result in record lake levels in the next few years, he said. Such swings occurred in the 1970s and 1980s after similar low points. - CNN.

MONUMENTAL EARTH CHANGES: Great Lakes Reach All-Time Record Low Water Levels - Lowest Level Since 1964!

January 04, 2013 - UNITED STATES - The Great Lakes have had lower water levels this past year, but now they have reached an all-time, record low.

A rare cloudless satellite view of the entire Great Lakes region, April 24, 2000,
with the names of the lakes added. © Wikipedia.

The Federal Government says preliminary numbers show both Lake Michigan and Lake Huron reached record low water levels, in December.

The credit is given to the low level, to light snowfall last Winter, and light rainfall in the Spring.

The previous all-time low level was set in 1964, at 576.2 feet.

The preliminary mark for December 2012, is 576.15 feet. - 9&10 News.

MONUMENTAL EARTH CHANGES: Great Lakes Winter Ice Cover Has Decreased 71 Percent Since 1973!

The average amount of ice covering the Great Lakes declined 71 percent over the past 40 winters, with Lake Superior ice down 79 percent, according to a report published by the American Meteorological Society.

A satellite photo of Lake Superior and the region taken Friday afternoon shows little ice on the lake.

“There was a significant downward trend in ice coverage from 1973 to the present for all of the lakes,’’ states the study appearing in the society’s Journal of Climate. Researchers used Coast Guard reports and satellite photographs taken from 1973 to 2010 to determine the ice coverage of all the lakes, with Lake Ontario ice dropping 88 percent while ice in Lake St. Clair (between Lake Huron and Lake Erie) diminished just 37 percent. The findings don’t include the current winter, but 2011-12 will only speed up the decline. Only about 5 percent of the Great Lakes surface froze over this winter, the least since satellite photos first were taken from space. That compares to winters that saw as much as 94 percent ice coverage, such as in 1979. It’s also way down from the average winter of about 40 percent coverage.

The results won’t be a surprise to Northlanders who have gazed out all winter over open water on the western tip of Lake Superior, where almost no ice has formed. Even in protected Chequamegon Bay, which usually freezes enough for trucks to drive on, strong ice never formed this winter, forcing the Madeline Island ferry to operate all season. That’s only the second time that’s ever happened. The results echo other studies that show much higher surface water temperatures on Lake Superior in recent years and far fewer days of ice cover. The study’s lead researcher is Jia Wang, who works at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab in Ann Arbor, Mich. He told Chicago’s WBEZ-FM that diminished ice can speed up wintertime evaporation, reducing water levels. It also may lead to increased and earlier algae blooms, which can damage water quality, and may accelerate erosion by exposing more shoreline to waves. Wang said the decline in ice cover probably is due to several factors, including cyclical climate patterns like El Niño and La Niña (unusually high temperatures and unusually low temperatures, respectively, in the Pacific), changes in the Arctic Oscillation and broader climate change. - Duluth News Tribune.

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR: Asian Carp Invades North America - Threatens American Fishes!

Environmentalists in North America are looking at options to control an invasive species of fish, the Asian carp, which threatens to squeeze out other species if its numbers continue to grow.

Imported as a farmed species in the 1970s, Bighead and Silver carp from China were first seen as a way to produce cheap food, but floodwaters overwhelmed the fish farms, spreading the fish throughout the US Midwest.


The threat from the species is so grave that authorities could end up spending billions of dollars and physically separating two river basins. - Al Jazeera.

WATCH: Al Jazeera's Daniel Lak reports from Toronto, Canada.