25th February - Today's News: More Floods, Tornadoes in Australia

Wild weather brings floods, 'mini tornado' to parts of NSW with a a huge gallery of pictures as storm leaves path of destruction in Kiama - and first hand reports of the tornado damage on UKweatherworld here.   Meanwhile, thousands still isolated by second flood in a month whilst up in Qld, school children rescued as flash flood strands bus as heavy rain claims man's life.   In contrast, down in Victoria, Melbourne equals heatwave record.

 

Biggest snowstorm of the season socks Denver metro area.   Elsewhere, storm leaves four dead in America

And some good examples of why you should never believe headlines without checking out the details.   First, it was reported that there was record snowfall in Kansas - but what they mean is, it was the most to have ever been recorded falling at that specific location on that specific date (21st February).  Not such a big deal after all.   And on Iceagenow, they've been getting excited about suggestions that northern hemisphere sets new, all-time record cold temperature - except a couple of minutes on google reveals that the 'new' figure of -71.2c is mentioned in a BBC article from 2010  - so it could hardly have been set this month, could it!    And if we check on Ogimet,  the lowest temp this February was -56.4c on the 13th.   The minimum on the 19th was -55.5c.   Mind, that's still pretty cold. I understand that the figure of -71.2c was set back in the 1920s - though is possibly not accepted as an official figure (wikipedia for example gives -68c as the lowest recorded there.)

On the subject of cold, from the MetO blog: Why does it feel so cold?  A guide to 'feels like temperatures' - though apart from the wind, it hasn't felt very cold here.  Yet another frostless 'cold spell'!   Non-weather continues this week though there's a chance it may become brighter - and maybe even frosty - by the weekend.

North India reels under rain, snow; 6 die in Uttar Pradesh

Fragments of ancient continent buried under Indian Ocean - no, not Lemuria, this is part of Rodinia, the super-continent that existed long before Pangea ever thought of forming

And the Battle of Hasting stopped by weather for second year - if only!