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Last record-breaking winter with snow hits Canada, US, before “nobody knows what snow is”

UPDATE: Record breaking snow falling in upstate New York. Pennsylvania.

 The airport in Erie, Pennsylvania, has had a whopping 65.1 inches of snow from this lake effect event — the highest snowfall total from any event on record in Erie. (Heavy lake effect snow is produced by cold Arctic air moving over relatively mild water temperatures in the Great Lakes.) — World News, ABC (US) News

40,000 people in Cleveland lost power overnight.

New York City may have coldest New Year’s Eve since 1960s… — ABC News

In freak conditions, Canadians (and many people in the US too) are getting a chance to enjoy record cold for the last time before climate change makes winters unbearably mild.

Extreme cold in Toronto smashes 57-year-old temperature record

Temperatures observed at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport bottomed out at -22 C [-7.7F]  this morning. The previous record for this date was set in 1960, when it hit -18.9 C. [-2F]

Tristan Hopper does some first class bragging about the cold:

Mars and the North Pole are warmer than Winnipeg: A guide to how damned cold it is

Vancouver is as cold as Moscow, Toronto is colder than CFS Alert and a piece of the country roughly the size of Europe was under an extreme cold warning

It’s colder in Winnipeg than it has ever been in Scotland (ever)

The coldest ever in Scotland was apparently only – 27C. (-16.6F). And for southerners, “CFS Alert” is the worlds most northern inhabited place, deep into the Arctic, and beyond even where Inuits would live. Today, by the way, in midsummer the South Pole warmed up to -18C.

A swath of Canada the size of Europe was under an extreme cold warning

Alberta’s warmest place was almost as cold as Mars

This means that, for a few minutes, all of Alberta was about as cold as Mars’ Gale Crater, the home of the Curiosity rover. Mars is subject to pretty violent temperatures shifts, and Curiosity regularly encounters temperatures below -80 C….this week, the highest temperature experienced by the rover were -23 C. A Calgary Boxing Day shopper, therefore, might have found themselves getting into a car that was literally colder than a Martian spacecraft.

People in Whitby are presumably making the most of the cold at the moment:

Hydro blackout hits 11,000 Whitby customers in extreme cold

The outage arrives on a morning when it feels like -31 C with the wind chill.

Best wishes to our Canadian and US friends. I’m sure they will be devastated if spring hits early.

h/t Pat, Scott, Clipe.

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*NOAA Satellites‏ @NOAASatellites 24h24 hours ago

Check out these “cloud streets” over the #GreatLakes, seen by the #SuomiNPP satellite’s #VIIRS instrument. These parallel rows of clouds are what’s behind the heavy lake effect #snow hitting parts of PA, MI and upstate NY. More imagery: http://goo.gl/eEwncX

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