Soy beans cost more because of climate change

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150330162427.htm






Even during a good year, soybean farmers nationwide are, in essence, taking a loss. That's because changes in weather patterns have been eating into their profits and taking quite a bite: $11 billion over the past 20 years.

This massive loss has been hidden, in effect, by the impressive annual growth seen in soybean yields thanks to other factors. But that growth could have been 30 percent higher if weather variations resulting from climate change had not occurred, according to a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison agronomists published last month in Nature Plants.

Averaging the data across the United States, researchers found that soybean yields fell by around 2.4 percent for every one-degree rise in temperature. In Wisconsin and most other northern states, including South Dakota and Minnesota, the changes in climate factors actually led to higher soybean yields. Wisconsin, for instance, saw an increase of 17.5 kilograms per hectare per year over the 20 years studied. However, most soybean-growing states farther south, including Ohio, Arkansas and Kentucky, experienced decreases in yields.

These divergent responses have to do with historical norms. In colder northern states, soybeans seem to be enjoying the new warmer weather, while in states farther south -- where conditions had previously been fairly ideal -- the additional heat is causing stress.

Conley's team isolated the impacts of changing temperature and precipitation on soybean yields in a much more precise way than previously done. While earlier approaches relied on estimates, UW-Madison researchers gathered their own data field trials, giving them access to more reliable and consistent information about the genetics of the soybeans being grown, the management practices being used and the weather the fields saw throughout the growing season. Spyridon Mourtzinis, a post-doctoral fellow in Conley's lab, then removed the effects of the management strategies and genetic improvements so the team could focus their analysis on the impacts of weather variability.

Animals adapting to frequent cold snaps

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150409120053.htm





As worldwide temperatures rise and the earth sees extreme weather conditions in both summer and winter, a team of researchers with the University of Florida and Kansas State University have found that that there is potential for insects - and possibly other animals - to acclimate and rapidly evolve in the face of this current climate change.

While much of the emphasis regarding climate change is on overall warming, increased frequency of extreme weather events is also a critical concern. As fall and spring temperatures rise, animals will increasingly have to deal with rapid changes from warm conditions to dangerously cold temperatures as weather fronts sweep through. These “snap freeze” events threaten a variety of plants from agricultural crops to landscaping that are damaged and animals like insects, frogs, and even sea turtles that can suffer from cold.

The ability to respond to longer-term seasonal changes does not impede the ability to respond to rapid changes associated with short-term extreme cold events,” said Daniel Hahn, associate professor of insect physiology with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences’ Department of Entomology and Nematology. “We have identified a series of about 100 candidate genes that could explain the ability of animals to rapidly respond to fluctuating temperatures.”

“Identifying which of these candidate genes actually causes variation in responses to cold snaps will give us the potential to understand whether evolution to climate change can occur in both wild and domesticated animals, allowing us to better predict which species or breeds will be “winners” and “losers” and to better mitigate the effects of anthropogenic climate change on a wide range of organisms from beneficial pollinators to invasive pests,” said Theodore Morgan an associate professor of evolutionary genetics in the Division of Biology at Kansas State University and senior author of the study.

Gerken, Hahn, and Morgan say identifying the genes involved in acclimation to temperature and the genetic relationship between long-term and short-term acclimation provides us with new tools to predict the impacts of an increased frequency of extreme events as a by-product of anthropogenic climate change on animal and plant populations.

Why flowers bloom earlier in a warming climate

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150331073936.htm







Scientists at the John Innes Centre have discovered why the first buds of spring come increasingly earlier as the climate changes.

Dr Steven Penfield at the JIC found that plants have an ideal temperature for seed set and flower at a particular time of year to make sure their seed develops just as the weather has warmed to this 'sweet spot' temperature.

As the climate changes the sweet spot for seeds comes earlier in the year, so first flowers bloom correspondingly earlier too.

The research which received funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Research Council (BBSRC) and is published in eLife, used computer models to understand the growth strategy of Arabidopsis thaliana. The underlying principle of a very sensitive temperature sweet spot is likely to apply to many flowering plants. This would mean that certain plants have different flowering times due to different but equally narrow temperature sensitivity windows.

Better method for forecasting hurricane season

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150331175912.htm







 A better method for predicting the number of hurricanes in an upcoming season has been developed by a team of University of Arizona atmospheric scientists.

The UA team's new model improves the accuracy of seasonal hurricane forecasts for the North Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico by 23 percent. The team's research paper was published online in the journal Weather and Forecasting on March 25.

The team developed the new model by using data from the 1950 to 2013 hurricane seasons. They tested the new model by seeing if it could "hindcast" the number of hurricanes that occurred each season from 1900 to 1949.

After much trial and error, Davis met Zeng's challenge. The model Davis developed does a better job of forecasting the Atlantic hurricane season by incorporating the force of the wind on the ocean and the sea surface temperature over the Atlantic. The model includes the effect of El Niño only for years when the AMO is in the cool phase.

Compared with the other models, the UA model de-emphasized the role of El Niño when the AMO is in the warm phase, as it has been for the past 15 years.

Next the team plans to examine the forecasting models for the eastern Pacific hurricanes -- the ones that hit Baja California and the western coast of Mexico and Central America.

Warm blob in Pacific ocean linked to werid weather across the U.S

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150409143041.htm





The one common element in recent weather has been oddness. The West Coast has been warm and parched; the East Coast has been cold and snowed under. Fish are swimming into new waters, and hungry seals are washing up on California beaches.

A long-lived patch of warm water off the West Coast, about 1 to 4 degrees Celsius (2 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, is part of what's wreaking much of this mayhem, according to two University of Washington papers to appear in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

"In the fall of 2013 and early 2014 we started to notice a big, almost circular mass of water that just didn't cool off as much as it usually did, so by spring of 2014 it was warmer than we had ever seen it for that time of year," said Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the UW-based Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, a joint research center of the UW and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The authors look at how the blob is affecting West Coast marine life. They find fish sightings in unusual places, supporting recent reports that West Coast marine ecosystems are suffering and the food web is being disrupted by warm, less nutrient-rich Pacific Ocean water.

"Lately this mode seems to have emerged as second to the El Niño Southern Oscillation in terms of driving the long-term variability, especially over North America," Hartmann said.

In a blog post last month, Hartmann focused on the more recent winter of 2014-15 and argues that, once again, the root cause was surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific.

That pattern, which also causes the blob, seems to have become stronger since about 1980 and lately has elbowed out the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to become second only to El Niño in its influence on global weather patterns.

Sun experiences seasonal changes

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150407085300.htm





The Sun undergoes a type of seasonal variability with its activity waxing and waning over the course of nearly two years, according to a new study by a team of researchers led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). This behavior affects the peaks and valleys in the approximately 11-year solar cycle, sometimes amplifying and sometimes weakening the solar storms that can buffet Earth's atmosphere.

The overlapping bands are fueled by the rotation of the Sun's deep interior, according to observations by the research team. As the bands move within the Sun's northern and southern hemispheres, activity rises to a peak over a period of about 11 months and then begins to wane.

The new study is one of a series of papers by the research team that examines the influence of the magnetic bands on several interrelated cycles of solar magnetism. In a paper last year in Astrophysical Journal, the authors characterized the approximately 11-year sunspot cycle in terms of two overlapping parallel bands of opposite magnetic polarity that slowly migrate over almost 22 years from high solar latitudes toward the equator, where they meet and terminate.

The quasi-annual variability can also help explain a cold-war era puzzle: why do powerful solar flares and CMEs often peak a year or more after the maximum number of sunspots? This lag is known as the Gnevyshev Gap, after the Soviet scientist who first reported it in the 1940s. The answer appears to be that seasonal changes may cause an upswing in solar disturbances long after the peak in the solar cycle.

Researchers can turn to advanced computer simulations and more detailed observations to learn more about the profound influence of the bands on solar activity. McIntosh said this could be assisted by a proposed network of satellites observing the Sun, much as the global networks of satellites around Earth have helped advance terrestrial weather models since the 1960s.

Research links two Millennia of cyclones, floods, El Nino

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150330162429.htm

Stalagmites, which crystallize from water dropping onto the floors of caves, millimeter by millimeter, over thousands of years, leave behind a record of climate change encased in stone. Newly published research by Rhawn Denniston, professor of geology at Cornell College, and his research team, applied a novel technique to stalagmites from the Australian tropics to create a 2,200-year-long record of flood events that might also help predict future climate change.

The resulting data tell scientists about more than just the frequencies of tropical cyclones in one part of Australia over the past 2,200 years. A major driver of year-to-year changes in tropical cyclones around the world is the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, which influences weather patterns across the globe. During El Niño events, for example, Australia and the Atlantic generally experience fewer tropical cyclones, while during La Niña events, the climatological opposite of El Niño, the regions see more tropical cyclones.

Denniston is now gearing up to establish a detailed cave monitoring program in this and other regional caves. "We want to extend this study," he said, "to examine what conditions trigger cave flooding."

In addition to Denniston, Villarini, and Gonzales, the other authors on the paper were Karl-Heinz Wyrwoll from the University of Western Australia, Victor J. Polyak from the University of New Mexico, Caroline C. Ummenhofer from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Matthew S. Lachniet from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Alan D. Wanamaker Jr. from Iowa State University, William F. Humphreys from the Western Australian Museum, David Woods from the Australian Department of Parks and Wildlife, and John Cugley from the Australian Speleological Federation.

Big storms increase tropical rainfall

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150325151857.htm

Joint research from the Monash branch of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science (ARCCSS) and NASA published in Nature found even though other types of rainfall has decreased in frequency and the total number of thunderstorms remained the same, the increase in big storms had elevated total rainfall.

Thunderstorms play an important role in rainfall in the tropics. Despite organised deep convective storms only occurring 5% of the time in the world's equatorial regions, they deliver almost 50% of all its rainfall.

The research has also contributed to answering the important question whether the increase in rainfall observed in the tropics was simply caused by the fact of a warmer atmosphere or whether the underlying circulation in that region had changed.

The changes to the deep convection discovered in the study suggested a dynamic change in the climate system was responsible for the change in rainfall.

The revelation that large thunderstorms appear to be the source of increased precipitation in the tropics explains why climate models may have difficulties in accurately representing the details of tropical rainfall.

The small-scale processes giving rise to thunderstorms make their direct simulation in climate models impossible given current computing power.

"This limitation, which is a well-known issue in global climate models, might well be a contributing factor to the precipitation errors and the bias towards light rain," said another author from Monash University, Prof Christian Jakob.

"Given how important these large storms are to rainfall in the tropics, it is vital that there is a renewed effort to represent convective organisation in global climate models if we are to fully understand precipitation changes in the future."

Climate Change does not cause extreme weathers

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150327132207.htm

Repeated cold snaps led to temperatures far below freezing across the eastern United States in the past two winters. Parts of the Niagara Falls froze, and ice floes formed on Lake Michigan. Such low temperatures had become rare in recent years. Pictures of icy, snow-covered cities made their way around the world, raising the question of whether climate change could be responsible for these extreme events.

It has been argued that the amplified warming of the Arctic relative to lower latitudes in recent decades has weakened the polar jet stream, a strong wind current several kilometres high in the atmosphere driven by temperature differences between the warm tropics and cold polar regions. One hypothesis is that a weaker jet stream may become more wavy, leading to greater fluctuations in temperature in mid-latitudes. Through a wavier jet stream, it has been suggested, amplified Arctic warming may have contributed to the cold snaps that hit the eastern United States.

Scientists at ETH Zurich and at the California Institute of Technology, led by Tapio Schneider, professor of climate dynamics at ETH Zurich, have come to a different conclusion. They used climate simulations and theoretical arguments to show that in most places, the range of temperature fluctuations will decrease as the climate warms. So not only will cold snaps become rarer simply because the climate is warming. Additionally, their frequency will be reduced because fluctuations about the warming mean temperature also become smaller, the scientists wrote in the latest issue of the Journal of Climate.

Using a highly simplified climate model, they examined various climate scenarios to verify their theory. It showed that the temperature variability in mid-latitudes indeed decreases as the temperature difference between the poles and the equator diminishes. Climate model simulations by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) showed similar results: as the climate warms, temperature differences in mid-latitudes decrease, and so does temperature variability, especially in winter.

Temperature extremes will therefore become rarer as this variability is reduced. But this does not mean there will be no temperature extremes in the future. "Despite lower temperature variance, there will be more extreme warm periods in the future because the Earth is warming," says Schneider. The researchers limited their work to temperature trends. Other extreme events, such as storms with heavy rain or snowfall, can still become more common as the climate warms, as other studies have shown.

Tropical Cyclone Size

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150317162146.htm


A team of scientists including Minghua Zhang, Dean and Director of Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS), have found that the size of tropical cyclones is controlled by their underlying sea-surface temperatures (SST) relative to the conditions of the mean SST within the surrounding tropical zone of the storms. Their findings, published early online in Nature Communications, imply that under a warmer climate, the size of tropical cyclones (including hurricanes), are not based on the absolute value of SST alone.

Scientists believe that the size of cyclones (total rainfall area/radius) is likely controlled by two conditions: the intensity of the storms and the SST. But in this paper, titled "Tropical cyclone rainfall area controlled by relative sea surface temperature," the research team examined relative conditions and found that aspect to be a more accurate predictor of the tropical cyclone size.

"We know that tropical cyclone precipitation will be stronger when sea-surface temperatures are higher, but is not clear whether the stronger precipitation is associated with higher intensity rates or larger areas, or both," explained Dr. Zhang. "Our study showed that if the sea-surface temperatures are uniformly higher around the cyclone region, the cyclone sizes will be similar to the affected tropical zone."

The researchers analyzed 1,142 tropic cyclones worldwide by using high resolution space-borne radar and microwave measurements of precipitation aboard NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite and tropical cyclone track data from the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship22 program. They investigated the controlling factors of each of the tropical cyclone sizes and found that the relationship of the cyclone sizes with the intensity of the cyclones, combined with the absolute values of SSF together are weak, but the relationship between the relative values of the SST and the cyclone sizes is strong.

Frequency of tornadoes hail linked to el nino

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150316135146.htm

Climate scientists can spot El Niño and La Niña conditions developing months ahead of time, and they use this knowledge to make more accurate forecasts of droughts, flooding and even hurricane activity around the world. Now, a new study shows that El Niño and La Niña conditions can also help predict the frequency of tornadoes and hail storms in some of the most susceptible regions of the United States. The study appears in the current issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.

While the information can't pinpoint when and where storms will wreak havoc, it will nevertheless be useful for governments and insurance companies to prepare for the coming season, Allen said. In recent weeks, researchers from IRI and other institutions have detected El Niño conditions over the Pacific, which implies that this spring will be a relatively quiet one for severe storms in the southern United States.

Last year, 47 people died in tornadoes. But in 2011--a La Niña year-- tornadoes killed more than 550 people, higher than in the previous 10 years combined. Hail storms and tornadoes cause an average estimated $1.6 billion in insured losses each year in the United States, according to the insurer Munich RE. Powerful, isolated events such as the 2011 Joplin, Missouri, tornado can smash that average. That storm alone caused several billion dollars in damage and killed 158 people.

The idea that ENSO can affect the frequency and locations of tornadoes and other severe storm systems isn't new. It is already known to exert a strong influence on temperatures and rainfall in the United States, and affect the position of the jet stream. Yet scientists have had difficulty quantifying ENSO's role in tornadoes, for two reasons. First, a variety of other factors can make them seemingly random: one year can see hundreds of twisters, while another sees few. Also, historical weather records are not reliable for long enough to make strong statistical connections. This is true especially for tornadoes, which often flare up and die quickly.

They note caveats, however. First, ENSO is not the only driver of severe storms. "Any kind of extreme weather is at most only loosely controlled by coherent, predictable climate phenomena like ENSO, and tornadoes are no exception," said coauthor Adam Sobel, who also is at Columbia's engineering school, as well as its Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Second, the current study shows robust correlation only in the southern states, where the ENSO signal is especially clear. "A lot of the year-to-year variability is for all practical purposes random and unpredictable," said Sobel, who also directs a new Columbia University Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate.

Avalanche kills 186 in Afghanistan

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/26/afghanistan-avalanches-180-feared-dead


The death toll in some of the worst avalanches in Afghanistan for 30 years has risen to more than 180 people, with heavy snow set to last for two more days.
Officials warned of an imminent humanitarian emergency in areas most severely hit by the bad weather, with snow sweeping through villages and blocking off roads.
“We haven’t seen this much snow, or this many avalanches, for 30 years,” said Abdul Rahman Kabiri, acting governor of the mountainous province of Panjshir, north of Kabul, where 186 people were killed and more than 100 injured in avalanches.
Despite bringing misery to so many people, the snow is vital for Afghanistan, where much of the rural population dependent on agriculture relies on snow melting in the mountains to sustain crops in the spring and summer. An unusually dry winter had led to fears of drought.
Farming drives the troubled Afghan economy, with about three quarters of the people living in rural areas, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated in 2004.

Tree kills child because of thunderstorm

 http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/mar/01/two-year-old-boy-killed-after-tree-falls-on-family-home-in-melbourne





The tree fell during a severe thunderstorm that hit Victoria on Saturday evening, landing on a two-story house at around 9pm in the outer Melbourne suburb The Patch in the Dandenong Ranges and causing substantial damage.
When emergency services arrived, they found two adults and two children trapped in the house – and were able to remove the adults and the girl, who suffered head, chest and leg injuries and was taken to the Royal Children’s hospital, but could not revive the boy.
Two other adults and a 13-year-old boy escaped unharmed.
The tragedy was one of three storm-related incidents to involve trees in Melbourne on Saturday, with a middle-aged woman suffering a broken leg from a tree fall in South Yarra, while a man aged in his 40s was hospitalised when a tree fell on his leg at The Basin.
Victoria’s State Emergency Service (SES) logged more than 1,400 calls for help during the storm and continuing into early Sunday morning.
“The peak was during the storm, so about 8pm until 11pm, but people are still finding things and calls are still coming through,” SES spokesperson Frances

Warmest cities during winter

http://www.weather.com/news/news/hottest-winter-cities-record-heat-december-january-February




There are, of course, plenty of places where winter isn't nearly as harsh – not just this year, but any year. In fact, there are many places in America that occasionally enjoy summerlike warmth even in the dead of winter.
We ranked the 50 hottest winter cities in the U.S. by combing through National Weather Service historical temperature data for every metropolitan area in the U.S., as defined by the federal government in 2013. For each metropolitan area, we looked for the hottest temperature ever recorded in the months of December, January and February – "meteorological winter" – for the principal city or cities in that metropolitan area, using the most reliable observation data available. In some cases, we threw out data that were inconsistent either with surrounding observation sites or with the observation site's own data for other days within the same time frame.
There were many ties, so we broke them first by giving a higher ranking to cities that achieved their wintertime high more than once. For example, a city with eight 90-degree days would beat a day with only two 90-degree days, assuming neither city had ever hit 91 or above.
Remaining ties were broken by giving the higher ranking to the city whose record was set the most recently. There was one pair of deadlocked cities that these two tiebreakers didn't resolve, so we broke that tie by looking at the second-highest wintertime highs for each city.
Laredo, Texas: 103ºF,Austin, Texas: 101ºF,McAllen, Texas: 100ºF,San Antonio, Texas: 100ºF,College Station - Bryan, Texas: 99ºF.

Winter Storm Remus

http://www.weather.com/storms/winter/news/winter-storm-remus-south-snow



To the north, another piece of Remus is bringing snow to parts of the Midwest and will eventually merge with the Southern portion of the storm system.

Snowfall totals up to 4 inches of snow have been reported as of late Wednesday morning in northeast Texas. Shreveport, Louisiana picked up 2 inches of snow in just 2 hours, and some 3-inch snow totals have come in from southern Arkansas. 

Sleet and freezing rain had accumulated as far east as parts of central and northern Mississippi. Despite surface temperatures holding a few degrees above freezing, ice accumulating in trees and power lines have triggered power outages in Madison and Hinds Counties, among other locations.
Low pressure is expected to track from near the Gulf Coast to off the Southeast coast in response to an energetic upper-level system moving across the region. With sufficiently cold air in place, the low will help pull moisture northward across the South, resulting in snow for some locations, and a cold rain for others. At the same time, a disturbance aloft will bring snow to the Midwest, eventually consolidating with the southern side of Remus.

Man killed by lighting strike

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/feb/01/gold-coast-man-killed-and-family-injured-by-massive-lightning-strike

A blast of light “shattered the air” the moment a Gold Coast father was fatally struck by a bolt of lightning.

A worker from the Queensland polling booth where the man and his wife were believed to be going to vote before the accident said they initially didn’t think anything of the lightning strike.

“There was a massive blast of light and it was beyond a bang – it just shattered the air,” the worker told the Gold Coast Bulletin.

The 39-year-old father of two died in the Gold Coast University hospital about 7pm on Saturday. His wife and two children were also admitted and were in a stable condition on Saturday night.

The Highland Park family was sheltering from the storm under a park shed near Worongary state school when the structure was struck about 4pm.

It is believed the man took a direct hit, with electricity then travelling into the others, including a toddler aged 18 months and a 12-week-old baby, a Queensland Ambulance spokesman told the ABC.

Avalanche kills 4

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/31/avalanche-kills-people-switzerland-skiers

Police in Switzerland say four people are dead after an avalanche hit a group of skiers in the south-east of the country.

Police in the canton of Graubünden said the avalanche on the slopes of the Piz Vilan mountain Saturday afternoon swept away seven members of a nine-strong group of skiers.

Rescuers recovered three bodies and four seriously injured people, who were flown to hospitals in St. Gallen, Zurich and Chur. Police say a fourth person later died at a hospital.

15 Deadliest tornadoes

http://www.almanac.com/content/15-deadliest-tornadoes-us-history

1. March 18, 1925 Tri-State (MO/IL/IN) 695 deaths
    
2. May 6, 1840 Natchez MS 317 deaths
    
3. May 27, 1896 St. Louis MO 255 deaths
    
4. April 5, 1936 Tupelo MS 216 deaths
    
5. April 6, 1936 Gainesville GA 203 deaths
    
6. April 9, 1947 Woodward OK 181 deaths
    
7. April 24, 1908 Amite LA, Purvis MS 143 deaths
    
8. June 12, 1899 New Richmond WI 117 deaths
    
9. June 8, 1953 Flint MI 115 deaths
    
10. May 11, 1953 Waco TX 114 deaths
     
11. May 18, 1902 Goliad TX 114 deaths
     
12. Mar 23, 1913 Omaha NE 103 deaths
     
13. May 26, 1917 Mattoon IL 101 deaths
     
14. June 23, 1944 Shinnston WV 100 deaths
     
15. April 18, 1880 Marshfield MO 99 deaths

Interestingly, tornadoes seem to be largely a U.S. phenomenon. Tornadoes occur in nearly all parts of Europe, but they are far less common and appear in less violent forms than in the U.S.

Statistics show that most tornadoes in the U.S. occur between 5PM and 6PM. However, those times vary by region; for example, Florida tornadoes are just as likely to occur after midnight as in the afternoon. 

Worst Winter Cities

http://www.almanac.com/content/worst-winter-weather-cities

The major cities listed below share some common traits to different degrees, no pun intended: cold average temperatures during the winter months, more days that stay below freezing, ample rain, and heavy snowfall.

Chicago, Illinois

The "Windy City" (which isn't actually that windy) has one of the coldest average temperatures and some of the heaviest snowfalls.

Cleveland, Ohio

Due to its location near Lake Erie, this city gets hard by lake-effect snow, winds, and subzero temperatures.

Boston, Massachusetts

Nor'easter storms translate to heavy rainfall, snow, and freezing temperatures.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Not only does this city rank high on snowfall and have low average winter temperatures, but it's also below freezing on your average winter day.

Winter Storm Linus 12 killed

http://www.wunderground.com/news/winter-storm-linus-latest-news






Linus canceled 6,886 domestic flights in a 48-hour span, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware. Linus completed a 10-day period that was the snowiest on record for Boston, shutting down schools and businesses in the city. And it killed 12 people during its march across at least two dozen states, affecting the Southwest, Great Plains, Midwest and Northeast along its frigid path.

The remainders of the winter storm lingered Tuesday morning in New England, where more than a foot of snow fell in some areas. Boston's MBTA train system was reporting delays, and the city announced a parade for the world champion New England Patriots would be delayed until Wednesday to give crews an extra 24 hours to clear roadways.

But even with some 40 inches of snow on the ground, Bostonians were determined to enjoy the days after the Patriots' championship.

After one of Detroit's biggest snowfalls on record, normal life was resuming Tuesday for the city's residents. Trash collectors would be operating on a holiday schedule, meaning residents would have their garbage collected one day after the normal schedule, according to The Associated Press. Plows would be out on side streets to clear remaining snow from the streets, and citizens were being asked to report any unplowed roads to local officials, the report added.

Hundreds of Detroit-area schools were closed Tuesday as the city continued its attempt to prepare the infrastructure for travel, The AP added.

Linus even made an appearance in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where the famous groundhog, Phil, still managed to see his shadow as freezing rain and light snow faded in and out during the event. According to legend, there will be another 6 weeks of winter – a winter that's coming on strong after a slow start.