Let's Go Skiing In Algeria! Cold Now In Odd Places

Snow in Algeria this week. Photo by
@Ovardaigbal on Twitter.  

As noted yesterday, there's snow and cold in the normally hot southwestern United States deserts and near Las Vegas.

That's not the only place that is having frigid weather amid the palm trees. There was a bunch of snow around the Mediterranean over the past couple days, including a nice snowy covering in what is normally the sandy dusty reaches of Algeria in northern Africa.

Snow does occasionally reach lower elevations in Algeria, the last two times before this in 2012 and 2005.

It also snowed quite a bit this week in far southern Italy, where again, snow is a rarity.

If you want warmth, head north. Scandanavia was generally warmer than Algeria yesterday, which is saying something.

A big ridge of in the jet stream pumped unusually warm air into northwestern Europe, which explains the Scandanavian warmth.

Much of Europe is coming off its hottest year on record, so the thaw up toward Norway is a fitting end to 2014.

Head north to Alaska, too, if you like relative warmth. Delta Junction, Alaska tied a record high of 44 degrees yesterday.

It was 30 degrees in Fairbanks yesterday, which doesn't seem particularly warm, but it was 27 degrees warmer than normal for this time of year and just missed the record high by five degrees.

Snow covered palms in Lake Havasu City, Arizona today.
Photo via Twitter, @Lklettenberg.  

And Anchorage, Alaska is finishing up 2014 with above zero readings.

This will be the first calendar year on record in Anchorage where the temperature never fell below zero.

By contrast, it got below zero 18 times near me in Burlington, Vermont this year. (all in January, February and March)

Even St. Louis, Missouri, zillions of miles south of Anchorage, was below zero more often than Anchorage. St. Louis had four subzero days in 2014, in January and February

Today, two cities, Needles, California and Lake Havasu City, Arizona had snow.

If you've heard of these two communities before, it's because they are very often the hottest spot in the nation on many days. Temperatures in Needles and Lake Havasu City can get up into the 120s (!!) in the summer.

The Havasu News-Herald said it's the first time it has snowed there in 27 years.

So I'm sure the snow today was quite a shock.

But not as shocking as in Wyoming, where one town got down to 48 below. That's not including the wind chill.

Time to go get a hot chocolate, I think.