Just after sunrise, Manitoba Merv, the rodent forecaster at Oak Hammock Marsh Interpretive Centre made his Groundhog Day prediction, and it’s grim.

Merv saw his shadow, so Manitobans will have another six weeks of winter.

Oak Hammock Marsh staff say Merv’s predictions have been amazingly accurate.

For the past 23 years, Manitoba Merv has correctly predicted the arrival of spring and only made one error.

The groundhog may well be correct about this year’s prediction. Six weeks from now is mid-March, which is typically when the first geese return, Oak Hammock Marsh staff say.

I don’t trust groundhogs anyway, or gophers and badgers for that matter. All they’re doing is guessing. And more and more of the guessing is being made by puppeteers.

A severe cold wave has gripped many parts of northern India, with temperatures plummeting to -6C (21F) in Indian-administered Kashmir. The famous Dal Lake, as seen in the picture above, has partially frozen, making it hard for boatmen to ferry passengers and tourists.

Water pipelines have frozen in some parts of Kashmir, road transport has been severely affected and supply chains have been disrupted, making it hard for local communities to meet their daily needs.

India’s capital Delhi has also been reeling under a severe cold wave. Some areas of Delhi have recorded temperatures as low as 2.2C. The cold snap has been particularly hard for Delhi’s homeless people who mostly sleep on pavements.

Dropping temperatures and dense fog have also disrupted train schedules. India Railways carries some 23 million passengers daily and it’s considered the backbone of the country’s transport system. Several trains have been running late – sometimes by six to 10 hours – in northern India, throwing people’s travel plans into chaos.

The cold wave has also been causing serious health issues, especially in Delhi which also sees severe pollution levels during winter months.

The north-western state of Rajasthan has also been witnessing a severe drop in temperatures. Farmers there say it has affected their work and harvests.

The holy city of Amritsar has also been engulfed in dese fog in the past few days. Transport services, including trains and buses, have been badly hit.

BBC

Blizzard kills 13 in Buffalo, N.Y., area

Buffalo, New York, where 43 inches of snow fell as of Sunday morning, according to the National Weather Service. The snowfall and blizzard conditions made roads impassable, froze power substations and left more than a dozen people dead, Erie County officials said.

Dec 25 (Reuters) – A lethal blizzard paralyzed Buffalo, New York, on Christmas Day, trapping motorists and rescue workers in their vehicles, leaving thousands of homes without power and raising the death toll from storms that have chilled much of the United States for days.

At least 30 people have died in U.S. weather-related incidents, according to an NBC News tally, since a deep freeze gripped most of the nation, coupled with snow, ice and howling winds from a sprawling storm that roared out of the Great Lakes region on Friday.

Much of the loss of life has centered in and around Buffalo at the edge of Lake Erie in western New York, as numbing cold and heavy “lake-effect” snow – the result of frigid air moving over warmer lake waters – persisted through the holiday weekend.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said the storm’s confirmed death toll climbed to 13 on Sunday, up from three reported overnight in the Buffalo region. The latest victims included some found in cars and some in snow banks, Poloncarz said, adding that the death tally would likely rise further.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul called it an “epic, once-in-a-lifetime” weather disaster that ranked as the fiercest winter storm to hit the greater Buffalo area since a crippling 1977 blizzard that killed nearly 30 people.

“We have now surpassed the scale of that storm, in its intensity, the longevity, the ferocity of its winds,” Hochul told an evening news conference, adding that the current storm would likely to go down in history as “the blizzard of ’22.”

Christina Klaffka, 39, a North Buffalo resident, watched the shingles blow off her neighbor’s home and listened to her windows rattle from “hurricane-like winds.” She lost power along with her whole neighborhood on Saturday evening, and was still without electricity on Sunday morning.

“My TV kept flickering while I was trying to watch the Buffalo Bills and Chicago Bears game. I lost power shortly after the 3rd quarter,” she said.

John Burns, 58, a retiree in North Buffalo, said he and his family were trapped in their house for 36 hours by the storm and extreme cold that he called “mean and nasty.”

A powerful Arctic winter storm sweeping across the US and Canada has been linked to at least 19 deaths ahead of the holiday weekend.

The storm, which extends more than 2,000 miles (3,200km) from Texas to Quebec, is affecting some 135 million people on the busiest travel days of the year.

Severe weather alerts stretch from coast to coast and reach as far south as the US-Mexico border and Florida, the Sunshine State.

The US National Weather Service (NWS) says more than 100 daily cold temperature records could be tied or broken in the next few days. Nashville, Tennessee, has already seen its temperatures fall below zero for the first time in 26 years.

High winds whip around 7.5 inches of new snow at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport as workers prepare a Sun Country Airlines plane for take off.

Major airports elsewhere have cancelled thousands of flights as the storm intensifies. In anticipation of disruptions, airlines including United, Delta and American have offered to waive fees for travellers who wish to reschedule their flights.

Some travellers were still arriving for flights at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago on Thursday – even with more warnings being issued.

A storm warning in Chicago is in effect until 6:00 (CST) Saturday, with forecasts of several inches of snow and winds topping 50mph (80km/h)

Workers were already out in force clearing away as the snowfall began in a western suburb of Chicago.

In many states, people have been urged to stay indoors. As temperatures dropped, only a handful of commuters were waiting for an L train during the lighter-than-usual evening rush hour in the city.

Conditions deteriorated further, into what is known as a “bomb cyclone” – a term given to an explosive storm that intensifies rapidly.

In Colorado, temperatures dipped to a record-breaking low of -9F from 42F on Thursday.

The extreme winter driving conditions shut many roads, including the I-70, in Silverthorne, Colorado.

Snow falls on Broadway, a popular tourist street in Nashville, Tennessee.

The governors of Kentucky, North Carolina, West Virginia, Georgia and Oklahoma have also declared states of emergency, while Wisconsin declared an “energy emergency”.