Winter '13 / '14 - Wolf at the Door

Winter '13 / '14 - Typhoon Wipha Brings Early Season Snows to Obihiro Airport...Japan

From Western Pacific Weather...

Thus far today Obihiro Airport has seen 20cm of snowfall and JMA is calling for an additional 10-15cm on top of that.  This is 36 days earlier than usual and the earliest since records first started in 1892.

The snow has been causing traffic problems and also ushers in a severe risk of power outages as leaves have just started changing colors in Northern Japan and or are still green. This adds extra weight to tree branches and brings the risk of branches snapping and power outages.

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Winter '13 / '14 - Eurasia Snowcover: September

Rutgers' Global Snow Lab reports a dramatic increase in September/s areal snow cover over Eurasia.

2,362,682 km^2
7th highest overall
49% above the period-of-record (1967 - 2013) normal of 1,587,905 km^2.
120% above 2012.
Largest areal coverage since 2001.

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Top chart:
BLUE - areal snow cover in millions of km^2
ORANGE - mean areal snow cover
YELLOW - +/- 1 standard deviations
RED - 9-point binomial filter

Bottom chart:
BLUE - period-of-record (1967 - 2013) median areal snow cover in millions of km^2
RED - observed areal snow cover (2013)

Rutgers data here.