Canada’s Earliest -30C Since 2017; Cold Snap Forces Germany To Fire-Up Reserve Coal Plant; + Rare ‘Pure Sine Wave’ Registered In Earth’s Magnetosphere

Canada’s Earliest -30C Since 2017

Canada has joined Russia in registering its first -30C of the season, and as with Russia, it has come early.

During the morning of Oct 18, a low of -30.2C (-22.4F) was observed at Eureka, Nunavut — Canada’s earliest -30C (-22F) since 2017.

As mentioned above, Russia also saw its first -30C this week.

As reported yesterday, the Yakutia village of Oymyakon bottomed-out at -33C (-27.4F) on Oct 17, making for Russia’s coldest temperature this early into a season for 30 years, according to Russian weather site gismeteo.ru.

Also worth noting, snow cover in this part of the world is advancing…

…which is helping northern hemisphere snow mass, as calculated by the Finish Meteorological Institute (FMI), continue this new season above the 1982-2012 average (and above 1 standard deviation, too):

The fall trend:

A more encompassing blast of winter could be on the cards for Canada next week as polar air engulfs a vast portion of the country. The Lower 48 could be impacted, too. Latest GFS runs are currently all over the place (literally), but this is one possibility:

Cold Snap Forces Germany To Fire-Up Reserve Coal Plant

As recently reported by Bloomberg, Germany has stoked its back-up coal unit to help meet energy needs as the region’s first proper cold snap of the season takes hold.

The power plant –the LEAG’s Jänschwalde block F, with its capacity of 500 megawatts– was asked by the German government to start generating last Sunday to help boost German supplies following the onset of the descention of Arctic air into Europe.

This faculty was also called into action last winter too, before being mothballed in July. Last year’s historic energy crisis forced Germany to increase its reliance on coal after supplies of Russian pipeline gas were shut off, reports Bloomberg.

German economy minister Robert Habeck said in a recent interview that the government will not need to reactivate old reserve plants next winter (2024-25) — which seems optimistic. It’s mid-October and already Germany’s ill-advised switch to renewables is proving lacking. As noted by Bloomberg, low sunshine and a lack of wind is also putting strain on the grid.

Polar cold took hold of swaths of Europe beginning Monday, which plunged temperatures below seasonal norms where they have remained ever since. This tightened Germany’s grid capacity as demand rose to keep factories running and homes warm.

Rare ‘Pure Sine Wave’ Registered In Earth’s Magnetosphere

Norwegian citizen scientist Rob Stammes just heard a pin drop on Earth’s magnetic field.

“It was very quiet when it happened,” said Stammes, who runs a space weather observatory in Lofoten, Norway.

On Tuesday, October 17, his magnetometer was monitoring Earth’s magnetic field, as it does every night, and the instrument’s needle had settled itself into a straight line, indicating very low geomagnetic activity.

Suddenly, Earth’s magnetic field began to ring.

“A very stable ~25 second magnetic oscillation appeared in my recordings, and lasted for more than 20 minutes,” said Stammes. “It was fantastic to see the magnetic field swing back and forth by about 0.1 degrees, peak to peak.”

This kind of pure tone is rare, reports Dr Tony Phillips of spaceweather.com. Researchers call them a “pulsation continuous” — or “Pc” for short. Pc waves are classified into 5 types depending on their period. The waves Stammes caught fall into category Pc3.

The “pin dropping” was a gentle gust of solar wind, elaborates Phillips.

Imagine blowing across a piece of paper, making it flutter with your breath. The solar wind can have a similar effect on Earth’s magnetic field. Pc3 waves are essentially flutters propagating down the flanks of our planet’s magnetosphere excited by the breath of the sun.

Stammes is a longtime observer of Pc waves.

Usually he catches them during Solar Minimum when “the room is quiet” for months at a time. “Recording one now so close to Solar Maximum is unexpected,” he said. “Lately, my magnetometer traces have been too noisy for such delicate waves–so it came a surprise!”

Pc3 waves, which can only be heard in moments of solar quiet, can also bring the quiet to an end. The oscillations sometimes flow all the way around Earth’s magnetic field and cause a “tearing instability” in our planet’s magnetic tail. This, in turn, can set the stage for magnetic reconnection and geomagnetic storms.

That didn’t happen this time round, though — the pin dropped, the magnetosphere rang, and quiet resumed.

Look back to that animation of the flutter…

Oct 17’s impact was caused, as Dr Phillips described it, by a gentle gust of solar wind. Now picture the wild perturbations, the nigh-on collapse of the magnetopshere –Earth’s defensive shield against space radiation– should a strong (9+) X-flare hit.

And when another ‘Myake Event’ impacts –whether that be in one year or one-thousand years– the ensuing spectacle would be truly apocalyptic: evolutionary leaps seem plausible during such violent injections of DNA-altering radiation (cosmic rays, etc.).

Record-Setting Frosts Sweep Yakutia, Russia; Californian’s Get Extended Tax Deadlines Owing To Historic Winter Snowfall; + Solar Storms And Grand Solar Minimums