Record Monthly Cold Sweeps Queensland; May Snow Clips India; Ireland Registers Its Largest-Ever Quake; Alaska’s Very Cold April; + G3 Storms Possible Tomorrow

Record Monthly Cold Sweeps Queensland

Australia’s record-breaking cold has spread north, from Victoria and NSW into Queensland.

Large areas of eastern Australia are shivering through their coldest May temperatures ever recorded this week — a feat made even more impressive considering we’re still well inside the first half of the month.

Equally telling, Queensland hasn’t posted a colder temp since July 2019.

Tuesday morning (May 9) delivered truly historic readings to Queensland: The -5.7C (21.7F) logged in Oakey at 6:30am smashed the town’s previous May low of -4.4C (24.1F) set in 2019. The wind chill made it feel even colder, -9.5C (14.9F).

Notable monthly benchmarks have fallen elsewhere, too, including in Dalby (the -3.2C/26.2F there broke the town’s 1911 record of -2.2C/28F); on the Sunshine Coast (3.3C/37.9F); and in Blackwater (3.1C/37.6F) — to name another three.

Brisbane, after its record-cold winter of 2022, is starting the 2023 cold season in a similar vein, reaching 9C (48.2F). The Brisbane airport was colder, logging 4.4C (39.9F) — its lowest May reading in 17 years.

While in Amberley –where the official Ipswich temperature station is located– the mercury dropped to -0.8C (20.6C) at 4am and was on course to challenge the May record low there; however, and in classic Bureau of Meteorology fashion, the temperature probe had an outage between 4:30 and 7:30am — prime cooling times.

Records continued to be toppled in neighboring state NSW, too: Narrabri, for example, logged an exceptional -3.3C (37.9F).

The weather bureau said cool south-westerly winds were behind the stark plunge in temperature — natural factors, naturally; only heat is deemed unnatural.


May Snow Clips India

Swathes of India’s Jammu and Kashmir witnessed rare, late-season snowfall on Monday, May 8.

The snow was heavy in parts, particularly across the Kokernag region of South Kashmir which was completely covered.

Pahalgam’s Betaab Valley was another area to receive an out-of-season blanketing; Kulgam and Kishtwar also witnessed fresh flurries, according to ANI on YouTube:


Ireland Registers Its Largest-Ever Quake

An M2.5 may not sound all-that noteworthy, but the tremor registered throughout County Donegal over the weekend was Ireland’s joint largest earthquake in record books dating back to 1980, matching the M2.5 of Jan 26, 2012–also at Donegal.

The 10km-deep quake, detected by the Irish National Seismic Network (INSN) operated by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS), struck at 12.30am near Glenveagh National Park on Saturday.

DIAS received ‘felt event reports’ from all over Donegal including at Buncrana and Desertegney in Inishowen. Shaking was also detected by several Raspberry Shake seismometers operated in Ireland by citizens and schools in Antrim, Sligo and Dublin.

A map showing locations where the earthquake was felt.
A map showing locations where the earthquake was felt.


While larger seismic events have been detected offshore by the INSN, this is Ireland’s largest onshore shaking.

Donegal’s quake followed an M3 in the Rockall Plateau in the North Atlantic, located approximately 600km to the NW, on March 4. While earthquakes in the Rockall Trough are often detected by the INSN, only one previous event has been detected in the Rockall Plateau — the M3.5 on Jan 10, 2016.

Earthquakes are thought to be a sign of the times.

Seismic/Volcanic activity correlates with changes in our Sun.

The recent global uptick can be attributed to the drop-off in solar activity, the increase in coronal holes, a waning magnetosphere, and the influx of Cosmic Rays penetrating silica-rich magma.


Alaskas Very Cold April

Overall, and despite the spurious headlines and UHI-ignoring datasets, the United States endured a cold April 2023.

April across the U.S. (Lower 48) finished with an average temperature of 51.37F which, even according to warm-mongering government agency NOAA, made for a month 0.48F below the multidecadal average.

The anomalies were starker still in Alaska.

Last month closed with an average of 16.3F across The Last Frontier, which, again according to official comparisons, is an impressive 9.9F below normal and made for Alaska’s fourth coldest April in 99-years of record-keeping:


G3 Storms Possible Tomorrow

Reversed-polarity sunspot AR3296 produced a long-lasting M.1.5-class solar flare on May 7 (at 22:34 UT):


The blast was squarely Earth-directed and is due to deliver storm levels of between G1 and G2 on May 10 or 11.

The explosion was relatively weak; however, given our planet’s ever-waning magnetic field strength combined this being a ‘long-lasting’ flaring event, stronger G3 geomagnetic storms cannot be ruled out.

During strong storms, auroras can descend to mid-latitudes and be visible in U.S. states as far south as Oregon, Nebraska, and Virginia.

We saw a similarly-impressive show back in April, one that delivered spectacular nightshinings to the likes of southern France.

For more, see the fourth story in my article dated April 24:

Please help keep Electroverse online, consider becoming a Patreon.
Become a patron at Patreon!