To understand these sightings, the forecasting team contacted their colleagues at the Lauder Atmospheric Research Station in Central Otago, who confirmed that their ground-based LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) instrument has been detecting unusual spikes in aerosols in the stratosphere, at around 20-25 kilometres above New Zealand.

For scientist Sophie Gilbert, who spent four recent summers tracking the movements of Sitka black-tailed deer in the Tongass National Forest in a project with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, that means notebooks with waterproof paper.

On particularly warm and damp winter nights, as thousands of Pacific newts venture out onto the verdant Petaluma hills north of San Francisco—so does the Chileno Valley Newt Brigade.Helping a few small newts cross a 1-mile stretch of country road offers a way, they said, to keep hope.

So, next time you are out enjoying the forest and you come across strips of bark at the base of a tree and obvious teeth marks on the tree trunk, keep an eye out: a bear could be nearby.

Lufthansa, Germany’s national airline, which is based in Frankfurt, has admitted to running 21,000 empty flights this winter, using its own planes and those of its Belgian subsidiary, Brussels Airlines, in an attempt to keep hold of airport slots.

© Sjensen~ / Flickr Throughout the summer months, we supply birds with water, which they use for drinking, bathing, or simply cooling off.Going back to heated birdbaths, if managed properly, we can use these to allow birds to drink from it, and not bathe.

On average, from 2017 to 2019, only 66 percent of moose calves survived their first 60 days.Not only do moose lack a grooming instinct, but they also offer a thick, eight-inch coat, keeping ticks “nice and warm,” Blouin says.

Muskrats don’t cache food for the winter like a beaver so they must find fresh aquatic plants every day under the ice, though they’ll occasionally snack on small fish, clams, snails and turtles, too.

NIWA meteorologist Nava Fedaeff also said there were 76 locations across the country that experienced a record or near-record warm winter.To put this winter’s record warmth in perspective, Ms Fedaeff delved into historic weather records and found that the last time New Zealand experienced a similar sequence of events was 50 years ago.

Nadine Lamberski, chief conservation and wildlife health officer at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, remembers walking into forests of northern Mexico to the deafening chatter of hundreds of thick-billed parrots.

At the end of the film, Captain America passes on his iconic shield to Sam Wilson, an airman turned Avenger known as the Falcon, who takes to the skies with the aid of a pair of mechanical wings.

This was the time of year they’d ordinarily start looking at their numbers for influenza, the seasonal flu—to see how bad the outbreak would be, and to assess how well that year’s vaccine dealt with the protean respiratory virus.

When I got into mountain climbing years ago and had to get all the equipment, it happened to be during the annual end-of-winter sales, and I lucked into some terrific prices.Updated March 11, 2021: REI's winter clearance sale is over, but many items are still discounted.

I've crossed out some sold-out items, re-added some that have come back into stock, updated pricing, and added five new deals.Black Diamond Camalot C4 Package #4-6 for $297 ($32 off) : If you want to start climbing trad or need to update your rack, you're going to need cams.

Sign up for our Games newsletter and never miss our latest gaming tips, reviews, and features .Then, the unexpected happened: My husband Zach got me an Xbox One as a Christmas gift.“Y’all this winter has me depressed AF, but Zach got me an Xbox for Christmas, any suggestions on what games I should play?”.

“We don’t know anything about king penguins at Martillo Island,” says Sami Dodino, a penguinologist at Argentinian scientific institute CADIC.Ushuaia, right at the southern tip of Argentina, is known fondly as “The End of the World.” Travel around 1,000 km south and the next place you reach is Antarctica (although not before passing through another settlement on the Chilean side of the Beagle Channel, Puerto Williams—“Beyond the End of the World”).

Lospalluto / Flickr I’m snowshoeing through Colorado’s Rocky Mountains when I see a small, nondescript bird at the far edge of the creek.American dippers are small and chunky — about the side of a robin — with grey-blue plumage, a brownish head, pink legs, a short tail, and a white eyelid.

Eastern mole (Scalopus aquaticus © Chris Helzer/TNC For one week each fall, in between bouts of watching football, harvesting the garden or cleaning up all those fallen leaves, hundreds of thousands of people deliberate on some really fat bears.

Every winter, volunteers from Seattle Mountain Rescue are dispatched to the sites of dozens of harrowing incidents: They rescue backcountry skiers buried in avalanches, help injured hikers descend slick trails—and once, they even removed the wreckage of a single-engine plane from a mountainside.

The vaccine process nears a new phase, Biden plans his pandemic response, and the winter surge arrives.The 13-member team of doctors and health experts will help the president-elect develop a plan for tackling the pandemic and work with governors to develop consistent messaging at the state and federal levels.

This year’s result also means seven of the 10 warmest winters on record in New Zealand have occurred since the year 2000.This was the highest temperature recorded there during winter since records began in 1885 and the equal-4th warmest winter temperature on record for New Zealand as a whole.

In fact, several sites have recorded half their typical snow depth for this time of year.Overall, Drs Zammit and Conway say warmer winter temperatures in future are expected to cause more precipitation to fall as rain and not snow, especially at mid and low elevations.

Last year NIWA air quality scientist Dr Ian Longley launched the Arrowtown project that included some outdoor monitoring and indoor air quality monitoring by people in their homes.

It takes about 40 gallons of sap to produce a single gallon of syrup from sugar maples.Various types of maples, boxelder, walnut, sycamore, birch, and a few additional tree species have all been tapped for syrup making.

“One of the main things we are investigating is why some winter storms are very snowy and some are not,” she says.“You can tell by the shape of the snowflake at which temperature and how high in the atmosphere the snow is developing,” says Sova.

This is highly influenced by temperature: An adult antechinus’ metabolism shifts to expend less energy when it’s cold during the winter, and there isn’t much insect prey for it to hunt.

The 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro ended on August 21 of that year; in September, a chunk of Nike’s design team was in Japan, meeting with the Tokyo Olympic Committee to see where its members’ collective heads were.

Photograph: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of ArizonaThe scale of this photo makes it’s hard to tell how massive these sand dunes are.Photograph: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of ArizonaThis image looks like something seen through a microscope, but no, this is a large swath of Martian terrain.

All that rain meant a bumper crop of grasses and other vegetation, which, as hot and dry conditions returned, likely contributed to a combustible mix of fuels that played a role in the severe fires that have swept California in the past two years .These wild swings from one weather extreme to another are symptomatic of a phenomenon, variously known as “climate whiplash” or “weather whiplash,” that scientists say is likely to increase as the world warms.

If the savings don't work, we recommend picking it up for $144 ($56 off) at Amazon—still a good deal.It's one of our favorite Google Assistant-powered smart displays, but its small screen is particularly suited to the bedroom.