US: Europe's weather may be the mildest in decades but in parts of the United States it has been the wildest, with sunny California in particular getting record rains and deadly mudslides.
Mammoth snowfalls have covered the Sierra Nevada and snow has even coated the casinos in Las Vegas. By contrast, in New York, as in many European cities, the usually icy winter has been snow-free and rainy, and temperatures are expected to soar today to 16 degrees in east coast cities as far north as Boston.
The storms battering the west coast have moved across the US, causing the Ohio river to flood so badly that the governor has declared a state of emergency in 56 of the 88 counties. An ice storm in the state knocked out electricity supplies and several people died from carbon monoxide produced by domestic generators. The most dramatic weather events have, however, been in California where as one headline put it, the sky has fallen. The state has been hit by the "perfect storm" event, depressions roaring in from the Pacific laden with moisture from a flow of air from Hawaii known as the "pineapple express" and meeting cold air plunging down from the Artic. Los Angeles got a record 6.6 centimetres of rain on Sunday, and has now received more rain in the last two weeks than in a year.
Some 22 people were killed, mainly in traffic accidents, during torrential downpours on the freeways. Insurance companies have declared a weather "catastrophe" for the first time in seven years. The usually arid Mojave desert has been also been inundated by almost-unceasing rain. The deluge caused a horrifying mud slide in California's Ventura County that engulfed 15 homes, killing at least 10 people. Several more are missing and rescuers are using high-tech cameras to search for life beneath rapidly hardening mud. Television has shown dramatic pictures of houses elsewhere collapsing as their foundations crumbled under raging torrents of water. In Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Idaho, swollen rivers have roared through main streets.
The town of Brownsville in the far south of Texas received about four centimetres of snow on Christmas Eve, its first measurable snowfall since February 14th 1895, and a local man, Oscar Garza, according to the Brownsville Herald, has offered a snowball made in the town that day for $5,000 on eBay, the online auction site.
The weather will provide much material for debate at today's meeting of the American Meteorological Society in rain-soaked San Diego, California.
On the agenda is a report from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado that the world is getting drier and climate change is a major factor in the growing world drought.