Four Corners, Florida has been crowned the new lightning capital of the United States, with a record-breaking 474 lightning events per square kilometer. The title was previously held by Flatonia, Texas, situated halfway between Houston and San Antonio.
Monitoring stations installed in the vicinity of the massive Ollagüe stratovolcano in the Andes, on the border between Bolivia and Chile, detected increased seismicity under the volcano on January 2, 2023.
Geomagnetic storms reaching G1 – Minor levels are likely on January 4 and 5, 2023 due to combined effects of a coronal mass ejection (CME) that left the Sun on December 30 and coronal hole high speed stream (CH HSS) effects. Solar activity is expected to be at low levels, with a chance for M-class flares through January 28.
Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) predicts that parts of Indonesia have the potential to receive rain with varying intensities from light to heavy in several areas on December 31 and January 1, 2023.
Popular ancient city of Petra, Jordan experienced unusually heavy rains on December 26, 2022, resulting in severe flooding that forced around 1 700 people to evacuate the archeological site. Tourist routes at the site have been reopened on December 27 and movement across the city restored.
Extremely heavy sea effect snow affecting Japan since December 14, 2022, claimed lives of at least 17 people and left at least 90 people injured, as of December 26.
An Arctic air mass brought extremely cold temperatures to Alberta, Canada over the past couple of days, breaking many daily minimum temperature records on December 20 and December 21.
A new tropical cyclone is brewing over the Timor Sea, near the coast of Australia’s Northern Territory and Western Australia. As a result, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has issued a Tropical Cyclone Warning for the coast of Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
A newly-discovered asteroid designated 2022 YO1 flew past Earth at a distance of 0.07 LD / 0.00018 AU (27 627 km / 17 167 miles) at 18:40 UTC on December 17, 2022.
Heavy sea effect snow continues affecting parts of Japan, bringing unprecedented amounts to parts of the country.
