From Baghdad, Iraq: First snow for 100 years falls on Baghdad
Light snow fell in Baghdad early on Friday in what weather officials said was the first time in about a 100 years. Rare snowfalls were also recorded in the west and centre of Iraq, plunging temperatures to zero degrees Centigrade (32 degrees Fahrenheit) and even colder, an official said. The snow in Baghdad, which melted as it hit the ground, began falling before dawn and continued until after 9 am, residents said.
"Snow has fallen in Baghdad for the first time in about a century as a result of two air flows meeting," said a statement by the meteorology department. "The first one was cold and dry and the second one was warm and humid. They met above Iraq."
The director of the meteorology department, Dawood Shakir, told AFP that climate change was possibly to blame for the unusual event.
"It's very rare," he said. "Baghdad has never seen snow falling in living memory.
"These snowfalls are linked to the climate change that is happening everywhere. We are finding some places in the world which are warm and are supposed to be cold."
From Vancouver, Washington: Like A Bomb
Retired mechanic Ron looked out the window:
"I saw that big black monster coming, and then I heard my house starting to shake," he said. "Good Lord, it went right over our house. You'd think a bomb went off. I'm not kidding. Huge hail came down. I'm a former Marine, and I was in Southeast Asia in a cyclone one time. It was like that."
At the car dealership
"As we were looking out, we commented on how dark the cloud was," Dave said. "All of a sudden it got really windy. The rain and hail were blowing horizontal to the ground. A couple of signs on the side of the building went flying with some of the gutter stuff. It was right on top of us. It was very intense and, all of a sudden, it blew by and I said, 'That's a tornado!'?"
Driving through a tornado
As usual, Kathryn left her job. Within minutes, she found herself steering into a unique adventure, driving through the tail of a tornado. "The hail was torrential and it got bigger like little marbles. What was unusual was it would come down and slow down and then start again like someone turned a bucket over. It came down in horrendous sheets. ? It was coming every which way. I didn't know if something was going to break through the car window or what," she said.
Flying shopping carts
From the parking lot of Salvation Army, Faith watched the twister in the distance as it raced eastward toward her. At first, it looked like a flock of birds, she said. "Then I said, 'Oh, that's debris!'" Across the street, from the lobby of the Quik Cash office, clerk Heather watched a bolt of lightning strike Highway 99. Within 10 seconds, she said, a roar of wind tore across the highway, sending two shopping carts and the hood of a car soaring hundreds of feet across the Fred Meyer parking lot.
Hail pounding like a ball-peen hammer
"It went from a typical gloomy, rainy day to like someone had turned on a 100 mph fan," Kevin said. It looks like someone took a ball-peen hammer to the top of truck. I watched the car in front of me rock from side to side."
At a construction site
"It wasn't right".
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