Free Republic

Audit finds workers plowing streets didn't receive bonus pay for 9 months District of Columbia workers billed taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to dine out during Winter Storm Jonas last year in violation of federal law, according to a new audit. While the government paid for D.C. desk workers to eat at local restaurants such as Ted’s Bulletin and Matchbox during the blizzard, workers plowing the streets were not given bonus pay until nine months after the storm. The government spent $521,857 on hotels and $145,193 on food for employees during Jonas, the January 2016 storm that blanketed the...

In the last few days, leading up to Snowmageddon 2017, I was warned many times that a devastating snowstorm was headed to Atlana, GA. The weatherdroids were all very upset (and yet somehow excited), and Governor Deal declared a State Emergency over it. From the photos I will share, below, you will see why. When I woke up and went outside, I was greeted by towering snow drifts like this. There is absolutely no way I would be able to step over these monsterous drifts and get out my front door. Time to try getting out the back patio. The...

In the Sahara desert, known for its suffocating heat, a freak snow shower coated the dusty dunes near the Algerian town of Ain Sefra. It hadn’t snowed in the town called “The Gateway to the Desert” since 1979. Photographer Karim Bouchetata captured gorgeous images of the red rolling dunes frosted in white. “Everyone was stunned to see snow falling in the desert, it is such a rare occurrence,” Bouchetata told the Independent. “It looked amazing as the snow settled on the sand.”

Freakish green snow blanketed the Russian Ural Mountains today - caused by pollution at a chrome factory. The disturbing emerald scene was caused by an 'accident' at a plant in Pervouralsk, in the industrial Chelyabinsk region, said officials. They insisted there was no danger to the health of locals. 'The accident today happened on a pipe between a pump and a cleaning station,' said a spokesman at Russian Chrome company. 'Some of the water pumped from under the ground went on the surface.'

White and brown merged into one color as snow covered the desert sand in central and northwestern regions in Saudi Arabia after temperatures dropped below zero Celsius. In the central city of Shakra’ and the northwestern city of Tabuk, thin layers of snow carpeted the ground. In Tabarjal, a town located in the northern Al-Jawf region temperatures reached -3 Celsius, and in Al-Quryat, a northern province, the temperature was -1 Celsius. Rainfall continues While mid-October usually marks the short-lived peak for Saudi Arabia’s rainfall season, the kingdom is still experiencing light to medium showers. Saudi Arabia on Friday witnessed medium...

Syracuse, N.Y. -- It's been snowing for 38 straight hours in Syracuse, and there's more to come. The National Weather Service station at Hancock International Airport has been recording snow since 3 a.m. Sunday, when rain switched over to light snow. From then until 4 p.m. today, at least 18.9 inches of snow has fallen, and Syracuse could get another 4 inches.

Several feet of new snow is expected in the Sierra Nevada mountains this weekend as another El Niño-influenced storm moves into Northern California. In what some are calling a "March Miracle," the Sierra have been hit by a series of powerful storms this month. That's important because the Sierra snowpack is a key source of water for California, which is in its fourth year of a drought. The storms have boosted the snowpack and replenished reservoirs. Heavy showers pummeled L.A. and Ventura counties Friday afternoon, and forecasters said there was a chance of some light rain in some areas of...

Pennsylvania city of Harrisburg is STILL plowing snow from January blizzard despite it being 70 degrees A Pennsylvania city is still clearing snow left from a record-breaking blizzard that occurred two months ago despite it being 70 degrees. An estimated 15,000 tons of snow from the city of Harrisburg and surrounding municipalities was piled high on City Island following a 30-inch snowfall in January. And for the last three weeks, city employees have been using gas-powered burners to help melt the remaining piles of snow before its baseball team's opening day in April, according to Pennlive.

DENVER - A developing winter storm is taking aim at Colorado, and it has the potential to be the biggest snowstorm of the season so far, for Denver. The El Niño weather pattern has delivered storms right into our "sweet spot" a few times since November, but Denver has only officially registered more than 3 inches of snow three times. It will take about 8 inches to take the title. That would beat the 1-day storm total from the middle of December. Denver’s only storms this season to measure more than 3 inches of snow: 7.7" December 15 4" November...

BEDFORD, Pa. Locked arm and arm with each other, complete strangers saved the life of a driver whose tractor-trailer lost control during the weekend snowstorm and was teetering over the edge of a hillside. It was a mess, dangerous. The truck was smoking, couple hundred gallons of diesel fuel, debris everywhere. People didn't seem to care, they jumped out to help," said Arlyn Satanek who witnessed the incident. Satanek has been driving trucks for years and he's never seen anything like this. On Friday night, inch-by-inch, the snow started to fall and by evening the roads were covered. One trucker...

The State Department on Friday sought to delay its final release of emails from Hillary Clinton's personal server, blaming a massive snowstorm hitting Washington as well as an internal "oversight." In a court filing, the department asked a federal court to delay by a month the Jan. 29 deadline for it to release the last batch of roughly 55,000 pages of Clinton's emails believed to be work-related. The emails, thousands of which have been released on a monthly basis since last year, have become a constant headache for Clinton's front-runner Democratic presidential campaign. More than 1,300 of the emails from...

All in all, we ended up getting about 20 inches of snow. I'm having the time of my life. I love snow. I've spent about 12 hours shoveling snow over the past two days. I think it's the best workout ever. I feel great. I've accomplished more in the last two days than in all of my 32 years working for the federal government.

Snowzilla took the entire eastern seaboard down.Les Nessman reported the breaking news: (H/T: Jonah Goldberg.)Barry used the anthropogenic climate disaster to take a little time off from his usual Sunday work day to appear on CBS' "Sunday Morning" where he revealed that - rumors to the contrary - he didn’t plan on running for a third term. Because A) he’s tired:  President Barack Obama says he wouldn't run for a third term even if he could. He says the presidency takes a toll on family life, and the office "should be continually renewed by new energy and new ideas." B)...

God in Winter -- Finding God in the Falling Snow Msgr. Charles Pope - January 22, 2016 - Holy Comforter Church Washington DCIt's snowing today in Washington, D.C. and I had a beautiful walk coming back from the March for Life this afternoon. Tonight I will enjoy another walk through the winter wonderland.Not everyone likes snow but it is an amazing work of God. He takes a barren winter landscape and creates it anew. I can almost hear the Lord saying, "Behold, I make all things new!"In the modern world we often walk past the glory of God hardly...

Blizzard warnings have been issued for the Baltimore and Washington D.C. metro areas, and blizzard watches extend northward to the Philadelphia and New York City metro areas as Winter Storm Jonas begins to take shape. The storm is expected to deliver heavy snowfall to at least 15 states, and heavy ice accumulations, strong winds and coastal flooding will add to the storm's impact as it carves a path from the nation's heartland through the South and onward to the East Coast now through Sunday. As of Thursday morning, just over 73 million people – or roughly one in every four...

The nation's capital is now under a blizzard watch, the first watch of its kind issued in advance of Winter Storm Jonas. Now is the time to prepare for Winter Storm Jonas, which is expected to kick into high gear Friday and pummel parts of the East through the weekend with heavy accumulations of snow and ice. Strong winds will likely add to the threat of power outages and may also bring serious coastal flooding along parts of the Atlantic coast. The National Weather Service issued the blizzard watch late Wednesday morning for Washington, D.C., and nearby Baltimore. The watch...

With the exception of a handful of one-time events, it had been such a mild winter across most of the U.S. that numerous retailers have been complaining how negatively impacted their topline has been as a result of the warmer weather (clearly having forgotten how they complained about precisely the opposite in prior years). All that is about to change, and all those warm weather-slammed retailers are about to get just the top line-boosting gift they have been waiting for because according to AccuWeather, the Northeast - from Charleston all the way to Boston - is about to be...

A deep freeze set in across the Midwest on Sunday with low temperatures forecast in the single digits and a few below zero, turning the season's first major snow into ice that made some roads treacherous to travel. After snow on Friday and Saturday across much of the region, temperatures plunged behind the front. The National Weather Service forecast 20 degrees or lower across six states from North Dakota to Illinois. Fargo, North Dakota, could dip to 11 degrees by early Sunday. Madison, Wisconsin, could see 7 degrees and Des Moines 12. Parts of Iowa, northwest Illinois and southern Wisconsin...

Winter storm Bella dumps 16 inches of snow on the Midwest in the heaviest recorded November snowstorm for a hundred years People fired up snowblowers and dug out their shovels Saturday after the first significant snowstorm of the season dumped up to 20 inches of snow across the Upper Midwest - blanketing a swath from South Dakota to Michigan. The storm created hazardous travel conditions and caused more than 500 flight cancellations. A blast of much colder air was following the storm. The National Weather Service said the snow, which first fell in South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa on Friday,...