NORTH POLE, Arctic: 50 degrees above normal on Christmas: GLOBAL WARMING

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/12/30/freak-storm-has-pushed-north-pole-to-freezing-point-50-degrees-above-normal/

A powerful winter cyclone — the same storm that lead to two tornado outbreaks in the United States and disastrous river flooding — has driven the North Pole to the freezing point this week, 50 degrees above average for this time of year.

From Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning, a mind-boggling pressure drop was recorded in Iceland: 54 millibars in just 18 hours. This triples the criteria for “bomb” cyclogenesis, which meteorologists use to describe a rapidly intensifying mid-latitude storm. A “bomb” cyclone is defined as dropping one millibar per hour for 24 hours.

NOAA’s Ocean Prediction Center said the storm’s minimum pressure dropped to 928 millibars around 1 a.m. Eastern time, which likely places it in the top five strongest storms on record in this region.

[Rivers are rising to record levels in the Midwest, flooding is ‘major to historic’]