An extreme winter rainstorm in New Zealand triggered one of the largest avalanche cycles observed in decades, raising questions about the risk of more hazardous events under climate change.

More evidence of great white sharks this summer leads biologists to expect the species will become a more common sight here.

Sherol Mershon runs the Silver Fin Bed and Breakfast, on the shore of Lake Aleknagik. She’s hung fishing nets for 45 years and has seen her fair share of wildlife. So when her guests told her they saw whales in the lake, she had her doubts.

The ubiquitous midge is almost completely absent from Mývatn, the pointedly named ‘Midge Lake,’ this year. Árni says this happens every seven to nine years—it’s now been about eight since the last time the midge population collapsed. As a result, the bird population will be much smaller for the next two to three years.

Harju said that due to its long tusks, she guessed that it was an older walrus, adding that the animal was calm during the hour that she watched it lay on the beach.

Interesting cysts covering a young choke cherry tree.

Nunavut is being hit with lightning from top to bottom because a “pretty significant heat wave” created the right conditions for a phenomenon that’s ordinarily uncommon in the North, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada says. Since Saturday, there have been reports of lightning strikes as far north as 79 degrees latitude.

Scientists and officials are advising hikers to be careful around the ice cave.

Landslide at 3 mile PSN happened outside the typical time of year for slides.

Last summer’s unusually warm weather fueled an explosion in the western blackheaded budworm, leaving masses of browning trees in many areas of Southeast. The worm, which is the larval stage of the budworm moth, is known to feed on the new growth of trees, leaving them with a brownish-red appearance.

Drained lake basins make up more than half of the Arctic coastal plain, but the complete drainage of a lake is rarely witnessed by people.

There were 4,500 lightning strikes in Alaska Tuesday — the latest in a run of days with thousands of ground strikes. There were also another 13 new, primarily lightning sparked wildfires in the state Tuesday, mostly in the Interior. The lightning storms have coincided with very dry conditions.

The rate of dead seal strandings in Maine is about three times the normal rate for the summer and is close to 60. Most of the seals that have been stranded this summer have been found dead, NOAA said. The dead seals have included gray seals and harbor seals.

On July 1, approximately 1,400 people experienced an outage in Dawson City caused by lightning. The community was partially restored after eight minutes, and fully restored after an hour. Five power outages occurred in Dawson City, Mayo and Whitehorse over the Canada Day weekend.

The first observations of orchids in the area were in 2020. Now they are becoming more common.

Anchorage saw temperatures spike above 60 degrees every day in June for the first time in recorded history. The city also experienced near record low precipitation: Only 1/10 of an inch of rain fell the entire month.

Unidentified spider observed outside of a commercial building.

A resident of Seldovia reported an infestation of worms infesting an area of salmonberry brush and nettle.

Temperatures surpassed 30 degrees Celsius across northern Scandinavia on Wednesday and many meteorological stations hit new record high temperatures for June. The thermometer in Saltdal, northern Norway, reached 31.6 degrees C. Further inside the Arctic Circle, at 69 degrees north in Skibotn east of Tromsø, the temperature was 31.7 degrees (89 F).

"The event occurred on June 29th, on our native allotment near Kotzebue (Illivak). We left home in the morning and when we came back around 8:00 PM in the evening the whole lake had drained! It looked like it was blown up with dynamite."