[Image: DevianArt]
Three stories caught our eye this week, and although they’re not even remotely connected, it seemed a good idea to lump them together. Call it the ‘current state of the Americas’- mashup, if you will, and it should tell you enough about that part of the world to hold off on your travel plans – for now at least.
It also reminded us of the Steely Dan song “Stuck in the Middle With You,” except we’ll change the lyrics to “Frozen to the North, Frying to the South, and the Middle just launched a nuclear ballistic missile.”
The North
Canada recorded a record snowfall in Montreal this week when 60cm of snow fell in ‘one event’. Locals woke up to cars buried under snow and a crisp -10 degrees Celsius.
Ottawa, meanwhile, was hit with 70cm of snow since Wednesday evening, prompting the city’s public works department to tweet, “Holy snow, Batman! It seemed like it was never going to stop.”
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The South
Rio de Janeiro reached a record-breaking heat level of 43 degrees Celsius on Monday, triggering the “Heat 4” alert for the first time.
Locals used public fountains and water hoses to cool off and video shows crowds flocking to the beach to escape the heat, although we’re breaking a sweat just thinking of a Brazillian beach at 43 degrees Celsius.
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The Middle
And finally, while Canada freezes and Rio fries, the clowns in the middle freaked out residents of Southern California on Wednesday by test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile.
A joint team of Air Force Global Strike Command Airmen and Vandenberg Space Force Base Guardians launched an unmanned Minuteman III ICBM equipped with a ‘single telemetered joint test assembly re-entry vehicle’ from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, according to a media release from the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force.
“Wednesday’s test launch is just one of the ways the [U.S. Air Force] demonstrates the readiness, precision and professionalism of U.S. nuclear forces,” Acting Secretary of the Air Force Gary Ashworth said. “It also provides confidence in the lethality and effectiveness of the nation’s nuclear deterrence mission.”
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Yes, we know the nuclear missile test doesn’t fit in with extreme weather, but somehow it made sense to us. If the world’s nuclear nations continue to rattle their sabres and threaten nukes, the whole world will be left with fire and winter.
[Source: FoxNews9]
