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.

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.

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 North Klondike Highway remains closed from Stewart Crossing to Pelly Crossing after fire breached the highway, the Yukon government has confirmed.

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.

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.

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 fire also comes as the state of Alaska enters its second highest level of fire preparedness, based on the high number of wildfires burning statewide and the possibility for more.

The state has established a fire response hub in Aniak to issue supplies to the surrounding fires.

A record-high temperature set in Winnipeg in 1888 was among 21 previous records that were broken Sunday across the province.

Southwest Alaska has had an unusual increase in lighting storms this month. That lightning has ignited at least half a dozen wildfires in the Bristol Bay area.

It’s not often that Southcentral Alaska residents wake to thunder in the middle of the night. But what forecasters are calling an unusual storm moved from the Talkeetna Mountains into the Matanuska Valley and then Anchorage and south to the Kenai Peninsula from Wednesday night into Thursday morning. At least one lightning-caused structure fire was reported.

It's coming up to peak flood season in BC with extra thick snowpack melting into rivers. On top of that, an atmospheric river is coming.

“It’s been hot, it’s been dry, and it’s been windy. And those winds gusts of 20 miles per hour, it’s kind of funneled through the Andreafsky River drainage,” said Beth Ipsen. Federal entities sent in more firefighters this week, and some residents are thinking about preparing their go-bags.

Two villages along the Lower Yukon River have begun evacuating their most vulnerable residents from a tundra fire.The fire late Thursday was burning less than eight miles from St Mary’s and nearby Pitkas Point, and wind continues spreading the flames closer to the villages with a combined population of over 700 people. Yute Commuter Service is sending all its planes to St. Mary’s to evacuate residents, and Grant Aviation is prepared to assist.

New data shows the wind speed at the Region of Waterloo International Airport was 147km/h, an increase from the 131km/h first recorded.

After some well-founded speculation a week ago, reported on in some media, the Met Office has now confirmed that this March was the wettest on record in Reykjavík--and the winter overall saw the most precipitation ever recorded in various locations around Iceland.

The last time Finland had this much sunshine in March was nearly a decade ago, in 2013. High pressure typically brings clear skies, and this was also the case last month in Finland.

"We used to have snowmobile races on the ocean ice in front of Elim during the first weekend in April but we cannot have any races this year."

All roads out of Iceland’s capital Reykjavík are closed due to extreme weather conditions, including Route 41, the road to Keflavík International Airport. A yellow weather alert is in effect across the country, with strong winds and snow showers expected to continue until tomorrow afternoon in most regions. Travel is discouraged across the country.