From Russia With -66 F Cold; 2 Feet of Rain in Japan

UPDATE 12/19: Facebook Newswire says 81" of snow has fallen in the mountains of Japan, and this video shows a time-lapse from a train there:

The storm also caused severe turbulence with a flight from South Korea to the U.S.

ORIGINAL BLOG 12/18: The Siberian area of Russia (which has experienced record cold and snowfall already, as forecast this fall, and which could have repercussions on the U.S. winter) has just had a large area of reinforcing cold air move in. Yes, it's cold and snowy in Russia normally, but these temperatures are plunging below normal.

I found synoptic station temperatures at three stations below -60 F yesterday evening, with the lowest being -66. There aren't a lot of climatic stations in that area that maintain weather records but the station at Verkhoyansk has reported a low of -61 for the last three days (update: now 4), as much as 6 degrees below normal. I'm sure there are other stations nearby that would report double-digit departures from normal, if the data existed.

The extreme cold has aided a strong storm that we forecast over Japan this week; it's already dropped 2 feet of rain and will drop feet of snow in what would seem to be a never-ending blizzard, as the low pressure isn't moving anywhere fast.