Alaska Beat

'Freak' April rain near North Pole

According to CBC News, a group of British scientists working on Ellef Ringnes Island say they were baffled by a three-minute rain shower last weekend. The island sits in Canada's High Arctic about 250 miles from the magnetic North Pole, and in that region, spring rain showers are extremely rare -- even "freak" and "bizarre" said officials of the "mystified" scientists' report. Everyone has good reason to be confused: "50 to 60" years of weather records for various points across the entire High Arctic show that there has never been a rain shower in the month of April. The previous earliest instance of measurable rain at the weather station on Ellef Rignes Island had been June 7, 1975. Read more, here.

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