Heavy snowfall and freezing rain across Germany on Wednesday caused the cancellation of hundreds of flights and trains, crashes on icy roads and school closures.

At Frankfurt airport, Germany's biggest, more than 500 flights were canceled, while in Munich over 250 arrivals and departures were canceled. In western Germany, Saarbruecken airport closed for the day, and Duesseldorf and Cologne/Bonn airports were also affected by delays and cancellations.

Dangerously cold temperatures affected much of the Rockies, Great Plains and Midwest on Tuesday, with wind chills below minus 30 degrees (minus 34.4 Celsius) in many parts of the central U.S.

More than 85,000 U.S. homes and businesses were without power early Tuesday, the bulk of them in Oregon after widespread outages that started Saturday. Portland General Electric warned that the threat of freezing rain Tuesday could delay restoration efforts. Transportation officials urged residents to avoid travel as roads were expected to be hazardously slick with ice that could weigh down trees and power lines, causing them to fall.

Rescuers evacuated tourists on Tuesday from a remote skiing area in northwestern China where dozens of avalanches triggered by heavy snow have trapped more than 1,000 people for a week, state media said.

The avalanches have blocked roads, stranding both tourists and residents in a village in Altay prefecture in the Xinjiang region, close to China's border with Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan.

The latest calculations from several science agencies showing Earth obliterated global heat records last year may seem scary. But scientists worry that what's behind those numbers could be even worse.

The Associated Press asked more than three dozen scientists in interviews and emails what the smashed records mean. Most said they fear acceleration of climate change that is already right at the edge of the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) increase since pre-industrial times that nations had hoped to stay within.

A dangerous Arctic blast will continue sweeping across the U.S. on Monday and linger through at least midweek, prolonging a bitter cold that set record-low temperatures in parts of the country and threatens to further disrupt daily life, including an NFL playoff game and the first-in-the-nation presidential nominating contest in Iowa.

The National Weather Service said wind chills are expected to push temperatures 30 degrees below zero from the Northern Rockies to northern Kansas and into Iowa, testing the hardiness of caucus goers willing to brave the deep chill on Monday.

The Earth is heating up, as is conflict in the Middle East. The world economy and Ukraine's defense against Russia are sputtering along. Artificial intelligence could upend all our lives.

The to-do list of global priorities has grown for this year's edition of the World Economic Forum's gabfest of business, political and other elites in the Alpine snows of Davos, Switzerland, which runs Tuesday through Friday.

An avalanche roared through a section of expert trails at a California ski resort near Lake Tahoe on Wednesday, sweeping up four people and killing one, as a major storm with snow and gusty winds moved into the region, authorities said.

The avalanche occurred about 9:30 a.m. and prompted Palisades Tahoe to close as search crews combed the area under the K-22 lift, which 30 minutes earlier had opened for the first time this season. It serves "black diamond" runs for skilled skiers and snowboarders.

Climate-altering pollution from greenhouse gases declined by nearly 2% in the United States in 2023, even as the economy expanded at a faster clip, a new report finds.

The decline, while "a step in the right direction,'' is far below the rate needed to meet President Joe Biden's pledge to cut U.S. emissions in half by 2030, compared to 2005 levels, said a report Wednesday from the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm.

A storm packing high winds and heavy rain was sweeping through the Northeast early Wednesday, while wild winter weather elsewhere brought tornadoes and deadly accidents in the Midwest and South, flood threats in Florida and blizzards in the Northwest.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy declared a state of emergency Tuesday afternoon and New York City officials evacuated nearly 2,000 migrants housed at a sprawling tent complex ahead of predicted wind speeds that could top 70 mph (112 kph) at times.

Earth last year shattered global annual heat records, flirted with the world's agreed-upon warming threshold and showed more signs of a feverish planet, the European climate agency said Tuesday.

In one of the first of several teams of science agencies to calculate how off-the-charts warm 2023 was, the European climate agency Copernicus said the year was 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. That's barely below the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit that the world hoped to stay within in the 2015 Paris climate accord to avoid the most severe effects of warming.