Heavy snow piling up in northern Japan in the last two weeks has blocked roads and is blamed for dozens of deaths nationwide so far, government officials said Wednesday.

As of Wednesday, 15 prefectures have been affected, with the amount of snow piled up in the worst hit areas estimated to have reached 2 meters (6.5 feet).

Four homes blasted by icy winds on an eroding North Carolina island collapsed into the ocean and Florida farmers anxiously waited for frozen plants to thaw Monday as people across the eastern half of the United States coped with more than a week of sub-freezing weather.

Thermometers hovered below freezing throughout the day Monday across the northern U.S. from the Dakotas to Maine, and sub-freezing temperatures were forecast to return to the Southeast overnight, reaching into parts of northern Florida.

These days, the majestic, forested slopes of Argentina's Patagonia look like a war zone.

Mushroom clouds of smoke rise as if from missile strikes. Large flames illuminate the night sky, tainting the moon mango-orange and turning the glorious views that generations of writers and adventurers imprinted on the global psyche into something haunted.

More than 50,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in northern Morocco due to severe weather and heavy rainfall affecting several provinces, the interior ministry told AFP on Tuesday.

The evacuations began on Friday, mostly in Larache province, where the city of Ksar El Kebir -- about 100 kilometres (62 miles) south of Tangier -- has seen significant flooding, the ministry said.

Forecasters warned that dangerous extra-cold conditions will persist into Monday morning for a huge swath of the U.S. from the Gulf Coast into New England that was cleaning up after a weekend bomb cyclone brought heavy snow and flight cancellations to North Carolina and flurries and falling iguanas in Florida.

Temperatures will begin inching up throughout the day but more misery was expected for thousands who were still without power from the ice storm last month in the South.

Florida won't be getting hit with massive blankets of snow and ice like the rest of the U.S., but even frosty windshields and a few flurries can feel like Antarctica to people with permanent sandal tans.

Storm Kristin has claimed five lives and left nearly 450,000 clients without power on Thursday, more than 24 hours after it barreled through central and northern Portugal, authorities said.

The storm brought heavy downpours and strong winds, reaching speeds of up to 178 kmh (110 mph), on the night from Tuesday to Wednesday.

Human-caused climate change worsened the recent torrential rains and floods which devastated parts of southern Africa, killing more than 100 people and displacing over 300 000, researchers said Thursday.

A study by the World Weather Attribution, which analyzed the recent heavy rainfalls that caused severe flooding in parts of South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, showed that the region experienced a year's worth of rain in a period of 10 days.

Three Texas siblings who perished in an icy pond were among several dozen deaths in U.S. states gripped by frigid cold as crews scrambled Tuesday to repair hundreds of thousands of power outages in the shivering South and forecasters warned the winter weather is expected to get worse.

Brutal cold lingered in the wake of a massive storm that dumped deep snow across more than 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) from Arkansas to New England and left parts of the South coated in treacherous ice.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni on Wednesday toured a southern town in Sicily where days of heavy rains from a cyclone triggered a massive landslide that cleaved off the town's edge, collapsing houses and forcing the evacuation of over 1,500 people.

The area of the landslide spanned 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) and civil protection crews created a 150-meter-wide (150-yard-wide) "no go zone." At the edge of Niscemi, some cars and structures had already tumbled 20 meters (yards) off the cliff while other homes remained perched perilously on the edge of the continuously shifting ground.