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To: Wharf Rat who wrote (1001768)	2/23/2017 12:17:45 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1587706

The Milding of February: All-Time Winter Warmth in Midwest By: Bob Henson , 4:41 PM GMT on February 23, 2017 Residents of Wisconsin have never experienced a winter day like the one that enveloped the state in a springlike balm on Wednesday. An uncommon lack of late-February snow cover across Illinois and southern Wisconsin allowed very mild air streaming northward to sweep across the state with very little surface cooling. All three of Wisconsin’s largest cities saw the highest temperatures observed on any December, January, or February day in more than a century of recordkeeping. Milwaukee’s 71°F smashed its winter record of 68°F (Dec. 5, 2001 and Feb. 11, 1999). Madison’s 68°F beat out 65°F from Dec. 3, 2012, as well as the monthly record of 64°F from Feb. 25, 2000. Meanwhile, Green Bay’s 65°F eclipsed the previous winter record of 64°F (Dec. 5, 2001) and the monthly record of 61°F (Feb. 26, 2000). Wednesday’s warmth was a fitting coda to a remarkably warm stretch across most of the Midwest. In some ways, the ultra-mild period is reminiscent of the Great Warm Wave of March 2012, if not quite as spectacular as that summerlike spell was. Duration is one of the most impressive aspects of the past week’s Midwestern mildness. St. Cloud, Minnesota, saw its sixth consecutive day above 50°F on Wednesday, the longest such streak on record for any February, while Chicago, Illinois, set a similar record for its first six-day streak of 60°F readings in any February (or in any winter month, for that matter). Rockford, Illinois, set six daily record highs in a row on February 17-22. Each of these new records was between 66°F and 70°F, beating out previous records that ranged from 58°F to 64°F. In Detroit, Michigan, the high on Wednesday hit 65°F, marking the third time in the past week the Motor City has reached or exceeded 65°F. The forecast for Friday calls for a fourth February day of 65°F or greater, with a high of 67°F—a full thirty degrees above average. Between 1874 and 2016, Detroit reached or exceeded 65°F only six times in February. Jeff Masters reports from southeast Michigan: “My lawn is starting to green up--an extraordinary occurrence for a time of year when the ground is usually frozen and covered with a hefty layer of snow!” Figure 1. Spring in February? A crocus blooms in Dravosburg, Pennsylvania on February 20, 2017. Image credit: Wunderphotographer gingyb Figure 2. Snow cover was lacking across the Northern Great Lakes on Wednesday, February 22, 2017. Image credit: NOAA/NWS/National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center. Snow is a rare commodity in the Upper Midwest right now Only 26.5% of the Upper Midwest was covered by snow on Wednesday, with an average coating of just 1.7 inches. Even the Northern Great Lakes were just 27.2% snow-covered. These are striking numbers to witness a full month before the spring equinox. The only states in the contiguous U.S. east of the Rockies where snow cover truly predominated on Wednesday were North Dakota, New York (the eastern half), and the New England states, still buried after a sequence of storms earlier this month. Lake ice is also in relatively short supply across the Midwest. Only 8.7% of the Great Lakes were ice-covered as of Tuesday, compared to 12.7% on that date in 2016 and a far more impressive 82.8% in 2015. It appears that the maximum coverage this year will be the already-observed 15%. That would place 2015-16 in fourth place for lowest minimum ice extent among all winters tracked since 1973 by NOAA, as related by George Leshkevich (NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory) to the Detroit Free Press. Back to a more late-winter-like pattern A strong, blustery winter storm pushing across the Midwest late Wednesday into Thursday will send the region back into a more seasonable pattern for at least a few days, starting off with a swath of snow extending from Colorado and Wyoming across the central and northern Great Plains into the Midwest. After reaching the mid-60s on Wednesday (35°F above average), Green Bay was expecting 1” - 3” of snow late Thursday into Friday. A blizzard warning was in effect for Thursday night into Friday across northwest Iowa and neighboring areas. It looks like Chicago will get mostly rain until at least Friday, thus prolonging its record-long “snow drought.” As of Wednesday, it had been 67 days since Chicago got its last inch of snow, surpassing the record of 66 days (Dec. 25, 1921, to Feb. 28, 1922). We’ll be back with a new post by Friday afternoon. Stay tuned for more in coming days on how this strikingly mild late winter is affecting other parts of the U.S. Bob Henson wunderground.com

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (1001768)	2/24/2017 11:25:40 AM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1587706

Parental marijuana use and risk of childhood acute myeloid leukaemia: a report from the Children's Cancer Group (United States and Canada). Trivers KF1, Mertens AC, Ross JA, Steinbuch M, Olshan AF, Robison LL; Children's Cancer Group. Author information Abstract The aetiology of childhood acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is largely unknown. Maternal marijuana use just before, or during pregnancy has been previously associated with childhood AML. This case-control investigation formally tested the hypothesis that parental marijuana use increases the risk of childhood AML in offspring. Incident cases of AML <18 years of age, diagnosed between 1989 and 1993, and registered with the Children's Cancer Group (a paediatric clinical co-operative group), were eligible for inclusion. Control children were selected via random digit dialling and individually matched 1:1 to cases on age, race and residential location, except for rare morphological subtypes that were matched 1:2. Parental telephone interviews were conducted to determine exposure and covariate information. Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate matched odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals [CI] adjusted for household income, parental education and parental age. The analysis included 517 cases and 610 matched controls. A series of sensitivity analyses examined the potential for recall bias. Ever lifetime use of marijuana by mothers was not associated with childhood AML [OR = 0.89; 95% CI = 0.66, 1.19]. Maternal marijuana use any time during the 3 months before, or during pregnancy was inversely associated with childhood AML [OR = 0.43; 95% CI = 0.23, 0.80]. Paternal use during the same time period was not associated with risk. Assuming a large degree of differential exposure misclassification was present, the corrected ORs ranged between 0.82 and 1.40. The previously reported positive association between maternal marijuana use before or during pregnancy and childhood AML was not confirmed. The decreased ORs observed in this study may be due to recall bias assuming plausibly low values of sensitivity. PMID: 16466429 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-3016.2006.00700.x

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (1001768)	2/24/2017 11:27:23 AM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 1587706

Marijuana use in early pregnancy increases child’s risk of cancer Roger Dobson Mothers who use marijuana in the first trimester may increase the risk of their child developing neuroblastoma, the second most common solid tumour found in children, a US study has found. The results of the case control study to investigate the role of illicit drugs in the development of the tumour show that mothers’ use of any illicit or recreational drug during pregnancy was associated with an increased risk of neuroblastoma in the offspring (odds ratio 1.82 (95% confidence interval 1.1 to 3.0) (Cancer Causes and Control 2006;7:663-9). “This is the first study to investigate the association between specific recreational drugs and neuroblastoma within distinct time segments around pregnancy. Our findings indicate that the strongest effect of maternal marijuana use is seen with exposure in the first trimester and among children diagnosed before age one,” write the authors of the study, from the National Cancer Institute and other centres in the United States. Neuroblastoma is the second commonest solid tumour in childhood (after brain cancer), and its causes are poorly understood, say the authors. The mean age at diagnosis is 17.3 months, which has led to speculation that environmental exposures around the time of conception and during pregnancy may be implicated. The study identified 538 cases at 139 North American hospitals and compared these children with 504 controls. Overall, 88 mothers (9%) reported use of any drug during the 10 month period from one month before pregnancy to childbirth. Of these women, 75 used marijuana and 61 used only marijuana and no other drugs. The time period with the strongest association with neuroblastoma was the first trimester (adjusted odds ratio 4.8 (1.6 to 16.5). In contrast, use of illicit drugs in the month before conception was not associated with a higher risk of neuroblastoma (adjusted odds ratio 0.9 (0.4 to 1.9)), and nor was use after birth (adjusted odds ratio 0.7 (0.4 to 1.4). The authors, who say that most studies of marijuana and childhood cancer were not designed to identify a specific time of greatest risk, point out that weeks 3 to 8 after conception, during the first trimester of pregnancy, are a critical period for organ development and vulnerability to teratogens. They also say that parental marijuana use has been associated with several other childhood malignancies, including leukaemia, brain tumours, and rhabdomyosarcoma. “Our findings further expand previous investigations of parental marijuana use in the prenatal period as a potential risk factor for other childhood cancers,” they write. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov