St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Crippling snowstorms in China, floods in Australia and blackouts in South Africa might seem like problems a world apart. But they’re closer than you think. Since Jan. 1, crises such as these have strained coal markets already stretched thin by soaring Asian demand, and the impact is reverberating to mines in West Virginia and Wyoming, which are being counted on to fill the void. St. Louis-based Peabody Energy Corp. shipped more coal overseas in the first six weeks of this year …