Please invest in Our Daily Planet today, by making a one time or monthly contribution.
We do not charge our readers a subscription fee for our content. We want to continue to grow our readership, particularly among millennials and public servants. Voluntary contributions from readers will help us employ interns and freelance journalists, expand our content, and reach a larger audience.
If you make a contribution of $150 or more, you will become an official “Friend of the Planet” and receive a Friend of the Planet T-shirt or water bottle.
Our Daily Planet is a daily morning email (M-F) to keep you informed of the stories shaping our environment. If these issues matter to you, we’d like to be the best ten minutes of your morning.
On Friday, Weather West’s Daniel Swain warned that the state of California was in for over a week of very intense and prolonged heatwave that would likely be “one of the most significant widespread California extreme heat events in the past decade, if not longer.”
As the New York Times reported, “Californians used so much electricity to try and stay cool Friday night that the agency that oversees much of the state’s power grid declared an emergency and, for the first time in 19 years, shut off power to hundreds of thousands of customers for several hours to avoid a damaging overload.”
Why This Matters: Extreme weather that’s being fueled at least in part by climate change has wreaked havoc across the country in the past week. Blackouts from Hurricane Isaias, a derecho across the midwest, and now California’s extreme heat have come at a time when people are stuck home due to the coronavirus and have been forced to compromise their safety by evacuating or seeking reprieve from the heat outside their homes.
True Record Heat: As the Washington Post reported, on Sunday afternoon a temperature reading in California’s Death Valley came in at 130 degrees. Which, if verified, could set a world record for the highest temperature ever observed during the month of August and would also rank among the top-three highest temperatures ever reliably measured on the planet at any time and may, in fact, be the highest.
California’s Surprise Blackouts: The state’s heatwave came on without much warning and while temperatures in the 90s and 100s aren’t unusual in summer months, the prolonged intensity along with the fact that temperatures weren’t dropping at night put an added stress on the electric grid which caused unexpected power blackouts. As Bloomberg reported, “before Friday, California hadn’t imposed rolling blackouts since the energy crisis of 2001, when hundreds of thousands of customers took turns being plunged into darkness, power prices surged to record levels and the state’s largest electric utility went bankrupt. (It went bankrupt a second time last year in the face of crippling wildfire liabilities.)”
Rolling Thunder: Thunderstorms fueled by tropical storm remnants in the Pacific Ocean swept over much of California, especially the Bay Area on Sunday morning. As the LA Times explained, another set of impending storms and a plume of moisture fueling the storms can be traced to Tropical Storm Fausto in the Pacific southwest of Baja California.
By late Sunday morning, isolated showers and thunderstorms were shifting northward, but another — possibly wetter — round of thunderstorms was expected, peaking in the overnight hours and into Monday morning, the weather service said.
Check the National Weather Service’s visual of Tropical Storm Fausto driving humid weather and thunderstorms in California:
Wondering where this moisture is coming from bringing us these thunderstorms? Check out this GOES-17 infrared imagery and follow the moisture back to Tropical Storm Fausto#CAwxpic.twitter.com/cOWq5pABcs
by Natasha Lasky, ODP Staff Writer This March will continue to bring more severe weather to the United States. An atmospheric river event — the “Pineapple Express” — is forecast to induce a rainy season in Washington and Oregon, as well as an increased risk of avalanches in the Pacific Northwest. As the Pineapple Express […]
We feel so badly for everyone in Texas suffering through days of bitter cold, many without heat. But the people at the northern U.S. end of the polar vortex are reeling from the cold as well. Low-temperature records are being broken in the northern plains — it’s so cold there that even Siberia was warmer. […]
After snowstorms swept across the South this week, 14 states are expecting power outages, frozen roads, and dangerous conditions. Hundreds of millions will be impacted by the storm. Millions will be experiencing rolling blackouts in the coming days due to stress on the Southwest Power Pool (SPP).
Why This Matters: Although it might seem that this polar vortex is an exception to global temperature rise, research says that erratic, far-reaching polar systems like the one we’re seeing now can be directly related to warming temperatures in the Arctic.
Subscribe to the email that top lawmakers, renowned scientists, and thousands of concerned citizens turn to each morning for the latest environmental news and analysis.
Want the lastest climate news summarized for you each morning?
Our Daily Planet is your daily dose of the stories shaping our world and the ways that you can take action. From the climate crisis to the protection of biodiversity, if these issues matter to you then please subscribe & stay informed!
Your privacy is Important! We promise never to use your email address to send you spam or advertisements.