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Weather
by Julia Fine, ODP Contributing Writer This week, China is facing its fifth major flood this summer, Tanner Brown reported for MarketWatch. This extreme flooding has officially reached the Three Gorges Dam, and is said to be “pummelling” the structure. As The Guardian reported yesterday, inflows to the “world’s largest hydro-electric dam reached 75m litres […]
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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.” Swain’s predictions came true as record-breaking heat, humidity, and even […]
Continue Reading 563 wordsThe extreme weather events this summer keep piling up. Phoenix set a record for the most number of days over 110 degrees in a year with 35 — so far as of yesterday. Plus a derecho, which is akin to an inland hurricane, swept 700 miles across the midwest Monday.
Why This Matters: President Trump is trying to remove $50 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to pay for needed unemployment benefits he unilaterally ordered. Given the increased number of hurricanes predicted (a new storm is forming in the Atlantic), it seems like a particularly bad time to raid FEMA’s emergency funds.
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Late last week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued its annual update on this year’s outlook for tropical hurricanes and they are now predicting the conditions are ripe for a huge season, with 19-25 named storms with sustained winds over 39 mph or greater, and even worse, 7 to 11 are expected to become hurricanes with winds of 74 mph or greater.
Why This Matters: Hurricane season really gets serious only now, so the worst is still ahead of us. And the revised forecast is a big increase over what had been forecast at the beginning of the season when NOAA said it there was a 70% chance of 13 to 19 named storms.
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A new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that if we don’t get global warming under control, the number of deaths globally from heat-related illness will rival the current number of deaths from all the infectious diseases combined.
Why This Matters: Heat is considered a “silent killer” because there is little awareness about its health risks. To raise awareness many experts have recommended naming heat waves just like we do hurricanes and now winter storms.
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The first major wildfire of the season has struck Southern California forcing thousands of residents to evacuate during a time where the COVID-19 pandemic has made evacuation shelters a dangerous place where the virus can spread. As AP reported, the Apple Fire in Riverside County, among several wildfires across California, had consumed more than 41 […]
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