• Weather

Tropical Storm Bertha Makes Landfall In South Carolina After Flooding South Florida

• #climatecrisis
• conservation
• environment
• Flooding
• rain
• severe weather
• tropical storm

The second named storm of the season, Tropical Storm Bertha, strengthened quickly overnight Tuesday and made landfall yesterday morning about 20 miles east of Charleston.   On Tuesday, as a result of the storm, Miami experienced more than 7 inches of rain — 6 of which fell in 2 hours, flooding streets across the city.

Why This Matters:  Tropical Storm Bertha is following an increasingly familiar pattern of unprecedented amounts of rainfall along with strong winds that persist into the interior portions.

• Water

Dam Failures a Risk Across the Country Due to Climate Change

• #climatecrisis
• climate change
• dam
• dam failure
• environment
• extreme weather
• rain
• storms

The Edenville Dam failure in Michigan causing thousands to evacuate puts a spotlight on a problem that the American Society of Civil Engineers highlighted in 2017 when it gave our country a “D” for dam safety (yep – that’s it’s grade) but this grade has not significantly improved in the last 20 years.

Why This Matters:  When we think about the security risks to our nation, we need to start counting infrastructure failure due to climate change as one of the most troubling.

• Weather

Dorian Heading Toward Puerto Rico, Expected to Become a Hurricane

• Flooding
• Florida
• hurricane
• Hurricane Dorian
• Puerto Rico
• rain
• wind

Tropical Storm Dorian, a “compact” storm that is expected to be upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane by the time it passes the Dominican Republic and to impact Puerto Rico by tonight or early tomorrow, according to CNN.  CNN also reported that a team of over 200 people from nearly 30 different fire departments in South Florida were deployed to the Caribbean and Puerto Rico on Monday, according to CNN affiliate WPLG-TV. 

• Weather

Hurricane Season Begins With Disturbance In Gulf of Mexico

• Climate Prediction Center
• damage
• Flooding
• forecast
• hurricane
• NOAA
• outlook
• rain
• severe storms

Hurricane Season in the Atlantic officially began last Saturday, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting a “near normal” year with nine to fifteen named storms, of which four to eight may strengthen to become hurricanes. Of those, two to four could be major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher.  The Pacific hurricane forecast is calling for an above-normal season for both the eastern and central Pacific regions. 

• Water

One Alarming Thing: Plastic Particles Found In Rainwater

• plastic
• pollution
• rain

It’s raining plastic!  A recent study of the chemical composition of rain in the Boulder to Denver corridor and in the mountains of Colorado that was conducted by a scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey produced some surprising and disturbing results — 90 percent of the samples collected contained plastics, mostly fibers and blue in […]

• Weather

PDS Tornados in the Plains, Flood Waters Rise in Midwest

• Flooding
• PDS
• rain
• severe storm
• tornado

The weather forecasts in the southern Plain states on Sunday into Monday were ominous and the storm cells spawned approximately twenty tornados that damaged buildings and produced heavy rain, but there were no reported injuries, prompting some people to declare the storms a “bust.”

• Water

One Drenched Thing: This Winter Was the Wettest Ever

• Drought
• rain
• wet

If it felt to you like the rain never ended this winter, you are correct!  According to NOAA, due to “a steady march of snow and rain storms across the country between December 2018 and the end of February 2019 … the contiguous U.S. marked its wettest winter on record.”  How wet was it?  By […]

• Water

California’s drought nearly wiped out but don’t celebrate yet…

• California
• Drought
• rain

California’s exceptionally wet winter has made headlines for flooding and precipitation records yet now it’s being reported that heavy rains have nearly wiped out the state’s 5 years of drought and the trend is expected to continue well into the spring. As the Weather Channel reported a dominant weather pattern featuring a southward dip in […]

• Water

West coast storms to get new 1-5 rating system

• AccuWeather
• atmospheric river
• rain
• rainstorm
• storm
• water

The SF Chronicle reported, Pacific storms that bear down on the West Coast are about to get the same deference as hurricanes in the Atlantic and tornadoes in the Midwest: a rating system to attest to their strength

• People

Private Weather Company To Use Different Hurricane Severity Scale

• AccuWeather
• Flooding
• hurricane
• National Weather Service
• rain
• risks
• severe storm
• storm
• storm surge
• weather
• wind

The nation’s largest private weather provider, AccuWeather, is going to begin to use a new “scale” for conveying the severity of hurricanes in the future, diverging from the current scale used by the National Weather Service (NWS) and followed by all private weather forecasters and meteorologists.  AccuWeather’s CEO, Joel Myers, claims that the current scale only measures wind, but that recent hurricanes from Sandy to Florence have proved that storm surge and flooding can be quite dangerous or deadly even when a hurricane’s wind is not at the top level of severity.