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By Monica Medina, Founder and CEO of Our Daily Planet Earlier this year, I drafted a chapter for a book of “big” new environmental ideas entitled “A Better Planet: Forty Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future.” In my essay, I propose that in order to brace ourselves for the impacts of climate change that we […]
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Late last week, a new AP-NORC poll of 1,058 adults, which was conducted August 15-18, found that more than 70 percent of Americans believe that weather disasters are worsening (only 4% thought it was less severe) and most of those people blame global warming for that. Meanwhile, ICYMI, in yesterday’s episode of Sharpie-Gate, the Acting […]
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New polls released this week show increasing numbers of Americans are concerned about severe weather and about climate change. A new poll released yesterday by CBS News found that a majority of Americans think action needs to be taken immediately to address climate change. The Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) also conducted a […]
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Daytime highs across much of the Southern United States have been breaking records this past week but a stifling combination of high heat and humidity is preventing nights from cooling off, creating dangerous heat situations in cities like Houston (also neighboring Galveston where the heat index remained above 100 for 40 straight hours). As the […]
Continue Reading 436 wordsSharks are have frequented the Cape in the past, but this year, according to the local TV station KSBW8, there has been a marked increase in sightings and they are coming closer to humans. Interestingly, the Boston Globe reported yesterday that those same sharks are rarely sighted in Rhode Island.
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On Wednesday, New Orleans got a preview of coming disasters. Severe thunderstorms that dumped between 6 and 7 inches of rain on the city in just 3 hours prompted tornado warnings and inundated the downtown area with water, causing transportation snarls and even forcing City Hall to close. Just as government forecasters announced that they expect 2019 to break annual flood records nationwide, the first real storm threat of the season “Barry” is lurking in the Gulf of Mexico setting its sights on the Louisiana coast (possibly New Orleans) but it is still not clear where it will make landfall.
Continue Reading 607 wordsEarlier this week, we described the severe weather outbreak in the midwest. By Thursday, more than 60 tornadoes had touched down in Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Iowa. All the rain made swollen rivers even more flooded and left many people stranded in their cars and homes. And the severe weather is not over yet. According […]
Continue Reading 136 wordsThe Mississippi River broke through a barrier and water rushed into downtown Davenport, Iowa, flooding offices and shops unexpectedly on Tuesday and remained flooded into Wednesday. CNN reported that the flooding occurred when HESCO flood restraints holding back the bloated river suddenly broke, sending water rushing into the streets creating a lake in the midst of the downtown area, forcing first responders to evacuate people by boat.
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The temperature on Tuesday in Denver was 78 degrees, but yesterday Denver was dealing with a major snowstorm that caused the cancellation of a baseball game between the Rockies and the Atlanta Braves. In South Dakota, a portion of I-90 had to be shut down on Wednesday night due to the poor conditions. Weather forecasters […]
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These meteorologists gave local residents 30-40 minutes lead time and pinpoint locations of where two highly destructive tornadoes were heading. So this week we salute the storm forecasters who warned the public and kept millions of people across the nation out of harm’s way.
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Los Angeles City Attorney Michael Feuer sued the operator of a free, popular weather forecast app alleging that the company misled consumers by hiding the fact that it was selling their personal location data. The Associated Press reported that TWC Product and Technology LLC (which is owned by IBM Corp.) sold data to hedge funds that used the information to analyze consumer behavior and to more than a dozen websites for targeted ads.
Why This Matters: The Weather Channel App is the most popular weather forecasting app in the world, with 45 million downloads each month, according to the company. Facebook and Google are not the only companies taking advantage of their users. Weather apps have become a key way that the dangers of severe weather are communicated to the mass public. I (Monica) must check the weather for my location — not to mention my family’s — every day. This is not just impacting weather geeks like me. The public should not have to choose between their privacy rights and their safety from weather hazards.
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