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After the environmental group American Rivers named the Hudson River the second-most endangered in the U.S., Yale Environment 360 took a look at why and found that the plans to protect the New York metro area from storms like Superstorm Sandy may be expensive and counterproductive, providing little protection from storm surge and at the […]
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The latest track of Hurricane Dorian is causing more disruption and dislocation as it moves up the East Coast today and tomorrow, with South and North Carolina and even Virginia in harm’s way as the storm re-strengthened to a strong Category 3, and its storm surge, torrential rains, and wind are expected to cause flooding […]
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The latest track of Hurricane Dorian is causing more disruption and dislocation as it moves up the East Coast today and tomorrow, with South and North Carolina and even Virginia in harm’s way as the storm re-strengthened to a strong Category 3, and its storm surge, torrential rains, and wind are expected to cause flooding and power outages in five states.
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As Hurricane Dorian slowly makes its way up the U.S. Southeast coast coming dangerously close to the Carolinas, the storm is growing in sheer size, as is its toll on the people in affected areas, particularly residents of frontline communities, in parts of Florida, Georgia, and North and South Carolina that were battered in recent years by Hurricanes Florence, Michael, and Matthew.
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Hurricane Dorian blasted the Bahamas over the weekend as you all undoubtedly know, with a few deaths already confirmed. The storm is moving extremely slowly along the coast and thus will impact much of the Southeast U.S. coast this week, hundreds of thousands of people evacuated and five states expecting to see storm surge damage. The question is how much damage will it do and exactly where?
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The Associated Press reported that as the “peak” of hurricane season begins they are now expecting 10 to 17 named storms, with five to nine hurricanes and two to four major ones, up from their May forecast of one or two fewer named storms and hurricanes.
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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.
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Given that the Democratic Party denies the need for a debate dedicated to the topic of climate change, the location of the first Democratic debate — Miami — is ironic, to say the least. No other American city is feeling the brunt of climate change on a daily basis the way that Miami is — from fires in the Everglades (yes – you are reading that correctly) to record-breaking heat (this past Sunday) to daily flooding to hundreds of million dollars in upgrades to infrastructure, Miamians are already dealing with the climate crisis. But will the candidates get to discuss this important issue beyond the basics of support or opposition for the Green New Deal and re-entry into the Paris Agreement? That is THE question.
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As the U.S. must contend with more flooding events in areas like Houston and Miami, there is increasing evidence that wetlands and marshes are far more effective at protecting homes and other structures from flooding than concrete barriers. Most recently, according to Scientific American, researchers studying the impact of 2011’s Hurricane Irene on the North Carolina coast where the storm had a 10-foot surge that destroyed roads and more than 1100 homes on the Outer Banks, a popular vacation spot.
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According to E&E News, the $14 billion levee system, which was recently totally rebuilt to better defend the New Orleans in the event of another catastrophic storm like Hurricane Katrina, is subsiding and soon may not provide sufficient protection from a 100-year storm.
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Over the weekend, a commercial cruise liner called the Viking Sky with nearly 14,000 passengers and crew on board had to be evacuated when stormy weather and rough seas off the coast of Norway caused the ship to rock dangerously and it nearly ran aground. The ship was struggling Saturday morning because its engines failed and it lost power and then it began to list and take on water under a pounding from 43 mph winds and 26-foot swells. Fortunately, the ship was traveling close to shore, making its way around the Norwegian coast.
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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.
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