By Kelly Helm Smith, National Drought Mitigation Center; Steve Smith, University Communications5 Jul 2012 (UNL) – More of the United States is in moderate drought or worse than at any other time in the 12-year history of the U.S. Drought Monitor, officials from the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said today. […]
By Patrick Evans 6 July 2012 Chernobyl, Ukraine (BBC) – Much of the 30km exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant is pine forest, and some of it so badly contaminated that a forest fire could create a devastating radioactive smoke cloud. Heading north from Kiev in Ukraine, you can see old ladies and their […]
By Bryan Walsh5 July 2012 Triple-digit days. Weeks with little to no rain. Soil crumbling away. Stunted corn stalks. Right now the fertile fields of the U.S. Midwest are experiencing corn-killing weather, with parts of five corn-growing states in the region experiencing severe or extreme drought. In at least nine states, one-fifth to one-half of […]
By Dr. Jeff Masters7 July 2012 The extraordinary heat wave of late June/early July 2012 toppled more Dust Bowl-era records on Friday, with three cities in Michigan hitting their hottest temperatures ever recorded. Lansing hit 103°, the hottest day in Michigan’s capital city since record keeping began in 1863. Lansing has hit 102° four times, […]
By Kate Galbraith3 July 2012 The historic Texas drought caused the Ogallala Aquifer to experience its largest decline in 25 years across a large swath of the Texas Panhandle, new numbers from a water district show. The 16-county High Plains Underground Water Conservation District reported this week that its monitoring wells showed an average decline […]
By Laura Betz, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center11 June 2012 Fires burning in Siberia recently sent smoke across the Pacific Ocean and into the U.S. and Canada. Images of data taken by the nation’s newest Earth-observing satellite tracked aerosols from the fires taking six days to reach America’s shores. Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) satellite’s […]
4 July 2012 (MSNBC) – In the aftermath of violent storms that knocked out power to millions from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic, sweltering residents and elected officials are demanding to know why it’s taking so long to restring power lines and why they’re not more resilient in the first place. The answer, it turns […]
By Christopher C. Burt1 July 2012 After scorching portions of the West and Plains early last week, the amazing heat wave of June 2012 slid eastward on Thursday, June 28, continuing to astonish us with more all-time heat records. Below is a summary of those. […] ALL-TIME HEAT RECORDS BROKEN OR TIED JUNE 28-30 There […]
By SETH BORENSTEIN, Associated Press3 July 2012 WASHINGTON (AP) — If you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, scientists suggest taking a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks. Horrendous wildfires. Oppressive heat waves. Devastating droughts. Flooding from giant deluges. And a powerful freak wind storm called a derecho. These […]
3 July 2012 – With power, and air conditioning, still out in nearly 1.5 million homes and businesses — and many of those not likely to be reconnected for days — the National Weather Service warned that dangerously high temperatures would hit the Midwest on Tuesday and then spread into the eastern third of the […]
