After Hurricane Irma, a once-lush gem in the U.S. Virgin Islands reduced to battered wasteland

By Anthony Faiola 12 September 2017 CRUZ BAY, U.S. Virgin Islands (The Washington Post) – The Asolare restaurant is gone, practically blown off its cliff, along with its world-famous carrot ginger soup. The facade of Margarita Phil’s is a junkyard of yellow and vermilion planks. Multimillion-dollar homes and aluminum huts alike lie in ruins.On the […]

Why it’s unclear when Puerto Rico will get power back – “The devastation of the island is really breathtaking”

By Jon Schuppe 23 September 2017 (NBC News) – A team of New York electricity-transmission workers and a pair of drone operators arrived in San Juan Friday to help the reeling government of Puerto Rico begin to measure the damage to the U.S. territory’s power grid. The entire island remained without electricity into the weekend, […]

Climate change’s Southern salvo – “The southern U.S. is basically ground zero for climate change”

By Seth Cline 22 September 2017 (US News) – To some, climate change is a vague idea, a hazy future. In parts of the South, it’s become a devastating reality. “When you drive down the street there’s piles and piles of furniture, clothing, shoes, sound systems, just about anything you find inside a home,” Hilton […]

Seattle experienced warmest and driest summer ever recorded in 2017

By Christine Clarridge 22 September 2017 (The Seattle Times) – This summer in Seattle was the warmest and driest ever recorded.For those of us living in the Puget Sound region, it might not come as a surprise. In fact, it’s been a year full of extremes, with numerous daytime high records broken, one of the […]

Hurricane Irma topples NASA “Moon Tree” that flew on Apollo 14

By Emre Kelly 21 September 2017 (Florida Today) – A tiny tree seed that began its voyage in an Apollo command module and later sprouted to life at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex was lost to the winds of Hurricane Irma earlier this month. Known as a “Moon Tree,” the perennial plant once located […]

Climate change terms altered in another corner of EPA’s website

By Dino Grandoni 22 September 2017 (The Washington Post) – Numerous mentions of “climate change,” “greenhouse gasses” and other phrases related to global warming have been found to be altered or deleted from another portion of the Environmental Protection Agency’s website, according to a new environmental watchdog report.At the beginning of President Trump’s term, the […]

Hurricane scientist Kerry Emanuel: Why it’s time to stop calling these hurricane disasters “natural”

By Kerry Emanuel 19 September 2017 (The Washington Post) – As the United States struggles to recover from two back-to-back hurricanes, it would be wise to reflect on why we keep having such calamities and whether they are likely to get worse. We must first recognize the phrase “natural disaster” for what it is: a […]

The scariest thing about 2017’s hurricanes: They keep getting really strong, really fast

By Chris Mooney 19 September 2017 (The Washington Post) – “Maria is developing the dreaded pinhole eye,” wrote National Hurricane Center forecaster Jack Beven on Monday evening, as the storm reached Category 4 intensity.That inward contraction of a hurricane’s eye can be one telltale indicator of what hurricane gurus technically call “rapid intensification,” although a […]

Hurricane Maria knocks out power to all of Puerto Rico, cripples other islands – “This is total devastation. This is something of historic proportions.”

By Holly Yan and Cassandra Santiago 20 September 2017 (CNN) – Hurricane Maria’s eye has left Puerto Rico, but the mammoth storm is still lashing the island with devastating winds. Maria weakened to a Category 3 hurricane Wednesday afternoon, hurling winds of 115 mph. But hurricane-force gusts topping 74 mph still extend over much of […]

Hurricane Maria hammers Puerto Rico with force not seen in modern history – “This is clearly going to be the most devastating storm in the history of our island”

By Samantha Schmidt, Mark Berman, and Sandhya Somashekhar 20 September 2017 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (The Washington Post) – Hurricane Maria roared ashore Wednesday as the strongest storm to strike Puerto Rico in more than 80 years, knocking out power to nearly the entire island and leaving frightened people huddled in buildings hoping to ride […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial