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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
19 September 2017 (United Nations) – Leaders from various levels of government, the private sector and civil society highlighted the need for climate action as they convened at United Nations Headquarters, where Secretary-General António Guterres warned that current pledges and plans are insufficient to keep global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees. “Hurricanes Harvey […]
By Bob Henson 19 September 2017 (Weather Underground) – After a direct hit on the small Lesser Antilles island of Dominica on Monday night, followed by a brief weakening, Hurricane Maria reintensified to Category 5 strength with winds of 160 mph on Tuesday morning. Maria will likely be a catastrophic Category 5 or high-end Category […]
By Kathryn Hansen 10 September 2017 (NASA) – Hurricane Irma churned across the Atlantic Ocean in September 2017, battering several Caribbean islands before moving on to the Florida Keys and the U.S. mainland. As the clouds cleared over places like the Virgin Islands, the destruction became obvious even from space.These natural-color images, captured by the […]
Dr. Jeff Masters 18 September 2017 (Weather Underground) – Category 5 Hurricane Maria made a direct hit on the small Lesser Antilles island of Dominica (population 72,000) near 9 pm EDT Monday, becoming Dominica’s first Category 5 landfall on record. At the time of landfall, an Air Force hurricane hunter aircraft measured surface winds of […]
By Wayne Drash 15 September 2017 (CNN) – The right time to talk climate change is now. It might seem premature when people in the Caribbean, Florida, and Texas are still mucking out their flooded homes. And no, changes in our planet’s atmosphere did not cause Hurricanes Harvey or Irma. But the consensus among scientists […]
