By Olga R. Rodriguez5 February 2016 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – The first West Coast waves of a week of powerful storms arrived to provide strong evidence March will not be as parched as the month that preceded it. Steady rain fell in Northern California on Saturday and was expected to go statewide Sunday. Fresh and […]
By Emmanuel Martinez 29 February 2016 (Reveal) – Reveal reported in early January about the water tank program in Tulare County, California. What began as an emergency response measure to the drought was becoming the norm for hundreds of families who no longer had running water. At the crisis’ peak, Tulare County reported about 1,400 […]
NEW ORLEANS, 29 February 2016 (Associated Press) – The nation’s boom in cheap natural gas — often viewed as a clean energy source — is spawning a wave of petrochemical plants that, if built, will emit massive amounts of greenhouse gases, an environmental watchdog group warned in a report Monday [Greenhouse Gases from a Growing […]
By Chico Harlan 4 March 2016 BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Washington Post) – Already, the state of Louisiana had gutted university spending and depleted its rainy-day funds. It had cut 30,000 employees and furloughed others. It had slashed the number of child services staffers, including those devoted to foster family recruitment, and young abuse victims for […]
By Laura Bliss2 March 2016 (CityLab) – The Great Salt Lake is drying up, thanks to 150 years of human diversions from the rivers that feed it. That’s the takeaway of a white paper released by a team of Utah biologists and engineers. And if those diversions continue ramping up, as a bill working its […]
By John Antczak, with additional reporting by Amanda Lee Myers 3 March 2016 LOS ANGELES (AP) – Ed Heinlein surveys the steep mountainside that has repeatedly unleashed tons of mud into the backyard of his Southern California home since a 2014 wildfire and still hopes the drought-stricken state gets more rain. “We have to have […]
By Tegan Hanlon29 February 2016 (ADN) – How weird has Anchorage’s weather been this winter? Weird enough that an Alaska Railroad spokesman said Monday that a train will deliver seven rail cars loaded with snow to the state’s largest city this week in time for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race ceremonial start on Saturday. […]
6 January 2016 (McGill University) – Drought and extreme heat events slashed cereal harvests in recent decades by 9% to 10% on average in affected countries – and the impact of these weather disasters was greatest in the developed nations of North America, Europe, and Australasia, according to a new study led by researchers from […]
By Lynda V. Mapes23 February 2016 (Seattle Times) – Puget Sound salmon are on drugs: Prozac, Advil, Benadryl, Lipitor, even cocaine. Those drugs and dozens of others are showing up in the tissues of juvenile chinook, researchers have found, thanks to tainted wastewater discharge. The estuary waters near the outfalls of sewage-treatment plants, and effluent […]
By Jason Samenow 23 February 2016 (Washington Post) – This winter’s shocking warmth in the Arctic, some seven degrees above average, has oozed into the Alaska which is experiencing one of its mildest recorded winters. So far this winter, Alaska’s temperature has averaged about 10 degrees above normal, ranking third warmest in records that date […]
