4 January 2018 (Munich Re) – The hurricane trio of Harvey, Irma, and Maria will cost the insurance industry a record amount in 2017: the final insurance bill for those and other natural catastrophes, including a severe earthquake in Mexico, is expected to come to US$ 135bn – higher than ever before. And overall losses […]
By Darryl Fears 4 January 2018 (The Washington Post) – The Trump administration unveiled a controversial proposal Thursday to permit drilling in most U.S. continental-shelf waters, including protected areas of the Arctic and the Atlantic, where oil and gas exploration is opposed by governors from New Jersey to Florida, nearly a dozen attorneys general, more […]
By Jennifer Kay 4 January 2018 MIAMI BEACH, Florida (Associated Press) – It’s so cold in Florida that iguanas are falling from their perches in suburban trees. Temperatures dipped below 40 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) early Thursday in parts of South Florida, according to the National Weather Service in Miami. That’s chilly enough to […]
By Alana Semuels 29 December 2017 HEMET, California (The Atlantic) – Many cities across America are doing better today than they were before the recession. This is not one of them. A decade after the start of the Great Recession, it struggles with pervasive crime and poverty. “We’re still recovering—we were really hit hard on […]
By Marshall Shepherd 28 December 2017 (Forbes) – If you are reading or watching the news, winter weather is the current headline. Negative wind chills, feet of lake effect snow in the Great Lakes region, and possibly the coldest New Year’s Eve ball drop in almost a half century are on tap. Forecasts are suggesting […]
By Alice Hill 20 December 2017 (CNN) – As this year comes to a close, 2017 is on track to set the all-time record for the most billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in any single year in US history. There were 15 in the first nine months (equal to all of 2011, which set the […]
28 December 2017 (MSNBC) – Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz of San Juan, Puerto Rico, talks with Joy Reid about the challenges the island is still dealing with months after catastrophic hurricanes, problems made worse by the Trump administration’s bungling of the response and the new Republican tax law. Puerto Rico crisis lingers as Trump administration […]
By Danica Coto 28 December 2017 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – Thousands of police officers are calling in sick every day in Puerto Rico, partly to press demands for unpaid overtime pay for hurricane recovery efforts as concerns grow over people’s safety in a U.S. territory struggling to restore power. The increase in absences […]
By Tim Craig 15 December 2017 NOYES, Minnesota (The Washington Post) – Chad Cosley tracks them as if they were deer. He looks for footprints and frequently checks his network of trail cameras, which had been documenting wildlife along the U.S.-Canada border but now also capture would-be refugees fleeing the United States under President Trump. […]
6 December 2017 (NSIDC) – November 2017 will be remembered not for total Arctic ice extent, which was the third lowest recorded over the period of satellite observations, but for the record low extent in the Chukchi Sea. This is a key area for Arctic Ocean access, and is an indicator of oceanographic influences on […]
