Just want to note that the SC congressional delegation all voted against relief aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy:
Even South Carolina residents who had been through Hurricane Hugo a quarter century ago said they have never seen anything like this, the deadly torrents that have crumbled roads, submerged houses and cars and killed at least 12 people. “They’re saying it’s a once-in-1,000-year rainstorm, and I’m inclined to believe it,” said Sean Brennan, a real… Continue reading “S. Carolina emerged from flooding that left 12 dead”→
(CNN)Horrific accounts of people drowning in a retirement home and being trapped in a road tunnel by floodwater have emerged after the French Riviera was hit by extreme downpours.
Rainfall on an “exceptional scale” set off flash floods that wreaked havoc along France’s southeastern Mediterranean coast late Saturday, killing at least 16 people and leaving three more missing, authorities said.
“The assessment isn’t yet complete, which just goes to show the intensity of what happened,” the French presidency said on its official Twitter account.
As much as 180 millimeters (7 inches) of rain in a span of three hours inundated parts of the Alpes-Maritimes district late Saturday, authorities said. The area is home to famous seaside resorts such as Nice, Cannes and Antibes.
The computer models are all over the place on this one, but the good news is (fingers crossed), the majority of them this morning have Hurricane Joaquin moving offshore. So there’s that for those of us on the coast (not so much for the Bahamas, where the slow-moving storm will sit all day).
Even if Joaquin doesn’t make a direct landfall, there will still be major flooding for much of the east/southeast. This storm is getting stronger, and your basic Historic Rainfall Event is expected, even if it only sideswipes the coast. (They’re saying Athens, Georgia may get as much as two feet of rain.) This is the same area that’s had heavy rain all week unrelated to this storm, and we’ve already seen serious beach erosion and flooding. Continue reading “Hurricane Joaquin”→
I remember all those years when they kept telling us any connection was all in our heads:
The central US state of Oklahoma has gone from registering two earthquakes a year to nearly two a day and scientists point to a controversial culprit: wastewater injection wells used in fracking.
Located in the middle of the country, far from any major fault lines, Oklahoma experienced 585 earthquakes of a magnitude of 3.0 or greater in 2014. That’s more than three times as many as the 180 which hit California last year.
As of last month, Oklahoma has already experienced more than 600 quakes strong enough to rattle windows and rock cars. The biggest was a 4.5-magnitude quake that hit the small town of Crescent.
[….] From 1975 to 2008, the state experienced anywhere from zero to three earthquakes a year which registered at 3.0 or higher. Then the numbers jumped: there were 20 in 2009, 35 in 2010, 64 in 2011, 35 in 2012, 109 in 2013 and 585 in 2014.
Chile has had more than its share of awful earthquakes in the past five years or so. Today another struck offshore, registering a preliminary magnitude of 8.3. A powerful 8.3-magnitude earthquake struck off Chile’s coast on Wednesday, according to a preliminary assessment from the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake’s epicenter was about 55 kilometers (34 miles)… Continue reading “8.3 in Chile”→
A surprising study has found that frogs in suburban lakes tend to be mostly female, and suggests that urbanization and estrogenic wastes are likely turning male frogs female. In a study published September 7 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers sampled hundreds of young frogs from 21 ponds in Connecticut, which… Continue reading “The frogs are turning female”→
New Orleans actor and activist Wendell Pierce looks at how insurance companies discouraged poor and black families from returning to New Orleans after Katrina by refusing to honor homeowner policies. Pierce, whose great-grandfather came to New Orleans as a slave in the 1850s, talks about how Allstate gave his parents just $400 after they paid premiums for 50 years. Pierce writes about his family in his new book, “The Wind in the Reeds: A Storm, a Play, and the City That Would Not Be Broken.”
And I see the Chinese have learned that putting dangerous, unregulated toxins in the midst of populated areas is a lot cheaper… for a while.
It boggles the mind: You can see the devastation everywhere: in the hollowed-out shells of buildings, in the anguished faces of relatives, in the parade of scorched cars. But what set off the terrifying explosions that ripped through warehouses containing hazardous chemical materials, shooting fireballs across the sky and shaking buildings more than 2 miles away?… Continue reading “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”→
From what I hear, an awful lot of Californians are ignoring the drought restrictions in favor of a green lawn and clean cars:
Gov. Jerry Brown, appearing at the site of a wildfire that has charred nearly 70,000 acres in Lake, Yolo and Colusa counties since last week, said Thursday that the ferocity of fires raging across drought-stricken California should serve as a “wake-up call” to climate change skeptics.
“The climate is unstable,” the Democratic governor told reporters after meeting with fire officials and people affected by the fire. “You can imagine, if the drought continues for a year or several years, California could literally burn up.”
Brown, who called a state of emergency last week in response to the fires, has long emphasized ties between climate change and wildfires, with rising temperatures contributing to drier forests. He urged Republican presidential candidates in a letter Wednesday to address climate change in their first debate, on Thursday night, and he told reporters, “My message is real clear: California’s burning. What the hell are you going to do about it?”
