Last Wednesday, Hurricane Michael slammed into the Florida Panhandle at 155 miles per hour, flattening neighborhoods, turning subdivisions into rubble, and plunging the coast into darkness. On Friday, Trevor Lewis packed up two trucks with crowbars, chainsaws, sledgehammers, ropes, walkie talkies, and five other guys from Cocoa Beach, where he ...
Read More »Why Hurricane Michael’s Storm Surge Is So High
After gathering strength from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico overnight, Hurricane Michael blasted across the Florida Panhandle Wednesday afternoon, pummeling the area with winds up to 155 miles per hour. That makes the Category 4 hurricane one of the all-time strongest landfalls in US history. Earlier today, ...
Read More »Hurricane Harvey samples saddled with antibiotic-resistant genes
Rice University scientists have released the first results of extensive water sampling in Houston after the epic flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey. They found widespread contamination by E. coli, likely the result of overflow from flooded wastewater treatment plants. The microbial survey showed high levels of E. coli, a fecal ...
Read More »After Hurricane Maria, Could Puerto Rico Be at Risk of Cholera?
After the deluge comes the deluge. First Hurricane Irma raked Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands in early September, and then two weeks later Hurricane Maria did the same, leaving 3.5 million people in Puerto Rico without clean water, communications, or electricity, amid damaged buildings and floodwaters. Aid is ...
Read More »SpaceX Lifts Off as NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Braces for Hurricane Irma
On the eve of Hurricane Irma‘s landfall, a scene out of a dystopian sci-fi novel unfolded around NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. There, in the path of the unprecedented storm, SpaceX managed to launch a secret uncrewed spacecraft for the Air Force and bring its Falcon 9 back home for a ...
Read More »Live Briefing: Hurricane Irma, Churning Through Caribbean, Hits Turks and Caicos
Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 storm with sustained winds of up to 175 miles an hour, continued to tear through the Caribbean on Thursday, heading for the Bahamas and the northern coast of Cuba, according to officials. The death toll from the storm was at least seven as of Thursday ...
Read More »Live Briefing: Hurricane Irma Reaches Puerto Rico: ‘There Is Nothing Like This’
• Hurricane Irma, one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the Atlantic, hit the eastern Caribbean on Wednesday with winds of up to 185 miles an hour. • The Category 5 storm leveled Barbuda, damaging 95 percent of its buildings and leaving the island “barely habitable.” It has since ...
Read More »How Will Houston Handle the Deluge of Hurricane Harvey?
Hurricanes are ranked according to their wind speed. But a truer measure of their destructive potential would also include their moisture level. Just before making landfall on Friday night, Hurricane Harvey jumped up to become a category 4 hurricane, with sustained winds of 130 miles per hour. But more dangerously, ...
Read More »Cholera Deepens Haiti’s Misery After Hurricane
RENDEL, Haiti — There is a plague on this town. Even before the winds and rain toppled nearly everything standing, cholera was already here. It came down from the mountains, washing into the lives of the thousands who once lived above the river. Now the only sign of life is ...
Read More »North Carolina’s Wild Steeds Bucked the Hurricane (Probably)
Hurricane Matthew is gone. But its effects linger: Hundreds—possibly thousands—dead, and hundreds of thousands without homes, without power, in the Caribbean and southeastern US. And there’s every indication that storms like Matthew will only become more common as the climate continues to change. But humans aren’t the only locals whose ...
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