Hurricane Michael Cost This Military Base About $5 Billion, Just One of 2018’s Weather Disasters. Major hurricanes, devastating wildfires, a drought and a series of extreme storms ran up the count of billion-dollar U.S. climate and weather disasters.
From HStoday, this article: Atlantic Hurricanes Are Strengthening Faster, Partially Because of Climate Change, Study Finds. Hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin are exploding into monster storms at a rapid pace more and more often, and climate change is one reason why, a new study has found.
Published Thursday in the journal Nature Communications, the findings compiled by a team of hurricane experts – several of whom work for NOAA – concluded that rapid intensification is happening more often than it should.
The result can be a hurricane that grows from a relatively tame Category 1 to a massive Category 4 or 5 storm, the most recent example being Hurricane Michael, which ravaged the Florida Panhandle last October (the Gulf of Mexico is included as part of the Atlantic Basin).
Toxic Debris Forces Camp Fire Victims To Stop Living On Their Land.
Thanks to Eric Holdeman for the citation.
Update on Feb. 11: In a related story, the local residents are having trouble with using RVs for temporary housing. See: Residents Pushed Out….
3 big takeaways from the disasters that hammered the US in 2018. Why wildfires, hurricanes, and floods cost us hundreds of lives and billions of dollars this year.
This year’s disasters are going to haunt us for months, if not years, as well. The Camp Fire destroyed nearly 10,000 homes in California. Residents are now jumping into one of the tightest and most expensive real estate markets in the country. Disaster managers are moving many of the people who lost their homes into longer-term shelters.
But that still leaves a major question: Should people rebuild their lives where they once were, or move on to safer ground? People around the country will increasingly be asking themselves this question, as the changing climate renders the future more uncertain.
Here is the WashPost’s take on the same topic.
New CRS Report: The Disaster Relief Fund, an Overview. It is 34 pages.
Seas may be rising faster than thought. A new Tulane University study questions the reliability of how sea-level rise in low-lying coastal areas such as southern Louisiana is measured and suggests that the current method underestimates the severity of the problem.
From Vox, this update on Trump Border Wall Animals.
‘Unprecedented’ Floods in Australia Force Hundreds to Evacuate
Between Jan. 26 and the morning of Feb. 4, there was close to four feet of rain in Townsville, a coastal city in the state of Queensland, eclipsing records set in 1998 during a flood known as the “Night of Noah.”
“In seven days, we’ve received our annual total rainfall,” said Jenny Hill, the mayor of Townsville. “We’ve never seen weather like this.”
USPS has sophisticated contingency plans for natural disasters. Across the country, 285 emergency-management teams are devoted to crisis control; * * * these teams are trained annually using a framework known as the three p’s: people, property, product. After a weather-necessitated service outage, the agency’s top priority is ensuring that employees are safe, after which it evaluates the health of infrastructure, such as the roads that mail carriers drive on. Finally, it decides when and how to reopen operations.
Recovery Diva 