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Francine Could Be Fueled by Gulf of Mexico’s Warm Waters
Francine is forecast to become a Category 2 hurricane before landfall this week, but an even stronger hurricane isn’t out of the question. More
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Tropical Storm Francine Takes Aim at Louisiana and Texas
The storm ends a lull in the Atlantic season and is expected to become a hurricane before making landfall. More
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Typhoon Shanshan Makes Landfall in Southern Japan
The risk of life-threatening landslides and floods was rapidly increasing in parts of Kyushu Island as the storm lashed it with relentless rain, the authorities warned.The storm unleashed torrential rain, hurricane-force winds and the threat of landslides.Kyodo, via Reuters More
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Dangerous Heat Returns to Central and Eastern U.S. This Week
High heat and humidity could make it feel like 115 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the country this week, forecasters warned.Forecasters warned that “dangerous heat and humidity” will spread across the central and eastern United States this week, threatening to break records for high temperatures and ending a spell of fall-like weather.The heat wave will bring “unseasonably hot” temperatures to the Upper Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, said David Roth, a meteorologist at the Weather Prediction Center.The extreme heat and humidity could make it feel like 105 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the country.“In some places in the Midwest, it could be the hottest temperatures they’ve seen all summer,” Mr. Roth said. “Not only is it late, it’s the hottest, too. So that’s a little unusual.” More
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On Hawaii’s Big Island, Hurricane Hone Brings Heavy Rain but No Major Damage
More than 20,000 customers were without power by Sunday afternoon, but neither the winds nor the flooding from the storm were dramatic.Hurricane Hone passed within 60 miles of Hawaii’s Big Island early Sunday, bringing heavy rain, knocking out power to thousands of customers and snapping native ohia trees like twigs.More than 20,000 customers were without electricity on Sunday afternoon on the island, which has a population of about 206,000. But Mitch Roth, the mayor of Hawaii County, which covers the Big Island, said there were no reports of injuries or major damage.Kazuo Todd, the fire chief for Hawaii County, said that nearly 18 inches of rain had fallen around the volcanoes in the southern part the island. But so far, neither the winds nor the flooding had been dramatic.“We do live on an island in the Pacific where the water can drain off into the ocean relatively quickly,” Chief Todd said.Forecasters predicted that Hone, which was a Category 1 storm as it was spinning westward below the islands on Sunday, could still bring up to 20 inches of rain to some areas. As the storm moves, it will slow down and push moisture over all the islands, increasing the potential for heavy rainfall statewide and the threat of flash flooding in some areas.Floodwaters flow through a soccer complex in Hilo, Hawaii, as a result of heavy rains.Bruce Omori for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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In Hawaii, a Sense of Alertness Without Panic Ahead of Tropical Storm Hone
Although the storm is not expected to pass directly over the Big Island, forecasters warned of threats including flooding and damaging winds.Debbie Arita, an office manager at a supermarket in Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii, took stock of the conditions. Tropical Storm Hone was approaching the region, but the scene on Friday was far from chaotic — no frantic rush for supplies, no desperate boarding up of windows.To Ms. Arita, who said she has been through her fair share of hurricanes and tsunamis, the prevailing mood seemed to be alertness without anxiousness.“There’s no sense of panic here,” she said.Hone (pronounced ho-NAY) is expected to deliver a glancing blow to Hawaii as it passes near or south of the Big Island late Saturday into early Sunday. Forecasters have warned of the potential for damaging winds, life-threatening surf and flash floods.Officials and residents largely said they were preparing, but not with alarm. While a landfall of a named storm on Hawaii is rare, storms frequently come close enough to affect the islands’ weather. Mitch Roth, the mayor of Hawaii County, which covers the Big Island, wants residents to remain watchful. “We want people to be prepared for any kind of hazard,” Mr. Roth said. In August 2018, Hurricane Lane drenched the Big Island with 58 inches of rainfall, damaged over 100 buildings and killed one person — despite the eye of the storm passing over 100 miles south of the state.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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How Air-Conditioning Made Us Expect Arizona to Feel the Same as Maine
It’s a quiet force that contributes to a sameness across the country and to climate change.One force has quietly shaped much of the world around us — our homes, our offices, the look of our cities, the migration patterns of Americans and the economic fortunes of different parts of the country.That is: air-conditioning.It’s become so widespread as to be unremarkable, an assumed feature of every interior environment. Nearly 90 percent of Americans use some kind of air-conditioning at home. It is humming in the background just about everywhere else you go: in your car, at the mall, on an airplane.But, as we discuss in an episode of “The Daily” podcast today, our dependence on it increasingly poses a knotty problem, as the energy needed to power all this air-conditioning produces emissions that contribute to the warming world. The more we use the thing that helps us cope with heat, the hotter it will get.“This cycle where air-conditioning is both the solution and the problem is really where we’re collectively kind of stuck,” said Daniel Barber, head of the school of architecture at the University of Technology Sydney.Or, as he has written more bluntly: The comfort air-conditioning gives us inside is predicated on the worsening instability of the climate outside.My colleagues Ronda Kaysen and Aatish Bhatia wrote about an illustration of this relationship on Monday. In some of the fastest-growing major metro areas in the U.S., like Las Vegas, the nights are rapidly getting hotter. That drives demand for even more air-conditioning. And in fact, without air-conditioning, it’s unlikely so many people would have moved to Las Vegas in the first place.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Heat Contributed to 47,000 Deaths in Europe Last Year, but Relief Programs Helped
A new study shows that behavioral and social changes can reduce heat mortality. But challenges remain as temperatures continue to rise.More than 47,000 Europeans died from heat-related causes during 2023, the world’s hottest year on record, a new report in Nature Medicine has found.But the number could have been much higher.Without adaptations to rising temperatures over the past two decades — including advances in health care, more widespread air-conditioning and improved public information that kept people indoors and hydrated during extreme temperatures — the death toll for Europeans experiencing the same temperatures at the start of the 21st century could have been 80 percent higher, according to the new study. For people over 80 years old, the death toll could have doubled.“We need to consider climate change as a health issue,” said Elisa Gallo, a postdoctoral researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, a nonprofit research center, and the lead author of the study. “We still have thousands of deaths caused by heat every year, so we still have to work a lot and we have to work faster.”Counting deaths from extreme heat is difficult, in part because death certificates don’t always reflect the role heat played in a person’s death. The study used publicly available death records in 35 countries, representing about 543 million Europeans and provided by Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union.The researchers used an epidemiological model to analyze the deaths alongside 2023 weekly temperature records to estimate what fraction of deaths could be attributable to heat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
