As Trump tweets, government acts. Welcome to Meanwhile, our recurring look at what federal agencies are up to and how their work affects people’s lives. Barry Myers, President Trump’s nominee to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has faced questions throughout his nomination process about conflicts of interest related to his family’s weather-forecasting business, […]
Hurricane Maria, currently headed for Puerto Rico, stunned forecasters by rapidly intensifying from a Category 1 storm to a Category 5 within a 15-hour period on Monday, battering the island of Dominica in the process. Indeed, the forecast error for Maria’s wind speed is one of the worst for a 24-hour hurricane forecast in the […]
On Sept. 8, someone in New York City dialed 311, the city’s non-emergency hotline, and asked for information about a Hurricane Sandy disaster relief program. This was not a fluke. It’s been nearly five years since the storm devastated the mid-Atlantic, causing 43 deaths in the city and $19 billion in damage. But still, nearly […]
2017 has been a bad year for peaches in the Peach State. Georgia’s disruptively warm winter caused the loss of an estimated 85 percent of the peach crop. “We had fruit here in Georgia from the middle of May to about probably the first week of July, and after that we didn’t have anything else,” […]
With the torrential rains of Hurricane Harvey, the historic winds of Irma, and Jose still meandering slowly through the Caribbean, the last few weeks have been full of powerful and frequent hurricanes. If the 2017 hurricane season continues like this, it could join 2005 and 2010 as one of the most intense hurricane seasons in […]