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Tag: Climate and environment

  • Nile basin nations say water-sharing accord has come into force without Egypt’s backing

    Nile basin nations say water-sharing accord has come into force without Egypt’s backing

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    KAMPALA, Uganda — A regional partnership of 10 countries says an agreement on the equitable use of water resources from the Nile River basin has come into force despite the notable opposition of Egypt.

    The legal status of the “cooperative framework” was formally confirmed by the African Union after South Sudan joined the treaty, the Nile Basin Initiative said in a statement Sunday.

    Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania have ratified the accord. Egypt and Sudan declined to sign, while Congo abstained. Kenya has not yet deposited its ratification documents with the African Union.

    The accord, which came into force on Sunday, “is a testament to our collective determination to harness the Nile River for the benefit of all, ensuring its equitable and sustainable use for generations to come,” the Nile Basin Initiative said in its statement. “This is a moment to congratulate the governments and people of the Nile riparian countries, and all partners and stakeholders, for their patience, resolve, and dedication to this cause.”

    The lack of ratification by Egypt and Sudan — desert nations that have raised concern over any attempts to diminish their shares of Nile water — means the accord will prove controversial.

    Tensions in the region have increased, stemming in part from Ethiopia’s construction of a $4 billion dam on the Blue Nile, a key tributary of the Nile River. Egypt fears the dam will have a devastating effect on water and irrigation supplies downstream unless Ethiopia takes its needs into account. Ethiopia plans to use the dam to generate badly needed electricity.

    The accord’s rights clause states that Nile basin states “shall in their respective territories utilize the water resources of the Nile River system in an equitable and reasonable manner.”

    Measuring 6,695 kilometers (4160 miles), the Nile is the longest river in the world, with one tributary, the White Nile, starting in South Sudan and the other, the Blue Nile, in Ethiopia.

    Amid the dispute with Ethiopia, Egypt has recently appeared to strengthen its position in the Horn of Africa by pledging security cooperation with Somalia, which opposes Ethiopia’s efforts to seek access to the sea via the Somali breakaway territory of Somaliland. Under the terms of an agreement reached last week, Egypt could deploy peacekeeping troops to Somalia when the mandate of African Union peacekeepers expires at the end of 2024.

    It was not immediately possible to get a comment from Egypt on the Nile accord now in force. The country, a founding member of the Nile Basin Initiative, has long asserted its rights to Nile water according to the terms of a colonial-era agreement.

    The agreement between Egypt and the United Kingdom gave downstream Egypt and Sudan rights to the Nile water, with Egypt taking 55.5 billion cubic meters and Sudan 18.5 billion cubic meters of the total of 84 billion cubic meters, with 10 billion lost to evaporation.

    That agreement, first signed in 1929, took no account of the other nations along the river basin that have been agitating for a more equitable accord.

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  • Florida neighbors band together to recover after one-two punch from hurricanes Helene and Milton

    Florida neighbors band together to recover after one-two punch from hurricanes Helene and Milton

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    TAMPA, Fla. — When ankle-deep floodwaters from Hurricane Helene bubbled up through the floors of their home, Kat Robinson-Malone and her husband sent a late-night text message to their neighbors two doors down: “Hey, we’re coming.”

    The couple waded through the flooded street to the elevated front porch of Chris and Kara Sundar, whose home was built on higher ground, and handed over their 8-year-old daughter and a gas-powered generator.

    The Sundars’ lime-green house in southern Tampa also became a refuge for Brooke and Adam Carstensen, whose house next door to Robinson-Malone also flooded.

    The three families met years earlier when their children became playmates, and the adults’ friendships deepened during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. So when Helene and Hurricane Milton struck Florida within two weeks of each other, the neighbors closed ranks as one big extended family, cooking meals together, taking turns watching children and cleaning out their damaged homes.

    And as Milton threatened a direct strike on Tampa last week, the Malones, the Sundars and the Carstensens decided to evacuate together. They drove more than 450 miles (725 kilometers) in a caravan to metro Atlanta — seven adults, six children, four dogs and teenage Max Carstensen’s three pet rats.

    “Everyone has, like, the chain saw or a tarp,” Robinson-Malone said Sunday. “But really the most important thing for us was the community we built. And that made all the difference for the hurricane rescue and the recovery. And now, hopefully, the restoration.”

    Recovery efforts continued Sunday in storm-battered communities in central Florida, where President Joe Biden surveyed the devastation. Biden said he was thankful the damage from Milton was not as severe as officials had anticipated. But he said it was still a “cataclysmic” event for people caught in the path of the hurricane, which has been blamed for at least 11 deaths.

    Nearly 800,000 homes and businesses in Florida remained without electricity Sunday, according to Poweroutage.us, down from more than 3 million after Milton made landfall late Wednesday as a Category 3 storm.

    Fuel shortages also appeared to be easing as more gas stations opened, and lines at pumps in the Tampa area looked notably shorter. Gov. Ron DeSantis announced nine sites where people can get 10 gallons (38 liters) each for free.

    While recovery efforts were gaining steam, a full rebound will take far longer.

    DeSantis cautioned that debris removal could take up to a year, even as Florida shifts nearly 3,000 workers to the cleanup. He said Biden has approved 100% federal reimbursement for those efforts for 90 days.

    “The (removal of) debris has to be 24/7 over this 90-day period,” DeSantis said while speaking next to a pile of furniture, lumber and other debris in Treasure Island, an island city near St. Petersburg that has been battered by both recent hurricanes. “That’s the way you get the job done.”

    National Weather Service meteorologist Paul Close said rivers will keep rising for the next several days and result in flooding, mostly around Tampa Bay and northward. Those areas got the most rain, which came on top of a wet summer that included several hurricanes.

    Meanwhile, residents unable to move back into their damaged homes were making other arrangements.

    Robinson-Malone and her husband, Brian, bought a camper trailer that’s parked in their driveway. They plan to live there while their gutted home is repaired and also improved to make it more resilient against hurricanes.

    “These storms, they’re just going to keep happening,” she said. “And we want to be prepared for it.”

    The Carstensens plan to demolish what’s left of their flooded, low-slung home, which was built in 1949, and replace it with a new house higher off the ground. For the time being they are staying with Brooke Carstensen’s mother.

    Chris Sundar said he’s questioning his plan to remain in Tampa until his children have all graduated from high school a decade from now. His house remains the home base for the families’ kids, ages 8 to 13. On the wall there is a list of chores for them all, from folding laundry to emptying wastebaskets. Brooke Carstensen, a teacher, has helped the children through an extended period without school.

    The Sundars lost both their vehicles when Helene’s storm surge flooded their garage, so they drove Robinson-Malone’s car when they evacuated to Georgia. Arriving, exhausted after the 14-hour trek, Chris Sundar said to Robinson-Malone: “This is where community shines or it falls apart.”

    “And that night we got together and we all hung out,” he said.

    On Sunday back in Florida, they worked together to remove sticks and logs from a large oak limb that dangled over another neighbor’s driveway. Brian Malone cut it up with a chain saw.

    Tackling recovery as a group has made it seem far less overwhelming, Brooke Carstensen said. The families share tips and ideas on a group text thread. The Sundars threw an impromptu 13th birthday party for her son at their house between the storms. And she found solace and laughter from Brian Malone’s advice about rebounding: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

    It’s why she wants to remain in Tampa, despite her concerns that Helene and Milton won’t be the last storms.

    “Why do we live here in a place that’s trying to destroy us?” Brooke Carstensen said. “Well, it’s all the people that we have here.”

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  • Volunteers bring solar power to Hurricane Helene’s disaster zone

    Volunteers bring solar power to Hurricane Helene’s disaster zone

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    BAKERSVILLE, N.C. — Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Helene downed power lines and washed out roads all over North Carolina’s mountains, the constant din of a gas-powered generator is getting to be too much for Bobby Renfro.

    It’s difficult to hear the nurses, neighbors and volunteers flowing through the community resource hub he has set up in a former church for his neighbors in Tipton Hill, a crossroads in the Pisgah National Forest north of Asheville. Much worse is the cost: he spent $1,200 to buy it and thousands more on fuel that volunteers drive in from Tennessee.

    Turning off their only power source isn’t an option. This generator runs a refrigerator holding insulin for neighbors with diabetes and powers the oxygen machines and nebulizers some of them need to breathe.

    The retired railroad worker worries that outsiders don’t understand how desperate they are, marooned without power on hilltops and down in “hollers.”

    “We have no resources for nothing,” Renfro said. “It’s going to be a long ordeal.”

    More than 43,000 of the 1.5 million customers who lost power in western North Carolina still lacked electricity on Friday, according to Poweroutage.us. Without it, they can’t keep medicines cold or power medical equipment or pump well water. They can’t recharge their phones or apply for federal disaster aid.

    Crews from all over the country and even Canada are helping Duke Energy and local electric cooperatives with repairs, but it’s slow going in the dense mountain forests, where some roads and bridges are completely washed away.

    “The crews aren’t doing what they typically do, which is a repair effort. They’re rebuilding from the ground up,” said Kristie Aldridge, vice president of communications at North Carolina Electric Cooperatives.

    Residents who can get their hands on gas and diesel-powered generators are depending on them, but that is not easy. Fuel is expensive and can be a long drive away. Generator fumes pollute and can be deadly. Small home generators are designed to run for hours or days, not weeks and months.

    Now, more help is arriving. Renfro received a new power source this week, one that will be cleaner, quieter and free to operate. Volunteers with the nonprofit Footprint Project and a local solar installation company delivered a solar generator with six 245-watt solar panels, a 24-volt battery and an AC power inverter. The panels now rest on a grassy hill outside the community building.

    Renfro hopes his community can draw some comfort and security, “seeing and knowing that they have a little electricity.”

    The Footprint Project is scaling up its response to this disaster with sustainable mobile infrastructure. It has deployed dozens of larger solar microgrids, solar generators and machines that can pull water from the air to 33 sites so far, along with dozens of smaller portable batteries.

    With donations from solar equipment and installation companies as well as equipment purchased through donated funds, the nonprofit is sourcing hundreds more small batteries and dozens of other larger systems and even industrial-scale solar generators known as “Dragon Wings.”

    Will Heegaard and Jamie Swezey are the husband-and-wife team behind Project Footprint. Heegaard founded it in 2018 in New Orleans with a mission of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of emergency responses. Helene’s destruction is so catastrophic, however, that Swezey said this work is more about supplementing generators than replacing them.

    “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Swezey said as she stared at a whiteboard with scribbled lists of requests, volunteers and equipment. “It’s all hands on deck with whatever you can use to power whatever you need to power.”

    Down near the interstate in Mars Hill, a warehouse owner let Swezey and Heegaard set up operations and sleep inside. They rise each morning triaging emails and texts from all over the region. Requests for equipment range from individuals needing to power a home oxygen machine to makeshift clinics and community hubs distributing supplies.

    Local volunteers help. Hayden Wilson and Henry Kovacs, glassblowers from Asheville, arrived in a pickup truck and trailer to make deliveries this week. Two installers from the Asheville-based solar company Sundance Power Systems followed in a van.

    It took them more than an hour on winding roads to reach Bakersville, where the community hub Julie Wiggins runs in her driveway supports about 30 nearby families. It took many of her neighbors days to reach her, cutting their way out through fallen trees. Some were so desperate, they stuck their insulin in the creek to keep it cold.

    Panels and a battery from Footprint Project now power her small fridge, a water pump and a Starlink communications system she set up. “This is a game changer,” Wiggins said.

    The volunteers then drove to Renfro’s hub in Tipton Hill before their last stop at a Bakersville church that has been running two generators. Other places are much harder to reach. Heegaard and Swezey even tried to figure out how many portable batteries a mule could carry up a mountain and have arranged for some to be lowered by helicopters.

    They know the stakes are high after Heegaard volunteered in Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Maria’s death toll rose to 3,000 as some mountain communities went without power for 11 months. Duke Energy crews also restored infrastructure in Puerto Rico and are using tactics learned there, like using helicopters to drop in new electric poles, utility spokesman Bill Norton said.

    The hardest customers to help could be people whose homes and businesses are too damaged to connect, and they are why the Footprint Project will stay in the area for as long as they are needed, Swezey said.

    “We know there are people who will need help long after the power comes back,” she said.

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    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and non-profits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • Powerful storm knocks out power to 1.4 million homes in Brazil’s largest city

    Powerful storm knocks out power to 1.4 million homes in Brazil’s largest city

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    Around 1.4 million homes in Sao Paulo, Brazil, are without power almost 24 hours after a brief but powerful storm swept through South America’s largest city

    SAO PAULO — Around 1.4 million households in Sao Paulo, Brazil, were without power on Saturday almost 24 hours after a brief but powerful storm swept through South America’s largest metropolis. At least seven people were killed.

    Officials in Sao Paulo state said that record wind gusts Friday night of up to 67 mph (108 kph) knocked down transmission lines and uprooted trees, causing severe damage in some parts. The storm also shut down several airports and interrupted water service in several areas, according to the state government.

    One person died when a tree fell on an outdoor stall, authorities said. At least six other people in surrounding Sao Paulo state also died.

    Authorities originally expected to restore power within a few hours. But several neighborhoods in the metropolitan area, which is home to 21 million people, were still in the dark on Saturday, and authorities were urging residents to limit their consumption of water.

    Most of the disruptions were in the service area of a single utility, Enel-Sao Paulo, which is partly owned by AES Corporation. In May, the Virginia-based power company said it was selling its 47% stake in its Brazil unit for $640 million.

    Regulators ordered an inspection of the utility, warning that if it doesn’t resolve the outages in a satisfactory and swift manner it will move to terminate the private concession.

    For its part, Enel said that 17 high voltage transmission lines were affected by the storm. It did not provide a time frame for re-establishing service.

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  • North Carolina maker of high-purity quartz back operating post-Helene

    North Carolina maker of high-purity quartz back operating post-Helene

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    SPRUCE PINE, N.C. — One of the two companies that manufacture high-purity quartz used for making semiconductors and other high-tech products from mines in a western North Carolina community severely damaged by Hurricane Helene is operating again.

    Sibelco announced on Thursday that production has restarted at its mining and processing operations in Spruce Pine, located 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Asheville. Production and shipments are progressively ramping up to full capacity, the company said in a news release.

    “While the road to full recovery for our communities will be long, restarting our operations and resuming shipments to customers are important contributors to rebuilding the local economy,” Sibelco CEO Hilmar Rode said.

    Sibelco and The Quartz Corp. shut down operations ahead of the arrival of Helene, which devastated Spruce Pine and surrounding Mitchell County. Following the storm, both companies said that all of their employees were accounted for and safe.

    The Quartz Corp. had said last week that it was too early to know when it would resume operations, adding it would depend on the rebuilding of local infrastructure.

    Spruce Pine quartz is used around the world to manufacture the equipment needed to make silicon chips. An estimated 70% to 90% of the crucibles used worldwide in which polysilicon used for the chips is melted down are made from Spruce Pine quartz, according to Vince Beiser, the author of “The World in a Grain.”

    The high-tech quartz is also used in manufacturing solar panels and fiber-optic cables.

    A Spruce Pine council member said recently that an estimated three-quarters of the town has a direct connection to the mines, whether through a job, a job that relies on the mines or a family member who works at the facilities.

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  • Here’s what has made Hurricane Milton so fierce and unusual

    Here’s what has made Hurricane Milton so fierce and unusual

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    With its mighty strength and its dangerous path, Hurricane Milton powered into a very rare threat flirting with experts’ worst fears.

    Warm water fueled amazingly rapid intensification that took Milton from a minimal hurricane to a massive Category 5 in less than 10 hours. It weakened, but quickly bounced back, and when its winds briefly reached 180 mph, its barometric pressure, a key measurement for a storm’s overall strength, was among the lowest recorded in the Gulf of Mexico this late in the year.

    At its most fierce, Milton almost maxed out its potential intensity given the weather factors surrounding it.

    “Everything that you would want if you’re looking for a storm to go absolutely berserk is what Milton had,” Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said.

    That’s not all. Milton’s eastward path through the Gulf is so infrequent the most recent comparable storm was in 1848. Tampa — the most populous metro area in its general path — hasn’t had a direct hit from a major storm in more than 100 years, making this week the worst-case scenario for many experts.

    The track “is not unprecedented but it’s quite rare,” said University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy. “And of those that did that track, this is by far the most intense.”

    “It is unusual in a number of ways,” Princeton University climate scientist and hurricane expert Gabriel Vecchi said. “This storm is probably going to be very unlike any storm anyone has experienced on the west coast of Florida.”

    But it might be getting less rare, and the U.S. is already on a particularly unlucky streak. When Helene plowed through Florida less than two weeks ago, it was the seventh Category 4 or stronger storm to make landfall in the continental U.S. in eight years. That’s more than triple the average annual rate of such monster landfalls in the U.S. since 1950, according to a data analysis by The Associated Press.

    If Milton somehow hits as a Category 4 storm at landfall it will be only the second time the nation was struck twice in a year by hurricanes so powerful. This is after an unusual 12-year period when no Category 4 or higher storms hit the mainland between 2005 and 2016.

    University of Albany atmospheric scientist and hurricane expert Kristen Corbosiero said Milton’s threat now, compared to that 12-year quiet period, is probably a combination of luck — that those previous big storms didn’t make landfall — and climate change that is steering big storms differently than before.

    “With more and stronger storms, the chances of a major hurricane hitting the U.S. increase,” she said.

    So much of what makes Milton nasty is rooted in the warmer water of its birth and in human-caused climate change, Vecchi, Corbosiero and others said.

    Milton formed in the Bay of Campeche in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico. For awhile, forecasters didn’t give the unstable air mass much of a chance to develop into a tropical storm, let alone a monster hurricane. But once it defied the odds, it took off because of warm water and it managed to avoid high-level cross winds that often decapitate storms, especially in autumn. As Milton neared Florida it hit those winds, called shear, which ate away at its strength, as meteorologists had forecasted.

    Warm water fuels hurricanes. It’s crucial that the surface water be at least 79 degrees (26 degrees Celsius) and it helps incredibly when there’s deep warm water.

    The water at Milton’s birth and along its path was around 87 degrees (30.5 degrees Celsius). That’s almost 2 degrees (1 degree Celsius) warmer than normal and near record levels, both on the surface and deep, McNoldy said.

    “Part of the reason it was so warm is because of global warming,” Vecchi said, though he added that last year’s El Nino — a natural warming of ocean waters that influences weather worldwide — and other natural factors played a role. “Now the storm has a lot more energy to draw on.”

    That water became an all-you-can eat buffet for Milton.

    Much like an ice skater spinning with her arms close in rather than outstretched, Milton’s small size and pinhole eye — which became as small as 4 miles across — also made it easier to supercharge.

    And then there’s the track. Corbosiero couldn’t think of a similar track for such a powerful storm, especially in October when there are fewer strong storms in the Gulf and the nastiest storms are more in the Caribbean.

    Klotzbach found one in 1848, before good records were kept, unearthing a storm other experts weren’t quite familiar with.

    Usually storms in the Gulf of Mexico start in the east and go west or just go north, but Milton is heading east-northeast, Vecchi said. That’s because of a weather system in Canada and the U.S. East Coast that is pushing the westerly winds that are common in mid-latitudes down to where Milton is, where autumn wind from the west is less common.

    With water piling up with storm surge in this “very, very rare direction,” Corbosiero said Milton “has the potential to be a worst-case scenario” if it directly hits Tampa, where the last major hurricane direct hit was in 1921.

    “It’s extraordinarily bad,” McNoldy said.

    —-

    Mary Katherine Wildeman contributed from Hartford, Conn. and Christopher L. Keller contributed from Albuquerque, New Mexico

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    Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

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    Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbears

    ______

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • More than 1 million without power as Hurricane Milton slams Florida

    More than 1 million without power as Hurricane Milton slams Florida

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    TAMPA, Fla. — TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Milton crashed into Florida as a Category 3 storm Wednesday, pounding the coast with ferocious winds of over 100 mph (160 kph) and producing a series of tornadoes around the state. Tampa avoided a direct hit.

    The cyclone had maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (205 kph) as it roared ashore 8:30 p.m. near Siesta Key, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said. Siesta Key is a prosperous strip of white-sand beaches that’s home to 5,500 people about 70 miles (112 kilometers) south of Tampa. The Tampa Bay area has not taken a direct hit from a major hurricane in more than a century, but the storm was still bringing a potentially deadly storm surge to much of Florida’s Gulf Coast, including densely populated areas such as Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota and Fort Myers.

    Heavy rains were also likely to cause flooding inland along rivers and lakes as Milton traverses the Florida peninsula as a hurricane, eventually to emerge in the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday.

    More than 1 million homes and businesses were without power Wednesday night in Florida, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports. The highest number of outages were in Sarasota County and neighboring Manatee County.

    Milton slammed into a Florida region still reeling from Hurricane Helene, which caused heavy damage to beach communities with storm surge and killed a dozen people in seaside Pinellas County alone.

    Earlier, officials issued dire warnings to flee or face grim odds of survival.

    “This is it, folks,” said Cathie Perkins, emergency management director in Pinellas County, which sits on the peninsula that forms Tampa Bay. “Those of you who were punched during Hurricane Helene, this is going to be a knockout. You need to get out, and you need to get out now.”

    By late afternoon, some officials said the time had passed for such efforts. By the evening, some counties announced they has suspended emergency services.

    “Unless you really have a good reason to leave at this point, we suggest you just hunker down,” Polk County Emergency Management Director Paul Womble said in a public update.

    Multiple tornadoes spawned by the hurricane tore across Florida, the twisters acting as a dangerous harbingers of Milton’s approach. Videos posted to social media sites showed large funnel clouds over neighborhoods in Palm Beach County and elsewhere in the state.

    Milton was expected to remain a hurricane after hitting land and plowing across the state, including the heavily populated Orlando area, through Thursday.

    The storm threatened communities still reeling two weeks after Hurricane Helene flooded streets and homes in western Florida and left at least 230 people dead across the South. In many places along the coast, municipalities raced to collect and dispose of debris before Milton’s winds and storm surge could toss it around and compound any damage.

    With the storm weaker but growing in size, the surge was projected to reach as high as 9 feet (2.7 meters) in Tampa Bay.

    Jackie Curnick said she wrestled with her decision to stay and hunker down at home in Sarasota, just north of where the storm made landfall. But with a 2-year-old son and a baby girl due Oct. 29, Curnick and her husband thought it was for the best.

    Curnick said they started packing Monday to evacuate, but they couldn’t find any available hotel rooms, and the few they came by were too expensive.

    She said there were too many unanswered questions if they got in the car and left: Where to sleep, if they’d be able to fill up their gas tank, and if they could even find a safe route out of the state.

    “The thing is it’s so difficult to evacuate in a peninsula,” she said. “In most other states, you can go in any direction to get out. In Florida there are only so many roads that take you north or south.”

    The famous Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which spans the mouth of Tampa Bay, closed around midday. Other major bridges also closed.

    “Yesterday I said the clock was ticking. Today I’m saying the alarm bell is really going off. People need to get to their safe place,” said Ken Graham, director of the National Weather Service.

    At a news conference in Tallahassee, Gov. Ron DeSantis described deployment of a wide range of resources, including 9,000 National Guard members from Florida and other states; over 50,000 utility workers from as far as California; and highway patrol cars with sirens to escort gasoline tankers to replenish supplies so people could fill up their tanks before evacuating.

    “Unfortunately, there will be fatalities. I don’t think there’s any way around that,” DeSantis said.

    As of Wednesday night, Milton was centered about 5 miles (10 kilometers) north of Sarasota and had maximum sustained winds of 115 mph (185 kph), the hurricane center reported. It was moving east-northeast at 15 mph (28 kph), slowing slightly from earlier in the afternoon.

    Heavy rain and tornadoes lashed parts of southern Florida starting Wednesday morning, with conditions deteriorating throughout the day. Six to 12 inches (15 to 31 centimeters) of rain, with up to 18 inches (46 centimeters) in some places, was expected well inland, bringing the risk of catastrophic flooding.

    One twister touched down Wednesday morning in the lightly populated Everglades and crossed Interstate 75. Another apparent tornado touched down in Fort Myers, snapping tree limbs and tearing a gas station’s canopy to shreds.

    Authorities have issued mandatory evacuation orders across 15 Florida counties with a total population of about 7.2 million people. Officials warned that anyone staying behind must fend for themselves, because first responders were not expected to risk their lives attempting rescues at the height of the storm.

    St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch told residents to expect long power outages and the possible shutdown of the sewer system.

    In Charlotte Harbor, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Tampa, clouds swirled and winds gusted as Josh Parks packed his Kia sedan with clothes and other belongings. Two weeks ago, Helene’s surge brought about 5 feet of water to the neighborhood, and its streets remain filled with waterlogged furniture, torn-out drywall and other debris.

    Parks, an auto technician, planned to flee to his daughter’s home inland and said his roommate already left.

    “I told her to pack like you aren’t coming back,” he said.

    By early afternoon, airlines had canceled about 1,900 flights. SeaWorld was closed all day Wednesday, and Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando shut down in the afternoon.

    More than 60% of gas stations in Tampa and St. Petersburg were out of gas Wednesday afternoon, according to GasBuddy. DeSantis said the state’s overall supply was fine, and highway patrol officers were escorting tanker trucks to replenish the supply.

    In the Tampa Bay area’s Gulfport, Christian Burke and his mother stayed put in their three-story concrete home overlooking the bay. Burke said his father designed this home with a Category 5 in mind — and now they’re going to test it.

    As a passing police vehicle blared encouragement to evacuate, Burke acknowledged staying isn’t a good idea and said he’s “not laughing at this storm one bit.”

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    Contributing to this report were Associated Press journalists Holly Ramer in New Hampshire; Joseph Frederick in West Bradenton, Florida; Curt Anderson in Tampa; Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale; Brenden Farrington in Tallahassee; Michael Goldberg in Minneapolis; Patrick Whittle in Portland, Maine; Jeff Martin in Atlanta and Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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  • Climate change boosted Helene’s deadly rain and wind and scientists say same is likely for Milton

    Climate change boosted Helene’s deadly rain and wind and scientists say same is likely for Milton

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    Human-caused climate change boosted a devastating Hurricane Helene ‘s rainfall by about 10% and intensified its winds by about 11%, scientists said in a new flash study released just as a strengthening Hurricane Milton threatens the Florida coast less than two weeks later.

    The warming climate boosted Helene’s wind speeds by about 13 miles per hour (20.92 kilometers per hour), and made the high sea temperatures that fueled the storm 200 to 500 times more likely, World Weather Attribution calculated Wednesday from Europe. Ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above average, WWA said.

    “Hurricane Helene and the storms that were happening in the region anyway have all been amplified by the fact that the air is warmer and can hold more moisture, which meant that the rainfall totals — which, even without climate change, would have been incredibly high given the circumstances — were even higher,” Ben Clarke, a study co-author and a climate researcher at Imperial College London, said in an interview.

    Milton will likely be similarly juiced, the authors said.

    The scientists warned that continued burning of fossil fuels will lead to more hurricanes like Helene, with “unimaginable” floods well inland, not just on coasts. Many of those who died in Helene fell victim to massive inland flooding, rather than high winds.

    Helene made landfall in Florida with record storm surge 15 feet (4.57 meters) high and catastrophic sustained winds reaching 140 miles per hour (225.31 kilometers per hour), pummeling Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Virginia. It decimated remote towns throughout the Appalachians, left millions without power, cellular service and supplies and killed over 230 people. Search crews in the days following continued to look for bodies. Helene was the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005.

    Helene dumped more than 40 trillion gallons of rain — an unprecedented amount of water — onto the region, meteorologists estimated. That rainfall would have been much less intense if humans hadn’t warmed the climate, according to WWA, an international scientist collaborative that runs rapid climate attribution studies.

    “When you start talking about the volumes involved, when you add even just a few percent on top of that, it makes it even much more destructive,” Clarke said.

    Hurricanes as intense as Helene were once expected every 130 years on average, but today are about 2.5 times more likely in the region, the scientists calculated.

    The WWA launched in 2015 to assess the extent which extreme weather events could be attributed to climate change. The organization’s rapid studies aren’t peer-reviewed but use peer-reviewed methods. The team of scientists tested the influence of climate change on Helene by analyzing weather data and climate models including the Imperial College Storm Model, the Climate Shift Index for oceans and the standard WWA approach, which compares an actual event with what might have been expected in a world that hasn’t warmed about 1.3 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times.

    A separate analysis of Helene last week by Department of Energy Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientists determined that climate change caused 50% more rainfall in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas, and that observed rainfall was “made up to 20 times more likely in these areas because of global warming.” That study was also not peer-reviewed but used a method published in a study about Hurricane Harvey.

    Kim Cobb, director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, wasn’t involved in either study. She said there are uncertainties in exactly how much climate change is supercharging storms like Helene, but “we know that it’s increasing the power and devastation of these storms.”

    She said Helene and Milton should serve “as a wake up call” for emergency preparedness, resilience planning and the increased use of fossil fuels.

    “Going forward, additional warming that we know will occur over the next 10 or 20 years will even worsen the statistics of hurricanes,” she said, “and we will break new records.”

    Analysis is already indicating climate change made possible the warmed sea temperatures that also rapidly intensified Milton. Clarke said the two massive storms in quick succession illustrates the potential future of climate change if humans don’t stop it.

    “As we go into the future and our results show this as well, we still have control over what trajectory this goes in as to what risks we face in the future, what costs we pay in the future,” he said. “That just hinges on how we change our energy systems and how many more fossil fuels we burn.”

    ___

    Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

    ___

    Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate solutions reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • ‘Magical’ flotilla of hot air balloons take flight at international fiesta amid warm temperatures

    ‘Magical’ flotilla of hot air balloons take flight at international fiesta amid warm temperatures

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    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A flotilla of hot air balloons ascended into a clear desert sky on Saturday to kick off a colorful mass ascension at the 52nd annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.

    The nine-day gathering draws hundreds of thousands of spectators and pilots to New Mexico each fall for the rare opportunity to be within arm’s reach as the giant balloons are unpacked and inflated.

    Balloons took flight to screams of delight after a brief weather delay and were spirited away by a gentle breeze. Propane burners roared and hundreds of balloons — from traditional globes to cartoonish figures — rose to speckle the sky with color.

    “The mass ascension is just magical, unlike anything in the world really that I’ve seen,” said Paul Kluzak, of Phoenix. He has come twice before and arrived this year wearing a foot-tall hat resembling a hot-air balloon, with a camera slung around his neck. “Seeing them all at once is just really, really cool.”

    Companion Heather Kluzak said that words can hardly express the thrill of the event.

    “We just like to be a part of it,” she said. “It’s fun to be out on the field” where the balloons inflate and depart.

    This year’s fiesta includes 106 balloons in special shapes, 16 of which will be making their fiesta debut. That includes Mazu, modeled after the sea goddess of the same name who is deeply rooted in Taiwanese culture and traditions.

    Ordinarily, cool morning temperatures at dawn can help pilots stay in the air longer, or carry more weight. But the morning air was unusually warm on opening day, with many spectators stripping down to T-shirts.

    Morning lows and afternoon highs are expected to be above average for days in a city that on Monday recorded its hottest temperature this late in the year, at 93 degrees Fahrenheit (33.8 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service.

    Globally, things have been trending hotter too. It’s likely this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, the European climate service Copernicus reported in early September.

    Typically, when the mornings are cool, less fuel is needed to get the balloons to rise. Fiesta veterans explain it is all about generating lift by heating the air inside the envelope to temperatures greater than what is on the outside.

    Still, ballooning happens year-round in many places, including in the simmering Phoenix area, which has seen its share of record-breaking temperatures over recent months.

    Troy Bradley, an accomplished balloon pilot who has been flying for decades, shrugged off the warmer weather in Albuquerque.

    “These are really non-issues from a spectator’s standpoint,” he said. “I don’t see any difference other than they won’t be freezing in the pre-dawn hours.”

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  • EPA reaches $4.2M settlement over 2019 explosion and fire at a Philadelphia refinery

    EPA reaches $4.2M settlement over 2019 explosion and fire at a Philadelphia refinery

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    PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reached a tentative $4.2 settlement with a firm that owned and operated a major East Coast refinery that was shuttered after an explosion and fire in 2019.

    The deal with Philadelphia Energy Solutions was announced Tuesday. There will now be a 30-day public comment period before the settlement plan can be considered for final court approval. The company does not admit to any liability in the settlement, which the EPA said is the largest amount ever sought for a refinery under a Clean Air Act rule that requires owners and operators to ensure that regulated and other extremely hazardous substances are managed safely.

    The EPA found that the company failed to identify and assess hazards posed by a pipe elbow in a hydrofluoric acid alkylation unit at the refinery in Philadelphia. The pipe elbow ruptured due to “extensive” corrosion that had withered the pipe wall to the thickness of a credit card since its installation in 1973.

    The explosion and subsequent fire on June 21, 2019, eventually forced the refinery to close after being in operation for 150 years. At the time, it was the largest oil refining complex on the East Coast, processing 335,000 barrels of crude oil daily.

    The EPA filed the claim in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware because the company entered bankruptcy shortly after the explosion. The 1,300-acre (526-hectare) site where the refinery had stood was sold in 2020 and is being redeveloped into industrial space and life sciences labs. It remains under a complex cleanup agreement under the oversight of the EPA and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

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  • Control the path and power of hurricanes like Milton? Forget it, scientists say

    Control the path and power of hurricanes like Milton? Forget it, scientists say

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    Hurricanes are humanity’s reminder of the uncontrollable, chaotic power of Earth’s weather.

    Milton’s powerful push toward Florida just days after Helene devastated large parts of the Southeast likely has some in the region wondering if they are being targeted. In some corners of the Internet, Helene has already sparked conspiracy theories and disinformation suggesting the government somehow aimed the hurricane at Republican voters.

    Besides discounting common sense, such theories disregard weather history that shows the hurricanes are hitting many of the same areas they have for centuries. They also presume an ability for humans to quickly reshape the weather far beyond relatively puny efforts such as cloud-seeding.

    “If meteorologists could stop hurricanes, we would stop hurricanes,” Kristen Corbosiero, a professor of atmospheric and environmental sciences at the University at Albany. “If we could control the weather, we would not want the kind of death and destruction that’s happened.”

    Here’s a look at what humans can and can’t do when it comes to weather:

    A fully developed hurricane releases heat energy that is the equivalent of a 10-megaton nuclear bomb every 20 minutes — more than all the energy used at a given time by humanity, according to National Hurricane Center tropical analysis chief Chris Landsea.

    And scientists are now finding many ways climate change is making hurricanes worse, with warmer oceans that add energy and more water in the warming atmosphere to fall as rain, said Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

    “The amount of energy a hurricane generates is insane,” said Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. It’s the height of human arrogance to think people have the power to change them, he said.

    But that hasn’t stopped people from trying, or at least thinking about trying.

    Jim Fleming of Colby College has studied historical efforts to control the weather and thinks humans have nowhere near the practical technology to get there. He described an attempt in 1947 in which General Electric partnered with the U.S. military to drop dry ice from Air Force jets into the path of a hurricane in an attempt to weaken it. It didn’t work.

    “The typical science goes like understanding, prediction and then possibly control,” Fleming said, noting that the atmosphere is far more powerful and complex than most proposals to control it. “It goes back into Greek mythology to think you can control the powers of the heavens, but also it’s a failed idea.”

    In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the federal government briefly tried Project STORMFURY. The idea was to seed a hurricane to replace its eyewall with a larger one that would make the storm bigger in size but weaker in intensity. Tests were inconclusive and researchers realized if they made the storm larger, people who wouldn’t have been hurt by the storm would now be in danger, which is an ethical and liability problem, the project director once said.

    For decades, the National Hurricane Center and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have been asked about nuclear-bombing a hurricane. But the bombs aren’t powerful enough, and it would add the problem of radioactive fallout, Corbosiero said.

    Bringing cooling icebergs or seeding or adding water-absorbing substances also are ideas that just don’t work, NOAA scientists said.

    Failed historical attempts to control hurricanes differ somewhat from some scientists’ futuristic ideas to combat climate change and extreme weather. That’s because instead of targeting individual weather events, modern geoengineers would operate on a larger scale — thinking about how to reverse the broad-scale damage humans have already done to the global climate by emitting greenhouse gases.

    Scientists in the field say one of the most promising ideas they see based on computer models is solar geoengineering. The method would involve lofting aerosol particles into the upper atmosphere to bounce a tiny bit of sunlight back into space, cooling the planet slightly.

    Supporters acknowledge the risks and challenges. But it also “might have quite large benefits, especially for the world’s poorest,” said David Keith, a professor at the University of Chicago and founding faculty director of the Climate Systems Engineering Initiative.

    Two years ago, the largest society of scientists who work on climate issues, the American Geophysical Union, announced it was forming an ethics framework for “climate intervention.”

    Some scientists warn that tinkering with Earth’s atmosphere to fix climate change is likely to create cascading new problems. University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann expressed worries on the ethics framework that just talking about guidelines will make the tinkering more likely to occur in the real world, something that could have harmful side effects.

    Field, of Stanford, agreed that the modeling strongly encourages that geoengineering could be effective, including at mitigating the worst threats of hurricanes, even if that’s decades away. But he emphasized that it’s just one piece of the best solution, which is to stop climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

    “Whatever else we do, that needs to be the core set of activities,” he said.

    ___

    This story has corrected Michael Mann’s affiliation to the University of Pennsylvania, not Penn State.

    ___

    Follow Melina Walling on X: @MelinaWalling.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Federal court reviews civil rights lawsuit alleging environmental racism in a Louisiana parish

    Federal court reviews civil rights lawsuit alleging environmental racism in a Louisiana parish

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    NEW ORLEANS — A federal appellate court is reviewing a civil rights lawsuit alleging a south Louisiana parish engaged in racist land-use policies to place polluting industries in majority-Black communities.

    The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans heard oral arguments on Monday for a lawsuit filed by community groups claiming St. James Parish “intentionally discriminated against Black residents” by encouraging industrial facilities to be built in areas with predominantly Black populations “while explicitly sparing White residents from the risk of environmental harm.”

    The groups, Inclusive Louisiana, Rise St. James and Mt. Triumph Baptist Church, seek a halt to future industrial development in the parish. They say they have suffered health impacts from pollution, diminished property values and violations of religious liberty as a result of the parish’s land use system.

    The plaintiffs say that 20 of the 24 industrial facilities were in two sections of the parish with majority-Black populations when they filed the complaint in March 2023.

    The parish is located along a heavily industrialized stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, known as the Chemical Corridor, often referred to by environmental groups as “Cancer Alley” because of the high levels of suspected cancer-causing pollution emitted there.

    The lawsuit comes as the federal government has taken steps during the Biden administration to address the legacy of environmental racism. Federal officials have written stricter environmental protections and committed tens of billions of dollars in funding.

    “The decisions made in this courtroom will resonate far beyond our borders, impacting frontline communities nationwide who are yearning for acknowledgment and accountability,” said Shamell Lavigne, a St. James Parish resident and a leader with Rise St. James, a local environmental justice organization. “We are advocating for our future and the wellbeing of our children.”

    In November 2023, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier of the Eastern District of Louisiana had dismissed the lawsuit against St. James Parish largely on procedural grounds, ruling the plaintiffs had filed their lawsuit too late. But he added, “this Court cannot say that their claims lack a basis in fact or rely on a meritless legal theory.”

    Barbier had accepted the parish’s argument that the lawsuit hinged on its 2014 land-use plan, which generally shielded white neighborhoods from industrial development and left majority-Black neighborhoods, schools and churches without the same protections. The plan also described largely Black sections of the parish as “future industrial” sites, a classification described by the plaintiffs as a form of “racial cleansing.”

    Regardless, the plaintiffs had missed the legal window to sue the parish by not filing their lawsuit within one year after the land-use plan was formalized, as required by statute of limitations laws, the judge had ruled.

    During the appeals hearing, Fifth Circuit Court Judge Catharina Haynes said that the argument raised by the parish “basically makes it sound like if you didn’t sue within a year, well, heck, you can be discriminated against in a bunch of different ways for the rest of eternity.”

    Carroll Devillier, Jr., a lawyer representing the parish, responded that residents had already had the opportunity to challenge the 2014 land use plan when it was being formulated. He also said the plaintiffs “have nothing” to prove they suffered from harms from discrimination in the year before they filed their lawsuit in March 2023.

    Haynes also observed that parish officials, including those representing majority Black areas, had voted to support the 2014 land-use plan. “Why would you vote to discriminate against yourself?” she asked.

    Pamela Spees, a lawyer for the Center of Constitutional Rights representing the plaintiffs, said the land-use plan could be approved by government officials but still reinforce discrimination.

    After the hearing, Spees said that the approval of the land use plan had to be understood in the context of ongoing structural racism.

    At its core, the lawsuit alleges civil rights violations under the 13th and 14th amendments, stating the land-use system in the parish allowing for industrial buildout primarily in majority-Black communities remains shaped by the history of slavery, white supremacy and Jim Crow laws and governance.

    The parish’s 2014 land use plan is just one piece of evidence among many revealing persistent and ongoing discrimination by the parish, Spees said.

    As evidence of more recent alleged discrimination, the lawsuit highlights the parish’s decision in August 2022 to impose a moratorium on large solar complexes after a proposed 3,900-acre (1,580-hectare) solar project upset residents of the mostly white neighborhood of Vacherie, who expressed concerns about lowering property values and debris from storms. The parish did not take up a request for a moratorium on heavy industrial expansion raised by the plaintiffs, the lawsuit states.

    The parish’s lawyer, Devillier, Jr., told judges the solar moratorium had applied to the entire parish and that the plaintiffs’ request for a moratorium on industrial expansion, which initially came in the form of a letter sent by the plaintiffs in 2019, was “never formally considered” by the parish.

    The lawsuit also argues the parish failed to identify and protect the likely hundreds of burial sites of enslaved people by allowing industrial facilities to build on and limit access to the areas, preventing the descendants of slaves from memorializing the sites. The federal judge tossed out that part of the lawsuit, noting the sites were on private property not owned by the parish.

    Lawyers for St. James Parish have said the lawsuit employed overreaching claims and “inflammatory rhetoric.” Victor J. Franckiewicz, who has served as special counsel to St. James Parish for land-use matters since 2013, declined to comment after the hearing. St. James Parish did not respond to a request for comment.

    “How can a judge rule a statute of limitations on clean air, clean water and clean soil? There should be none,” said Gail LeBoeuf, 72, a life-long St. James resident and a plaintiff in the case who co-founded Inclusive Louisiana.

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found in a 2003 report that St. James Parish ranked higher than the national average for certain cancer deaths. Both majority Black sections of the parish are ranked as having a high risk of cancer from toxic pollutants according to an EPA screening tool based on emissions reported by nearby facilities, the complaint noted.

    ___

    Jack Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on the social platform X: @jack_brook96.

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  • Milton increases to a Category 2 hurricane as Florida prepares for massive evacuations

    Milton increases to a Category 2 hurricane as Florida prepares for massive evacuations

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    FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida — Milton increased to a Category 2 hurricane early Monday as Florida gears up for what could be its biggest evacuation in seven years as the storm heads toward major population centers including Tampa and Orlando.

    Hurricane Milton was strengthening over the southern Gulf of Mexico as storm surge and hurricane watches for parts of Florida and a hurricane warning for the Mexican coast were issued, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. The storm-ravaged Gulf Coast in Florida was expected to hit again.

    While forecast models vary widely, the most likely path suggests Milton could make landfall Wednesday in the Tampa Bay area and remain a hurricane as it moves across central Florida into the Atlantic Ocean. That would largely spare other southeastern states ravaged by Hurricane Helene, which caused catastrophic damage from Florida into the Appalachian Mountains and a death toll that rose Sunday to at least 230 people.

    The Mexican government issued a hurricane warning for the Yucatan Peninsula from Celestun to Rio Lagartos, the center said.

    About 7 million people were urged to evacuate Florida in 2017 as Hurricane Irma bore down on the state. The exodus jammed freeways, led to hourslong lines at gas stations that still had fuel and left evacuees frustrated and, in some cases, vowing never to evacuate again.

    Building on lessons learned during Irma and other previous storms, Florida is staging emergency fuel for gas vehicles and charging stations for electric vehicles along evacuation routes, Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said at a Sunday briefing.

    “We are looking at every potential, possible location that can potentially house someone, as what we refer to in emergency management, as a refuge of last resort,” Guthrie added.

    The storm, which the center said was likely to become a major hurricane Monday, was centered about 195 miles (314 kilometers) west-northwest of Progreso, Mexico, and 750 miles (1,207 kilometers) west-southwest of Tampa with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph (161 kph) while moving east-southeast at 8 mph (12.8 kph), the hurricane center said.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday that while it remains to be seen where Milton will strike, it’s clear the state is going to be hit hard.

    “I don’t think there’s any scenario where we don’t have major impacts at this point,” he said.

    “You have time to prepare — all day today, all day Monday, probably all day Tuesday to be sure your hurricane preparedness plan is in place,” DeSantis said. “If you’re on that west coast of Florida, barrier islands, just assume you’ll be asked to leave.”

    With Milton achieving hurricane status, this is the first time the Atlantic has had three simultaneous hurricanes after September, according to Colorado State University hurricane scientist Phil Klotzbach. There have been four simultaneous hurricanes in August and September.

    The St. Petersburg-Tampa Bay area is still cleaning up extensive damage from Helene and its powerful storm surge. Twelve people perished as Helene swamped the coast, with the worst damage along the narrow, 20-mile (32-kilometer) string of barrier islands that stretch from St. Petersburg to Clearwater.

    DeSantis expanded his state of emergency declaration Sunday to 51 counties and said Floridians should prepare for more power outages and disruption, making sure they have a week’s worth of food and water and are ready to hit the road.

    “We are preparing … for the largest evacuation that we have seen, most likely since 2017, Hurricane Irma,” Guthrie said.

    People who live in homes built after Florida strengthened codes in 2004, who don’t depend on constant electricity and who aren’t in evacuation zones should probably avoid the roads, Guthrie said.

    All classes and school activities in St. Petersburg’s Pinellas County preemptively closed Monday through Wednesday as Milton approached. Officials in Tampa opened all city garages free of charge to residents hoping to protect their cars from floodwaters, including electric vehicles. The vehicles must be left on the third floor or higher in each garage.

    As many as 4,000 National Guard troops are helping state crews to remove debris, DeSantis said, and he directed Florida crews dispatched to North Carolina in Helene’s aftermath to return in preparation for Milton.

    “All available state assets … are being marshaled to help remove debris,” DeSantis said. “We’re going 24-7 … it’s all hands on deck.”

    FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell defended her agency’s response to Hurricane’s destruction after Republicans’ false claims, amplified by former President Donald Trump, created a frenzy of misinformation across devastated communities.

    “This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people and it’s really a shame we’re putting politics ahead of helping people,” Criswell told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. It has created fear and mistrust among residents against the thousands of FEMA employees and volunteers on the ground across the southeast, she said.

    Despite this, Criswell said the agency is already preparing for Milton, well before it’s clear exactly where the storm will move across the Florida peninsula.

    Federal disaster assistance has surpassed $137 million since Helene struck more than a week ago, one of the largest mobilizations of personnel and resources in recent history, FEMA said Sunday.

    Some 1,500 active-duty troops, more than 6,100 National Guardsmen and nearly 7,000 federal workers have been deployed, shipping more than 14.9 million meals, 13.9 million liters (3.6 million gallons) of water, 157 generators and 505,000 tarps, along with approving more than $30 million in housing and other types of assistance for over 27,000 households, according to FEMA, the White House and the Department of Defense.

    More than 800 people unable to return home are staying in lodging provided through FEMA and 22 shelters are still housing nearly 1,000 people as mobile feeding operations continue to help survivors. The response to Helene won’t let up during Milton and its aftermath, because FEMA has the capacity to address multiple disasters simultaneously, the agency said.

    “My Administration is sparing no resource to support families as they begin their road to rebuilding,” President Joe Biden said. “We will continue working hand-in-hand with local and state leaders — regardless of political party and no matter how long it takes.”

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  • Death toll from Hurricane Helene rises to 227 as grim task of recovering bodies continues

    Death toll from Hurricane Helene rises to 227 as grim task of recovering bodies continues

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    FRANKFORT, Ky. — The death toll from Hurricane Helene inched up to 227 on Saturday as the grim task of recovering bodies continued more than a week after the monster storm ravaged the Southeast and killed people in six states.

    Helene came ashore Sept. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane and carved a wide swath of destruction as it moved northward from Florida, washing away homes, destroying roads and knocking out electricity and cellphone service for millions.

    The number of deaths stood at 225 on Friday; two more were recorded in South Carolina the following day. It was still unclear how many people were unaccounted for or missing, and the toll could rise even higher.

    Helene is the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005. About half the victims were in North Carolina, while dozens more were killed in Georgia and South Carolina.

    The city of Asheville, in the western mountains of North Carolina, was particularly battered. A week later workers used brooms and heavy machinery to clean mud and dirt outside of New Belgium Brewing Company, which lies next to the French Broad River and is among thousands of city businesses and households affected.

    So far North Carolinians have received more than $27 million in individual assistance approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said MaryAnn Tierney, a regional administrator for the agency. More than 83,000 people have registered for individual assistance, according to the office of Gov. Roy Cooper.

    In Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, FEMA-approved assistance has surpassed $12 million for survivors, Tierney said Saturday during a news briefing.

    “This is critical assistance that will help people with their immediate needs, as well as displacement assistance that helps them if they can’t stay in their home,” she said.

    She encouraged residents impacted by the storm to register for disaster assistance.

    “It is the first step in the recovery process,” she said. “We can provide immediate relief in terms of serious needs assistance to replace food, water, medicines, other life safety, critical items, as well as displacement assistance if you cannot stay in your home.”

    Helene’s raging floodwaters shocked mountain towns hundreds of miles inland and far from where the storm made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast, including in the Tennessee mountains that Dolly Parton calls home.

    The country music star has announced a $1 million donation to the Mountain Ways Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing immediate assistance to Hurricane Helene flood victims.

    In addition, her East Tennessee businesses as well as the Dollywood Foundation are combining efforts, pledging to match her donation to Mountain Ways with a $1 million contribution.

    Parton said she feels a close connection to the storm victims because so many of them “grew up in the mountains just like I did.”

    “I can’t stand to see anyone hurting, so I wanted to do what I could to help after these terrible floods,” she said. “I hope we can all be a little bit of light in the world for our friends, our neighbors — even strangers — during this dark time they are experiencing.”

    Walmart U.S. President and CEO John Furner said the company, including Sam’s Club and the Walmart Foundation, would increase its commitment and donate a total of $10 million to hurricane relief efforts.

    In Newport, an eastern Tennessee town of about 7,000, residents continued cleaning up Saturday from the destruction caused by Helene’s floodwaters.

    Mud still clung to the basement walls of one Main Street funeral home. The ground-floor chapel of another nearby was being dried out, a painting of Jesus still hanging on the wall in an otherwise barren room.

    Newport City Hall and its police department also took on water from the swollen Pigeon River. Some of the modest, one-story homes along its banks were destroyed, their walls crumbled and rooms exposed.

    Farther east in unincorporated Del Rio, along a bend in the French Broad River, residents and volunteers toiled to clean up. The smell of wood hung in the air as people used chainsaws to cut through downed trees, and Bobcats beeped as they moved mangled sheet metal and other debris. Many homes sustained damage, including one that slid off its foundation.

    ___

    Associated Press journalists Jeff Roberson in Newport, Tennessee; Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa; and Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Virginia, contributed.

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  • ‘Magical’ flotilla of hot air balloons take flight at international fiesta amid warm temperatures

    ‘Magical’ flotilla of hot air balloons take flight at international fiesta amid warm temperatures

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    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A flotilla of hot air balloons ascended into a clear desert sky on Saturday to kick off a colorful mass ascension at the 52nd annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.

    The nine-day gathering draws hundreds of thousands of spectators and pilots to New Mexico each fall for the rare opportunity to be within arm’s reach as the giant balloons are unpacked and inflated.

    Balloons took flight to screams of delight after a brief weather delay and were spirited away by a gentle breeze. Propane burners roared and hundreds of balloons — from traditional globes to cartoonish figures — rose to speckle the sky with color.

    “The mass ascension is just magical, unlike anything in the world really that I’ve seen,” said Paul Kluzak, of Phoenix. He has come twice before and arrived this year wearing a foot-tall hat resembling a hot-air balloon, with a camera slung around his neck. “Seeing them all at once is just really, really cool.”

    Companion Heather Kluzak said that words can hardly express the thrill of the event.

    “We just like to be a part of it,” she said. “It’s fun to be out on the field” where the balloons inflate and depart.

    This year’s fiesta includes 106 balloons in special shapes, 16 of which will be making their fiesta debut. That includes Mazu, modeled after the sea goddess of the same name who is deeply rooted in Taiwanese culture and traditions.

    Ordinarily, cool morning temperatures at dawn can help pilots stay in the air longer, or carry more weight. But the morning air was unusually warm on opening day, with many spectators stripping down to T-shirts.

    Morning lows and afternoon highs are expected to be above average for days in a city that on Monday recorded its hottest temperature this late in the year, at 93 degrees Fahrenheit (33.8 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service.

    Globally, things have been trending hotter too. It’s likely this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, the European climate service Copernicus reported in early September.

    Typically, when the mornings are cool, less fuel is needed to get the balloons to rise. Fiesta veterans explain it is all about generating lift by heating the air inside the envelope to temperatures greater than what is on the outside.

    Still, ballooning happens year-round in many places, including in the simmering Phoenix area, which has seen its share of record-breaking temperatures over recent months.

    Troy Bradley, an accomplished balloon pilot who has been flying for decades, shrugged off the warmer weather in Albuquerque.

    “These are really non-issues from a spectator’s standpoint,” he said. “I don’t see any difference other than they won’t be freezing in the pre-dawn hours.”

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  • Homeowners hit by Hurricane Helene face the grim task of rebuilding without flood insurance

    Homeowners hit by Hurricane Helene face the grim task of rebuilding without flood insurance

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    A week after Hurricane Helene overwhelmed the Southeastern U.S., homeowners hit the hardest are grappling with how they could possibly pay for the flood damage from one of the deadliest storms to hit the mainland in recent history.

    The Category 4 storm that first struck Florida’s Gulf Coast on September 26 has dumped trillions of gallons of water across several states, leaving a catastrophic trail of destruction that spans hundreds of miles inland. More than 200 people have died in what is now the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina, according to statistics from the National Hurricane Center.

    Western North Carolina and the Asheville area were hit especially hard, with flooding that wiped out buildings, roads, utilities and land in a way that nobody expected, let alone prepared for. Inland areas in parts of Georgia and Tennessee were also washed out.

    The Oak Forest neighborhood in south Asheville lives up to its name, with trees towering over 1960s era ranch-style houses on large lots. But on Sept. 27, as Helene’s remnants swept through western north Carolina, many of those trees came crashing down, sometimes landing on houses.

    Julianne Johnson said she was coming upstairs from the basement to help her 5-year-old son pick out clothes that day when her husband began to yell that a giant oak was falling diagonally across the yard. The tree mostly missed the house, but still crumpled part of a metal porch and damaged the roof. Then, Johnson said, her basement flooded.

    On Friday, there was a blue tarp being held on the roof with a brick. Sodden carpet that the family torn out lay on the side of the house, waiting to go to the landfill. With no cell phone service or internet access, Johnson said she couldn’t file a home insurance claim until four days after the storm.

    “It took me a while to make that call,” she said. “I don’t have an adjuster yet.”

    Roof and tree damage are likely to be covered by the average home insurance policy. But Johnson, like many homeowners, doesn’t have flood insurance and she’s not certain how she’ll pay for that part of the damage.

    Those recovering from the storm may be surprised to learn flood damage is a completely separate thing. Insurance professionals and experts have long warned that home insurance typically does not cover flood damage to the home, even as they espouse that flooding can happen anywhere that rains. That’s because flooding isn’t just sea water seeping into the land – it’s also water from banks, as well as mudflow and torrential rains.

    But most private insurance companies don’t carry flood insurance, leaving the National Flood Insurance Program run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as the primary provider for that coverage for residential homes. Congress created the federal flood insurance program more than 50 years ago when many private insurers stopped offering policies in high-risk areas.

    North Carolina has 129,933 such policies in force, according to FEMA’s latest data, though most of that protection will likely be concentrated on the coast rather than in the Blue Ridge Mountains area where Helene caused the most damage. Florida, in comparison, has about 1.7 million flood policies in place statewide.

    Charlotte Hicks, a flood insurance expert in North Carolina who has led flood risk training and educational outreach for the state’s Department of Insurance, said the reality is that many Helene survivors will never be made whole. Without flood insurance, some people may be able to rebuild with the help of charities but most others will be left to fend for themselves.

    “There will absolutely be people who will be financially devasted by this event,” Hicks said. “It’s heartbreaking.”

    Some may go into foreclosure or bankruptcy. Entire neighborhoods will likely never be rebuilt. There’s been water damage across the board, Hicks said, and for some, mudslides have even taken the land upon which their house once stood.

    Meanwhile, Helene is turning out to be a fairly manageable disaster for the private home insurance market because those plans generally only serve to cover wind damage from hurricanes.

    That’s a relief for the industry, which has been under increasing strain from other intensifying climate disasters such as wildfires and tornadoes. Nowhere is the shrinking private market due to climate instability more evident than in Florida, where many companies have already stopped selling policies — leaving the state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corporation now the largest home insurer in the state.

    Mark Friedlander, spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group, said Helene is a “very manageable loss event,” and estimates insurer losses will range from about $5 billion to $8 billion. That’s compared to the insured losses from the Category 4 Hurricane Ian in September 2022 that was estimated in excess of $50 billion.

    Friedlander and other experts point out that less than 1% of the inland areas that sustained the most catastrophic flood damage were protected with flood insurance.

    “This is very common in inland communities across the country,” Friedlander said. “ Lack of flood insurance is a major insurance gap in the U.S., as only about 6% of homeowners carry the coverage, mostly in coastal counties.”

    Amy Bach, executive director of the consumer advocacy group United Policyholders, said the images of the flood destruction in North Carolina shook her despite decades of seeing challenging recovery faced by victims of natural disasters.

    “This is a pretty serious situation here in terms of people disappointed. They are going to be disappointed in their insurers and they are going to be disappointed in FEMA,” Bach said. “FEMA cannot match the kind of dollars private insurers are supposed to be contributing to the recovery.”

    This week, FEMA announced it could meet the immediate needs of Helene but warned it doesn’t have enough funding to make it through the hurricane season, which runs June 1 to Nov. 30 though most hurricanes typically occur in September and October.

    Even if a homeowner does have it, FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program only covers up to $250,000 for single-family homes and $100,000 for contents.

    Bach said that along with homeowners educating themselves about what their policies do and don’t cover, the solution is a national disaster insurance program that does for property insurance what the Affordable Care Act did for health insurance.

    After Hurricane Floyd in 1999, the state of North Carolina started requiring insurance agents to take a flood insurance class so they could properly advise their clients of the risk and policies available, Hicks said. The state also requires home insurance policies to clearly disclose that it does not cover flood.

    “You can’t stop nature from doing what nature is going to do,” Hicks said. “For us to think it’s never going to be this bad again would be a dangerous assumption. A lot of people underestimate their risk of flooding.”

    ___

    Associated Press Staff Writers Jeff Amy in Asheville, North Carolina, Lisa Leff in London and Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • Spider lovers scurry to Colorado town in search of mating tarantulas and community

    Spider lovers scurry to Colorado town in search of mating tarantulas and community

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    LA JUNTA, Colo. — Love is in the air on the Colorado plains — the kind that makes your heart beat a bit faster, quickens your step and makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

    It’s tarantula mating season, when male spiders scurry out of their burrows in search of a mate, and hundreds of arachnophiles flock to the small farming town of La Junta to watch them emerge in droves.

    Scientists, spider enthusiasts and curious Colorado families piled into buses just before dusk last weekend as tarantulas began to roam the dry, rolling plains. Some used flashlights and car headlights to spot the arachnids once the sun set.

    Back in town, festivalgoers flaunted their tarantula-like traits in a hairy leg contest — a woman claimed the title this year — and paraded around in vintage cars with giant spiders on the hoods. The 1990 cult classic film “Arachnophobia,” which follows a small town similarly overrun with spiders, screened downtown at the historic Fox Theater.

    For residents of La Junta, tarantulas aren’t the nightmarish creatures often depicted on the silver screen. They’re an important part of the local ecosystem and a draw for people around the U.S. who might have otherwise never visited the tight-knit town in southeastern Colorado.

    Word spread quickly among neighbors about all the people they had met from out of town during the third year of the tarantula festival.

    Among them was Nathan Villareal, a tarantula breeder from Santa Monica, California, who said he heard about the mating season and knew it was a spectacle he needed to witness. Villareal sells tarantulas as pets to people around the U.S. and said he has been fascinated with them since childhood.

    “Colorado Brown” tarantulas are the most common in the La Junta area, and they form their burrows in the largely undisturbed prairies of the Comanche National Grassland.

    In September and October, the mature males wander in search of a female’s burrow, which she typically marks with silk webbing. Peak viewing time is an hour before dusk when the heat of the day dies down.

    “We saw at least a dozen tarantulas on the road, and then we went back afterwards and saw another dozen more,” Villareal said.

    Male tarantulas take around seven years to reach reproductive readiness, then spend the rest of their lifespan searching for a mate, said Cara Shillington, a biology professor at Eastern Michigan University who studies arachnids. They typically live for about a year after reaching sexual maturity, while females can live for 20 years or more.

    The males grow to be about 5 inches long and develop a pair of appendages on their heads that they use to drum outside a female’s burrow. She will crawl to the surface if she is a willing mate, and the male will hook its legs onto her fangs.

    Their coupling is quick, as the male tries to get away before he is eaten by the female, who tends to be slightly larger and needs extra nutrients to sustain her pregnancy.

    Like many who attended the festival, Shillington is passionate about teaching people not to fear tarantulas and other spiders. Tarantulas found in North America tend to be docile creatures, she explained. Their venom is not considered dangerous to humans but can cause pain and irritation.

    “When you encounter them, they’re more afraid of you,” Shillington said. “Tarantulas only bite out of fear. This is the only way that they have to protect themselves, and if you don’t put them in a situation where they feel like they have to bite, then there is no reason to fear them.”

    Many children who attended the festival with their families learned that spiders are not as scary as they might seem. Roslyn Gonzales, 13, said she couldn’t wait to go searching for spiders come sunset.

    For graduate student Goran Shikak, whose arm was crawling with spider tattoos, the yearly festival represents an opportunity to celebrate tarantulas with others who share his fascination.

    “They’re beautiful creatures,” said Shikak, an arachnology student at the University of Colorado Denver. “And getting to watch them do what they do … is a joy and experience that’s worth watching in the wild.”

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  • World ski body and UN weather agency team up to help winter sports plan for climate change

    World ski body and UN weather agency team up to help winter sports plan for climate change

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    GENEVA — Facing a long-time crisis in winter sports because of climate change, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation teamed up with the United Nations weather agency on Thursday.

    The initial five-year partnership between FIS and the World Meteorological Organization aims to help national ski federations, venues and race organizers better understand weather forecasting to manage natural and artificial snow. An online meeting is set for Nov. 7.

    The Switzerland-based organizations said in a joint statement “winter sports and tourism face a bleak future because of climate change” and warmer temperatures.

    FIS said weather issues forced the cancellation of 26 of its 616 World Cups last season across disciplines including Alpine and cross-country skiing, snowboard park and pipe, freestyle skiing and ski jumping.

    “Ruined winter vacations and canceled sports fixtures are — literally — the tip of the iceberg of climate change,” WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement.

    Event organizers have long relied on using local water resources to make artificial snow for preparing courses and it is common to see broadcasts of races on a ribbon of white through brown and green forests and fields.

    “The climate crisis is obviously far bigger than FIS, or sports, for that matter,” its president Johan Eliasch said. “It is a genuine crossroads for mankind.

    “It is true, though, that climate change is, simply put, an existential threat to skiing and snowboarding.”

    As global temperatures rise, the International Olympic Committee has said by 2040 just 10 countries could have a “climate-reliable” outlook to host snow events at a Winter Games.

    The 2022 Beijing Winter Games relied entirely on artificial snow to stage Alpine races about 90 kilometers (55 miles) north of the city in mountains that get almost no natural snowfall.

    Saudi Arabia is creating a ski resort with a man-made lake near the futuristic city Project Neom and preparing to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games.

    In Switzerland, the federal weather office has said Alpine glaciers have lost about 60% of their volume since 1850.

    “The thawing of frozen ground in mountain, arctic and sub-arctic regions has direct consequences on the stability of infrastructures built on it, as well as contributing to increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere,” the WMO said.

    Less snow is falling at lower altitudes up to 800 meters (2,600 feet), with the number of snowfall days halved since 1970, the Geneva-based UN agency said.

    ___

    AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

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  • Hurricane Helene brings climate change to forefront of the presidential campaign

    Hurricane Helene brings climate change to forefront of the presidential campaign

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    WASHINGTON — The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene has brought climate change to the forefront of the presidential campaign after the issue lingered on the margins for months.

    Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Georgia Wednesday to see hard-hit areas, two days after her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, was in the state and criticized the federal response to the storm, which has killed at least 180 people. Thousands of people in the Carolinas still lack running water, cellphone service and electricity.

    President Joe Biden toured some of the hardest-hit areas by helicopter on Wednesday. Biden, who has frequently been called on to survey damage and console victims after tornadoes, wildfires, tropical storms and other natural disasters, traveled to the Carolinas to get a closer look at the hurricane devastation. He is expected to visit Georgia and Florida later this week.

    “Storms are getting stronger and stronger,” Biden said after surveying damage near Asheville, North Carolina. At least 70 people died in the state.

    “Nobody can deny the impact of the climate crisis any more,” Biden said at a briefing in Raleigh, the state capital. “They must be brain dead if they do.”

    Harris, meanwhile, hugged and huddled with a family in hurricane-ravaged Augusta, Georgia.

    “There is real pain and trauma that resulted because of this hurricane” and its aftermath, Harris said outside a storm-damaged house with downed trees in the yard.

    “We are here for the long haul,” she added.

    The focus on the storm — and its link to climate change — was notable after climate change was only lightly mentioned in two presidential debates this year. The candidates instead focused on abortion rights, the economy, immigration and other issues.

    The hurricane featured prominently in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate as Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz were asked about the storm and the larger issue of climate change.

    Both men called the hurricane a tragedy and agreed on the need for a strong federal response. But it was Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who put the storm in the context of a warming climate.

    “There’s no doubt this thing roared onto the scene faster and stronger than anything we’ve seen,” he said.

    Bob Henson, a meteorologist and writer with Yale Climate Connections, said it was no surprise that Helene is pushing both the federal disaster response and human-caused climate change into the campaign conversation.

    “Weather disasters are often overlooked as a factor in big elections,” he said. “Helene is a sprawling catastrophe, affecting millions of Americans. And it dovetails with several well-established links between hurricanes and climate change, including rapid intensification and intensified downpours.”

    More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast in the last week, an amount that if concentrated in North Carolina would cover the state in 3 1/2 feet of water. “That’s an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

    During Tuesday’s debate, Walz credited Vance for past statements acknowledging that climate change is a problem. But he noted that Trump has called climate change “a hoax” and joked that rising seas “would make more beachfront property to be able to invest in.″

    Trump said in a speech Tuesday that “the planet has actually gotten little bit cooler recently,” adding: “Climate change covers everything.”

    In fact, summer 2024 sweltered to Earth’s hottest on record, making it likely this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, according to the European climate service Copernicus. Global records were shattered just last year as human-caused climate change, with a temporary boost from an El Niño, keeps dialing up temperatures and extreme weather, scientists said.

    Vance, an Ohio senator, said he and Trump support clean air, clean water and “want the environment to be cleaner and safer.” However, during Trump’s four years in office, he took a series of actions to roll back more than 100 environmental regulations.

    Vance sidestepped a question about whether he agrees with Trump’s statement that climate change is a hoax. “What the president has said is that if the Democrats — in particular Kamala Harris and her leadership — really believe that climate change is serious, what they would be doing is more manufacturing and more energy production in the United States of America. And that’s not what they’re doing,” he said.

    “This idea that carbon (dioxide) emissions drives all of the climate change. Well, let’s just say that’s true just for the sake of argument. So we’re not arguing about weird science. If you believe that, what would you want to do?” Vance asked.

    The answer, he said, is to “produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America, because we’re the cleanest economy in the entire world.”

    Vance claimed that policies by Biden and Harris actually help China, because many solar panels, lithium-ion batteries and other materials used in renewable energy and electric vehicles are made in China and imported to the United States.

    Walz rebutted that claim, noting that the Inflation Reduction Act, the Democrats’ signature climate law approved in 2022, includes the largest-ever investment in domestic clean energy production. The law, for which Harris cast the deciding vote, has created 200,000 jobs across the country, including in Ohio and Minnesota, Walz said. Vance was not in the Senate when the law was approved.

    “We are producing more natural gas and more oil (in the United States) than we ever have,” Walz said. “We’re also producing more clean energy.”

    The comment echoed a remark by Harris in last month’s presidential debate. The Biden-Harris administration has overseen “the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot over rely on foreign oil,” Harris said then.

    While Biden rarely mentions it, domestic fossil fuel production under his administration is at an all-time high. Crude oil production averaged 12.9 million barrels a day last year, eclipsing a previous record set in 2019 under Trump, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

    Democrats want to continue investments in renewable energy such as wind and solar power — and not just because supporters of the Green New Deal want that, Walz said.

    “My farmers know climate change is real. They’ve seen 500-year droughts, 500-year floods back to back. But what they’re doing is adapting,” he said.

    “The solution for us is to continue to move forward, (accept) that climate change is real” and reduce reliance on fossil fuels, Walz said, adding that the administration is doing exactly that.

    “We are seeing us becoming an energy superpower for the future, not just the current” time, he said.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Colleen Long in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Christopher Megerian in Augusta, Georgia, contributed to this report.

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  • Taiwan’s weather agency says Typhoon Krathon has made landfall on the heavily populated west coast

    Taiwan’s weather agency says Typhoon Krathon has made landfall on the heavily populated west coast

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    Taiwan’s weather agency says Typhoon Krathon has made landfall on the heavily populated west coast

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