by tyler | Aug 4, 2023 | CNN, weather
Life-threatening flash flooding forced evacuations and water rescues across parts of the South Friday morning and more rainfall throughout the day could worsen the situation.
Some of the worst flooding centered on portions of western Kentucky and Tennessee, where multiple flash flood emergencies were issued Friday morning. Flash flood emergencies are a sign forecasters are confident the situation is life-threatening and are the highest level of warning the National Weather Service can issue for flooding.
The National Weather Service in Memphis used rare language to describe the risk, calling it a “particularly dangerous situation” and warning residents in places like Union City, Tennessee, to seek higher ground immediately.
Rising floodwaters there forced residents of the Green Acres Mobile Home Park, the Davy Crockett Senior Center and some area homes to evacuate, Union City officials confirmed to CNN. Nine to 11 inches of rain had fallen in parts of the area Thursday night into early Friday, with more likely throughout the afternoon.
Several others were evacuated from their homes in Fulton County, Kentucky, amid a separate flash flood emergency, Fulton County Deputy Brooke Amberg told CNN. Numerous roadways were also flooded in the county after 11 inches of rain fell near Hickman, Kentucky, with more to come on Friday.
The prolific rainfall and flooding is happening because of training storms.
Training occurs when multiple storms move over the same area one after another, similar to multiple train cars on the same track. Storms of this nature can produce massive amounts of rainfall over the same area in quick succession, rapidly increasing the threat of dangerous flooding.
Rainfall rates from these storms reached 2 to 3 inches per hour at times late Thursday night into Friday morning – enough rain to overwhelm almost any drainage system and cause flash flooding.
Heavy downpours are forecast across the already-soaked areas through the late morning hours before easing up Friday afternoon. A Level 3 of 4 moderate risk for excessive rainfall is in effect from far southeastern Missouri to northern Alabama for Friday where any additional rain would worsen active flooding.
Torrential rainfall already deluged northern Alabama Friday morning and the city of Oneonta, located about 30 miles northeast of Birmingham, took the brunt of it. Many of the roads in Oneonta were covered with water, with multiple roadways “dangerously flooded,” according to the Blount County Emergency Management Agency.
Four people were rescued by emergency personnel in Oneonta after drivers failed to forge flooded roadways, Brandon Horton, the city’s Director of Public Safety confirmed to CNN. Oneonta recorded more than 4 inches of rainfall in less than 3 hours which quickly set flash flooding into motion.
by tyler | Jun 30, 2023 | CNN, weather
A heat wave in parts of the South and Mississippi Valley is peaking and a new one is building in the West on Friday, putting more than 70 million people in those areas under heat alerts ahead of the holiday weekend.
More dangerous severe thunderstorms and areas of heavy rain along the northern side of the heat dome are forecast to track eastward from the Central Plains to the Ohio Valley and eventually the mid-Atlantic over the next couple of days, bringing some heat relief, but also the risk of damaging storms and additional power outages.
In the mid- to lower Mississippi River Valley and the Deep South, temperatures on Friday will again near or top 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; Little Rock, Arkansas; and New Orleans are under excessive heat warnings, as heat and humidity may combine to make temperatures feel like 105 to 115 degrees.
This continues distressing, deadly heat that parts of the South have experienced for days. Eleven people died in recent days due to heat-related illnesses in Texas’ Webb County, which includes Laredo, and at least two people died from the heat in Louisiana’s Caddo Parish this month, officials said.
Parts of Texas have sweltered under triple-digit temperatures for more than two weeks – but the state is seeing signs of relief. Dallas was not under any heat alert Friday morning as temperatures there dip to more typical summer values.
“Although a few locations across Central and East Texas may reach advisory criteria, the prevalence of 105 heat indices will be far less widespread, and our protracted stretch of advisories/warnings for heat will come to an end,” the National Weather Service office in Dallas said.
Heat across the rest of the South is expected to follow a similar pattern to Dallas, with slight relief slowly occurring over the holiday weekend.
“An increase in showers and thunderstorms this weekend into next week during peak heating will bring some relief from the heat as the upper-level ridge weakens slightly across the region,” the National Weather Service office in Memphis said.
Rounds of storms each day “will begin to erode the upper ridge (heat dome) responsible for the ongoing heat wave across the South and help bringing cooler air ever so slowly east across the Central Plains,” the Weather Prediction Center said Friday morning.
But the trade-off is rounds of dangerous storms.
Damaging winds and large hail are the main threats today as storms move around the periphery of the heat dome parked over the South. Denver, Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina, are in a Level 1 of 5 risk on Friday.
A level 2 of 5 slight risk of severe storms stretches from Colorado to Kentucky on Friday, including Colorado Springs, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Nashville, Tennessee.
Thunderstorm complexes with heavy downpours, hail and damaging wind gusts will develop over the mid-Mississippi and Ohio Valleys Saturday, according to the Storm Prediction Center.
On Saturday, a level 3 of 5 enhanced risk of severe storms covers portions of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky, including St. Louis and Louisville. Damaging winds and large hail are the most likely threat with these storms. A Level 2 of 5 risk stretches farther east to the Virginias, Carolinas and Georgia.
By Sunday, storms look to target the Ohio Valley into the mid-Atlantic where a Level 2 of 5 risk is already highlighted. Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Indianapolis are included.
As parts of the South begin to see some relief, heat in the West is building.
Millions across Las Vegas and Phoenix will be under excessive heat warnings beginning Saturday, with temperatures projected to soar above 110 degrees for both locations this weekend. And many parts of California are under excessive heat warnings or heat advisories.
Las Vegas has gone a record-breaking 293 consecutive days without reaching 100 degrees, but is forecast to top 100 degrees today, and shoot up to 110 degrees by Sunday and beyond.
“This heat should be taken seriously and precautions need to be taken to prevent heat-related illnesses,” the National Weather Service office in Las Vegas warned. “Avoid outdoor activity during the hottest parts of the day (10 a.m. – 4 p.m.), drink extra water, take breaks in cool or shady locations, and wear light colored, light weight clothing.”
More than 600 people in the US are killed by extreme heat every year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As human-induced climate change forces temperatures to rise around the globe, officials urge people to take safety precautions during heat waves, including staying hydrated, avoiding leaving pets and kids in cars unattended and finding cool, indoor spaces to wait out the high temperatures.
by tyler | Jun 30, 2023 | CNN, weather
More than 100 million people are under air quality alerts Friday morning from Wisconsin to Vermont and down to North Carolina as smoke from Canadian wildfires continues to waft south, though conditions are expected to improve slowly into the holiday weekend.
Storms Thursday brought some relief from the smoke in parts of the Midwest, and more rain there Friday should provide more. But smoke may dissipate less quickly in the Ohio Valley and the Mid-Atlantic, where Friday’s storms will be more isolated.
“Air quality is expected to improve in the short term as a combination of thunderstorm activity and dispersion of smoke will ultimately result in improving air quality conditions for much of the country heading into the weekend,” the National Weather Service said.
More than 500 active wildfires raging across Canada have tanked the air quality across parts of that country and the United States. As of early Friday, Toronto topped a list of the world’s major cities with the worst air quality, followed by Washington, DC, according to IQAir.
Detroit, which topped the same list on Thursday evening, ranked fourth early Friday, while New York City was sixth, the website showed.
On Friday, the United States’ worst air quality is expected to span from Michigan to Ohio and into the Mid-Atlantic, including Washington, DC.
The air in those areas is expected to be rated a level 3 of 6 “unhealthy for sensitive groups” or a level 4 of 6 “unhealthy” on the US Air Quality Index developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Current air quality ratings can be found on AirNow.gov, a partnership of agencies including the EPA.
“Unhealthy for sensitive groups” typically includes the elderly, young children, those with certain chronic illnesses and outdoor workers.
In New York, a statewide air quality health advisory will remain in effect through Friday, urging residents to take necessary preventative measures – like masking – to stay safe outdoors, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Thursday. “With ground-level smoke more visible and air quality continuing to reach unhealthy levels in many parts of the state, we encourage New Yorkers to take precautions to protect their health,” she said.
The western and central parts of New York along with the eastern Lake Ontario region are forecast Friday to reach the “unhealthy” air quality threshold, the governor’s office said. Other areas in the state could see air rated in the less severe “unhealthy for sensitive groups” category.
Canada’s Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia provinces had some of that nation’s worst air quality Thursday night, according to IQAir.
The impacts of the fires have prompted Canadian officials to cancel Canada Day fireworks in Montreal scheduled for Saturday, though other festivities are planned.
While forecasters weren’t sure about Saturday’s air quality, the cancellation decision was “in solidarity,” said Stéphane Guertin, president of Tandem Communications, the event organizer.
“I am just being compassionate to what is going on right now. So, that is why we are canceling it. It is a question of what is going on in the fires and what is in the air right now,” Guertin told CNN. “There is something bad happening now in the north of Quebec, so we are all together in this. So, it’s been canceled. We are not going to put something more in the air.”
Canada is experiencing its worst wildfire season on record, with scientists warning such intense blazes are becoming more common as the planet warms. Smoke from the flames can travel thousands of miles, putting millions more people in harm’s way.
Wildfire smoke is particularly dangerous because it contains particulate matter, or PM2.5, a tiny but dangerous pollutant. When inhaled, it can travel deep into lung tissue and enter the bloodstream, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It comes from sources including the combustion of fossil fuels, dust storms and wildfires. The particulate matter has been linked to health problems including asthma, heart disease and other respiratory illnesses.
by tyler | Jun 30, 2023 | CNN, weather
Summers are getting hotter than ever, shattering all-time high temperature records, straining the energy grid and damaging critical infrastructure.
Heat waves also are coming to include another increasingly dangerous element: overnight temperatures that don’t cool down enough to offer sufficient reprieve from oppressive heat, particularly for people without access to air conditioning.
“Most people don’t realize that hot nighttime temperatures have been outpacing daytime temperature increases across most populated regions worldwide in recent decades,” Columbia University’s Data Science Institute postdoctoral research scientist Kelton Minor told CNN.
Hotter nights are a consequence of the climate crisis, scientists have warned. On average, nights are warming faster than days in most of the United States, the 2018 National Climate Assessment found.
“We think it’s because as the days grow warmer, there is more moisture in the air that traps the heat,” the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health’s executive director, Lisa Patel, told CNN. “During the day, that moisture reflects the heat, but at night, it traps the heat in.”
Increasing nighttime heat is even more common in cities because of the urban heat island effect, in which metro areas are significantly hotter than their surroundings.
Places with a lot of asphalt, concrete, buildings and freeways absorb more of the sun’s heat than areas with ample parks, rivers and tree-lined streets. At night, when temperatures are supposed to cool down, the retained heat is released back into the air, said University of Washington climate and health expert Kristie Ebi.
Areas with a lot of green space – with grass and trees that reflect sunlight and create shade – are cooler on summer’s hottest days, she said.
“Many cities put together cooling shelters, but people have to know where they are, how to get to them and what hours they operate,” Ebi told CNN, noting city officials must rethink urban planning to consider climate change.
“It’s going to take a while for trees to grow, but we need tree-planting programs focusing on places that are particularly vulnerable, making sure that city planning takes into account that we’re heading into a much warmer future.”
Nighttime should be when our bodies get a break from the heat, Patel said. But with the climate crisis, it’s becoming less likely to happen. Heat-related deaths could increase sixfold by the end of the century due to warmer nighttime temperatures, unless planet-warming pollution is significantly curbed, a 2022 study in the Lancet Planetary Health found.
The climate crisis is already affecting people’s ability to sleep, said Minor, co-author of a study that found people living in warmer climates lose more sleep for each degree of temperature increase. It was published in May in the journal One Earth.
“We all know what it’s like to try to fall asleep on a hot night – it’s uncomfortable,” Patel said. “We often lose sleep. It is estimated that by the end of the century, we could lose about two days of sleep per year, and it will be worse for people without access to air conditioning.”
At its most extreme, when a human body does not get the chance to recover – typically at night – heat stress can progress to heat stroke, which is associated with confusion, dizziness and passing out, Patel explained.
People around the world are already losing roughly 44 hours of sleep every year on average due to warm nighttime temperatures during just the first part of the 21st century, Minor’s study estimated. He calls this “sleep erosion,” noting each person may lose up to 58 hours of sleep by the end of the century.
“People in our study did not appear to make up for lost sleep on hotter nights by napping during the day or by sleeping more during the days or weeks after,” Minor said. “In fact, they lost additional sleep over these periods due to a delayed temperature effect, possibly due to ambient heat being trapped indoors.”
And much like other social issues, the impacts don’t fall equally across communities, he said.
“For every degree of nighttime temperature rise, we found that the elderly lost over twice as much sleep as middle-aged adults, females lost slightly more sleep than males, and critically, residents of lower-middle-income countries lost three times as much sleep compared to people living in higher income countries,” Minor said.
Heat waves that go on for several days tend to be associated with more deaths as the body can no longer keep itself cool, Patel said.
And unless planet-warming pollution is curbed, the climate crisis is set to increase exposure to dangerous heat index levels by 50% to 100% in much of the tropics and by up to 10 times across much of the globe, according to a 2022 study published in Communications Earth & Environment.
“Living through a heat wave during the day can be like running a race,” Patel said. “We need a cool break to recover and recuperate, and when nighttime temperatures don’t drop, we don’t get that critical time we need to relieve the stress on our bodies from being overheated during the day.”
by tyler | Jun 29, 2023 | CNN, weather
A deadly heat wave will worsen in parts of the South today, but relief from the most extreme, record-breaking temperatures arrives in Texas and is on the horizon elsewhere.
Parts of Texas have baked in triple-digit heat for more than two weeks, but today is the first day since mid-June that the state isn’t expected to set some kind of record.
Still, the concept of “relief” is relative for temperatures that climbed as high as 119 degrees last week.
Temperatures in Laredo, where heat has killed 11 people, have been in the triple digits every day for nearly three weeks. It will be nearly 10 degrees cooler there through the weekend, but temperatures are still forecast to top 100 degrees.
Other places across South Texas will finally catch a break from that kind of heat by the weekend.
San Angelo could have its coolest day since June 16 and hit the 90s on Saturday, a feat possible across other portions of southern Texas.
“Temperatures will still be hot, but considering we’ve seen multiple days above 110 recently, highs in the 90s will feel cooler,” forecasters at the National Weather Service office in San Angelo said.
While Texas temperatures fall, the heat will worsen elsewhere.
The heat in the Southeast has already killed two people in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, the county coroner told CNN. A 62-year-old woman died in her Keithville home after going without electricity from storms that knocked out power across the Shreveport area. Temperatures were in the 90s for days leading up to the time she was found on June 21.
Just four days later, on June 25, a 49-year-old man collapsed while walking in the 95-plus degree heat in Shreveport and later died. Both had preexisting conditions, the coroner said, which made them more vulnerable to heat illness.
Temperatures will climb above 100 degrees in Shreveport and elsewhere across the Southeast as the “heat dome” – a persistent ridge of high pressure – expands into the region.
Nearly 20 record highs across the region could be broken over the next two days.
Read more: What is a heat dome?
Brutal humidity will combine with record high temperatures to crank up heat index values and make it feel like 110 to 115 degrees in places like Memphis, where nearly 25 thousand people are still without power after powerful storms ripped through the area over the weekend.
Overnight temperatures will also stay warm, even in Texas. More than 100 record high minimum temperatures could fall during the next five days.
Relief will take a little longer for areas in the Southeast. Temperatures will stay hot through the weekend, then finally fall by early next week. Temperatures will still be hot in the 90s, but cooler compared to the triple digits happening now.
Roughly 90 million people are under heat alerts across the US, and it’s not just in the South. A chunk of that population is in the West.
Heat alerts now cover portions of New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California and Oregon as temperatures are expected to soar above 100 degrees for many locations through the weekend and into early next week. Temperatures will get close to 120 degrees across Central Arizona and the California deserts.
For the valleys of California, temperatures are forecast to hit 110 degrees, as the “region’s first widespread heatwave of the season” arrives, the National Weather Service in Sacramento said.
That heat will also finally arrive in Las Vegas, which has gone a record-breaking 292 consecutive days without reaching 100 degrees, but is forecast to hit 100 today, and shoot up to 110 degrees by Sunday and beyond.
by tyler | Jun 28, 2023 | CNN, weather
Nine people died in eight days due to heat-related illnesses in Webb County, Texas, the county medical examiner said, as an unrelenting heat wave put 90 million Americans under safety alerts Wednesday.
“I come to you with a heavy heart this morning. In the last eight days in our county, we’ve lost nine residents to this heat,” Webb County Medical Examiner Dr. Corinne Stern said at a commissioners court meeting Tuesday.
Texans have faced triple-digit temperatures and extreme humidity in the last week. Stern urged residents to stay hydrated and check on family, friends and neighbors who may not be taking the heat seriously.
“This is heat like we’ve not seen here before. Please, please, please. Deaths due to heat stroke are ruled as accidents, and accidents, by definition, are preventable deaths. All these deaths could have been prevented,” she said. “Please check on your neighbors.”
Power use in Texas hit an all-time high Tuesday, the state’s power authority said, and the blistering temperatures that prompted the usage surge will continue to scorch parts of the US Wednesday.
As customers grappled with the scorching heat, the Texas Electric Reliability Council said power usage reached 80,828 megawatts at 6 p.m. Tuesday. That surpassed the grid’s previous record of 80,148 megawatts, set on July 20, 2022. The authority expects another record to be set Wednesday afternoon.
The state’s power grid is largely cut off from the rest of the country and has seen frequent challenges in recent years as Texans have been faced with extreme heat and other strains, including severe storms and tornadoes.
While the Texas power authority has assured residents the energy supply is sufficient to avoid blackouts, it is asking residents to cut back on power usage where possible.
The heat wave that has impacted Texas for well over a week is set to expand northward and eastward. More than 150 heat records could be broken during the next six days. The National Weather Service in Memphis warned the warm front could bring dangerous peaks of 110 to 115 degrees Thursday and Friday.
Several daily high temperature records were broken or tied Tuesday in Texas, including at Houston Hobby Airport, Corpus Christi, Laredo and Del Rio. Del Rio hit 110 degrees, marking its 10th consecutive day of record highs.
On Wednesday, 100-degree heat will spread northward into Oklahoma and Kansas, as well as eastward into Arkansas and Louisiana. Oklahoma City is expecting a record high of 106, the weather service said.
The heat index – what the body feels – will range from 100 to 115 degrees across large portions of the central and southern Plains as well as into the lower Mississippi Valley. Temperatures will continue to reach 100 degrees across much of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas on Thursday and will also spread into portions of Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama.
Heat alerts are also posted for portions of Colorado and California. The heat in southeastern Colorado should peak Wednesday, with highs from the upper 90s to around 100 degrees.
In California, the heat will peak on Friday and Saturday, with highs climbing to 110. That includes much of the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, as well as a large portion of the Central Coast and Bay Area. Mount Shasta could come close to breaking its 100-degree record high on Friday, with a high of 99 degrees forecast.
More than 600 people in the United States are killed by extreme heat every year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As Americans face hotter and hotter temperatures, officials are urging people to take safety precautions, including staying hydrated, avoiding leaving pets and kids in cars unattended and finding cool, indoor spaces to wait out the heat.
