All things geology, climate, oceans, and more
After a period of quiet in the Atlantic, tropical cyclone activity has once again picked up. Tropical Storm Nestor formed on Friday afternoon and is slated to impact the Gulf Coast Friday and into the weekend. The sprawling disturbance spans a huge portion of the eastern Gulf of Mexico and is chugging toward the Florida…
This past summer, southern California experienced a significant earthquake swarm. Analysis of the event suggests earthquakes unravel in a more complicated manner than is typically appreciated. What’s more, this event has perturbed a major, previously idle fault nearby—and scientists aren’t entirely sure about the potential consequences. New research published this week in Science details the…
The bee population is plummeting and the ecosystems and food systems that depend on their pollination are declining. One startup’s solution to the incoming beepocalypse is to make better bees. A report issued this summer found that last year U.S. beekeepers reported a loss of 40 percent of their bee colonies. That’s a huge blow…
Hurricane season may be winding down, but worry not, lovers of rapidly intensifying weather. Bomb cyclone season is upon us. Okay, so it’s not an official meteorological season, but storms that bomb out along the East Coast tend to happen in late fall through spring. And this week is when we could see our first…
Typhoon Hagibis may now be a swirl of clouds near Alaska, but its impacts on Japan are still playing out. The country was walloped by the storm over the weekend, with some areas receiving 40 percent of their annual rain in the span of a few days. Floodwaters have left at least 55 dead, and…
In a community outside Los Angeles, more than 12,000 people are facing mandatory evacuation as a wildfire rages out of control. The Saddleridge Fire has burned some 4,600 acres, and so far officials haven’t been able to contain it. The fire broke out Thursday night, and authorities have shut down parts of Route 210, a…
The Midwest is skipping fall and heading right to winter to end the week. A potentially record-setting blizzard is bearing down on the region and could dump snow from Colorado to Minnesota. The Dakotas sit near the epicenter of the storm and could see up to three feet of October snow (yes, you read that…
At midnight on Wednesday, California’s largest utility begun cutting off power to customers across the northern part of the state. The rolling blackout came with just a day’s warning as intense fire weather is expected to whip up across the region. The gusty winds have caused power lines to snap and, on the back of…
New evidence from South Africa is adding further credence to the idea that a large asteroid or comet struck Earth during the Pleistocene—an event that possibly triggered the extinction of many large animals while also disrupting human populations at a global scale. Along with locations in North and South America, Greenland, Western Europe, and the…
Every year around 10 million acres of the U.S. is seared by wildfires. The country spends more than $2 billion trying to fight them—a total that doesn’t even include the cost of lost property. Fighting wildfires is still mostly a reactive effort, something that happens after the fires have already ignited. But researchers at Stanford…
Hurricane Lorenzo, the weirdest storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, struck the Azores on Wednesday and is forecast to continue its jaunt across the eastern Atlantic toward Ireland. It could make a rare landfall there with hurricane-force winds and crippling surf. The freak hurricane rapidly intensified into a Category 5 monster over the weekend, setting…
Impeachment is hardly the only thing dividing America. The weather is doing the same, cleaving the country into two distinct seasons this week. In the West, winter arrived in full force, with heavy snow and frigid temperatures. In the East, though, a different story is underway. Record-breaking heat could roast nearly every location east of…
A huge iceberg weighing upwards of 350 billion tons has broken off the Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica. AFP reports the calving event happened at some point between September 24 and 25, as evidenced by U.S. and European satellite images. Dubbed D28, the gigantic chunk of ice measures 1,636 square kilometers (632 square miles) in…
Hurricane Lorenzo has set records as it blasts its way through the central Atlantic, becoming a category 5 hurricane on Saturday night before weakening back down to category 3 status by Sunday evening, CNN reported. The National Hurricane Center reported late on Saturday night (AST) that Lorenzo had become “the strongest hurricane on record this…
An Indonesian province on the eastern side of Sumatra looked more like Mars over the weekend than a tropical island paradise. Why? Forest fires are raging throughout the country, turning skies red. More than 4,000 hotspots had been flagged in Indonesia as of last week, and the fires have gotten so bad that schools and…
Tropical Depression Imelda might not have the same ring as Hurricane Imelda, but the impacts of the storm are for real. The National Weather Service has issued a civil emergency warning as a flooding crisis unfolds in the region rocked by Harvey’s historic floods just two years ago. Upwards of 40 inches of rain have…
As wildfires continue to rage in the Amazon, Indonesians and their neighbors are are struggling to cope with excessive smoke caused by burning forests and peatlands. New satellite images show the extent of the blazes, with Borneo barely visible under a thick blanket of noxious smoke. This incredible image, taken on September 15, 2019, was…
‘Tis the season for the hole in the ozone layer to undergo its annual growth spurt in the skies high above Antarctica. It’s still early days, but scientists say this year’s version is behaving unusually and that it has the potential to be the smallest hole observed in over three decades. Today on this International…
Another hurricane has formed in the Atlantic Ocean, and Bermuda is sitting in its projected path. Hurricane Humberto is only a Category 1 hurricane as of Monday morning, according to the National Hurricane Center, but it is expected to strengthen over the next few days. The storm is already causing some rainfall in the northwestern…
Hurricane Dorian’s devastation has killed at least 30 in the Bahamas. All this death has a distinct smell, Sam Teicher told Earther. The founder of Coral Vita, a coral-growing operation based Grand Bahama, had that awful, hair-raising stench in his nose all day on Thursday as he drove around trying to help those in need.…
