Hurricane Sally Is a Slow-Moving Threat. Climate
Change Might Be Why.
Scientists say that climate change, which has also
contributed to the wildfires on the West Coast, helped intensify a storm that
is unleashing a deluge in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi.
By Richard
Fausset, Rick Rojas and Henry Fountain
Published
Sept. 15, 2020
Updated
Sept. 16, 2020, 1:33 a.m. ET
BAYOU LA
BATRE, Ala. — Hurricane Sally parked itself over the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday,
churning slowly and lumbering at a sluggish pace toward land, representing a
climate change reality that has made many hurricanes wetter, slower and more
dangerous.
Sally’s
outer bands unleashed a relentless rain that began in the morning and continued
unabated all day and into the night, threatening to deluge coastal communities
in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. Meteorologists worried — and almost
marveled — as the storm pushed forward at a speed of just 2 miles per hour,
shifting erratically in its path and intensity.
Scientists
saw Sally’s stall over the warm waters of the Gulf as yet another effect of
climate change in the United States, coming as wildfires along the West Coast
have incinerated millions of acres and sent foul air into the atmosphere as far
away as Washington, D.C. A scorching summer — made worse by the burning of
fossil fuels, experts say — led to dry conditions that helped turn this year’s
wildfires into the worst ever recorded.
Fires were
still burning out of control in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest
on Tuesday, and air quality in the region — some of the worst in the world —
prompted the closure of some schools, parks and beaches.
With the
authorities pleading with residents to stay indoors, the hunt for missing
people continued in scorched communities. In New Mexico, scientists were
investigating whether the deaths of huge numbers of birds were caused by the
smoke plumes altering their migratory routes or poisoning them in the air.
And all
this amid a hurricane season that is among the most active on record. Last
month, Hurricane Laura tore across southwest Louisiana, leaving a trail of
destruction and cutting electricity that has yet to be restored to many
communities.
Climate
change has made hurricanes wetter and slower, scientists have found. Recent
research suggests that global warming — specifically in the Arctic, which is
warming much more rapidly than other regions — is playing a role in weakening
atmospheric circulation and thus potentially affecting hurricane speed.
A 2018
study found that since the middle of the 20th century, translation speeds of
all hurricanes and tropical storms had decreased by about 10 percent. Another
study that year that focused on Atlantic hurricanes found that the average
speed of storms near the North American coast had slowed by more than 15
percent.
Beach
Boulevard, which traces the coast in Pascagoula, Miss., was closed to
traffic.Credit...William Widmer for The New York Times
In Bayou La
Batre, Ala., where Sally was already turning roads into rivers on Tuesday,
Ernest Nelson, a retired commercial fisherman, reached a similar conclusion as
he sought refuge under a house raised 10 feet off the ground on concrete
pillars.
Storms were
getting bigger and more intense, he said. Mr. Nelson, who had worked the water
for decades, gave his basis for that belief: “No meteorologist. No college
degree. Experience.”
On Tuesday,
the National Hurricane Center reported that Sally’s translation speed, the rate
at which it moves forward, was about 2 miles per hour, and that the storm was
not expected to accelerate much as it moved northward in the Gulf of Mexico
toward an expected landfall on Wednesday. It was stalling, in effect, as it
approached the Mississippi coast.
But rather
than serve as a source of comfort, its languid speed only intensified the
unease: Sally, which intensified into a Category 2 storm early Wednesday, is
dangerous, meteorologists warned, precisely because it is so slow. Its
lingering could translate into major flooding, with more rain than the region
typically records over several months.
Hurricane
Paulette, by contrast, was zipping along in the Atlantic on Tuesday with a
translation speed of more than 25 m.p.h. after passing Bermuda two days
earlier.
Other
recent hurricanes have also stalled. A year ago, Dorian crawled over the
Bahamas for a day and a half, causing widespread destruction from wind and
storm surge. And Harvey, perhaps the best-known — and most costly — example of
stalling, was no longer a hurricane by the time it slowed near Houston in
August 2017. It had been downgraded to a tropical storm, but still it inundated
the city and surrounding communities with four feet or more of rain over
several days.
As Sally
churned in the Gulf, the conditions left many living along the coast perplexed
and unnerved. No strangers to hurricanes, they weighed the risks of hunkering
down against fleeing.
The
confusion came from the storm’s apparent fickleness, as the forecast constantly
evolved in recent days, with predictions that included reaching west of New
Orleans or hitting Biloxi, Miss. On Tuesday evening, the forecast said it was
continuing on a path aimed for Mobile Bay, Ala., likely making landfall
Wednesday morning.
Still,
officials and meteorologists said there was a measure of certainty in the
threat that Sally posed. The rainfall could reach as high as 30 inches in some
areas from the Florida panhandle to Mississippi.
The
rainfall would compound a storm surge that could reach as high as four to six
feet around Dauphin Island and the Mobile Bay on the Alabama coast, according
to the National Hurricane Center. Forecasters from the center also warned of
life-threatening flash floods.
“I can tell
you from many years of experience and many times passed, I’ve seen streets and
neighborhoods quickly fill up with five, six, seven and even more depth of
water in a short period of time,” Sam Cochran, the Mobile County sheriff, said
during a briefing on Tuesday.
And if
residents stay behind, he added, it might be “a couple of days or longer before
we can get you out.”
A hurricane
warning remained in effect for an area stretching eastward from Bay St. Louis,
Miss., near the Louisiana border, to Navarre, near the tip of the Florida
panhandle — a distance that includes most of Mississippi’s and Alabama’s
coastlines.
A tropical
storm warning covered the area west of the Pearl River to Grand Isle, La. —
including metropolitan New Orleans — and east of Navarre to Indian Pass, Fla.
Officials
urged people living along the coast and in low-lying areas to clear out, taking
advantage of the storm’s snail-like pace to avoid being trapped in floodwaters.
Intense
waterfalls of rain began pelting Mobile, an old port city of about 190,000
people, on Tuesday morning. The streets were mostly empty, but many residents
had chosen to stay home to ride out a storm that was expected to deposit more
than two feet of rain.
Alonzo
Johnson, a high school football coach, was sitting on the front porch of the
80-year-old Craftsman home where he lives with his family south of downtown.
There was nothing to do but watch the rain and see how high it would go. Mr.
Johnson, 47, said that floodwaters had gone to the bottom of a stop sign across
the street in the past. During Katrina, the water had lapped up to the top of
his porch, about two feet off the ground.
“We’re
anxious,” he said. If the water gets high enough, the family would retreat to
the back of the house, which is a bit higher. “We’ll find a safe space where we
can get to praying.”
In the
oyster and fishing town of Bayou La Batre, how Mr. Nelson found himself under a
house, and how the house got built in the first place, was tangled in the long,
painful drama of a changing climate that has irrevocably complicated life along
the Gulf Coast.
Mr. Nelson,
66, had been living more than 300 miles west of Bayou La Batre, in the small
Louisiana town of Hackberry. But a few weeks ago, Hurricane Laura roared out of
the Gulf and devastated Hackberry, including Mr. Nelson’s home, a little travel
trailer right on the water.
“You’re
looking at the last person to get out of Hackberry,” said Mr. Nelson, who made
his escape just before Laura’s landfall, when his sister Stephenie Bosarge, 63,
picked him up and brought him to her elevated home just off the water on the
Alabama shore.
A different
house had been on the property before Hurricane Katrina blew it away in 2005,
along with Ms. Bosarge’s wedding bands, family photos and oyster shop. The
Volunteers of America came through town and built her this new raised house a
few blocks from the water.
Since
Katrina, many houses in Bayou La Batre are now jacked up on stilts, and people
have their ways of figuring out what to do with all that space below, parking a
truck or boat, stashing junk or storing tools. At her house, Ms. Bosarge
installed a tiki bar, some porch swings and a stereo system.
Soon, they
planned on evacuating, riding out the storm with a relative on higher ground in
Grand Bay. But for the time being, the siblings sat on their porch swings,
watching this new slow-moving disaster unfold around them, wondering how high
the water would rise and joking about Mr. Nelson’s bad fortune.
But they
were serious about what had happened to their way of life, and the life of so
many other Gulf people. “It is coming to an end,” Ms. Bosarge said. “Baby, I
knew that years ago.”
Richard
Fausset reported from Bayou La Batre, Rick Rojas from Atlanta, and Henry
Fountain from Albuquerque. Mike Baker contributed reporting from Seattle, Simon
Romero from Albuquerque, and Maria Cramer from New York.
Richard
Fausset is a correspondent based in Atlanta. He mainly writes about the
American South, focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal
justice. He previously worked at the Los Angeles Times, including as a foreign
correspondent in Mexico City. @RichardFausset
Rick Rojas
is a national correspondent covering the American South. He has been a staff
reporter for The Times since 2014. @RaR
Henry
Fountain specializes in the science of climate change and its impacts. He has
been writing about science for The Times for more than 20 years and has
traveled to the Arctic and Antarctica. @henryfountain • Facebook
Prestigious US science journal breaks with
tradition to back Biden
Scientific American says Trump has damaged US ‘because
he rejects evidence and science’
Martin
Belam
Wed 16 Sep
2020 09.44 BSTLast modified on Wed 16 Sep 2020 09.56 BST
In a break
with its 175-year tradition, prestigious US magazine Scientific American has
for the first time endorsed a candidate in a US presidential election – the
Democratic party nominee, Joe Biden.
The
magazine has taken the line because, it says, “Donald Trump has badly damaged
the US and its people – because he rejects evidence and science.”
In a piece
published in October’s edition, the editorial board write:
The most
devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the Covid-19
pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of
September. He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and
the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for
its greatest challenges.
They
criticise Trump, saying that “At every stage, Trump has rejected the
unmistakable lesson that controlling the disease, not downplaying it, is the
path to economic reopening and recovery,” and refer to the recent revelation
from interview tapes published by the veteran journalist Bob Woodward that
Trump was stating in public “this is like a flu” while saying in private that
it was “lethal and highly transmissible”.
They go on
to say the president “repeatedly lied to the public about the deadly threat of
the disease”, and that while supporting the wearing of masks – a strategy they
say would hurt no one – could have saved thousands of lives in the US. Instead
“Trump and his vice -resident flouted local mask rules, making it a point not
to wear masks themselves in public appearances”.
They
condemn the president for reacting to America’s worst public health crisis in a
century by saying “I don’t take responsibility at all”
Away from
the coronavirus pandemic, the article also attacks the president’s record on
environmental, health and scientific issues more broadly, saying:
Trump’s
refusal to look at the evidence and act accordingly extends beyond the virus.
He has repeatedly tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act while offering no
alternative; comprehensive medical insurance is essential to reduce illness.
Trump has proposed billion-dollar cuts to the National Institutes of Health,
the National Science Foundation, and the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, agencies that increase our scientific knowledge and strengthen us
for future challenges. Congress has countermanded his reductions. Yet he keeps
trying.
Only this
week, Trump appeared to contradict experts on the fires ravaging the US west
coast, saying that the climate would soon cool, and that “I don’t think science
knows” about the climate disaster unfolding across California, Oregon and
Washington state.
Laura
Helmuth, the ninth editor-in-chief of the Scientific, took over in April this
year. Formerly a weekly, Scientific American switched to monthly publishing in
the 1920s, and is considered to be the longest-running regularly published
magazine in the US. In the past it has carried articles by Albert Einstein,
Orville Wright of the Wright Brothers, Francis Crick, Al Gore and Mark Twain.
The
editorial endorsing Biden concludes: “Although Trump and his allies have tried
to create obstacles that prevent people from casting ballots safely in
November, either by mail or in person, it is crucial that we surmount them and
vote. It’s time to move Trump out and elect Biden, who has a record of
following the data and being guided by science.”
.jpg)
.jpg)
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário