Folks still thawing out might be wondering: How bad a U.S. winter was it overall? Very bad – that is, if you’re concerned about long-term warming and intensified drought impacts. (2nd warmest and 5th driest on record.) @climateconnections.bsky.social
yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/03/we-j...
Your graphic pegs the two Aussie areas of extra effort, and Diego Garcia (south of India) and American Samoa also get extra effort.
A further bit of info from an attendee at the TCORF conference last week: There are 4 SH areas near populated coasts assured regular 6-hourly updates, with 12 hourly elsewhere in the SH. A noteworthy comment on one of the slides - "Availability of JTWC public-facing website is not assured"
Here’s the word from Levi Cowan at JTWC: “The new policy outlined by the notice took effect as of March 5th, and the notice was then removed from JTWC’s web pages.”
Corpus Christi may run out of water next year, and they are praying for a hurricane to hit and dump 20-30” of rain. The water loss “impacts are going to be felt tremendously through the state, if not internationally.”
Drought is climate change’s biggest threat.
“A company with zero nuclear reactor operating experience is seeking NRC forgiveness for unpermitted welding on the 55-year-old Palisades reactor pressure vessel containment head.” The issues “could threaten financing of the entire atomic energy industry.”
@nucsafetyucs.bsky.social
A new paper on the "stabilization wedge" idea was published in the journal Science today. The authors provide 36 wedge strategies that together can be mixed and matched into more than 6 trillion combinations able to limit global warming to 1.5°C. @bhensonweather.bsky.social has a detailed analysis:
Estimated annual U.S. wildfire smoke deaths 2011-2020: 40,000. With 3°C of global warming: 64,000. With 1.5°C: 52,400.
A 2024 paper, Trends of Heat-Related Deaths in the US, 1999-2023 (jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...), shows a sharp increase in U.S. heat-related deaths beginning in 2016, as tallied by CDC. Not obvious why from U.S. summer temps over that time period. Would need a regional analysis.
In Texas, “2.2% of all summer deaths were caused by moderate and extreme heat.” Heat’s toll is hugely under counted.
True, but as I say, “Hurricanes are like bananas: They come in bunches.” Steering currents have multi-year phases that favor different coastal areas. It's easy to fool yourself into mistaking natural variability for a climate trend. For example, South Florida got hit by 5 Cat 4s in 1945-1950:
Climate is usually talked about on scales of 30+ years; 25 years is too short a period to look at for climate trends.
My comprehensive look at the future of major hurricane landfalls for the continental U.S. There is no long-term trend in major hurricane landfalls, but with more majors now prowling the Atlantic, a shift in steering currents could change that.
Yay! Great news.
January had the 3rd most intense Florida drought conditions since 1895, behind only 1932 and 2008, according to www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monit...
The paper: "Establishing nationwide power system vulnerability index across US counties using interpretable machine learning"
arxiv.org/pdf/2410.19754
They used a a power system vulnerability assessment framework based on intensity, frequency, and duration of power outages from 2014-2023.
power outage vulnerability map for the U.S.
A nice map from a 2024 paper showing which counties have the highest vulnerability to their power grid, based on power outage data from 2014-2023. It rated the counties holding Los Angeles/Riverside/San Bernardino, Houston, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Detroit as ones facing "extreme" risk.
I’ve had to update my plot of the strongest tropical cyclones by ocean basin all too often in recent years, since climate change increases the number of high-end storms. Per post-season analysis, Melissa is now the strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded outside the Gulf of Mexico.
6.7
From 1950–1995, max of one Caribbean hurricane in Oct-Nov in any year. But in 1996-2024, the region had two+ hurricanes in Oct-Nov nine times. Causes: increased SSTs and Potential Intensity, decreased vertical wind shear, increased mid-level relative humidity, stronger tropical waves.
Help us spread the word: We're making climate information more accessible than ever to Spanish-speaking audiences around the world!
yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/02/intr...
Handy new model can “compute the frequency, duration, intensity, spatial extent and other variables of extreme events. This allows researchers to analyse the extent to which emission-intensive actors such as states or companies are responsible for increasing climate damages and risks.”
We have our first Cat 5 of 2026: Horacio in the remote South Indian Ocean. It's not a threat to any land areas.
yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/02/trop...
One NOAA tide gage is forecast to see major coastal flooding from the coming Nor'easter, during the 1 a.m. Monday high tide cycle: Lewes, DE. This would be the 8th-highest water level since records began in 1919, ~1.3' below the record set in the 1/23/16 Nor'easter, and ~0.7' below Hurricane Sandy.
Like I’ll be discussing in a future article, “hurricanes are like bananas, they come in bunches”. Southeast Florida’s bunches came in 1945-1950, and will come again some day.
My comprehensive look at how Atlantic hurricane tracks are changing and will change. One takeaway:
No significant changes in tracks have been reliably detected in recent decades, though there appears to have been a significant shift to the south for storms attaining hurricane strength.
Insurers want to protect NCAR: "NCAR has long supplied the foundational capabilities that enable catastrophe modeling and climate-informed pricing. Disruption would heighten uncertainty in risk assessments, and undermine the stability and affordability of insurance coverage for U.S. consumers."
I'm looking forward to joining friends and colleagues at @yale.edu @yaleclimatecomm.bsky.social on Monday to discuss, North: The Future of Post-Climate America (Oxford). yaleconnect.yale.edu/ypccc/rsvp_b...
Wow, thanks, I assumed that the map I got from the EPA was current, but it was indeed from Friday. The Monday purpleair.com map shows the air pollution episode caused by the mobilization of PM2.5 particles from the melting snowpack. Concerning that airnow.gov is not updating the pollution maps.
Wow, thanks, I assumed that the map I got from the EPA was current, but it was indeed from Friday. The Monday purpleair.com map shows the air pollution episode caused by the mobilization of PM2.5 particles from the melting snowpack. Concerning that airnow.gov is not updating the pollution maps.
