EnviroPolitics Blog

After drought turn to floods, can seasonal weather forecasts be trusted?

Forecasters in California didn’t see it coming

*Water floods part of a road by the San Ysidro Creek near the closed Highway 101 in Montecito, Calif., on Tuesday. (Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP)*

By Dan Stillman and Diana Leonard, Washington Post

Coming into this winter, California was mired in a three-year drought, with forecasts offering little hope of relief anytime soon. Fast forward to today, and the state is waterlogged with as much as 10 to 20 inches of rain and up to 200 inches of snow that have fallen in some locations in the past three weeks. The drought isn’t over, but parched farmland and declining reservoir levels have been supplanted by raging rivers and deadly flooding.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) issues seasonal forecasts of precipitation and temperature for one to 13 months into the future. The CPC’s initial outlook for this winter, issued on Oct. 20, favored below-normal precipitation in Southern California and did not lean toward either drier- or wetter-than-normal conditions in Northern California.

However, after a series of intense moisture-laden storms known as atmospheric rivers, most of California has seen rainfall totals 200 to 600 percent above normal over the past month, with 24 trillion gallons of water falling in the state since late December.

Floods, landslides, sinkholes: See the devastation of heavy rain in California

The stark contrast between the staggering amount of precipitation in recent weeks and the CPC’s seasonal precipitation outlook issued before the winter, which leaned toward below-normal precipitation for at least half of California, has water managers lamenting the unreliability of seasonal forecasts.

Read the full story here

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Another whale washes up on Jersey shore

The second dead whale in two days. One of seven in the past month. State senator calls for a pause in offshore wind development. Governor says no way

A young humpback whale, between 20 and 25 feet long, was found dead on a Brigantine beach Thursday — the second whale to wash up on Jersey Shore beach in the last week. Connie Pyatt photo.

By Oona Goodin-Smith, Philadelphia Inquirer

A young humpback whale, between 20 and 25 feet long, washed up on the beaches of Brigantine Island Thursday afternoon — the second whale found dead on the Jersey Shore in the last week, and one of seven discovered in New York and New Jersey in a little more than a month.

The whale in Brigantine was found upside-down on the north end of the island, on state-protected property around half a mile from the site of the former U.S. Coast Guard Station, according to a post on the municipality’s Facebook page.

New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection, Fish and Wildlife department, and the non-profit Marine Mammal Stranding Center responded to the scene, the post said. The state planned to bury the carcass, according to the post.

It was not immediately clear how the whale had died, and that answer could take “several months” to determine — if at all, the center said in a statement Friday. Plans for a necropsy are under way, the center said, but due to the tide cycle and erosion, the area where the whale is located is hazardous to access. The center’s staff will continue to visit the site during low tide to take measurements and samples to send to experts tasked with investigating whale deaths.

Read the full story here

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Big rumble in South Jersey: An earthquake?

By Rob Jennings | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

A loud, sustained rumbling shook residents and buildings along the Jersey Shore on Friday afternoon leading some to speculate on social media that an earthquake could be to blame.

But the U.S. Geological Survey site shows no signs of seismic activity in New Jersey or neighboring states as of 2:30 p.m., about 30 minutes after the tremors rattled windows and houses.

Residents from as far south as Cape May and up to Manahawkin along the coast and as far west as Glassboro in Gloucester County reported feeling the shaking on social media. The tremor lasted at least 10 seconds.

“I thought my house was about to explode,” posted one user to Facebook.

Read the full story here

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What’s whacking whales off the New Jersey coast?

Shore and wildlife advocates want offshore wind farm development paused until a cause can be determined.

Whale deaths — Cindy Zipf, from Clean Ocean Action, speaks during a press conference just off Florida Avenue in Atlantic City and the Boardwalk, to demand specific actions from President Biden to the alarming increased whale deaths, Monday, Jan. 9, 2023. In a span of 33 days, six whales, all endangered species, washed up in the New Jersey and New York coastal region. (Tim Hawk photo) |

By Steven Rodas | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Tire tracks in the sand marked the burial ground of a massive humpback whale Monday.

The dead 30-foot female whale washed up ashore Saturday and two days later lay buried underneath, leaving behind a decaying rotten smell.

“What a sad end to an animal in the prime of her life and an endangered species,” Cindy Zipf, executive director of Long Branch-based non-profit, Clean Ocean Action, told NJ Advance Media while walking on the beach. “The federal government should have been here with busloads of people really doing an examination if they were taking this seriously.”

Zipf was in Atlantic City on Monday afternoon — after the sixth dead whale was found on the New York-New Jersey coastline in 33 days — to ask the federal government to investigate if the whale deaths and work being done for offshore wind turbines could be to blame. She called the string of deaths “unprecedented.”

Steve Sweeney: NJ economy depends on offshore wind energy

While New Jersey moves toward a “cleaner” future, offshore wind continues to be among the hot-button renewable energy alternatives. Among the concerns expressed by residents and some officials is the impact to whales and other animals before, during, and after, construction.

It’s unclear if the deaths of half-a-dozen whales in the region since December is high. And although the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is currently studying an uptick of reported humpback whale deaths since 2016 across the East Coast, officials there say so far offshore wind has not been the culprit.

Read the full story here

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NY State Police SIU raids Troopers PBA offices

Members of the SIU kept a low profile as they executed the search warrants at the PBA’s State Street headquarters and a related office

A member of the State Police Special Investigations Unit loads boxes of records from the New York State Troopers Police Benevolent Association into a van outside the PBA's headquarters on Tuesday in Albany. The SIU executed search warrants at the PBA’s headquarters and the adjacent office of the Signal 30 Benefit Fund, a non-profit associated with the union. — 1of15A member of the State Police Special Investigations Unit loads boxes of records from the New York State Troopers Police Benevolent Association into a van outside the PBA’s headquarters on Tuesday in Albany. The SIU executed search warrants at the PBA’s headquarters and the adjacent office of the Signal 30 Benefit Fund, a non-profit associated with the union. (Jim Franco photo)

The State Police Special Investigations Unit executed a search warrant at the New York State Troopers Police Benevolent Association on Tuesday in Albany and confiscated dozens of boxes of records. It also executed a search warrant on the office of the adjacent Signal 30 Benefit Fund offices, a non-profit associated with the union.

By Brendan J. Lyons, Times-Union

ALBANY — The State Police Special Investigations Unit on Tuesday raided the headquarters of the New York State Troopers Police Benevolent Association and the nearby office of its related Signal 30 Benefit Fund, which has raised millions of dollars for charitable causes.

It’s unclear whether the court-authorized searches also targeted the “Surgeons Group,” which like the Signal 30 Benefit Fund is a fundraising arm of the PBA that provides honorary memberships to paid supporters. The Surgeons Group, which shares offices with the PBA, has raised millions of dollars for the union through its sales of official-looking dashboard “Trooper Surgeon” placards that also come with an identification card and a gold badge reading “PBA State Police Surgeon.”

Members of the SIU kept a low profile as they executed the search warrants at the PBA’s State Street office and also at Signal 30’s nearby office on Howard Street. They used unmarked vehicles and, in the case of the PBA’s office, a rear entrance. The office is located a block from the state Capitol, where Gov. Kathy Hochul was delivering here State of the State address Tuesday afternoon as the raid quietly unfolded.

Read the full story here

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Can you believe it? George Santos is a Congressman

The GOP strategy of acclimatizing us to scandal is still working.

By Tom Nichols, The Atlantic

Remember Herschel Walker, the Georgia football star who was a shoo-in for a Senate seat—until the press discovered the children he didn’t acknowledge and the abortions he’d allegedly paid for? The Republican Party decided to tough it out with Walker, but the humiliation was too much for voters in a state that sent Marjorie Taylor Greene to Congress, and Walker narrowly lost.

Narrowly. It is amazing to realize that Walker lost by only a few points, when not so long ago, a candidate with his baggage (and inability to speak in coherent sentences) would have simply dropped out of the race. Surely, we’d reached the bottom of what even the most jaded voters would tolerate.

Or so I thought until I started following the improbable tale of George Santos—so far, that does seem to be his name—the weird fabulist who has been elected to the Congress of the United States of America. Almost everything about the life story Santos has told is a lie; likewise, he has not, so far, been able to adequately explain where he got all the money that he poured into his campaign.

As you might expect, this has caused fury in his district, powered a recall movement, and led the national Republicans to act on principle and refuse to seat him in Congress.

I am, of course, kidding. Nothing in that last sentence happened. If George Santos can make stuff up, so can I, but The Atlantic requires that I tell you when I’m joking.

Read the full story here

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