As many as 50 million Americans living in the Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington are bracing for the Frankenstorm, the combination of Hurricane Sandy, high tide and a nor’easter, which is likely to create storm surges of up to 11 feet in places that do not normally contend with them. Manhattan, for example. Or Atlantic City. Or Long Island’s south shore. Or Long Island’s NORTH shore, simultaneously. The National Hurricane Center describes it as a “life-threatening” storm surge. The shallowness of the water near the coast will make the storm surge higher, especially in and around the New York Harbor area.

Hurricane Isaac has made landfall in Louisiana, but it is basically hovering over the Gulf Coast, moving very slowly. The slowness of the storm and the circulation of much of it over water means that it will probably continue for some time, which means days of rain and more flooding over a broad coastal region. Wind speeds have weakened to 75mph, but this is still a big, wet storm.

Tampa has been given the all-clear signal for Isaac, the tropical storm expected to grow in strength to a hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico, but Isaac is not out in the Gulf headed for Gulf shore areas as a Category 1 hurricane.

It’s going to be bad, folks — bad all across the country. Bad for farms, and bad for anyone who eats food from farms. It’s especially bad for the poor, who are already stretched beyond the breaking point as it is.

While summer here in Los Angeles has been fairly temperate – especially for those of us by the beach who get the “June gloom” most mornings – in the rest of the country, the heat index has flown off the charts. Record high temperatures have been set with a disturbing regularity in May, June and [...]

We experienced unexpected jobs growth earlier this year, partly from unseasonably warm winter weather. But the catch-up growth just moved some economic activity forward, and the same seasonal adjustment models that didn’t catch job growth in January and February, according to this theory, caught too much in March

Weather.

Allow me to indulge a bit of hyperbole but there are probably more words expounded upon the topic of weather to less effect than just about any topic we humans know.

After running across some resources again recently, I thought it would be a good idea to put some posts together that showed the background of many of the common facts I discuss. In this first post, I wanted to show the relationship between greenhouse gases, radiative forcing and temperatures. In doing, I will use graphics from the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report Technical Summary.

One thing is certain: the Republicans do have an X-factor in their get out the vote operations. That’s what they always use: intimidation and voter suppression. The Rand Paul curb stomping incident, seen this way, wasn’t just an expression of violence but a warning to those planning to hit the polls on Election Day.

In 2006, conservative activists repeatedly claimed that the problem of people casting fraudulent votes was so widespread that it was corrupting the political process and possibly costing their candidates victories.