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AM Briefing: Fixing the Grid
On the DOE’s transmission projects, Cybertruck recalls, and Antarctic greening
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On the DOE’s transmission projects, Cybertruck recalls, and Antarctic greening
On Mayorkas’ warning, damage at the Palisades plant, and violence against women
New research published today in Nature shocked even the study’s own authors.
On autumn heat waves, the VP debate, and solar tariffs
On rapid weather analysis, BlocPower, and free EV chargers
If Hurricane Helene were the only memorable storm to make landfall in the U.S. in 2024, this would still be remembered as an historically tragic season. Since its arrival as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday night in Florida’s Big Bend region, Helene has killed more than 100 people and caused more than $160 billion across six states. Recovery efforts are expected to last years, if not decades, in the hardest-hit regions of Western North Carolina, some 300 miles inland and 2,000 feet above the nearest coastline. “Helene is going to go down as one of the most impactful hurricanes in U.S. history,” AccuWeather’s senior director of forecasting operations, Dan DePodwin, told me when we spoke on Friday.
As of Monday morning, the National Hurricane Center is tracking five additional systems in the Atlantic basin. Two of those storms reached named status on Friday — Joyce and Isaac — though their paths appear to keep them safely in the middle of the Atlantic. A third storm, Kirk, reached tropical storm strength on Monday and is expected to strengthen into a major hurricane, but is likewise likely to turn north and stay out at sea.
But the two other systems could potentially make U.S. landfall. The first and most concerning is an area of low pressure in the Caribbean “similar to where Helene developed,” DePodwin told me. “We’re going to be monitoring that from the middle to end of [this] week. All options are open with where it could go — anywhere along the Gulf Coast, from Mexico to Florida.”
Directly behind Kirk, in the eastern Tropical Atlantic and out toward the Cape Verde islands, another tropical depression is likely forming. “Anytime you get a tropical wave coming off of Africa this time of year, in late September or early October,” you want to keep an eye on it, DePodwin went on. Sometimes, depending on the weather patterns, those storms stay far out at sea, like Joyce or Kirk. “But the next one probably has a better chance of making it farther west across the Atlantic” because of the prevailing weather patterns, DePodwin said. “So we’ll keep an eye on that one” — though forecasters are still days away from knowing if it could make it as far west as the East Coast.
Let this be a lesson in speaking too soon. Although the 2024 hurricane season went through a long lull at the end of the summer, it’s about to definitively silence any talk of it being a “quiet” year. “We’re predicting at least [five] more named storms to get to that 16 to 20 named storm range that we have for the season,” DePodwin told me. Many of those would likely come in October, which “can be a pretty active month,” but due to the “La Niña pattern we’re moving into and the very warm waters of the [Atlantic] Basin, we think we could get a couple of named storms in November, which is not always the case.”
Finishing the season with 16 to 20 named storms would put 2024 well above the 1991-2020 average of 14 named storms per year. But as hurricane forecasters are always quick to point out, all it takes is one destructive storm making landfall for it to be a “bad” hurricane year. In that case, there’s no debate: 2024 is already bad. Now we must wait, prepare, and hope it doesn’t get any worse.
On extreme flooding in North Carolina, another nuclear revival, and the U.K.’s last coal plant
Current conditions: Flooding and landslides in Nepal over the weekend killed almost 200 people • Storm John dumped more than three feet of rain on southern Mexico • An autumn heat wave is settling over the California coast.
The remnants of Hurricane Helene swept northeast over the weekend, bringing intense rainfall and catastrophic flooding to Central Appalachian states. Western North Carolina has been particularly hard hit. Asheville recorded about 18 inches of rain over three days, which is far more than the city typically sees in an entire month, and the resulting flooding is nothing short of devastating. At least 91 deaths have been recorded as a result of the storm but the death toll is expected to rise as the water recedes and the search for missing people continues.
Flooding in AshevilleMelissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images
Storm damage in AshevilleSean Rayford/Getty Images
While the worst of Helene has passed, more rain is still on the way for the region. More than 2 million customers are without power across the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, and Florida. Hundreds of roads are closed and some towns are completely isolated. “This will be one of the most significant weather events to happen in western portions of our area,” reported a weather service in western North Carolina. Vice President Kamala Harris has paused her 2024 presidential campaign to return to Washington and be briefed on the federal response to the storm. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will visit Georgia to survey the damage.
FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell said global warming made the damage from Helene worse. E&E Newsnoted that Asheville had previously been described as a “climate haven,” and said the storm serves as a reminder that “no regions are immune to the dangers of climate-fueled disasters.” AccuWeather estimated that the total damage and economic loss from Helene will be between $145 billion and $160 billion. Many of the homes that have been inundated lack flood insurance, Bloombergreported.
The Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture announced Monday that they are together putting forward billions of dollars to support the re-opening of the Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan — the first in U.S. history.
The plant was shuttered in 2022, and since 2023, state and federal officials have been working to reopen the plant — as have the plant’s owner, Holtec, and Wolverine Power, a power company that purchases power on behalf of its member utilities. Those efforts received a boost Monday morning with the closing of a $1.52 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office, announced provisionally in March, and more than $1.3 billion in funds from the Department of Agriculture, split up between Wolverine Power and Hoosier Energy, a cooperative serving rural utilities in Indiana and Illinois. The USDA funds will defray a quarter of the cost of the power purchase agreement between the cooperatives and Palisades, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Xochitl Torres Small told reporters.
The restarted plant would have some 800 megawatts of capacity, and the project will employ some 600 people, said Deputy Secretary of Energy Dave Turk on a call with reporters. The plant could be up and running in “a couple of years,” an administration official said. “The funds from this closed loan from the DOE announced today will be utilized in the necessary inspections, testing, restoration, rebuilding, and replacement of existing equipment,” the official said. Holtec is currently working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on reauthorizing its license to operate the plant.
The U.S. Forest Service is now working with the well-funded carbon removal startup Charm Industrial in a two-for-one endeavor to reduce wildfire risk and permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere, Heatmap’s Katie Brigham reported. The federal agency and its official nonprofit partner, the National Forest Foundation, have partnered with the San Francisco-based company on a pilot program to turn leftover trees and other debris from forest-thinning operations into bio-oil, a liquid made from organic matter, to be injected underground. The project is a part of a larger Cal Fire grant, to implement forest health measures as well as seek out innovative biomass utilization solutions. If the pilot scales up, Charm can generate carbon removal credits by permanently locking away the CO2 from biomass, while the Forest Service will finally find a use for the piles of leftover trees that are too small for the sawmill’s taste. The pilot is taking place in Inyo National Forest in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, and comprises 538 acres of forest. Charm is processing just 60 tons of biomass over six weeks of operation in Inyo. The pilot is already more than halfway over.
The United Kingdom was home to the world’s first coal-fired power plant, which opened in 1882. Today, it became the first G7 country to phase out coal as a source of electricity with the closure of its last coal-fired plant. As recently as 2012, nearly 40% of the country’s electricity came from coal. But since then, coal has seen a rapid decline. Fifteen coal power plants have shut down or switched fuels, and wind and solar power generation have soared. As a result, carbon emissions from the U.K.’s power sector have fallen by 74%, according to a report from energy think tank Ember. “U.K. policies have incentivised the rapid deployment of renewable energy over the last decade, while simultaneously tightening restrictions on high polluting coal power plants,” the report said. Wind power in particular grew by 315% from 2012 to 2023. What’s more, the move away from coal has happened even without a big shift to natural gas:
Ember
A gardener in Washington state has discovered a new flower that looks like a mashup between a daffodil and a dahlia. They’re calling it the Daffodahlia: