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The tsunami that tore through northern Japan on March 11 was catastrophically strong. The waves—triggered by a 9.0 earthquake—swamped coastal towns, destroyed homes and offices and led to the deaths of nearly 16,000 people. (For a chilling look at the devastation, check out these photos by the Japanese photographer Kishin Shinoyama.) The tsunami also led [...]
I’ll be honest—I don’t pay close attention to space weather. I’m busy enough trying to figure out how scared I should be—and how scared I should make you—of regular old Earth weather, like hurricanes, floods and droughts. But maybe I should start keeping tabs on what’s going on above us. On September 24 the sun [...]
Come on, Irene — it’s hurricane season. Hurricane Irene, which slashed across Puerto Rico earlier this week and just missed the Dominican Republic, is headed for the southeastern U.S. Irene is expected to strengthen to Category 3 and could become a Category 4 storm, with at least 131-m.p.h. winds as it approaches the southeastern U.S. [...]
One of the challenges of understanding weather and climate change in the U.S. involves a simple fact: this country is really big. Huge—and that means there’s almost always significant variety in the weather from sea to shining sea. A heat wave in one part of the country might be matched by unusually cool weather in [...]
When I woke up today at my apartment in upper Manhattan, it was nearly 80 F. It’s nearly 90 F right now, and it will likely scrape 100 F before the day is blessedly over. On a weather map, the entire broiling eastern half of the U.S. looks like it has a bad Memorial Day [...]
The South is reeling from what could be one of the deadliest tornado systems in U.S. history. Yesterday storms and tornadoes ripped through Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia, killing as many as 200 people, and potentially far more. At least 139 separate tornadoes were reported yesterday. That number is almost certain to rise, and [...]
Yesterday afternoon, as we were closing this week’s issue of Time, I ended up in a debate with one of my editors over how the air travel system had responded to a December of terrible weather. I’d written a short piece coming out in the magazine describing the travel Armageddon the storm had created for [...]
