Storm

As Hurricane Ian churned into Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday, it evoked a 2004 hurricane, Charley, that struck the area. Both were Category 4 storms that hit near Cayo Costa with wind speeds of around 150 miles per hour, and both severely damaged suburban areas around Fort Myers. But that’s where the similarities end. Satellite imagery from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals the difference in scale of these two storms. Ian was nearly double the size of Charley at landfall, when the eye of the hurricane moves ashore. Satellite images taken Wednesday afternoon show Ian obscuring nearly the entire state. According to the National Weather Service in Key West, Fla., Ian had hurricane-force winds spanning 90 miles, and tropical-storm-force winds spanning 350 miles. Charley’s hurricane-force winds extended 50 miles, with 170 miles of tropical-storm-force winds. Another key difference is the speed at which the storms moved across the state. … [Read more...] about How Hurricane Ian Compares to Charley, Another Southwest Florida Storm

Tropical Storm Alex brought strong winds and rain to Bermuda before becoming a post-tropical cyclone on Monday, days after the weather system caused flooding across South Florida and killed at least three people in Cuba. As of Monday afternoon, Alex, which became the first named storm of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season early Sunday, had sustained winds of 60 miles per hour, according to the National Hurricane Center . As the storm’s center moved away from the island, the Bermuda Weather Service discontinued a tropical storm warning, and Alex weakened into a post-tropical cyclone. In its final update on the system, the Hurricane Center said Alex was quickly moving east-northeast at 31 m.p.h. and was expected to continue drifting over the Atlantic Ocean. Up to two inches of rain was expected on the island. The Hurricane Center said that Alex's winds extended up to 195 miles from the storm’s center. By 11 a.m., L.F. Wade International Airport had reported sustained winds of … [Read more...] about Tropical Storm Alex Drifts Into the Atlantic After Flooding Florida

JACKSON, Miss. — Residents in several towns across Louisiana and Mississippi took cover as tornado sirens blared late Tuesday, and forecasters warned of the threat of strong twisters capable of tracking long distances on the ground as a severe weather outbreak erupted in the Deep South. There were no immediate reports of injuries or severe damage. Tornado warnings were issued Tuesday afternoon and continued into the nighttime hours as heavy thunderstorms rolled from eastern Texas to Georgia and as far north as Indiana. The National Weather Service confirmed that tornadoes hit the ground in Mississippi on Tuesday evening and Alabama was in the forecast path of the storms during the overnight hours. More than 25 million people were at risk as the vast storm system. The national Storm Prediction Center said in its storm outlook that affected cities could include New Orleans; Memphis and Nashville in Tennessee; and Birmingham, Alabama. The NWS received reports of people … [Read more...] about Tornadoes reported as storms cause flooding, damage across the South

CAROLINA, P.R. — Hurricane Earl tore through the northern Caribbean on Monday, escalating to Category Four status with winds up to 135 miles an hour that downed power lines, damaged homes and sent hundreds of people fleeing to emergency shelters. The hurricane hit the smallest of the Leeward Islands — Antigua, Barbuda, St. Maarten and St. Martin — on Sunday, before veering toward the British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and the mainland United States, The National Weather Service said Monday afternoon that the governments of Antigua and Barbuda had discontinued a tropical storm warning for both islands, and the warning was also lifted for Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis. Though the weather service also lifted the hurricane watch for Puerto Rico and its two island municipalities, Vieques and Culebra, heavy winds and rains were expected to hit the islands around 8 p.m., local weather officials said. Gov. Luis G. Fortuño announced the closing of all public schools … [Read more...] about Intensifying Hurricane Heads North

Hurricanes are made up of three parts: Rain bands, which are curved bands of clouds and thunderstorms that spiral away from the center The eyewall, which is a ring of cumulonimbus clouds where the strongest winds are found The eye, which is the hurricane’s center The eye of a storm is a circular area where there are winds of up to 15 miles per hour, relatively weak compared with the stronger winds of the rest of the storm. It is completely or partially surrounded by the eyewall, which is a ring of cumulonimbus clouds, the National Hurricane Center said . An eye can be up to 120 miles in diameter, but most are 20 to 40 miles across, said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist for the center. A hurricane’s eyewall usually develops when winds reach 74 miles per hour, or Category 1 status . According to Mr. Feltgen, the eyewall is a ring of deep convection — the vertical movement of heat and moisture in the atmosphere — bordering the eye of the storm. “This area has the … [Read more...] about What is the eye of a hurricane?

I rather think Graham Greene, an eager war correspondent himself, would have approved of the setting when I first read Journey Without Maps . I was locked down after curfew in a dank hotel in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, trying as a reporter to work out whether noises outside were thunderclaps from rainy-season storm clouds or mortars going off as rebels circled the dying regime of the west African warlord, Charles Taylor. The only book I could find on the country was Greene’s first travel book, the account of his 1935 journey by train and truck through Sierra Leone and then on foot for 350 miles through Liberia and Guinea. For Greene, it was a turning point. After publishing four novels he was struggling to make a living, rootless in rented accommodation; so he turned to non-fiction. He got fit by walking prodigious distances along Cotswold lanes fretting over how he would write a travel book that avoided the “awful tedium of A to Z”. The resulting work tells of two journeys. … [Read more...] about Book of a lifetime: Journey Without Maps by Graham Greene

WASHINGTON — Anthony M. Ornato, the former Secret Service agent and White House aide at the heart of a dispute over conflicting accounts of President Donald J. Trump’s actions during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, is scheduled to be interviewed on Tuesday before the House committee investigating the attack, according to two people familiar with the matter. The committee has sought for weeks to re-interview Mr. Ornato as it digs deeper into the activities of the Secret Service around the time of Jan. 6, 2021, an area of inquiry that members believe is one of the most important final pieces of unfinished business before the panel completes its much-anticipated report into the attack. Mr. Ornato, who as deputy White House chief of staff oversaw the logistics of the president’s movements outside, is key to a dispute over the events in a presidential S.U.V. that day. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, testified to lawmakers that Mr. Ornato told her that Mr. Trump became enraged … [Read more...] about Anthony Ornato, a Key Jan. 6 Witness, to Speak With House Panel

To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android . For three days in January 1970, they filled the 13th floor of the federal courthouse in Manhattan, women of all ages crowded into a conference room, sitting on the floor, spilling into the hallway. Some brought friends or husbands. One nursed a baby. Another was a painter who also taught elementary school. A third had gone to Catholic school. They’d come to give testimony in the case of Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz, the first in the country to challenge a state’s strict abortion law on behalf of women. The witnesses in the courthouse were among 314 people, primarily women, brought together by a small team of lawyers, led by Florynce Kennedy and Nancy Stearns, to set up a legal argument no one had made before: that a woman’s right to an abortion was rooted in the Constitution’s promises of liberty and equal protection. New York permitted abortion only to save a woman’s life. … [Read more...] about America Almost Took a Different Path Toward Abortion Rights

WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the attack on the United States Capitol issued a subpoena to the Secret Service late Friday seeking text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, that were said to have been erased, as well as any after-action reports. In a statement, the committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, said the panel was seeking records from “any and all divisions” of the Secret Service “pertaining or relating in any way to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.” The development came after the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of the Secret Service, met with the panel and told lawmakers that many of the texts were erased as part of a device replacement program even after the inspector general had requested them as part of his inquiry into the events of Jan. 6. The Secret Service has disputed parts of the inspector general’s findings, saying that data on some phones had been “lost” as part of a … [Read more...] about Jan. 6 Panel Issues Subpoena to Secret Service in Hunt for Text Messages

WASHINGTON — Soon after his speech on the Ellipse ended on Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald J. Trump stepped into the back of a black Suburban bearing the presidential seal. What happened next has become a matter of intense debate after explosive testimony on Tuesday by Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who said Mr. Trump became enraged when his security detail refused to take him to the Capitol. Speaking before the House committee investigating the attack, Ms. Hutchinson said she had been told by Anthony M. Ornato, a deputy White House chief of staff, that Mr. Trump tried to grab the wheel of his vehicle when he was told he could not go to the Capitol to join his supporters. Ms. Hutchinson also said Mr. Ornato told her the president “lunged” at his lead Secret Service agent, Robert Engel. Ms. Hutchinson made clear in her public testimony that she did not have direct knowledge of the incident, but that Mr. Ornato recounted it to her with Mr. Engel present in the room. … [Read more...] about Heated Debate Erupts Over What Happened Inside Trump’s Vehicle on Jan. 6