Category: Hurricanes_CN LOUISIANA_CN

Registration has started for a new program to help low- and moderate-income Lake Charles residents fix 2020 hurricane damage to their homes, and Mayor Nic Hunter says he expects it to fill up fast.

For storm-battered residents of the Caribbean, the Southeast and the Gulf Coast, new research on hurricanes is rarely good news, with recent studies showing trends toward stronger storms that intensify suddenly near the coast and maintain their strength longer after hitting land.

Human-caused climate change made the entire season — 30 named storms — drop 5% more rain. During the 14 storms that reached hurricane status the rainfall was 8% heavier, according to the study in Tuesday’s Nature Communications…

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is one for the record books. There were two storms in May, before the season’s official start on June 1, and this is the first year since storm record-keeping began in 1851 in which nine named tropical cyclones have formed before August and thirteen before September.

Across much of the Atlantic Ocean, from Cuba to Texas and Florida to Newfoundland, hurricanes and tropical storms have flooded streets, taken out the power and caused serious damage to cities this year.

In the northeastern Pacific, storms have also been churning to life: So far this year, there have been 16 named storms, including six hurricanes, with more than a month remaining in the season.

Hurricane Ida’s winds and floods did at least $584 million in damage to agriculture in Louisiana, experts at the LSU AgCenter estimate. More than half of that — $315.9 million — is timber damage, with another $207 million, or 35% of the total, in damage to buildings, equipment and other infrastructure, economist Kurt Guidry said.

Linda Williams is used to power outages in her neighborhood, where strong winds often damage the electrical lines that crisscross her street. But Hurricane Ida was different. Within days of losing power, the heat was making her so dizzy that she had to stay in bed.

With the vast majority of lights now on in New Orleans, city officials on Thursday were prepared for the next phase in navigating the aftermath of Hurricane Ida: recovery. The slow progress toward normalcy came even as the death toll from Ida continued to rise — an additional 11 deaths were confirmed by the state health department on Wednesday, bringing the count to at least 26 dead in Louisiana.

Oil and gas investigative journalist Antonia Juhasz says the extent of damage done after Hurricane Ida from the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry from leaks, spills, flaring, ruptures and chemical releases in the Gulf Coast could be among the worst of such events ever recorded.