What Happens to Hurricane Victims When Congress Can’t Function?

In October of last year, Panama City was ground zero for the fourth-strongest tropical storm in U.S. history. Hurricane Michael, which made landfall with maximum wind speeds of 160 miles per hour and was recently upgraded to a Category 5 storm, ripped more than 1 million trees out of the ground in Panama City alone last October. “We’re a tree city,” Brudnicki told me. “So they were just flying through the air like missiles.”  Those missiles took aim at the homes and businesses of Panama City’s 36,000 residents. After the storm passed, the ground was covered in more than 4 million cubic yards of debris. That may be hard to visualize. Imagine 45 billion eggs’ worth of rotting debris…

What to expect from the 2019 hurricane season

Compared to last year’s devastating Atlantic hurricane season, it seems this year’s will be a bit of a reprieve. According to the Weather Company’s forecast, released Monday, we’ll have a “slightly less active” Atlantic hurricane season than in 2018. But even this less active season can produce powerful tempests: We’re in store for a projected 14 named storms, including seven hurricanes, of which three are major hurricanes (category 3 to 5). The season starts June 1 and continues until Nov. 30, although tropical storms occasionally strike outside that period…

Biodiesel from cotton waste – how Kenyan farmers are fighting drought

Recent years have been particularly tough on Kenya’s farmers. The country has endured three consecutive seasons of below-average rainfall. Last year, the government declared a national drought emergency for 23 of the country’s 47 counties; 13 are under drought emergency so far this year. This erratic rainfall is part of the reason nearly 3 million people are food insecure in the country…