Climate

Trump tapped former New York Representative Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin has a 14 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters.

Hurricane Rafael cut off power across the island even before it made landfall on Wednesday as a Category 3 storm. Authorities are still working to restore power after weeks of widespread, prolonged blackouts exacerbated by another hurricane that struck Cuba in late October.

Utility planning documents show rising costs for customers in some regions of the US as tech companies build out energy-hungry data centers, the Washington Post reports:

Meta wanted to build a nuclear-powered AI data center in the US — until a rare species of bee was found at the site, according to the Financial Times.

The Quartz Corp CEO Thomas Guillaume said the company’s assets have been “largely preserved” after Hurricane Helene brought devasting flooding and power outages to the area.

Power outages affect more than 3.3 million customers in Florida, out of the 11.5 million customers tracked by poweroutage.us (which collects data from utilities). Milton made landfall as an “extremely dangerous category 3 hurricane” Wednesday night.

We might not hear from them for a while if Milton knocks out power and communicates like Hurricane Helene did. “Life-threatening” hurricane-force winds and flash floods are on the way, the National Hurricane Center warns.

Hurricane Milton has rapidly intensified into a Category 5 storm and is quickly making its way toward the western coast of Florida, threatening communities still recovering from Hurricane Helene.

Key sites for producing high-purity quartz used in chipmaking “only sustained minor damage,” according to an initial assessment by Sibelco, one of the mining companies in Spruce Pine, NC. But power outages are still a big problem for its operations after the devastating storm.

The 320-mile line would connect the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) power grid to other states for the first time. Unlike most states that send each other electricity in times of need, the Lone Star state has historically been isolated. That made it more vulnerable to power outages during extreme weather like deadly Winter Storm Uri in 2021.

The monstrous storm devastated North Carolina, a key swing state in the presidential election. Communities face a long recovery ahead after Helene leveled towns. With so many people displaced and polling locations flooded, officials are worried about how much harder it could be now for people to cast their votes.

NASA and other federal agencies launched a new website last week that shows past, present, and future sea level rise along America’s coastlines. It combines data from satellites with readings from sensors on the ground to create an interactive map.

A report by CBS 17 in Raleigh goes into how some of the communities in North Carolina’s mountains are communicating after the floods.