ABC NEWS
"East Coast, Midwest brace for storms while dangerous summer heat returns to the South"
18 AUGUST 2019
A stalled weather system that has been bringing rain to parts of the Southeast will begin to slide northward over the next day bringing with it pop up thunderstorms and heavy downpours up and down much of the east coast and to parts of the Midwest.
The result of this weather pattern means that 1 to 3 inches of rain and possible flash flooding could affect regions in New York and Pennsylvania, parts of Illinois and Indiana, and northern Florida and southern Indiana.
As a cold front slides eastward and interacts with tropical moisture, it will likely cause pop up thunderstorms in parts of the northeast on Monday, with locally heavy downpours possible.
Meanwhile, the Midwest had over 150 reports of severe weather on Saturday including 114 reports of strong winds.
The severe weather occurred in parts of the Northeast, parts of the upper Midwest, and parts of the central plains.
An intense weather system is also expected to move across southeast Kansas and into parts of Missouri, Arkansas, and northeast Oklahoma today.
It is in this area that a Severe Thunderstorm Watch will remain in effect until 10AM CDT with damaging winds being the main threat along with heavy rainfall of up to 1 to 2 inches per hour which could cause flash flooding as well.
A similar – but less intense – system is also expected to move through parts of Minnesota and Iowa with the possibility of heavy rain and localized flash flooding.
Dangerous summer heat will be making its return to much of the country over the next few days as well.
Temperatures in parts of the northeast will get into the 90’s again, including Philadelphia, where a heat advisory has been issued.
Luckily this stretch of heat doesn’t look as pronounced or as long as some of the periods of heat the region had in July.
Meanwhile, in the southern states it will be another hot day with heat indices well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.
In the west the heat will increase once again this upcoming week with temperatures approaching 115 or higher in Death Valley and Palm Springs by Wednesday.
In Phoenix temperatures could reach as high as 112 on Wednesday and Las Vegas will be near 109 by Thursday.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topsto ... P17#page=2
ON THE TIMES WE ARE NOW IN
Re: ON THE TIMES WE ARE NOW IN
ABC NEWS
"Storms and blistering heat move through Midwest, red flag warnings for fire in West"
19 AUGUST 2019
Tumultuous weather is expected to continue across much of the middle of the country after a weekend of heavy summer weather.
There were 422 damaging storm reports over the weekend from the central Plains into the Northeast corridor, including wind gusts of 94 MPH in Texas and winds topping 60 mph in Indiana, Ohio and Illinois.
The hot and humid air mass currently sitting over the Midwest will fuel storms expected to hit the Ohio Valley and the Northeast Monday and into Tuesday.
Strong winds, lightning and heavy rain are expected.
By Tuesday, a new storm system is expected to replace the hot and humid air mass in the Midwest, and severe storms could be possible from Nebraska to Indiana with damaging winds, large hail and even isolated tornadoes.
Damaging winds, hail, and tornadoes could be possible today in the Midwest.
The West Coast, however, will remain incredibly dry and hot for the early part of the week, with red flag warnings issued for most of Wyoming because of high fire danger.
Heat warnings that were in place over the weekend will also continue across much of the Southwest, all the way from California to Las Vegas and into Arizona with many areas anticipating record highs by midweek.
A similar weather pattern in the South will see the Heat Index close to 110 Fahrenheit through parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri.
That heat and humidity should stretch into the Northeast, with heat advisories issued up the east coast from Delaware to Massachusetts, where temperatures will approach 100 degrees today.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topsto ... P17#page=2
"Storms and blistering heat move through Midwest, red flag warnings for fire in West"
19 AUGUST 2019
Tumultuous weather is expected to continue across much of the middle of the country after a weekend of heavy summer weather.
There were 422 damaging storm reports over the weekend from the central Plains into the Northeast corridor, including wind gusts of 94 MPH in Texas and winds topping 60 mph in Indiana, Ohio and Illinois.
The hot and humid air mass currently sitting over the Midwest will fuel storms expected to hit the Ohio Valley and the Northeast Monday and into Tuesday.
Strong winds, lightning and heavy rain are expected.
By Tuesday, a new storm system is expected to replace the hot and humid air mass in the Midwest, and severe storms could be possible from Nebraska to Indiana with damaging winds, large hail and even isolated tornadoes.
Damaging winds, hail, and tornadoes could be possible today in the Midwest.
The West Coast, however, will remain incredibly dry and hot for the early part of the week, with red flag warnings issued for most of Wyoming because of high fire danger.
Heat warnings that were in place over the weekend will also continue across much of the Southwest, all the way from California to Las Vegas and into Arizona with many areas anticipating record highs by midweek.
A similar weather pattern in the South will see the Heat Index close to 110 Fahrenheit through parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri.
That heat and humidity should stretch into the Northeast, with heat advisories issued up the east coast from Delaware to Massachusetts, where temperatures will approach 100 degrees today.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topsto ... P17#page=2
Re: ON THE TIMES WE ARE NOW IN
"Storm that slammed Malta was a microburst"
By Amanda Fries, Albany, New York Times Union
Updated 10:03 pm EDT, Monday, August 19, 2019
Meteorologists confirmed Monday that a microburst is what caused trees to topple, some falling on cars and homes, in an area along the Northway in Malta on Sunday.
The National Weather Service confirmed the damage found between exits 11 and 12 on the Northway was from a microburst, a thunderstorm downdraft that impacts an area of less than 2.5 miles wide and has peak winds that last less than five minutes.
The storm struck the area around 6:35 p.m. Sunday, and covered Ruhle Road on the west and Route 9 on the east, according to the weather service.
Forecasters estimated winds reached 90 mph.
The worst of the damage was on the east side of the Northway in the Malta Gardens and Woodfield communities.
There were no injuries.
Microbursts produce straight-line winds, unlike tornadoes where winds rotate, but both can be damaging.
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article ... o-18132172
By Amanda Fries, Albany, New York Times Union
Updated 10:03 pm EDT, Monday, August 19, 2019
Meteorologists confirmed Monday that a microburst is what caused trees to topple, some falling on cars and homes, in an area along the Northway in Malta on Sunday.
The National Weather Service confirmed the damage found between exits 11 and 12 on the Northway was from a microburst, a thunderstorm downdraft that impacts an area of less than 2.5 miles wide and has peak winds that last less than five minutes.
The storm struck the area around 6:35 p.m. Sunday, and covered Ruhle Road on the west and Route 9 on the east, according to the weather service.
Forecasters estimated winds reached 90 mph.
The worst of the damage was on the east side of the Northway in the Malta Gardens and Woodfield communities.
There were no injuries.
Microbursts produce straight-line winds, unlike tornadoes where winds rotate, but both can be damaging.
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article ... o-18132172
Re: ON THE TIMES WE ARE NOW IN
"Here's why the Capital Region is getting slammed by storms"
By Steve Hughes, Albany, New York Times Union
Published 10:56 am EDT, Monday, August 19, 2019
It's not your imagination.
The Capital Region has experienced more violent thunderstorms than usual this summer.
The Capital Region continued to clean up Monday from the latest in a series of multi-day thunderstorm systems rumbling through the area.
The storms have brought high winds, above-normal amounts of rain, flooding and thousands of power outages.
Rainfall totals through Aug. 19
Altamont - 2.8 inches
Queensbury - 2.29 inches
Albany International Airport - 3.1 inches
Albany - 5.25 inches
Niskayuna - 4.65 inches
Brunswick - 3.45 inches
Wynantskill - 5.86 inches
Saratoga Springs - 3.57 inches
Source: National Weather Service
"We have had quite a few thunderstorms," said Mike Evans, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
"We have issued quite a few thunderstorm warnings for our part of the country over the last several weeks after the first half of the summer was pretty quiet."
The main culprit behind the series of storms is a stronger-than-usual jet stream, Evans said.
"So we've had our usual heat and humidity but usually in the month of August the jet stream gets very, very weak."
"But this year the jet stream has stayed more like what you might see in June," he said.
"So as a result some of our thunderstorms have been a little bit stronger than what we might normally see."
Albany typically receives around 3.5 inches of rain in August.
As of Monday, the official total for the month was 3.1 inches, Evans said.
But some places have seen more than 5 inches of rainfall this month.
The storms have National Grid's restoration crews continually battling power outages.
The company has dealt with around 120,000 outages since July 4, spokesman Patrick Stella said.
"We drill for this sort of situation but it's becoming more regular and longer term than usual," he said, adding that the restoration work becomes harder on work crews in the summer with the heat.
Many of the outages, because of the storms' tracks, have focused on Schenectady and Saratoga counties, Stella said.
This past weekend's storms knocked out power to a combined total of more than 50,000 customers, according to tallies of the company outage map.
This summer National Grid introduced a new text alert system.
Customers can sign up to receive a text during a storm asking if their power is out, which helps the company identify outages quickly.
"A lot of people think we automatically know when your power is out, we don't," he said.
Some of what is happening is simply bad luck, said Nick Bassill, a meteorologist at the University of Albany.
"Friday, that storm was the only damage-causer in eastern New York, so in a sense, Albany just got unlucky in that it was over Albany rather than 30 miles south or 10 miles east," he said.
The consecutive days of rain and humidity creates a loop that feeds the next storm moving in, Bassill said.
Behind that stronger-than-normal jet stream, late in the summer a large high pressure system develops in the Central Plains.
When the two systems align just right, the combination with hot and humid weather creates bigger storms, Bassill said.
In that case, what would be an ordinary thunderstorm with rain and little bit of lighting develops into something that's more organized and more damaging, he said.
The Capital Region will see at least one more jet-stream-driven system this week before a few dry days are forecast.
A system on Wednesday could cause the same type of powerful storms that passed through the area over the weekend, according to the National Weather Service.
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article ... 348132.php
By Steve Hughes, Albany, New York Times Union
Published 10:56 am EDT, Monday, August 19, 2019
It's not your imagination.
The Capital Region has experienced more violent thunderstorms than usual this summer.
The Capital Region continued to clean up Monday from the latest in a series of multi-day thunderstorm systems rumbling through the area.
The storms have brought high winds, above-normal amounts of rain, flooding and thousands of power outages.
Rainfall totals through Aug. 19
Altamont - 2.8 inches
Queensbury - 2.29 inches
Albany International Airport - 3.1 inches
Albany - 5.25 inches
Niskayuna - 4.65 inches
Brunswick - 3.45 inches
Wynantskill - 5.86 inches
Saratoga Springs - 3.57 inches
Source: National Weather Service
"We have had quite a few thunderstorms," said Mike Evans, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
"We have issued quite a few thunderstorm warnings for our part of the country over the last several weeks after the first half of the summer was pretty quiet."
The main culprit behind the series of storms is a stronger-than-usual jet stream, Evans said.
"So we've had our usual heat and humidity but usually in the month of August the jet stream gets very, very weak."
"But this year the jet stream has stayed more like what you might see in June," he said.
"So as a result some of our thunderstorms have been a little bit stronger than what we might normally see."
Albany typically receives around 3.5 inches of rain in August.
As of Monday, the official total for the month was 3.1 inches, Evans said.
But some places have seen more than 5 inches of rainfall this month.
The storms have National Grid's restoration crews continually battling power outages.
The company has dealt with around 120,000 outages since July 4, spokesman Patrick Stella said.
"We drill for this sort of situation but it's becoming more regular and longer term than usual," he said, adding that the restoration work becomes harder on work crews in the summer with the heat.
Many of the outages, because of the storms' tracks, have focused on Schenectady and Saratoga counties, Stella said.
This past weekend's storms knocked out power to a combined total of more than 50,000 customers, according to tallies of the company outage map.
This summer National Grid introduced a new text alert system.
Customers can sign up to receive a text during a storm asking if their power is out, which helps the company identify outages quickly.
"A lot of people think we automatically know when your power is out, we don't," he said.
Some of what is happening is simply bad luck, said Nick Bassill, a meteorologist at the University of Albany.
"Friday, that storm was the only damage-causer in eastern New York, so in a sense, Albany just got unlucky in that it was over Albany rather than 30 miles south or 10 miles east," he said.
The consecutive days of rain and humidity creates a loop that feeds the next storm moving in, Bassill said.
Behind that stronger-than-normal jet stream, late in the summer a large high pressure system develops in the Central Plains.
When the two systems align just right, the combination with hot and humid weather creates bigger storms, Bassill said.
In that case, what would be an ordinary thunderstorm with rain and little bit of lighting develops into something that's more organized and more damaging, he said.
The Capital Region will see at least one more jet-stream-driven system this week before a few dry days are forecast.
A system on Wednesday could cause the same type of powerful storms that passed through the area over the weekend, according to the National Weather Service.
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article ... 348132.php
Re: ON THE TIMES WE ARE NOW IN
ABC NEWS
"Severe storms targeting Midwest, Northeast as West stays hot"
20 AUGUST 2019
More than 140 damaging storms were reported on Monday from Georgia up to Maine.
New Jersey and Delaware experienced gusts of 75 mph, and wind speeds in Long Island, New York, reached 67 mph.
Parts of Massachusetts saw hail larger than golf balls as areas around Philadelphia had trees knocked onto power lines and cars.
Severe weather in the Midwest on Tuesday -- including potential storms all the way from Nebraska to Ohio -- is likely to make its way to the Northeast by Wednesday.
Damaging winds, large hail and tornadoes are the biggest threats.
The cold front is forecast to reach the Northeast on Wednesday afternoon.
Damaging winds and flash flooding are the biggest threats.
Nine southern states are under heat warnings and advisories as heat indices could top 110.
The Southwest remains hot, and parts of California, Nevada and Arizona could see record highs by Wednesday.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topsto ... P17#page=2
"Severe storms targeting Midwest, Northeast as West stays hot"
20 AUGUST 2019
More than 140 damaging storms were reported on Monday from Georgia up to Maine.
New Jersey and Delaware experienced gusts of 75 mph, and wind speeds in Long Island, New York, reached 67 mph.
Parts of Massachusetts saw hail larger than golf balls as areas around Philadelphia had trees knocked onto power lines and cars.
Severe weather in the Midwest on Tuesday -- including potential storms all the way from Nebraska to Ohio -- is likely to make its way to the Northeast by Wednesday.
Damaging winds, large hail and tornadoes are the biggest threats.
The cold front is forecast to reach the Northeast on Wednesday afternoon.
Damaging winds and flash flooding are the biggest threats.
Nine southern states are under heat warnings and advisories as heat indices could top 110.
The Southwest remains hot, and parts of California, Nevada and Arizona could see record highs by Wednesday.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topsto ... P17#page=2
Re: ON THE TIMES WE ARE NOW IN
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"‘Shark!’: Cape Cod Recoils in a Summer of Sightings, Real and Imagined"
Kate Taylor
20 AUGUST 2019
WELLFLEET, Mass. — Anxiety is hanging over the Cape Cod beaches this summer.
Great white sharks are increasingly prevalent along the Cape’s beaches, attracted by the expanding population of gray seals.
It is in lifeguards’ gazes as they scan the water.
It is in the three young men playing a game by the shoreline who do not swim out to retrieve their ball when it lands too far out in the surf.
It is in the panicked stampede out of the water when a seal swims by and someone on the beach mistakenly yells the word already hovering in the back of everyone’s mind: “Shark!”
It is feeling more than a little like Amity Island on the Cape this season.
Nearly a year ago, in September, a 26-year-old man named Arthur Medici died after he was bitten by a great white shark while boogie boarding on a beach in the Outer Cape town of Wellfleet.
There had not been a fatal shark attack in Massachusetts since 1936, but in recent years many people on the Cape had thought it was only a matter of time.
Great white sharks had become increasingly prevalent along the Cape’s beaches, attracted by the expanding population of gray seals.
A tourist had been bitten in 2012, and a month before Mr. Medici’s death, a doctor was bitten, surviving but requiring nine operations.
But if many people on the Cape, including local officials, had been able to ignore the shark problem or play it down, Mr. Medici’s death changed that.
It has altered life for anyone who goes into the ocean and has set off intense debates over what should be done, from deploying buoys or drones that would detect sharks to culling the seal population.
It has also raised concerns about what will happen when there is another attack, which many expect there will be.
Some people say they fear that eventually the Cape will become another Réunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean where swimming and surfing are severely restricted because of an abundance of shark attacks in its waters.
Even without such a ban, some say, another serious attack could doom the Cape’s vitally important tourist economy.
“It hurts because you know it’s inevitable,” Marc Angelillo, a surfer and surf equipment salesman based in Orleans, a town in the Cape’s elbow, said of another attack.
“We don’t have things in place."
"It’s just a matter of time, again.”
It is rare for sharks to attack humans.
There were 66 confirmed unprovoked shark attacks in 2018, four of which were fatal, according to the International Shark Attack File by the University of Florida.
Nearly half of those attacks occurred in the United States, and nearly a quarter of them in Florida.
But those statistics have not reduced the agitation on Cape Cod, where the saga that has unfolded has enough characters and subplots to fill out a “Jaws” reboot.
There are the cautious town officials, wary of taking any measures to deter an attack that might give beachgoers a false sense of security and expose their towns to liability.
There is the outspoken county commissioner, who has no formal role in managing beaches or wildlife but has fervently argued for killing sharks and seals.
Marine biologists and conservationists have been providing critical information to the towns, though some frustrated citizens deride them as “shark whisperers” who care more about animals than humans.
Tourists have been dutifully going into the water no further than waist deep, as they have been advised, and exiting the water when a shark has been spotted, as has happened nearly once a day on a Cape beach this month.
And then there are the surfers.
Their lives have been upended since Mr. Medici’s death, which made it no longer possible to ignore the risks of surfing on the Cape.
Surfers are in a kind of collective state of mourning, some simmering with anger at what they perceive as a slow government response and others wrestling with whether they can still find joy in surfing the Cape’s waves.
“It kind of infects my mind,” Timothy Schirmang, a 35-year-old surfer from Provincetown, said, explaining why he would never use Sharktivity, an app created by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy to send alerts of confirmed shark sightings.
For now, the Cape’s six Atlantic-facing towns have focused on warning people about the risks and putting tools on the beach to respond to attacks, like trauma kits and 911 call boxes.
They have hired an environmental consulting firm to analyze shark mitigation tactics.
That report is expected in September.
Daniel Hoort, the town administrator in Wellfleet, acknowledged that the discussion of sharks had grown contentious and that many people wanted the towns to move faster.
“If we had a proven method that was proven to work, we would absolutely consider it, but right now we just have a lot of salespeople who are trying to sell us products,” he said.
Asked about criticism that a White Shark Working Group — which includes town administrators, public safety officials and representatives from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, the National Park Service and the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy — meets in private, Mr. Hoort said, “Sometimes we just have to be able to have open, frank discussions and not worry about who is in the audience that’s going to take something that we say out of context.”
“There are people out there,” he said, “who want to know why we’re not out killing seals and killing sharks.”
Among those people is A.J. Salerno, who works in financial services and lives in Eastham, just south of Wellfleet.
His two teenage sons love to surf, but since Mr. Medici was killed, Mr. Salerno and his wife no longer let them surf on the Cape.
Instead, the family drives two hours away to a beach in Rhode Island.
Great white sharks are less of a concern on Rhode Island beaches, because the seal population there is much less dense than in Massachusetts, and in Maine, where the sharks spread out over a broader area rather than concentrating in places where people are swimming and surfing.
“Nobody wants to say what needs to be done,” Mr. Salerno said, adding that “the seals need to be culled yesterday, the sharks need to be fished.”
The marine biologists, Mr. Salerno suggested, were inherently conflicted.
“The people that are keeping all the statistics on this are people who make a career out of studying sharks,” he said.
Referring to Gregory Skomal, a scientist with the Division of Marine Fisheries and the state’s pre-eminent shark expert, he said: “The last thing Greg Skomal and his band of shark whisperers are going to say is the sharks need to go.”
The sharks and the seals are protected by law, the seals by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, which made possible a rebound in their population, and the sharks by a combination of state and federal law.
Even if officials could cull the seals, it might not solve the shark threat, Dr. Skomal said.
Because the 50,000 seals on Cape Cod are part of a population of half a million that moves throughout the western North Atlantic, he said, any small number of seals killed would quickly be replaced by others.
“Does the general public have the stomach to remove tens of thousands of seals?” Dr. Skomal said.
“It’s a knee-jerk reaction, in my opinion, that is not likely to work.”
Some worried that the shark attacks would harm Cape tourism this summer; local officials consulted scientists and public relations experts about what to tell tourists about sharks, in order to be honest but also “maintain some confidence in the destination,” as one official put it.
But so far there is nothing to suggest that the sharks have kept people away.
The only businesses clearly affected are surf schools, some of which have closed, and surf shops, where sales of surfboards, body boards and wet suits have dropped.
One day last week, at Head of the Meadow Beach in Truro, further up the Cape from Wellfleet, lifeguards had to clear the water twice because they had spotted sharks.
But most beachgoers seemed to be taking the sharks in stride.
Cara Abraham, a social studies teacher from Roxbury, Conn., was watching her children play in shallow water.
She said she and her husband had grown up coming to the Cape and were not overly alarmed, although no one in the family would go very far into the water.
“I think what’s actually scarier to me is that they’re finding them on the Bay side” of the Cape, she said of the sharks.
“Those are the safe beaches."
"That’s where you take your toddlers.”
The sharks have driven away Nina Lanctot, 26, a surfer, former lifeguard in Wellfleet and trained emergency medical technician.
Ms. Lanctot was on the beach last year when Mr. Medici was attacked.
She put a tourniquet on his leg and performed CPR while waiting for an ambulance.
She said she had known that such a day might come — she had kept tourniquets in her car for the last six summers.
Still, she said she was stunned by what happened.
In January, she left her parents and friends behind and moved to Maine, where she said she can surf without worrying about sharks.
As much as she loves Cape Cod and the ocean, she said, “It’s not worth risking my life over anymore.”
“I’m just lucky,” she added, “that I was given the opportunity to enjoy the Cape while it was somewhat safe, and I made it out alive.”
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/shark- ... P17#page=2
"‘Shark!’: Cape Cod Recoils in a Summer of Sightings, Real and Imagined"
Kate Taylor
20 AUGUST 2019
WELLFLEET, Mass. — Anxiety is hanging over the Cape Cod beaches this summer.
Great white sharks are increasingly prevalent along the Cape’s beaches, attracted by the expanding population of gray seals.
It is in lifeguards’ gazes as they scan the water.
It is in the three young men playing a game by the shoreline who do not swim out to retrieve their ball when it lands too far out in the surf.
It is in the panicked stampede out of the water when a seal swims by and someone on the beach mistakenly yells the word already hovering in the back of everyone’s mind: “Shark!”
It is feeling more than a little like Amity Island on the Cape this season.
Nearly a year ago, in September, a 26-year-old man named Arthur Medici died after he was bitten by a great white shark while boogie boarding on a beach in the Outer Cape town of Wellfleet.
There had not been a fatal shark attack in Massachusetts since 1936, but in recent years many people on the Cape had thought it was only a matter of time.
Great white sharks had become increasingly prevalent along the Cape’s beaches, attracted by the expanding population of gray seals.
A tourist had been bitten in 2012, and a month before Mr. Medici’s death, a doctor was bitten, surviving but requiring nine operations.
But if many people on the Cape, including local officials, had been able to ignore the shark problem or play it down, Mr. Medici’s death changed that.
It has altered life for anyone who goes into the ocean and has set off intense debates over what should be done, from deploying buoys or drones that would detect sharks to culling the seal population.
It has also raised concerns about what will happen when there is another attack, which many expect there will be.
Some people say they fear that eventually the Cape will become another Réunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean where swimming and surfing are severely restricted because of an abundance of shark attacks in its waters.
Even without such a ban, some say, another serious attack could doom the Cape’s vitally important tourist economy.
“It hurts because you know it’s inevitable,” Marc Angelillo, a surfer and surf equipment salesman based in Orleans, a town in the Cape’s elbow, said of another attack.
“We don’t have things in place."
"It’s just a matter of time, again.”
It is rare for sharks to attack humans.
There were 66 confirmed unprovoked shark attacks in 2018, four of which were fatal, according to the International Shark Attack File by the University of Florida.
Nearly half of those attacks occurred in the United States, and nearly a quarter of them in Florida.
But those statistics have not reduced the agitation on Cape Cod, where the saga that has unfolded has enough characters and subplots to fill out a “Jaws” reboot.
There are the cautious town officials, wary of taking any measures to deter an attack that might give beachgoers a false sense of security and expose their towns to liability.
There is the outspoken county commissioner, who has no formal role in managing beaches or wildlife but has fervently argued for killing sharks and seals.
Marine biologists and conservationists have been providing critical information to the towns, though some frustrated citizens deride them as “shark whisperers” who care more about animals than humans.
Tourists have been dutifully going into the water no further than waist deep, as they have been advised, and exiting the water when a shark has been spotted, as has happened nearly once a day on a Cape beach this month.
And then there are the surfers.
Their lives have been upended since Mr. Medici’s death, which made it no longer possible to ignore the risks of surfing on the Cape.
Surfers are in a kind of collective state of mourning, some simmering with anger at what they perceive as a slow government response and others wrestling with whether they can still find joy in surfing the Cape’s waves.
“It kind of infects my mind,” Timothy Schirmang, a 35-year-old surfer from Provincetown, said, explaining why he would never use Sharktivity, an app created by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy to send alerts of confirmed shark sightings.
For now, the Cape’s six Atlantic-facing towns have focused on warning people about the risks and putting tools on the beach to respond to attacks, like trauma kits and 911 call boxes.
They have hired an environmental consulting firm to analyze shark mitigation tactics.
That report is expected in September.
Daniel Hoort, the town administrator in Wellfleet, acknowledged that the discussion of sharks had grown contentious and that many people wanted the towns to move faster.
“If we had a proven method that was proven to work, we would absolutely consider it, but right now we just have a lot of salespeople who are trying to sell us products,” he said.
Asked about criticism that a White Shark Working Group — which includes town administrators, public safety officials and representatives from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, the National Park Service and the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy — meets in private, Mr. Hoort said, “Sometimes we just have to be able to have open, frank discussions and not worry about who is in the audience that’s going to take something that we say out of context.”
“There are people out there,” he said, “who want to know why we’re not out killing seals and killing sharks.”
Among those people is A.J. Salerno, who works in financial services and lives in Eastham, just south of Wellfleet.
His two teenage sons love to surf, but since Mr. Medici was killed, Mr. Salerno and his wife no longer let them surf on the Cape.
Instead, the family drives two hours away to a beach in Rhode Island.
Great white sharks are less of a concern on Rhode Island beaches, because the seal population there is much less dense than in Massachusetts, and in Maine, where the sharks spread out over a broader area rather than concentrating in places where people are swimming and surfing.
“Nobody wants to say what needs to be done,” Mr. Salerno said, adding that “the seals need to be culled yesterday, the sharks need to be fished.”
The marine biologists, Mr. Salerno suggested, were inherently conflicted.
“The people that are keeping all the statistics on this are people who make a career out of studying sharks,” he said.
Referring to Gregory Skomal, a scientist with the Division of Marine Fisheries and the state’s pre-eminent shark expert, he said: “The last thing Greg Skomal and his band of shark whisperers are going to say is the sharks need to go.”
The sharks and the seals are protected by law, the seals by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, which made possible a rebound in their population, and the sharks by a combination of state and federal law.
Even if officials could cull the seals, it might not solve the shark threat, Dr. Skomal said.
Because the 50,000 seals on Cape Cod are part of a population of half a million that moves throughout the western North Atlantic, he said, any small number of seals killed would quickly be replaced by others.
“Does the general public have the stomach to remove tens of thousands of seals?” Dr. Skomal said.
“It’s a knee-jerk reaction, in my opinion, that is not likely to work.”
Some worried that the shark attacks would harm Cape tourism this summer; local officials consulted scientists and public relations experts about what to tell tourists about sharks, in order to be honest but also “maintain some confidence in the destination,” as one official put it.
But so far there is nothing to suggest that the sharks have kept people away.
The only businesses clearly affected are surf schools, some of which have closed, and surf shops, where sales of surfboards, body boards and wet suits have dropped.
One day last week, at Head of the Meadow Beach in Truro, further up the Cape from Wellfleet, lifeguards had to clear the water twice because they had spotted sharks.
But most beachgoers seemed to be taking the sharks in stride.
Cara Abraham, a social studies teacher from Roxbury, Conn., was watching her children play in shallow water.
She said she and her husband had grown up coming to the Cape and were not overly alarmed, although no one in the family would go very far into the water.
“I think what’s actually scarier to me is that they’re finding them on the Bay side” of the Cape, she said of the sharks.
“Those are the safe beaches."
"That’s where you take your toddlers.”
The sharks have driven away Nina Lanctot, 26, a surfer, former lifeguard in Wellfleet and trained emergency medical technician.
Ms. Lanctot was on the beach last year when Mr. Medici was attacked.
She put a tourniquet on his leg and performed CPR while waiting for an ambulance.
She said she had known that such a day might come — she had kept tourniquets in her car for the last six summers.
Still, she said she was stunned by what happened.
In January, she left her parents and friends behind and moved to Maine, where she said she can surf without worrying about sharks.
As much as she loves Cape Cod and the ocean, she said, “It’s not worth risking my life over anymore.”
“I’m just lucky,” she added, “that I was given the opportunity to enjoy the Cape while it was somewhat safe, and I made it out alive.”
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/shark- ... P17#page=2
Re: ON THE TIMES WE ARE NOW IN
"Nearly 11,000 without power after severe storms"
By Mike Goodwin, Tim Wilkin, and Emily Masters
Updated 10:02 pm EDT, Wednesday, August 21, 2019
ALBANY — Nearly 11,000 homes and businesses were left without power in the Capital Region after severe thunderstorms swept through the area Wednesday afternoon.
About 4,460 National Grid customers were without power in Rensselaer County, and 3,042 in Columbia County.
About 2,235 homes and businesses in Albany County, and about 1,150 customers in Saratoga County, were also in the dark as of 7 p.m.
The afternoon began with fears of potential tornadoes in the Mohawk Valley.
It's possible a tornado touched down in Johnstown, but the National Weather Service can't say for sure until they send a meteorologist to the area Thursday to investigate.
The line of storms formed over Fulton County at about 1:30 p.m. and strengthened as it moved over Saratoga County, weather service meteorologist Steve DiRienzo said.
The storm caused damage in Malta and drenched the race course in Saratoga Springs.
Racing was delayed for about 50 minutes before the sixth race got underway.
The storms then moved south, dropping one-inch hail on Cohoes and quickly flooding streets in Troy and Brunswick, DiRienzo said.
Heavy rain and lightning continued as the storms moved across Albany and into Rensselaer and Columbia counties, where most of the downed wires and trees were recorded, DiRienzo said.
Gusts reached 43 mph in Voorheesville and 33 mph in Kinderhook, according to the state Mesonet.
Flooding forced the closure of several roads in Rensselaer County.
Route 150 in Sand Lake is closed in both directions, north of Sand Lake Springs Way, and Route 278 is closed in both directions between routes 2 and 7 in Brunswick, according to 511NY.
River Road in Schaghticoke is also closed, and Geiser Road in North Greenbush is partially blocked by debris, according to the county government's Facebook page.
Water pressure caused manhole covers to be dislodged in other areas.
Federal Street and Sage Avenue in Troy were also damaged during the storm, and are closed between 6th Avenue and 15th Street, along the edge of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's campus.
The Washington County Fair was closed on Wednesday because of the weather.
The fair runs through Sunday at the fairgrounds in Greenwich.
The region had seen two days of relatively dry weather after sustaining three straight days of thunderstorms that flooded streets and left thousands without utility service.
Two waves of thunderstorms passed through the region Wednesday morning.
A pre-dawn storm left several hundred National Grid customers without utility service, primarily in Schenectady and Saratoga counties.
Most service had been restored by noon.
Wednesday's wave of storms are part of a heavier than usual string of late-summer thunderstorms that are being fueled by a stronger than expected jet stream.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday are expected to be partly to mostly sunny with highs in the upper 70s and low 80s.
The weather service says the jets stream is often to blame for thunderstorms that sweep through upstate New York during the late spring and early summer.
But the jet stream is usually weaker by August.
That weakening has not happened this year.
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article ... o-18132172
By Mike Goodwin, Tim Wilkin, and Emily Masters
Updated 10:02 pm EDT, Wednesday, August 21, 2019
ALBANY — Nearly 11,000 homes and businesses were left without power in the Capital Region after severe thunderstorms swept through the area Wednesday afternoon.
About 4,460 National Grid customers were without power in Rensselaer County, and 3,042 in Columbia County.
About 2,235 homes and businesses in Albany County, and about 1,150 customers in Saratoga County, were also in the dark as of 7 p.m.
The afternoon began with fears of potential tornadoes in the Mohawk Valley.
It's possible a tornado touched down in Johnstown, but the National Weather Service can't say for sure until they send a meteorologist to the area Thursday to investigate.
The line of storms formed over Fulton County at about 1:30 p.m. and strengthened as it moved over Saratoga County, weather service meteorologist Steve DiRienzo said.
The storm caused damage in Malta and drenched the race course in Saratoga Springs.
Racing was delayed for about 50 minutes before the sixth race got underway.
The storms then moved south, dropping one-inch hail on Cohoes and quickly flooding streets in Troy and Brunswick, DiRienzo said.
Heavy rain and lightning continued as the storms moved across Albany and into Rensselaer and Columbia counties, where most of the downed wires and trees were recorded, DiRienzo said.
Gusts reached 43 mph in Voorheesville and 33 mph in Kinderhook, according to the state Mesonet.
Flooding forced the closure of several roads in Rensselaer County.
Route 150 in Sand Lake is closed in both directions, north of Sand Lake Springs Way, and Route 278 is closed in both directions between routes 2 and 7 in Brunswick, according to 511NY.
River Road in Schaghticoke is also closed, and Geiser Road in North Greenbush is partially blocked by debris, according to the county government's Facebook page.
Water pressure caused manhole covers to be dislodged in other areas.
Federal Street and Sage Avenue in Troy were also damaged during the storm, and are closed between 6th Avenue and 15th Street, along the edge of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's campus.
The Washington County Fair was closed on Wednesday because of the weather.
The fair runs through Sunday at the fairgrounds in Greenwich.
The region had seen two days of relatively dry weather after sustaining three straight days of thunderstorms that flooded streets and left thousands without utility service.
Two waves of thunderstorms passed through the region Wednesday morning.
A pre-dawn storm left several hundred National Grid customers without utility service, primarily in Schenectady and Saratoga counties.
Most service had been restored by noon.
Wednesday's wave of storms are part of a heavier than usual string of late-summer thunderstorms that are being fueled by a stronger than expected jet stream.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday are expected to be partly to mostly sunny with highs in the upper 70s and low 80s.
The weather service says the jets stream is often to blame for thunderstorms that sweep through upstate New York during the late spring and early summer.
But the jet stream is usually weaker by August.
That weakening has not happened this year.
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article ... o-18132172
Re: ON THE TIMES WE ARE NOW IN
ABC NEWS
"Severe storms stretch from Plains to the Carolinas as fire dangers grow in West"
23 AUGUST 2019
Strong storms blew through the Northeast on Thursday evening, delivering 60 mph wind gusts to Long Island and New York and leaving thousands without power.
The same cold front will slowly drift south Friday and stall across the southern states, from the Carolinas to the Plains.
Severe storms are expected Friday in southern Virginia and North Carolina and also in the western Plains from Nebraska to western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle.
These areas could see damaging winds, large hail and an isolated tornado.
Heavy rain from these storms could bring flash flooding as well to parts of the South.
Fire danger in California
Dry conditions, gusty winds and warm temperatures are fueling a 600-acre wildfire in Northern California's Mount Shasta County.
The fire is threatening more than 1,000 homes and has forced thousands to be evacuated.
It is just 20% contained.
No rain of any kind is forecast in Northern California over the next seven days.
More gusty, erratic winds are possible in the fire area Friday afternoon and into the weekend.
There are red flag warnings for parts of Wyoming, where fire danger is running high.
Tropical update
An area of weak low pressure off the coast of southern Florida is producing rainy weather over the eastern Bahamas on Friday morning.
The forecast takes this low pressure up and along Florida’s east coast through the weekend, and along the Carolina coast early next week.
The National Hurricane Center says there is a 70% chance for development into a tropical depression over the weekend or into early next week.
The biggest threat with this tropical system will be heavy rain from Florida into the Carolinas.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topsto ... P17#page=2
"Severe storms stretch from Plains to the Carolinas as fire dangers grow in West"
23 AUGUST 2019
Strong storms blew through the Northeast on Thursday evening, delivering 60 mph wind gusts to Long Island and New York and leaving thousands without power.
The same cold front will slowly drift south Friday and stall across the southern states, from the Carolinas to the Plains.
Severe storms are expected Friday in southern Virginia and North Carolina and also in the western Plains from Nebraska to western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle.
These areas could see damaging winds, large hail and an isolated tornado.
Heavy rain from these storms could bring flash flooding as well to parts of the South.
Fire danger in California
Dry conditions, gusty winds and warm temperatures are fueling a 600-acre wildfire in Northern California's Mount Shasta County.
The fire is threatening more than 1,000 homes and has forced thousands to be evacuated.
It is just 20% contained.
No rain of any kind is forecast in Northern California over the next seven days.
More gusty, erratic winds are possible in the fire area Friday afternoon and into the weekend.
There are red flag warnings for parts of Wyoming, where fire danger is running high.
Tropical update
An area of weak low pressure off the coast of southern Florida is producing rainy weather over the eastern Bahamas on Friday morning.
The forecast takes this low pressure up and along Florida’s east coast through the weekend, and along the Carolina coast early next week.
The National Hurricane Center says there is a 70% chance for development into a tropical depression over the weekend or into early next week.
The biggest threat with this tropical system will be heavy rain from Florida into the Carolinas.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topsto ... P17#page=2
Re: ON THE TIMES WE ARE NOW IN
"Tornadoes confirmed in Johnstown, Saratoga Springs"
Staff report, Albany, New York Times Union
Updated 4:15 pm EDT, Thursday, August 22, 2019
The National Weather Service confirmed tornadoes touched down Wednesday in Saratoga Springs and Johnstown, Fulton County.
Both were category EF1, meaning the tornadoes were relatively weak on the scale of zero to five.
The Saratoga Springs tornado touched down at 3:25 p.m. over a half-mile, 75-yard path near Gilbert Road.
It had a maximum wind speed of 105 mph, the weather service said.
No one was injured but dozens of trees, some over a foot in diameter, were uprooted, and a tin roof was peeled off a large barn.
The Fulton County tornado touched down at 2:24 p.m. and covered about a half-mile swath, the weather service reports.
The damage starts at Earl Road in the town of Johnstown, continues across Route 29 and O'Neil Avenue toward Pleasant Avenue, and ends near Irving Street in the city of Johnstown, according to the Fulton County Office of Emergency Management.
No one was injured in the Johnstown twister.
Damage was confined to uprooted trees and wind speed was estimated at 85 mph.
The National Weather Service made the designations Thursday afternoon after visiting the sites of each tornado.
The tornados were part of Wednesday's powerful storm that hit the Mohawk Valley and Capital Region.
Close to 11,000 National Grid customers were without power at one time as a result, including sections or Albany and Rensselaer counties.
Wet road conditions were said to be a factor in a Columbia County crash Wednesday evening that killed a 7-year-old boy.
The collision happened at about 6:40 p.m. on County Route 7A near Twin Bridges Road.
Police said their preliminary investigation shows that Christina I. Gubler, 28, driving a Honda Civic south on County Route 7A, with passenger Caleb P. Dier, 7, both of Craryville, lost control in the slick conditions and entered the northbound lane.
Gubler's car struck a northbound Toyota Avalon driven by Michael T. Super, 71, of Hudson, with Mary B. Super, 71, a passenger.
Gubler and the Supers were taken to Albany Medical Center Hospital with serious, but not believed to be life-threatening, injuries.
Caleb was taken by Greenport Rescue to Columbia Memorial Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead, troopers said.
Also responding to the scene was Copake Fire Department, Northern Dutchess Paramedics, Copake Rescue, the Columbia County EMS Coordinator, and Troop K Collision Reconstruction Unit.
The road was closed for an extended time after the accident.
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article ... 371134.php
Staff report, Albany, New York Times Union
Updated 4:15 pm EDT, Thursday, August 22, 2019
The National Weather Service confirmed tornadoes touched down Wednesday in Saratoga Springs and Johnstown, Fulton County.
Both were category EF1, meaning the tornadoes were relatively weak on the scale of zero to five.
The Saratoga Springs tornado touched down at 3:25 p.m. over a half-mile, 75-yard path near Gilbert Road.
It had a maximum wind speed of 105 mph, the weather service said.
No one was injured but dozens of trees, some over a foot in diameter, were uprooted, and a tin roof was peeled off a large barn.
The Fulton County tornado touched down at 2:24 p.m. and covered about a half-mile swath, the weather service reports.
The damage starts at Earl Road in the town of Johnstown, continues across Route 29 and O'Neil Avenue toward Pleasant Avenue, and ends near Irving Street in the city of Johnstown, according to the Fulton County Office of Emergency Management.
No one was injured in the Johnstown twister.
Damage was confined to uprooted trees and wind speed was estimated at 85 mph.
The National Weather Service made the designations Thursday afternoon after visiting the sites of each tornado.
The tornados were part of Wednesday's powerful storm that hit the Mohawk Valley and Capital Region.
Close to 11,000 National Grid customers were without power at one time as a result, including sections or Albany and Rensselaer counties.
Wet road conditions were said to be a factor in a Columbia County crash Wednesday evening that killed a 7-year-old boy.
The collision happened at about 6:40 p.m. on County Route 7A near Twin Bridges Road.
Police said their preliminary investigation shows that Christina I. Gubler, 28, driving a Honda Civic south on County Route 7A, with passenger Caleb P. Dier, 7, both of Craryville, lost control in the slick conditions and entered the northbound lane.
Gubler's car struck a northbound Toyota Avalon driven by Michael T. Super, 71, of Hudson, with Mary B. Super, 71, a passenger.
Gubler and the Supers were taken to Albany Medical Center Hospital with serious, but not believed to be life-threatening, injuries.
Caleb was taken by Greenport Rescue to Columbia Memorial Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead, troopers said.
Also responding to the scene was Copake Fire Department, Northern Dutchess Paramedics, Copake Rescue, the Columbia County EMS Coordinator, and Troop K Collision Reconstruction Unit.
The road was closed for an extended time after the accident.
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article ... 371134.php
Re: ON THE TIMES WE ARE NOW IN
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Summer on the Swollen Great Lakes"
Mitch Smith and Lyndon French
25 AUGUST 2019
CHICAGO — Two rare birds, a major music festival and an overflowing Lake Michigan all claimed a beach on Chicago’s North Side.
But there was not enough sand to go around.
The lake, which rose to levels not seen in decades, formed lagoons where sunbathers once lounged.
The festival, which would have featured disco yoga sessions and musicians across three stages, was canceled.
And the birds, one of only about 75 mating pairs of the endangered piping plover left in the Great Lakes region, lost their nest in the rising water.
With help from more than 180 volunteers who kept curious humans and errant volleyballs at a distance, the tiny, photogenic plovers recently built a new nest further inland, away from the swollen waters, and mated again.
Three chicks hatched.
Two survived.
“How do we make things succeed even in the face of the most daunting challenges?” said Tamima Itani, who some weeks spent 20 to 30 hours protecting the piping plovers, including one harrowing moment when an off-leash dog ran straight toward the chicks.
Across the Great Lakes, high water levels have upended summer, swallowing beaches, closing in on century-old buildings and threatening wildlife.
“Long term, I don’t know how anybody along the lakeshore deals with it,” said Mitch Foster, the city manager in Ludington, Mich., where the rising water has closed roads, damaged homes and seeped into a museum.
There have been benefits, including for massive shipping freighters, which have been able to haul heavier loads across Lake Superior.
Mostly, though, the high waters have caused concern, like on Lake Ontario, where the New York National Guard was called in to help with flood control, and along Lake Erie, where water has spilled into the streets.
The higher water, which set records this summer on some Great Lakes, could be part of an expensive new normal.
Though water levels have always fluctuated, scientists have suggested that in the coming decades climate change could cause higher highs, with periods of intense rainfall and snow, and lower lows, with times of warmer temperatures and increased evaporation.
To understand how extreme lake levels have reshaped life on the water, a New York Times reporter and photographer drove around Lake Michigan.
Over 1,234 miles, four states, two time zones and 34 counties, there were crowded hotels, packed beaches and landscapes worthy of a magazine cover.
But in town after town, higher waters were leaving damage, interrupting routines and stirring fears that the worst may be yet to come.
Clinging to the Edge
OGDEN DUNES, Ind. — When storms send Lake Michigan’s waves crashing into Steve Coombs’s windows, his house shakes and his dog hides.
Once separated from the lake by a generous, sandy beach, Mr. Coombs’s house and dozens of others in the town of Ogden Dunes, about an hour’s drive from Chicago, are now protected by little more than a faltering sea wall and a small patio.
Mr. Coombs fears that his house could eventually fall into the water.
“It is so unnerving,” he said.
The beach at Ogden Dunes was starving for sand long before lake levels rose — a product, residents and local officials believe, of a port that juts into the lake nearby, shifting the natural process that reshapes their beach over time.
(Officials at the port say that it has no role in the sand shortage, and that other factors are to blame.)
Now rising lake levels have accelerated erosion.
Public walkways to the beach now lead straight into the water.
Homeowners fear that their properties will never sell.
Local officials say they would need government permits and millions of dollars to fix the problem and pump sand onto the beach.
So far, help has not come.
Residents of Ogden Dunes only need to glance a few dozen yards down the lake to imagine what the future may hold.
There, in Portage, Ind., a multimillion-dollar beachfront development opened to great fanfare 11 years ago, but parts of the sidewalk and waterfront walkway have vanished into water.
Sand dunes have been sliced open.
Most of the beach is gone.
Ferries Instead of Bridges
LUDINGTON, Mich. — Every few days, workers in Ludington pump out lake water that has infiltrated the sewer system and spilled onto an intersection.
About 12 hours later, after they finish pumping, the water is back.
It is a thankless, endless task — and one that is unlikely to be enough to save some roads and sidewalks in Ludington, about halfway up Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.
In Ludington and other places around the lake, infrastructure damage is complicating daily life and growing worse as long as the water stays high.
In Wisconsin, docks are underwater.
On Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, perch have been spotted swimming up sidewalks.
And in Pentwater, Mich., a short drive from Ludington, an inland bridge made inaccessible by the rising water has cut off one side of town from the other.
In an effort to spare residents a lengthy detour, Pentwater bought a ferry this summer and started offering free rides across Pentwater Lake, just off Lake Michigan.
“It’s seamless,” said Marjory Basile, who now rides the ferry from her cottage to the yacht club and the grocery store, and who had been bracing for an onerous summer of detours.
The scope and expense of the region’s damage may not be known for months.
Mr. Foster, the Ludington city manager, said he was bracing for new sidewalks and roads and improvements to the harbor, as well as sinkholes to repair after the water drops.
“What happens when the water level goes back down and all those systems dry out?” Mr. Foster said.
“They have been inundated with water for a year now or more."
"They have saturated the groundwater."
"They have saturated everything.”
Keeping Fishtown Above Water
LELAND, Mich. — Fishtown, a set of wooden shanties where visitors can shop for T-shirts and sandwiches or watch commercial fishermen set off on boats, links today’s tourist-focused Lake Michigan to the region’s grittier fishing past.
Rising water threatens both.
In Leland, on the northeast side of the lake, one shanty, dating to 1903, was covered in water from Lake Michigan and an inland dam most of the summer.
Parts of the dock have been engulfed.
At a nearby hotel, a room flooded in the middle of the night a few weeks ago and sandbags wait at the ready in case another surge comes.
Amanda Holmes, the executive director of the Fishtown Preservation Society, a nonprofit group that owns most of the shanties, said that high water has made repairs urgent.
Shanties need to be elevated.
The docks need to be raised.
Construction is scheduled to start in October, but hundreds of thousands of dollars are still needed.
The nonprofit’s pitch to donors: “Your gift,” it said online, “will keep Fishtown literally above water.”
Bracing for Winter
GLADSTONE, Mich. — Winter comes early and stays late in Gladstone, near the top of Lake Michigan.
During the fast-fleeting summer, residents grimaced through the hassle of soggy sand volleyball courts.
They jogged in the streets after a nature trail was battered by water.
And they wrestled to fill their boats with gas even when the marina pumps were partly underwater.
But if water levels do not drop before the lake freezes, the problems could turn much worse.
Nicole Sanderson, the city’s parks and recreation director, fears major damage.
Sheet piling in the municipal harbor could sustain significant damage when the water freezes and expands.
“We’re really trying to weigh out what should we try to protect, what should we just take as a loss, what can we just keep our fingers crossed for,” she said.
The good news for Ms. Sanderson is that the Army Corps of Engineers, which monitors lake levels, expects the water to drop enough to stave off the worst of the damage.
The bad news: Forecasting lake levels months in advance is an imperfect science, and her city remains exposed, especially if there is a rainy fall or an early freeze.
On some of the Great Lakes, water has started to recede from the summer crest.
But it remains at some of the highest levels on record.
“There’s really nothing you can do to stop Lake Michigan,” Ms. Sanderson said.
A Hayride on the Lake
BAILEYS HARBOR, Wis. — The Poseidon plows through Lake Michigan every 15 minutes or so, carrying sightseers across 100 yards of water to the Cana Island Lighthouse, a beloved attraction that only recently became an actual island.
The lighthouse, a 150-year-old white tower that shines roughly 18 miles into the Wisconsin night, was long accessible by a narrow causeway that tourists could walk across without getting their socks wet.
As the lake rose, the pathway vanished.
Worried about losing tourists, the group that manages Cana Island, located about 175 miles northeast of Milwaukee, had to improvise.
They leased Poseidon, a bright-green John Deere tractor that pulls a wagon with bench seating, sort of like a hayride through a lake.
The tractor has been a hit with visitors, especially children, who prefer a water ride to a walk.
And it has kept the lighthouse open.
“Nothing swims like a Deere,” said Hal Wilson, who manages the site.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topsto ... P17#page=2
"Summer on the Swollen Great Lakes"
Mitch Smith and Lyndon French
25 AUGUST 2019
CHICAGO — Two rare birds, a major music festival and an overflowing Lake Michigan all claimed a beach on Chicago’s North Side.
But there was not enough sand to go around.
The lake, which rose to levels not seen in decades, formed lagoons where sunbathers once lounged.
The festival, which would have featured disco yoga sessions and musicians across three stages, was canceled.
And the birds, one of only about 75 mating pairs of the endangered piping plover left in the Great Lakes region, lost their nest in the rising water.
With help from more than 180 volunteers who kept curious humans and errant volleyballs at a distance, the tiny, photogenic plovers recently built a new nest further inland, away from the swollen waters, and mated again.
Three chicks hatched.
Two survived.
“How do we make things succeed even in the face of the most daunting challenges?” said Tamima Itani, who some weeks spent 20 to 30 hours protecting the piping plovers, including one harrowing moment when an off-leash dog ran straight toward the chicks.
Across the Great Lakes, high water levels have upended summer, swallowing beaches, closing in on century-old buildings and threatening wildlife.
“Long term, I don’t know how anybody along the lakeshore deals with it,” said Mitch Foster, the city manager in Ludington, Mich., where the rising water has closed roads, damaged homes and seeped into a museum.
There have been benefits, including for massive shipping freighters, which have been able to haul heavier loads across Lake Superior.
Mostly, though, the high waters have caused concern, like on Lake Ontario, where the New York National Guard was called in to help with flood control, and along Lake Erie, where water has spilled into the streets.
The higher water, which set records this summer on some Great Lakes, could be part of an expensive new normal.
Though water levels have always fluctuated, scientists have suggested that in the coming decades climate change could cause higher highs, with periods of intense rainfall and snow, and lower lows, with times of warmer temperatures and increased evaporation.
To understand how extreme lake levels have reshaped life on the water, a New York Times reporter and photographer drove around Lake Michigan.
Over 1,234 miles, four states, two time zones and 34 counties, there were crowded hotels, packed beaches and landscapes worthy of a magazine cover.
But in town after town, higher waters were leaving damage, interrupting routines and stirring fears that the worst may be yet to come.
Clinging to the Edge
OGDEN DUNES, Ind. — When storms send Lake Michigan’s waves crashing into Steve Coombs’s windows, his house shakes and his dog hides.
Once separated from the lake by a generous, sandy beach, Mr. Coombs’s house and dozens of others in the town of Ogden Dunes, about an hour’s drive from Chicago, are now protected by little more than a faltering sea wall and a small patio.
Mr. Coombs fears that his house could eventually fall into the water.
“It is so unnerving,” he said.
The beach at Ogden Dunes was starving for sand long before lake levels rose — a product, residents and local officials believe, of a port that juts into the lake nearby, shifting the natural process that reshapes their beach over time.
(Officials at the port say that it has no role in the sand shortage, and that other factors are to blame.)
Now rising lake levels have accelerated erosion.
Public walkways to the beach now lead straight into the water.
Homeowners fear that their properties will never sell.
Local officials say they would need government permits and millions of dollars to fix the problem and pump sand onto the beach.
So far, help has not come.
Residents of Ogden Dunes only need to glance a few dozen yards down the lake to imagine what the future may hold.
There, in Portage, Ind., a multimillion-dollar beachfront development opened to great fanfare 11 years ago, but parts of the sidewalk and waterfront walkway have vanished into water.
Sand dunes have been sliced open.
Most of the beach is gone.
Ferries Instead of Bridges
LUDINGTON, Mich. — Every few days, workers in Ludington pump out lake water that has infiltrated the sewer system and spilled onto an intersection.
About 12 hours later, after they finish pumping, the water is back.
It is a thankless, endless task — and one that is unlikely to be enough to save some roads and sidewalks in Ludington, about halfway up Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.
In Ludington and other places around the lake, infrastructure damage is complicating daily life and growing worse as long as the water stays high.
In Wisconsin, docks are underwater.
On Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, perch have been spotted swimming up sidewalks.
And in Pentwater, Mich., a short drive from Ludington, an inland bridge made inaccessible by the rising water has cut off one side of town from the other.
In an effort to spare residents a lengthy detour, Pentwater bought a ferry this summer and started offering free rides across Pentwater Lake, just off Lake Michigan.
“It’s seamless,” said Marjory Basile, who now rides the ferry from her cottage to the yacht club and the grocery store, and who had been bracing for an onerous summer of detours.
The scope and expense of the region’s damage may not be known for months.
Mr. Foster, the Ludington city manager, said he was bracing for new sidewalks and roads and improvements to the harbor, as well as sinkholes to repair after the water drops.
“What happens when the water level goes back down and all those systems dry out?” Mr. Foster said.
“They have been inundated with water for a year now or more."
"They have saturated the groundwater."
"They have saturated everything.”
Keeping Fishtown Above Water
LELAND, Mich. — Fishtown, a set of wooden shanties where visitors can shop for T-shirts and sandwiches or watch commercial fishermen set off on boats, links today’s tourist-focused Lake Michigan to the region’s grittier fishing past.
Rising water threatens both.
In Leland, on the northeast side of the lake, one shanty, dating to 1903, was covered in water from Lake Michigan and an inland dam most of the summer.
Parts of the dock have been engulfed.
At a nearby hotel, a room flooded in the middle of the night a few weeks ago and sandbags wait at the ready in case another surge comes.
Amanda Holmes, the executive director of the Fishtown Preservation Society, a nonprofit group that owns most of the shanties, said that high water has made repairs urgent.
Shanties need to be elevated.
The docks need to be raised.
Construction is scheduled to start in October, but hundreds of thousands of dollars are still needed.
The nonprofit’s pitch to donors: “Your gift,” it said online, “will keep Fishtown literally above water.”
Bracing for Winter
GLADSTONE, Mich. — Winter comes early and stays late in Gladstone, near the top of Lake Michigan.
During the fast-fleeting summer, residents grimaced through the hassle of soggy sand volleyball courts.
They jogged in the streets after a nature trail was battered by water.
And they wrestled to fill their boats with gas even when the marina pumps were partly underwater.
But if water levels do not drop before the lake freezes, the problems could turn much worse.
Nicole Sanderson, the city’s parks and recreation director, fears major damage.
Sheet piling in the municipal harbor could sustain significant damage when the water freezes and expands.
“We’re really trying to weigh out what should we try to protect, what should we just take as a loss, what can we just keep our fingers crossed for,” she said.
The good news for Ms. Sanderson is that the Army Corps of Engineers, which monitors lake levels, expects the water to drop enough to stave off the worst of the damage.
The bad news: Forecasting lake levels months in advance is an imperfect science, and her city remains exposed, especially if there is a rainy fall or an early freeze.
On some of the Great Lakes, water has started to recede from the summer crest.
But it remains at some of the highest levels on record.
“There’s really nothing you can do to stop Lake Michigan,” Ms. Sanderson said.
A Hayride on the Lake
BAILEYS HARBOR, Wis. — The Poseidon plows through Lake Michigan every 15 minutes or so, carrying sightseers across 100 yards of water to the Cana Island Lighthouse, a beloved attraction that only recently became an actual island.
The lighthouse, a 150-year-old white tower that shines roughly 18 miles into the Wisconsin night, was long accessible by a narrow causeway that tourists could walk across without getting their socks wet.
As the lake rose, the pathway vanished.
Worried about losing tourists, the group that manages Cana Island, located about 175 miles northeast of Milwaukee, had to improvise.
They leased Poseidon, a bright-green John Deere tractor that pulls a wagon with bench seating, sort of like a hayride through a lake.
The tractor has been a hit with visitors, especially children, who prefer a water ride to a walk.
And it has kept the lighthouse open.
“Nothing swims like a Deere,” said Hal Wilson, who manages the site.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topsto ... P17#page=2