
Florida was spared the worst of Isaias, the earliest "I" storm on record of the Atlantic hurricane season and the second hurricane of the 2020 season.
The storm's projected path had prompted fears that Floridians would have to evacuate in large numbers as the state struggles to contain the coronavirus pandemic. But Isaias weakened to a tropical storm Saturday afternoon, ABC 11 reported. It also remained offshore, drenching parts of the Florida coast with rain but largely sparing the state, according to USA TODAY.
"Florida dodged a bullet for sure!" BAM Weather meteorologist Ryan Maue tweeted.
Tropical Storm #Isaias no longer expected to restrengthen into a hurricane. 🌀 The vertical wind shear shredder has… https://t.co/kqBsJOS3Tj— Ryan Maue (@Ryan Maue)1596381581.0
However, Isiais isn't done with the U.S. yet. It now approaches the Carolinas, and is expected to strengthen into a hurricane again before reaching them Monday night, CNN reported.
A storm surge warning is in effect from Edisto Beach in South Carolina to Cape Fear in North Carolina, along with parts of the Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds and the North Carolina Outer Banks from Oregon Inlet to the North Carolina and Virginia borders. It could raise water levels by three to five feet from South Santee River, South Carolina to Cape Fear, North Carolina, according to an 11 a.m. EDT update from the National Hurricane Center (NHC).
"A Storm Surge Warning means there is a danger of life-threatening inundation, from rising water moving inland from the coastline, during the next 36 hours in the indicated locations," NHC explained.
Here are the 5 am EDT Monday, August 3 Key Messages for Tropical Storm #Isaias. For the full advisory on #Isaias, v… https://t.co/5MbSBJmEhI— National Hurricane Center (@National Hurricane Center)1596445959.0
The North Carolina coastal communities of Ocracoke Island and Hatteras Island were evacuated Friday ahead of the storm, CNN reported.
President Donald Trump approved a disaster declaration for parts of North Carolina, and Gov. Roy Cooper reminded residents Sunday to have their emergency kits ready, ABC 11 reported.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, meanwhile, said Friday he would not issue any evacuations.
"Right now we're hoping this storm will not hit us hard if it hits at all," McMaster said in the CNN story. "At this time we have no intention at all of declaring any sort of evacuation."
Isaias is expected to slowly weaken after making landfall and then travel north. It will bring strong winds to Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York, impacting the Mid Atlantic states on Tuesday and New Hampshire and Maine on Wednesday.
Along the way, storm surges and winds aren't the only threat.
"Heavy rainfall from Isaias will result in flash and urban flooding, some of which may be significant in the eastern Carolinas and the mid-Atlantic, through Tuesday night near the path of Isaias up the East Coast of the United States," NHC wrote.
There is a moderate risk of flash flooding across portions of the eastern Carolinas and Mid-Atlantic states from… https://t.co/C5Ys46ZetX— National Hurricane Center (@National Hurricane Center)1596446600.0
Tornadoes could touch down in coastal South Carolina Monday and eastern North Carolina into Tuesday. Twisters are also possible from eastern Virginia to southern New England on Tuesday.
Before Isaias reached the U.S., it knocked down trees and tore off roof shingles in the Bahamas, Al Jazeera reported. Some residents of Abaco and Grand Bahama Islands, who were still living in temporary shelters following last year's devastating Hurricane Dorian, had to be evacuated ahead of the storm.
"With everything not quite shored up, property not secured, homes not prepared, even a category one will be enough to set them back," Bahamas Mercy Corps Director Paula Miller told The Associated Press, Al Jazeera reported.
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A tornado tore through a city north of Birmingham, Alabama, Monday night, killing one person and injuring at least 30.
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By Katherine Kornei
Clear-cutting a forest is relatively easy—just pick a tree and start chopping. But there are benefits to more sophisticated forest management. One technique—which involves repeatedly harvesting smaller trees every 30 or so years but leaving an upper story of larger trees for longer periods (60, 90, or 120 years)—ensures a steady supply of both firewood and construction timber.
A Pattern in the Rings
<p>The <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/coppice-standards-0" target="_blank">coppice-with-standards</a> management practice produces a two-story forest, said <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bernhard_Muigg" target="_blank">Bernhard Muigg</a>, a dendrochronologist at the University of Freiburg in Germany. "You have an upper story of single trees that are allowed to grow for several understory generations."</p><p>That arrangement imprints a characteristic tree ring pattern in a forest's upper story trees (the "standards"): thick rings indicative of heavy growth, which show up at regular intervals as the surrounding smaller trees are cut down. "The trees are growing faster," said Muigg. "You can really see it with your naked eye."</p><p>Muigg and his collaborators characterized that <a href="https://ltrr.arizona.edu/about/treerings" target="_blank">dendrochronological pattern</a> in 161 oak trees growing in central Germany, one of the few remaining sites in Europe with actively managed coppice-with-standards forests. They found up to nine cycles of heavy growth in the trees, the oldest of which was planted in 1761. The researchers then turned to a historical data set — more than 2,000 oak <a href="https://eos.org/articles/podcast-discovering-europes-history-through-its-timbers" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">timbers from buildings and archaeological sites</a> in Germany and France dating from between 300 and 2015 — to look for a similar pattern.</p>A Gap of 500 Years
<p>The team found wood with the characteristic coppice-with-standards tree ring pattern dating to as early as the 6th century. That was a surprise, Muigg and his colleagues concluded, because the first mention of this forest management practice in historical documents occurred only roughly 500 years later, in the 13th century.</p><p>It's probable that forest management practices were not well documented prior to the High Middle Ages (1000–1250), the researchers suggested. "Forests are mainly mentioned in the context of royal hunting interests or donations," said Muigg. Dendrochronological studies are particularly important because they can reveal information not captured by a sparse historical record, he added.</p><p>These results were <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-78933-8" target="_blank">published in December in <em>Scientific Reports</em></a>.</p><p>"It's nice to see the longevity and the history of coppice-with-standards," said <a href="https://www.teagasc.ie/contact/staff-directory/s/ian-short/" target="_blank">Ian Short</a>, a forestry researcher at Teagasc, the Agriculture and Food Development Authority in Ireland, not involved in the research. This technique is valuable because it promotes conservation and habitat biodiversity, Short said. "In the next 10 or 20 years, I think we'll see more coppice-with-standards coming back into production."</p><p>In the future, Muigg and his collaborators hope to analyze a larger sample of historic timbers to trace how the coppice-with-standards practice spread throughout Europe. It will be interesting to understand where this technique originated and how it propagated, said Muigg, and there are plenty of old pieces of wood waiting to be analyzed. "There [are] tons of dendrochronological data."</p><p><em><a href="mailto:katherine.kornei@gmail.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Katherine Kornei</a> is a freelance science journalist covering Earth and space science. Her bylines frequently appear in Eos, Science, and The New York Times. Katherine holds a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California, Los Angeles.</em></p><p><em>This story originally appeared in <a href="https://eos.org/articles/tree-rings-reveal-how-ancient-forests-were-managed" target="_blank">Eos</a></em> <em>and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.</em></p>Earth's ice is melting 57 percent faster than in the 1990s and the world has lost more than 28 trillion tons of ice since 1994, research published Monday in The Cryosphere shows.
By Jewel Fraser
Noreen Nunez lives in a middle-class neighborhood that rises up a hillside in Trinidad's Tunapuna-Piarco region.