Friday, Jun 13th
Last update07:29:49 AM GMT
Environmental Glance
At least four people died and others were hurt after severe storms including a possible tornado swept through St Louis on Friday, as tens of millions of Americans in multiple states braced for possible damage from expected high winds and severe weather this weekend.
St Louis mayor Cara Spencer confirmed the deaths after storms tore roofs off some buildings, ripped away brick facades and downed trees and power lines as residents were urged to take cover.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is “not ready” for hurricane season, which starts June 1, an internal document warns as President Trump eyes eliminating the department entirely.
Internal slides obtained by The Hill state that, “As FEMA transforms to a smaller footprint, the intent for this hurricane season is not well understood, thus FEMA is not ready.”
The slides also state that per a hurricane season 2025 assessment, “resources are reduced” and the “quality of people lost cannot be replaced right away.”
And it says the routine readiness process “has been derailed this year due to other activities like staffing and contracts.”
FEMA is the federal agency in charge of coordinating responses to disasters, working alongside states and localities to do so. It also helps communities rebuild after they’ve been hit.
Chadwick was calm enough to leave for a three-week expedition to Guam on May 7 to explore the Mariana Trench – though he noted that those following Oregon's undersea volcano joke that it's most likely to erupt when its least convenient. "May is looking like a pretty inconvenient time for Axial to erupt ... so you never know!"
Scott Nooner, a professor of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, who co-runs the Axial Seamount blog with Chadwick, said on May 16 that there's no new news.
"We are still waiting for activity to pick up there," he said.
Dating of the flows around the seamount shows that it has erupted about 50 times over the last 800 years, about once every 15 years on average.
A series of instruments around the volcano indicate a reservoir has been refilling with magma since its last eruption, gradually inflating so that it's bulging upward.
Chemical firm 3M has agreed to pay up to $450 million to address water pollution and other environmental damage from PFAS, or "forever chemicals," New Jersey officials have announced.
The agreement would resolve 3M's liability for PFAS contamination from the 1,455-acre Chambers Works complex in Pennsville and Carneys Point. PFAS was supplied to the sprawling plant by 3M until 2001.
It also would resolve lawsuits against 3M over the presence of PFAS in fire-fighting foam across the state and over pollution at a company facility in Sayreville, Middlesex County.
A jet stream over the Gulf of Mexico will likely reach an area it doesn't typically hit: the Southeastern United States.
Beginning this weekend into Monday and Tuesday, widespread rainfall across the region could result in 4 to 6 inches of rain, the National Weather Service said. Isolated spots are expected to see as much as 12 inches of rain.
Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina are forecast to see most of the effects of the atmospheric river.
The chances of rain in the area "will increase later this weekend, with the potential for heavy rainfall Monday through Tuesday, which could result in flooding," the NWS said early Saturday.
A 4.1-magnitude earthquake shook Knoxville and East Tennessee at 9:04 a.m. ET May 10, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The earthquake originated near Greenback, Tennessee, which is 30 miles southwest of Knoxville. The earthquake was about 15 miles deep, the USGS says, which is considered a shallow quake.
It was the seventh earthquake with a 4.0 magnitude or greater since 1900 and the first since a 4.4-magnitude quake hit Decatur in 2018. The largest earthquake in East Tennessee since 1900 was a 4.7-magnitude quake in Alcoa in 1973.
The Knoxville Fire Department did not receive any reports of damage, spokesman Mark Wilbanks said, nor did the Knoxville Police Department.
The nation's biggest cities are sinking, according to data from a new study.
Known scientifically as land "subsidence," the most common cause of the sinking is "massive ongoing groundwater extraction," say the study authors, though other forces are at work in some places. The cities include not just those on the coasts, where sea level rise is a concern, but many in the interior.
In every city studied, at least 20% of the urban area is sinking – and in 25 of 28 cities, at least 65% is sinking.
He added that the study "offers critical information for urban planning, infrastructure adaptation, and hazard preparedness."
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