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Monday, August 30, 2021
Hurricane Ida made landfall in Lousiana on Sunday, devastating many areas. It's near New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina caused levies to fail and catastrophic flooding 2005, but dams have been improved since then and are projected to prevent the worst of the floods. Part of Ida's devastation is the rate at which it worsened. It wasn't even considered a tropical storm on Thursday; it is now a category 4 hurricane with 150 mph winds. This is an example of a process known as rapid intensification, where a storm sees an increase in wind speeds by at least 35 mph in 24 hours. This usually occurs in warm waters with no sheer. Sheer is a phenomenon when a bunch of different winds go in many directions at once. This is what occurs in tornadic thunderstorms, but it is bad for hurricanes, which want one strong wind. We are one day away from President Biden's August 31st deadline for the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. It began a few months ago, and the Taliban has quickly regained power since then, leading to a frenzy of evacuations at the Kabul International Airport. Last week, the ISIS-K terrorist group carried out bombings at the airport, prompting the US to attack several people it says are strategists.
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
After Hurricane Ida passed through Lousiana on Sunday, officials and residents are beginning to get a sense of the damage inflicted by the category 4 hurricane. It took out houses and powerlines and dumped as much as 2 feet of rain on many areas. The hurricane has weakened into a storm system after passing over land, but it is still projected to dump lots and lots of rain over the New England states. Cooling systems use massive amounts of energy and put a lot of strain on the electrical grid, mostly from the process of cooling refrigerants. SkyCool is looking to relieve some of that energy by taking advantage of a natural process called radiative cooling. It occurs in things like grass, which can get cooler than the air around it by releasing infrared heat. Normally, this only works at night, but the material SkyCool has developed can work in direct sunlight, cooling the liquid that passes through it and reducing the need for electric cooling.
Wednesday, September 1, 2021
On Monday night, the last of the US military planes left Kabul International Airport in Afghanistan on the eve of the August 31st deadline for the end of US military involvement in the Asian country. When Biden first announced the US withdrawal, he said that the Afghan military was strong enough to fend off the Taliban, the extremist Islamic group that ruled Afghanistan before the US invasion two decades ago. The Taliban had hosted a terrorist group that carried out the 9/11 attacks. However, the Afghan military fell in a matter of weeks as the Taliban pushed all the way to Kabul airport, the last US-held area in the country, where frantic evacuations took place. After the US left, the Taliban declared victory. The State Department said that a few hundred Americans and allies who had wanted to leave were still in the country after the withdrawal. The last time the Taliban was in power, it ruled oppressively with a strict interpretation of Islam, and though it says it has changed, many are still skeptical. In California, the Caldor Fire in South Lake Tahoe is already the 17th largest fire in state history and the largest current fire in the nation. It has burned dozens of homes and put 7 states under AQI alerts. Calfire says that it is 16% contained as of last night. China has instituted a new law banning online games during the week and restricted them to 1 hour per weekend for minors. It says that gaming is detrimental to young people, and has also cracked down on afterschool tutoring and "celebrity worshipping". It's unclear how this law will be enforced, though the government says it will be through game distributors, and many analysts believe it is just a way for the government to enforce its ideology on the younger generation.
Thursday, September 2, 2021
After Hurricane Ida made landfall as a category 4 storm on Sunday, it has left many parts of Louisiana in shambles. There are still many people trapped by floodwaters, supply shortages are common in many areas, and gasoline is in high demand because people need them to power generators. On top of that, the temperature is expected to be extremely high this weekend, and most people don't have air conditioners or electricity to power them. Another dilemma facing many residents who had their homes destroyed - will they rebuild or move away? The hardest-hit areas are still under floodwaters and have seen damage far beyond what even Katrina had, and they face a tough decision of whether to continue living on the vulnerable gulf coast. FPV (first-person view) drones are allowing filmmakers to capture scenes like never before, those shots of diving down cliffs and moving right along the ground. But a lot more work goes in behind the scenes than one would expect. The controller, who is receiving a live feed of the drone's view, has to be within radio range, and it's nerve-wracking every single time, wondering if you can get the dive right, whether the drone will come back. Thousands of hours of practice are needed to get everything just right.
Friday, September 3, 2021
The remnants of Hurricane Ida continue up the East Coast, dumping rain and flooding areas as far up as New York. Even though it is no longer classified as a hurricane, it is still dumping inches of rain, filling up New York subways and causing governors to declare states of emergency. Sequoia trees, which are only found in California's Sierra Nevadas, have survived for thousands of years. But the recent droughts, invasive beetles, and wildfires have weakened the almost indestructible species. The wildfires this year killed almost 15% of all the living sequoias. However, fires in and of themselves are not bad for sequoias. In fact, they need fires in order to germinate their seeds and start the next generation of trees.
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