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A program designed to help Rhode Island's older adult population prepare for climate change threats is one of several projects that will receive federal money as part of the state's disaster recovery action plan. This program will receive $150,000 over the next two years. Julia Gold, the health department's climate change program manager, said the agency and its partners will develop these plans during a pilot project to kick off this fall in Washington County. The grant to support this program comes from federal money designed to help long-term recovery efforts related to Hurricane Sandy.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)A large super typhoon is gathering force as it barrels along a path that is expected to take it close to the Japanese island of Okinawa. By the time it nears Okinawa early Tuesday, Super Typhoon Neoguri is likely to be generating winds as strong as a Category 5 hurricane, meteorologists say. "This is a beast," said CNN International Meteorologist Tom Sater. Okinawa, where multiple U.S. military facilities are situated, regularly finds itself in the path of big typhoons. Many of the buildings on the island are designed to weather the powerful winds that come roaring in off the Western...

The first hurricane of the Atlantic season has hit the North Carolina coast, a wet and windy spoiler of the July Fourth holiday for thousands of Americans as authorities ordered them to evacuate exposed areas. Hurricane Arthur crossed the coast near Cape Lookout at the southern end of North Carolina's Outer Banks at 11:15 p.m. EDT (0315 GMT) on Thursday, with maximum sustained winds of 100 miles per hour (160 kph). This earned it Category 2 status on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Moving northeast at 22 mph (35.6 kph), Arthur is...

Arthur becomes the first hurricane of the 2014 Atlantic season. Independence Day travelers and revelers up and down the U.S. Atlantic coast are eying the path of the storm. Forecast models are in good agreement that Hurricane Arthur will dampen July 4th festivities along the N.C. Outer Banks. Mandatory evacuation of the Outer Banks has begun. Warm waters from the Gulf Stream are adding fuel to the storm development. Sea Surface TempsPublic Advisories

Colorado State University researchers have forecast nine named storms in 2014, with just three expected to become hurricanes and one major storm. El Nino development is anticipated to contribute to a less active Atlantic tropical storm season. Forecasters got it wrong last year when they predicted an unusually busy hurricane season. There were just 13 named storms and two Category One hurricanes. The NHC has updated and revised several of their tracking and prediction products. The intensity probability table has been retired. The forecast cone (affectionately known as the cone of death or destruction) will be smaller. A new potential...

Though the federal government allocated more than $1.8 billion in Hurricane Sandy disaster relief aid for New Jersey more than a year ago, less that a quarter has been distributed to cash-strapped residents struggling to rebuild, according to a new state report. State officials, however, say they are making considerable progress with recovery programs, addressing concerns and making changes where needed to speed up the delivery of aid. But advocates claim a botched rollout of major housing recovery programs has taken its toll on distributing funding more quickly. More than $1.3 billion of federal aid is "in the pipeline or...

Joey Giardello, a former middleweight boxing champion who won a decision over Rubin Carter in 1964 and then sued over how the fight was depicted in the 1999 film "The Hurricane," has died. He was 78. Giardello died Thursday of congestive heart failure at a nursing home in Cherry Hill, N.J., the International Boxing Hall of Fame announced.

The once-budding friendship between President Obama and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie reached its zenith in May on a storm-ravaged boardwalk in Point Pleasant, N.J. After Obama missed four throws at a carnival game, Christie stepped in, picked up a football and tossed it through a hoop, winning the president a stuffed bear. “One and done,” the governor said as a crowd cheered and the two men exchanged a high-five. On Thursday, however, Christie used an appearance before the Conservative Political Action Conference to blast Obama in personal terms, as a weak leader. Accusing Obama of sitting on the sidelines...

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie may stand accused of using Sandy money as both carrot and stick in his political battles, but that's not stopping him from asking the federal government for more help. The Star-Ledger reported Wednesday that Christie sent a letter to President Obama asking FEMA to extend its housing program. The program, the paper reports, would not directly bring money into the state, but instead cost the Federal government thousands in maintaining temporary homes for displaced victims. The housing, located in the Central Jersey facility of Fort Monmouth, currently houses 49 families but takes care of 80...

WASHINGTON -- The St. Tammany Parish school district is getting $67.8 million in disaster loans and accumulated interest for Hurricane Katrina forgiven by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Sen. Mary Landrieu's office announced Monday. The announcement follows FEMA's earlier decision to cancel a $9.9 million loan for the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office and a $14.5 million loan to the St. Tammany Parish government. The loan forgiveness is a response to a provision Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, added to a 2013 Homeland Security Appropriations that changed the criteria for loan forgiveness affecting some $211 million in Katrina-related loans.

The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season ended Saturday, and — unless a new sponsor pops up with wads of cash — so did Colorado State University’s hurricane forecasting team. Fine with us. We won’t miss either one. The Colorado team, officially the Tropical Meteorology Project, has been issuing forecasts for the upcoming hurricane season each summer for 30 years. At the beginning of this year’s season, the team predicted 18 named storms. Nine of those, it said, would become hurricanes. Four would be major hurricanes. Here’s how it shook out: There were 13 named storms. Only two became hurricanes. Neither was...

A hurricane hunter aircraft sent to the Arctic to study ice formations returned this month with critical data that might explain why an increasing number of tropical storms seem to be taking irregular paths. Scientists are trying to determine how much heat is released into the atmosphere when Arctic ice builds up in autumn. That heat release is believed to shift the jet stream, a fast-moving, high altitude river of air, farther to the south. That shift, in turn, might be slowing down or even stalling tropical systems, before they can re-curve east and out to sea, scientists say. [Snip]...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Under a reforming president, the Philippines emerged as a rising economic star in Asia but the trail of death and destruction left by Typhoon Haiyan has highlighted a key weakness: fragile and patchy infrastructure after decades of neglect and corruption. Authorities fear that the storm that tore through Leyte province in the country's east has killed thousands. More than 600,000 people have been displaced. Low rates of insurance in the Philippines mean the disaster is likely to sap government finances but analysts say it might not slow growth significantly because of the small role the affected region plays in the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) - Typhoon-ravaged Philippine islands faced a daunting relief effort that had barely begun Monday, as bloated bodies lay uncollected and uncounted in the streets and survivors pleaded for food, water and medicine. Police guarded stores to prevent people from hauling off food, water and such non-essentials as TVs and treadmills, but there was often no one to carry away the dead - not even those seen along the main road from the airport to Tacloban, the worst-hit city along the country's remote eastern seaboard.....

TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) - Corpses hung from trees, were scattered on sidewalks or buried in flattened buildings - some of the 10,000 people believed killed in one Philippine city alone by ferocious Typhoon Haiyan that washed away homes and buildings with powerful winds and giant waves. As the scale of devastation became clear Sunday from one of the worst storms ever recorded, officials projected the death toll could climb even higher when emergency crews reach parts of the archipelago cut off by flooding and landslides. Looters raided grocery stores and gas stations in search of food, fuel and water as...

...only a fraction of the aid money earmarked for recovery has been used, in what some claim is a painfully slow and opaque process. Only $5.2 billion of the pledged $47.9 billion had been tapped by cities and states by the end of August, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. And tracking those funds has been complicated, lawmakers said. "Transparency is woefully lacking. We don't know where the money is. We know people have been approved for grants, but the money has not been distributed," said New Jersey Assemblywoman L. Grace Spencer, chair of the environment...

MIAMI (Reuters) - The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season looks set to go down as a big washout, marking the first time in 45 years that the strongest storm to form was just a minor Category 1 hurricane. There could still be a late surprise in the June 1-November 30 season, since the cyclone that mushroomed into Superstorm Sandy was just revving up at this time last year. But so far, at least, it has been one of the weakest seasons since modern record-keeping began about half a century ago, U.S. weather experts say. Apart from Tropical Storm Andrea, which soaked...

The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season is an ongoing annual cycle in tropical cyclogenesis. It is the first Atlantic hurricane season since 2002 to feature no hurricanes through the month of August. The season officially began on June 1 and will end on November 30. The first tropical cyclone of the year, Andrea, developed on June 7 in the Gulf of Mexico. This season continued a pattern of unusually early starting hurricane seasons – the first named storm of a season typically forms around July 9. Below average activity continued afterwards into October. The strongest tropical cyclone of the season thus...

Tropical Storm Karen threatens Central Gulf of Mexico states. NHC Public Advisories NHC Tropical Discussions