Free Republic

The Atlantic hurricane season is fast approaching, and early indications have forecasters worried that it will have similarities to the 2024 season, which was one of the most devastating and costliest on record. "Super-charged" encapsulates the ferocity of last year's deadly hurricane season. Beryl entered the record books as the earliest Category 5 on record, Helene pummeled the Southeast with biblical rain and flooding, and Milton tore across Florida with deadly flooding and dozens of tornadoes. AccuWeather Lead Hurricane Expert Alex DaSilva warns it could be another year with volatile hurricanes, with the season officially starting on Sunday, June 1.

Greek-American meteorologist Katie Nickolaou revealed that she and her colleagues have received death threats from hurricane conspiracy theorists through social media. Michigan-based Nickolaou, told The Guardian that she and her colleagues have borne the brunt of much of these conspiracies, having received messages claiming there are category 6 hurricanes, that meteorologists or the government are creating and directing hurricanes and even that scientists should be killed and radar equipment be demolished. “I’ve never seen a storm garner so much misinformation, we have just been putting out fires of wrong information everywhere,” Nickolaou said. Conspiracy theorists claim meteorologists control hurricanes “I...

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Deanne Criswell told reporters Wednesday that FEMA has enough money to address Hurricanes Helene and Milton, after Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said the agency “does not have the funds” to make it through hurricane season. “I have funding and sufficient resources to support the ongoing responses to Hurricane Helene as well as Hurricane Milton,” Criswell said Wednesday, according to the Hill. The remarks come after Mayorkas told reporters on October 2, just days after the southeast was devastated by Hurricane Helene, that FEMA would not have enough funding to make it through...

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is getting skewered on social media for releasing a message asking drone pilots to no longer fly their drones “near or around rescue and recovery efforts” for Hurricane Helene victims. ” Drone pilots: Do not fly your drone near or around rescue and recovery efforts for Hurricane Helene,” the U.S. Department of Transportation said in an X post. “Interfering with emergency response operations impacts search and rescue operations on the ground,” it continued, sharing a video of Buttigieg repeating this sentiment.

Hurricane Ernesto is closing in on the strongest strike on Bermuda in almost four years, then could brush parts of Newfoundland, Canada, early next week after its flooding rain and damaging winds hammered Puerto Rico and the Lesser Antilles. Ernesto will remain well off the U.S. East Coast, but beachgoers will need to be aware of its swells generating a threat of dangerous rip currents. C​urrent status: Category 2 Hurricane Ernesto is centered just over 200 miles south-southwest of Bermuda and is moving north-northeast. Ernesto's scope of strong winds continues to grow. Hurricane-force winds now extending up to 75 miles...

President Biden on Thursday warned Hurricane Ian could prove to be the deadliest storm in Florida’s history as it punished swaths of the state with flooding rains and damaging winds. “This could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida’s history. The numbers are still unclear, but we’re hearing early reports of what may be substantial loss of life,” Biden said during a visit to Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters for a briefing on the hurricane response.

Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vazquez has fired the island’s director of emergency management after officials found a warehouse full of emergency supplies dating back to 2017's Hurricane Maria. Vasquez dismissed Carlos Acevedo on Saturday and gave officials two days to investigate why the wasted supplies were forgotten. The warehouse was initially investigated for damage following recent earthquakes in the area, and investigators found thousands of items of supplies, including food, water, diapers, and medicine that were intended to help those affected by Hurricane Maria years ago. ¡Esto le saca las lágrimas de coraje a cualquiera! 😡😡😡 Pañales, comida para bebés,...

To see the storm projections WHILE THEY ARE in motion take a radical left/west turn, Please go to: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2012/graphics/al18/loop_5NLW.shtml

US President Barack Obama warned the US east coast was in for a "long 72 hours" as he led his government's response to Hurricane Irene at a disaster command center in Washington. Obama on Saturday chaired a meeting at the National Response Coordination Center (NRCC) set up at the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) headquarters in Washington, which is marshaling federal and local hurricane-relief efforts. "This is going to be a tough slog getting through this thing," Obama said during a video teleconference including senior federal officials and local government agencies in the east coast path of Irene. "It's going...

ELCA NEWS SERVICE August 19, 2010 Lutherans to Mark Five-year Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina Aug. 29 CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The 4.5 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) will mark the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina during Sunday worship Aug. 29, the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Worship and liturgical resources for the anniversary are available on the ELCA website. The people of the Gulf Coast taught an entire nation about "courage, perseverance and hope," said the Rev. Kevin A. Massey, director for Lutheran Disaster Response (LDR). LDR is a collaborative ministry of the ELCA...

NEW ORLEANS -- Starved for cash, the New Orleans school district is taking a long shot and hoping to sell its flooded, unsalvageable school buses on eBay.

PASCAGOULA, Miss. (Army News Service, March 20, 2006) –- With some help from the Army, hundreds of thousands of residents along a stretch of the Mississippi Gulf Coast have begun a painful climb toward getting life back to the way it was before the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina. The Army Corps of Engineers has been removing debris from the Gulf Coast since the hurricane in August ripped tens of thousands of trees from their roots and everything from cars to shrimp boats rested where homes once stood. Across a four-state region, hurricanes Katrina and Rita left more than 87,000...

Tuesday, February 14, 2006 Local officials say $85 billlion aid figure is misleading By Bill Walsh Washington bureau WASHINGTON — When pressed about what his administration is doing to help the victims of last year’s hurricanes, President Bush has recently taken to pointing to an eye-catching number on the bottom line. Typical is his statement during a Jan. 26 White House press conference: “The Congress has appropriated $85 billion to help rebuild the Gulf Coast. ... I want to remind people in that part of the world, $85 billion is a lot.” Some Louisiana lawmakers do not dispute the heft...

MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 29, 2005--There are a few ways customers can help our crews speed up the restoration process. First, we would appreciate if they do not stop and ask the crews when power will be restored. When customers direct their questions to crews working in neighborhoods they slow the critical work of the crews whose goal is the prompt and safe restoration of electric service to all FPL customers left without service in the wake of Hurricane Wilma. Since crews receive assignments to work on particular line segments, they most likely do not know what other work must be completed...

ABOARD USS JOHN C. STENNIS (NNS) -- Sailors from USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74), assisted a grateful community in Pearlington, Miss., in October by removing old refrigerators from the area, which had become a health hazard after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast coastline. Stennis, homeported in Bremerton, Wash., sent 50 volunteers to the hurricane-ravaged area of southern Mississippi. The aircraft carrier is named for Senator John C. Stennis of Miss., and considers the state its adopted home. "These smaller communities receive little attention after [Hurricane] Katrina," said Rick Hines, a FEMA volunteer from the West Indianapolis, Ind., fire...

PASS CHRISTIAN, Miss. (NNS) -- U.S. Navy Seabees are building a “tent city” in what’s left of this devastated coastal town to house 1,000 people rendered homeless by the impact of Hurricane Katrina. Some 250 Seabees from detachments across the United States have gathered behind the city’s War Memorial Park, where they’re also constructing a temporary police department headquarters and other municipal offices as government leaders organize plans to rebuild the town they lost. The tent city, a sign of life in a beachfront resort town otherwise in shambles, will have basic necessities from a laundromat to a place to...

Shelter volunteers across East Texas have heard first hand devastating stories of how Hurricane Katrina tore families apart. But there was none like the one that was brought to our attention from volunteers at the Smith County Chapter of the American Red Cross. It was from Ray Johnson. In an interview with KLTV 7 last Wednesday he describes how he tried to get his wife and 3-year-old son to the attic to safety when New Orleans floodwaters came rushing in. "I didn't ever think I was going to lose my son and wife no never," says Johnson in the August...

Hello, family and friends, They are predicting that the thing will move to the east slightly at landfall, and we will be on the clean side. Hollis fixed our generator today, thank God. Told him that now I won't have to kick his butt for a while. (Standing joke(?) around the fire department is that I can and will kick everybody's butt if they get out of line, ha ha. Sheesh, my 90 some pounds and whose Army? ) Fire department had a meeting in town with the power company this morning. They said that if the worst senerio happens,...

KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. (AFPN) -- Helping repair Keesler after Hurricane Katrina struck the base is not the only thing on the mind of civil engineers deployed here; they are also helping the people here get back on their feet. The engineers, deployed from the 56th Civil Engineer Squadron at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., are helping the 81st Training Wing repair the damage Hurricane Katrina left behind. Not only are they repairing damage on base, but Sept. 17 they were at Stanley Morgan's house removing moldy drywall, sopping wet insulation, scattered debris, ruined furniture and, unfortunately, memories collected...

NEW YORK -- Manhattan could be flooded and New York could suffer as much damage as New Orleans if it were hit by a catastrophic hurricane like one that passed just north of the city in 1938, experts warned on Monday. "Major hurricanes are not limited to the Gulf Coast and Florida," said James Lee Witt, who was director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency from 1993 to 2000 in the Clinton administration. He was speaking at the launch of a campaign to improve preparation for disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, which killed at least 883 people when it slammed...