Key Facts Of The Day 10/27

Hurricanes

• A pair of Atlantic disturbances run the risk of becoming named tropical storms, with at least one system set to potentially materialize in the Caribbean and eventually pose a threat to land.
• More than 700,000 Florida households have applied for individual federal assistance after Hurricane Ian and another 130,000 are expected to apply.
• Some in Lee County say they felt less informed about Hurricane Ian than with past storms.
• Thousands of Superstorm Sandy victims in New Jersey are still paying for the superstorm 10 years later.

Wildfires

• As of Thursday, there are currently 25 large active wildfires that have burned 256,629 across ID, IN, KY, MT, OK, OR, and WA. As of Thursday, 59,441 wildfires have burned 7,210,454 acres across the country.
• In Oregon, 2 fires have burned 128,183 acres as of Thursday.
  • The Cedar Creek Fire has burned 127,283 acres and is 60% contained as of Thursday.
• In Washington, 10 fires have burned 40,857 acres as of Thursday.
  • Last week, Seattle had the worst air quality in the world for two days in a row as the Pacific Northwest air was clogged with smoke from multiple wildfires in the region.
• Colorado’s Marshall fire losses are now expected to exceed $2 billion, making it the 10th costliest wildfire in U.S. history.

Extreme Heat

• Drought has sent water levels plunging to near-record lows on the Mississippi River. A river gauge near the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers headquarters registers just 3 feet above sea level.
  • Usually, more than a third of the rain in the U.S. ends up in the Mississippi River. However, with little or no rainfall coming from the Midwest, the drought is causing problems along the river.
  • Low water levels have exposed a century-old shipwreck and made it easy for visitors to reach Tower Rock, a prominent rock formation south of St. Louis that’s normally an island, on foot.
  • The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists expect drought conditions to worsen in the lower Mississippi Valley in the winter.
  • For weeks now, that slow-moving crisis has made it difficult, if not impossible, to move barges down a river that serves as a highway for about 60% of the nation’s foreign-bound corn and soybeans.
  • As flows in the river drop, saltwater intrusion from the Gulf of Mexico is also threatening municipal drinking water supplies in the New Orleans metro area.
• Texas honey production is expected to be below average this season due to the lack of soil moisture and extreme heat across the state.
• The 2022 Lancet Countdown report found that the worsening impacts of climate change are increasingly affecting the foundations of human health and wellbeing, exacerbating the vulnerability of the world’s populations to concurrent health threats.
  • Because of the rapidly increasing temperatures, vulnerable populations were exposed to 3.7 billion more heatwave days in 2021 than annually in 1986–2005, and heat-related deaths increased by 68% between 2000–04 and 2017–21.
  • Extreme heat was associated with 98 million more people reporting moderate to severe food insecurity in 2020 than annually in 1981–2010, in 103 countries.

New Reports and Data

• An October 2022 report found that the world is not moving nearly fast enough to curb emissions of the gases superheating the planet.
• An October 2022 report found that the worsening impacts of climate change are increasingly affecting the foundations of human health and wellbeing, exacerbating the vulnerability of the world’s populations to concurrent health threats.