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Washington County storm leads to ‘serious' damage

Washington County storm leads to ‘serious' damage

Yahoo3 days ago

Video note: Despite this article's time stamp, the above video is the latest forecast from The Weather Authority.
WASHINGTON COUNTY, Ky. (FOX 56) — Washington County authorities are urging the public to stay clear of roads in the area after a storm reportedly left severe damage in its wake on Friday morning.
Latest central Kentucky weather forecast
FOX 56 chief meteorologist Justin Logan said that just before 7 a.m. on Friday, the NWS issued an alert saying a tornado had been seen in southwest Mercer County, heading east at around 35 miles per hour.
Around 7:30 a.m. on Friday, the Washington County Sheriff's Office posted on Facebook that emergency crews are being dispatched to the Long Run Road and Deep Creek areas in response to weather-related emergencies.
'There is serious and severe damage,' Washington County deputies wrote. 'We are asking everyone to stay off the roads for the time being if at all possible.'
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Around 8:15 a.m. on Friday, Washington County law enforcement asked the public to avoid roads in the area while crews responded to multiple emergency calls.
Tornado warnings were also issued but expired around 7:45 a.m. for Mercer, Boyle, Garrard, and Jessamine counties.
Around 8:45 a.m., Gov. Beshear posted on social media that officials are responding to tornado reports in Washington County.
'This level of severe weather was unexpected, with a system still moving through the state,' Beshear wrote.
For the latest weather alerts, download the FOX 56 Weather Authority App.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Chaos at FEMA, NOAA as hurricane season starts
Chaos at FEMA, NOAA as hurricane season starts

E&E News

time4 hours ago

  • E&E News

Chaos at FEMA, NOAA as hurricane season starts

The nation enters the 2025 hurricane season with significant fear about the federal government's ability — and willingness — to help with natural disasters. Yet much of the worry isn't centered on hurricanes. Rather, state and local officials are concerned the Trump administration won't provide much, if any, assistance to U.S. communities after less-than-catastrophic disasters, which previously have received federal aid. Advertisement Democratic-led states also fear President Donald Trump will cut off disaster aid if they spurn his efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. At the same time, the nation's vaunted weather forecasting and warning system is eroding, experts say, as personnel cuts limit the use of sophisticated equipment such as weather balloons and aircraft that collect atmospheric data. 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Fewer federal forecasters on station Senior hurricane specialist Stacy Stewart monitors the progress of Tropical Storm Dorian at the National Hurricane Center on Aug. 27, 2019. | Lynne Sladky/AP Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, is ready for a major hurricane. It's the smaller disasters that are giving officials pause this year. About two hours west of New Orleans, the parish of 250,000 is prone to floods and severe thunderstorms, which are growing more frequent as global temperatures rise. Recent cuts at the local weather office, plus potential cuts at FEMA, raise concerns that the parish will get fewer disaster warnings. The parish has relied on the National Weather Service office in Lake Charles, Louisiana, about an hour away, for guidance in making decisions about local events and telling the public about weather threats. But the office has lost several top staffers since April — including its meteorologist in charge — and communications have waned. On one or two recent occasions, 'we just had weather show up on us,' said Christina Dayries, chief of staff in the Mayor-President's office of the Lafayette Consolidated Government, which oversees both the parish and the city of Lafayette. During Lafayette's recent five-day Festival International de Louisiane, heavy rain and flash floods struck the city early in the morning on the festival's first day in late April, surprising government officials. 'We didn't get the heads up until we reached out to [the National Weather Service office],' Dayries said. 'The storm had already come. Flash flooding, that happens. But we still didn't get the alert and forecasting that we would typically have received.' Stephen Carboni, the acting meteorologist in charge at NWS Lake Charles, said he couldn't comment on changes in staffing or operations. But the office is relying on overtime shifts and mutual aid from other offices when extra support is needed, Carboni said in an email. 'Our preparation for hurricane season or any other potential hazardous weather event remains the same as it always has,' Carboni said. Other weather service offices also are dealing with staffing cuts. The National Weather Service has lost around 600 of its roughly 4,200 employees since January, according to Tom Fahy, legislative director at the union that represents National Weather Service employees. Kim Doster, NOAA's director of communications, said in an email that NWS 'has a sufficient number of forecasters to fill mission-critical operational shifts during the 2025 severe weather and hurricane season.' She said weather forecast offices are focusing on 'mission-critical functions.' NOAA oversees the weather service. The new policy means that forecast offices are doing only forecasts and are stopping activities such as conferences, tabletop exercises and school visits, Fahy said. Some offices no longer operate 24 hours a day, Fahy said. 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NWS offices move staff to the places that need temporary help. It's unlikely that any office in the crosshairs of a hurricane would allow their usual forecasts or warnings to slide. But it may force NWS offices to cut their interaction with local emergency managers, government agencies and community groups, threatening public safety. 'That fabric is gonna get pulled apart,' said Uccellini, a former NWS director. 'And at some point, it's going to rip and you're not going to be able to get it back together again. ' Grants tied to cooperation with deportation efforts President Donald Trump speaks at a Hurricane Helene recovery briefing in a hangar at the Asheville Regional Airport in Fletcher, North Carolina, on Jan. 24. | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty As president, Trump alone has the power to declare a federal disaster. And he wants the federal government to have a smaller footprint. But the administration has been a fountain of confusion since January when Trump himself suggested the abolition of FEMA only to drop the idea later, leaving states and municipalities with no idea how FEMA will help with disasters. Noem of Homeland Security stunned people, including FEMA employees, when she made the seemingly impromptu remark in late March, 'We are eliminating FEMA.' Noem said more recently that the administration wants to 'get rid of FEMA the way it exists today.' DHS oversees FEMA. 'People still aren't sure exactly what role they're going to play, not just with FEMA but also the other agencies,' former FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said, referring to the Trump administration. FEMA's disaster workforce has shrunk by 9 percent since Trump took office in January, agency records show. 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In some rural areas, officials said, local emergency management agencies might draw their entire budget from FEMA grants. The administration is now linking those grants to Trump's mass deportation campaign. The Department of Homeland Security in March began adding language to all its new grant agreements — including those for preparing and responding to disasters — to make those billions of dollars conditional on states and other recipients cooperating with federal immigration agents. FEMA and DHS have required states to agree to those conditions before releasing safety grants and wildfire funding this year, according to a lawsuit by 20 Democratic state attorneys general. Many states have refused, leaving their emergency management budgets in limbo. FEMA has given states roughly $350 million a year under the Emergency Management Grant program through a formula based largely on population. States spend the money on post-disaster search and rescue operations, electricity restoration and food distribution, according to the lawsuit, which accuses the Trump administration of holding states 'hostage.' 'Losing those grants would abruptly terminate ongoing emergency management programming,' the lawsuit says. Millions of people would be at risk of disasters 'similar to those that prompted Congress to create federal grant programs after September 11 and Hurricane Katrina.' In Volusia County on Florida's Atlantic coast, officials are plotting how to cope with the potential loss of FEMA's performance grants. State officials have warned local governments that, as soon as October, the grants could 'disappear,' Clint Mecham, Volusia County emergency management director, said at a roundtable of elected officials in May. 'There are potential impacts coming down the pipe,' Mecham said. 'What those are, we don't know for sure.' 'Like everybody else, we are playing the wait-and-see game with what is happening in Washington,' he added. Jason Fuller, a senior emergency management specialist with New Hanover County on the North Carolina coast, said the uncertainty will be 'a little bit of a challenge.' But it also offers an opportunity to drive home the importance of officials preparing for what's under their control. Recovery costs rise with climate change, population growth An aerial view of flood damage wrought by Hurricane Helene along the Swannanoa River on Oct. 3, 2024, in Asheville, North Carolina. |States already are struggling to keep up with rising disaster costs, said Colin Foard, director of the managing fiscal risks project at the Pew Charitable Trusts. Disasters are becoming more damaging as climate change increases their intensity and population growth increases their impact. Meanwhile, state and local governments have to balance their budgets, unlike the federal government, which can respond to a disaster with deficit spending. Piling more costs onto states could force them into difficult trade-offs, Foard said. 'They will have to think about how you come up with more money for disaster recovery.' Some states can tap special accounts or budget surpluses as North Carolina did after Hurricane Helene. But that's a limited solution, Foard said. States that have set aside wildfire funding, for instance, have seen it drained year after year. 'Some of these current approaches that states were taking were already starting to fall short,' Foard said. Cities and counties have limited flexibility to adapt. 'You can't do it without FEMA money,' said Raul Gastesi, the town attorney for Miami Lakes, Florida. Many local governments are constrained in what kinds of taxes and revenues they can collect, leaving them dependent on state and federal funding after a hurricane. FEMA pays at least 75 percent of disaster recovery costs. 'We have to operate in a balanced budget at the local government level – which you can't do if you're responding to a disaster,' said Gastesi, also a partner at the law firm Gastesi Lopez Mestre & Cobiella. Risks to long-term forecasting John Cangialosi, senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, inspects a satellite image of Hurricane Beryl, the first hurricane of the 2024 season, on July 1, 2024. |Scientists and disaster specialists say there are signs the federal disaster response system may soon begin to fray. Weather models will suffer as NOAA's data collection and model-building capabilities shrink, meteorologists say. Several weather offices across the country already have had to reduce or curtail their weather balloon programs, whose observations feed the country's weather models. The 20-foot-wide balloons feed information on temperature, wind speeds, humidity and other atmospheric conditions into weather models, which have recently declined in accuracy, said Friday, the former NWS director, in a recent panel discussion of climate scientists and meteorologists. 'We've already seen numerical numbers, actual numbers, showing the decrease of our forecasting computer models in the last couple or three weeks,' Friday said. Doster, the NOAA communications director, said the agency is working to fill vacancies to 'ensure the continuity of services' including balloon launches. At the same time, NWS' Hurricane Hunter program, which flies aircraft into the hearts of tropical cyclones to collect information on wind speeds and other conditions, is operating at reduced capacity. The measurements feed hurricane forecasts in real time and help long-term research on tropical cyclones. A recent Government Accountability Office report found that staffing shortages and aircraft problems have led to flight cancellations in recent years. The Trump administration laid off several employees involved in the Hurricane Hunter missions. It's also proposed eliminating funding for NOAA's network of laboratories and cooperative research institutes, including the University of Miami's Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies, whose scientists collect key data on the Hurricane Hunter flights. If Congress approved the budget cuts, NOAA would lose access to many of the laboratories that help build and maintain its weather forecasts. The Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, housed at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, analyzes satellite data on strengthening hurricanes. It's the only institute in the country that monitors hurricane wind fields in real time as they form and intensify, according to institute Director Tristan L'Ecuyer, making it an essential component of NOAA's hurricane forecasting system. Meanwhile, staffing cuts have hit some of the NOAA offices responsible for designing and maintaining national weather models, like the National Centers for Environmental Prediction. 'We've lost some of the staff that takes care of the quality control, that takes care of making sure that the models are really performing up to par,' Friday said. With less data to feed the weather models and less quality control, weather forecasts won't improve over time — and they may even degrade, some experts said. Scientists may also lose the gains they've made on complex weather prediction issues, including advances in hurricane forecasting. Hurricanes are intensifying faster as global temperatures rise, yet dangerous rapid intensification events are notoriously difficult to predict. Only in the last few years have scientists made major strides in rapid intensification forecasting, and scientists worry that those efforts will plateau in the coming years. 'You probably won't see the effect right away,' said Andrew Hazelton, a hurricane model expert at the University of Miami and a former NOAA scientist who was fired amid the Trump administration's recent layoffs. 'There's a latency, a lag to this.'

More Than 200,000 People Told To Stay Indoors in 3 States
More Than 200,000 People Told To Stay Indoors in 3 States

Newsweek

time4 hours ago

  • Newsweek

More Than 200,000 People Told To Stay Indoors in 3 States

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Air quality alerts were in effect across three states on Monday morning, with residents of Michigan, Minnesota and South Carolina warned of potential health impacts. Why It Matters Health officials say that vulnerable populations—such as children, older adults and individuals with existing respiratory issues—face heightened risks during periods of poor air quality. What To Know In Michigan and Minnesota, alerts were issued due to smoke impacts from Canadian wildfires, a notice posted by the National Weather Service (NWS) said. Michigan counties affected included Mackinac, Chippewa, Menominee, Keweenaw, Dickinson, Iron, Marquette, Baraga, Schoolcraft, Houghton, Delta, Ontonagon, Gogebic, Luce and Alger. "It is recommended that, when possible, you avoid strenuous outdoor activities, especially those with heart disease and respiratory diseases such as asthma," read the alert. The entirety of Minnesota was also under air quality alert. "A cold front will continue to drag smoke from large wildfires in Manitoba and Saskatchewan southward into Minnesota. This will be a long duration event with multiple rounds of smoke expected," read the air quality alert for Minnesota. A round of smoke was expected to arrive on Monday, it said, adding that the alert could potentially be extended as additional smoke waves were possible. Sensitive groups were advised to limit prolonged or heavy exertion, with authorities also cautioning against activities that contribute to air pollution, such as outdoor burning. "Keep windows closed overnight to prevent smoke from getting indoors," the alert added. Meanwhile, an air quality alert had been issued for Catawba and Upstate regions of South Carolina. The alert said that weather conditions were expected to cause high ozone pollution levels. "This has been further compounded by higher than projected ozone readings from over the weekend and an influence from interactions with the Canadian wildfire smoke that has poured across the Plains and Southeast," it added. What People Are Saying Professor of pediatric respiratory and environmental medicine Jonathan Grigg, with Queen Mary University of London, previously told Newsweek: "There are vulnerable groups and classically they are children because they've got an extra issue to do with their lungs developing, whereas our lungs are not developing as adults. "Their trajectory can be deviated so they don't actually achieve their maximum lung function." There are also "very clear links" between inhaling particles and earlier death from both respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, Grigg said. Additionally, Grigg said conditions such as asthma are also exacerbated by exposure to air pollution. What Happens Next At the time of writing, Minnesota's air quality alerts were set to remain in effect until 6 p.m. on Monday, while in South Carolina, the alert is to last until 8 p.m.

Gusty winds and low humidity spark Red Flag Warning in parts of Northern California
Gusty winds and low humidity spark Red Flag Warning in parts of Northern California

Yahoo

time11 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Gusty winds and low humidity spark Red Flag Warning in parts of Northern California

( — The National Weather Service has issued a Red Flag Warning starting early morning on Monday for the Northern and Central Sacramento Valley and the adjacent northern Coastal Range. A Red Flag Warning means that critical fire weather conditions are either happening or will happen later, NWS said. This is when a combination of strong winds, low relative humidity, and warm temperatures can start a fire that can rapidly grow in size and intensity. According to NWS, the warning comes due to gusty winds and low humidity, which will be in effect from 2 a.m. to 8 p.m. The winds are expected across the northern and central Sacramento Valley, along west of I-5, and into the northern Coastal Range. NWS stated that the speed of the winds will be 15 to 25 mph with possible gusts of 30 to 40 mph. Lucky guest wins $549K jackpot at Thunder Valley's new slot machines The humidity level is forecast to be between nine and 20 percent, with the highest threat being in the Northern Sacramento Valley. NWS asks the public to avoid and obey the following activities: Outdoor burning Do not use a lawn mower or drive on dry grass or brush Do not have vehicle parts or chains dragging on the ground Properly dispose of cigarettes and matches Obey local burn bans and evacuate if told to Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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