Latest news with #centralAlabama
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Weather Aware Tuesday: Severe storms likely
Tonight: Our weather will remain quiet tonight with patchy dense fog developing under a partly cloudy sky with lows in the upper 60s to low 70s. A sprinkle or light shower is possible along the Hwy-278 corridor around sunrise Monday morning. Monday: Outside of a sprinkle or two over our northern counties very early Monday, we should all stay dry. Temperatures will be much warmer in the upper 80s, feeling more like the low to middle 90s with partly cloudy skies. This Week: A strong cold front will approach the region on Tuesday, providing another day of summer-like heat. Highs on Tuesday will approach 90° over parts of the area while most of us hang out in the upper 80s, feeling like the low/mid 90s with muggy air in place. This warm, moist air will make an unstable environment late Tuesday into early Wednesday, providing a potentially significant severe weather risk. Weather Aware Tuesday Night: 4 PM Tuesday – 1 AM Wednesday Scattered storms are expected to either form over northern Mississippi shortly after lunch on Tuesday before organizing into a gusty line of storms that will pose a high risk for damaging winds in excess of 60-70 mph across central Alabama starting Tuesday evening. There will also be a risk for up to ping pong ball size hail and potentially a tornado or two depending on where storms decide to form at. Once the line of storms organize together, they'll quickly move southeast into late Tuesday night before likely exiting central Alabama shortly after midnight. The confidence in regards to timing is still low to medium, so be sure to check back for updates as the timing becomes more specific. By Wednesday, lower humidity and refreshing air spills southward, drying things out and returning us to sunshine for the second half of the week. Highs will fall into the upper 70s and lows in the 40s and 50s! The upcoming weekend becomes a bit tricky as northwest flow aloft appears to develop somewhere over the Tennessee River Valley. Where this pattern sets up will determine who could see a few complexes of storms similar to our weather this past weekend. We'll keep a low end threat for rain in the forecast for now and ramp up as needed over the coming days. Be sure to follow the CBS 42 Storm Team: Follow Us on Facebook: Chief Meteorologist Dave Nussbaum, Meteorologist Michael Haynes, Meteorologist Alex Puckett, and Meteorologist Jacob Woods. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
More storms tonight, some intense with loud thunder
Tonight: We'll remain dry through the evening into early tonight. After midnight, showers and storms will build in from our west, giving a good bit of us heavy rain with very loud thunder into the wee hours of Sunday morning. Low temperatures will fall into the upper 60s to low 70s. Sunday: A complex of storms will be weakening and pushing away to our southeast around sunrise with additional hit/miss showers and downpours possible through lunch. Expect some periods of sunshine during the afternoon as highs creep into the middle 80s, feeling like the low 90s. Next Week: Temperatures will remain very warm to nearly hot in the upper 80s and even lower 90s for some on Monday and Tuesday with most of us staying dry outside of a quick passing shower. As the humidity remains quite oppressive, heat index values these days will reach the middle 90s! Be sure to have plenty of water for those afternoon and evening youth practices. Weather Aware Tuesday Night: 4 PM Tuesday – 4 AM Wednesday A complex of strong to severe storms are expected to push across central Alabama sometime late Tuesday evening into the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Confidence is low on the exact timing, so this will be updated over the coming days. Storm threats include damaging straight-line winds of 60-70+ MPH and up to ping-pong ball size hail. Be sure to check back for updates. The storms Tuesday night will be along a cold front which will push through here early Wednesday, clearing out the storms and muggy, warm weather for a few days. Temperatures will fall into the middle 70s for highs on Thursday and Friday with overnight lows settling in the low/mid 50s! This air will feel refreshing as we round out the work week combined with plenty of sunshine. Highs may climb back to the low 80s by Saturday with a small chance of rain. Be sure to follow the CBS 42 Storm Team: Follow Us on Facebook: Chief Meteorologist Dave Nussbaum, Meteorologist Michael Haynes, Meteorologist Alex Puckett, and Meteorologist Jacob Woods. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Fast Company
08-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
Trump wants to fast-track an Alabama coal mine expansion—but almost all its rock is shipped overseas
BROOKWOOD, Ala.—The Trump administration has announced it will aim to fast-track the permitting and environmental review of a major coal mine expansion in central Alabama as part of a larger effort to accelerate the construction of what the government has labeled 'critical mineral' infrastructure. While administration officials said the change is aimed at 'significantly reduc[ing] our reliance on foreign nations,' coal produced as part of Warrior Met's expansion in Alabama is almost entirely exported overseas to support foreign steelmaking markets, according to the company. Warrior Met's Blue Creek mine expansion, set to be one of the largest coal build-outs in Alabama history, is one of 20 planned developments deemed 'transparency projects' by the administration over the last two months. The mine expansion will be placed on the federal government's permitting dashboard as it moves its way through the regulatory and permitting process. The projects' inclusion on the dashboard authorized under the 2015 Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act (FAST) will, according to the Trump administration, 'make the environmental review and authorizations schedule for these vital mineral production projects publicly available and allow all of these projects to benefit from increased transparency. 'The public nature of the dashboard ensures that all stakeholders, from project sponsors and community members to federal agency leaders, have up-to-date accounting of where each project stands in the review process,' the administration said in its announcement. 'This transparency leads to greater accountability, ensuring a more efficient process.' During the Biden administration, the so-called FAST-41 dashboard was used to fast-track projects aimed at benefiting tribal nations, as well as various projects advancing renewable energy, coastal restoration, broadband, and electricity transmission sectors. The program was created as a means 'to enhance transparency and increase the efficiency of the permitting process,' the Biden administration said at the time. With a new president, though, the programs designated to participate—and the policy priorities they represent—have now changed. The Trump administration has already signaled its support of the Alabama project. In April, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum visited an existing Warrior Met mine outside Tuscaloosa and took a windshield tour of the Blue Creek facility currently under construction. During that visit, Burgum emphasized the administration's stated commitment to fossil fuel production and said that its actions would 'unleash American energy.' He did not acknowledge Warrior Met's checkered safety and environmental record or that nearly all of its product—metallurgical coal—is shipped overseas for foreign steelmaking operations, not used in the U.S. 'We sell substantially all of our steelmaking coal production to steel producers outside of the United States,' a recent Warrior Met corporate filing said. 'For the three months ended March 31, 2025, our geographic customer mix was 37% in Europe, 43% in Asia, and 20% in South America.' The planned expansion of Blue Creek involves a major build-out of Warrior Met's ability to mine for underground coal using the longwall method, a particularly destructive form of mining in which large machines shear walls of coal, leaving vast, empty expanses in their wake. Land above those empty caverns sinks, causing what is often permanent damage to the surface and structures there. Longwall mining has devastated communities in Alabama and beyond. In March 2024, an Alabama home exploded above a longwall mine with a different owner after methane—a gas released during mining—seeped into the residence and ignited. The resulting blast killed an Alabama grandfather and seriously injured his grandson. Since then, the community above the Oak Grove mine in western Jefferson County has continued to crumble, with homes' foundations cracking as the longwall mine expands below. Earlier this year, just as President Donald Trump was announcing efforts to promote 'clean, beautiful coal,' a West Virginia woman was hospitalized after a methane explosion in her home atop a longwall mine left her seriously injured. Workers from the mine beneath her home had stood behind Trump during his White House announcement. Once completed, Warrior Met's Blue Creek expansion will increase the company's coal production by 60%, providing additional supply for overseas steelmaking markets hungry for metallurgical coal that can meet production needs. Taxpayer-funded support for the facility may top $400 million. The company has also asked the federal government to allow it to mine publicly owned coal as part of the Blue Creek project. The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced last year that it would conduct an environmental assessment related to Warrior Met's Blue Creek project and, specifically, its proposal to mine 14,040 acres of federal minerals underlying privately owned land in Tuscaloosa County. Warrior Met's applications to lease the coal rights propose the extraction of approximately 57.5 million tons of recoverable public coal reserves. Initial government scoping documents indicated that any environmental assessment of the Blue Creek project would include an analysis of its impact on climate change, both direct and indirect. Since those initial documents were released, however, federal guidance on the inclusion of climate change considerations in government decision-making has been in flux. A day-one executive order by Trump, for example, disbanded the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases, which was established pursuant to a Biden executive order. The order said 'any guidance, instruction, recommendation, or document issued by the IWG is withdrawn as no longer representative of governmental policy.' That guidance had emphasized the importance of government analysis of the social cost of carbon, a way of putting a dollar figure on the economic damage that comes from emitting a ton of carbon dioxide. The Trump White House has said without evidence that the concept 'is marked by logical deficiencies, a poor basis in empirical science, politicization, and the absence of a foundation in legislation.' Public comments on the project already submitted to BLM included concerns around greenhouse gas emissions and Warrior Met's contribution to the climate crisis. 'Please do not approve any new or expanded coal mining,' one commenter wrote. 'The climate crisis is already deadly and rapidly getting worse. There is an overwhelming international consensus on the severity of this crisis and the urgent need to phase out the use of harmful fossil fuels.'
