Chaos at disaster’s emotional focal point

Plaza towers elementary school

Chaos at disaster’s emotional focal point

May 22, 2013 1:02 am

MOORE, Okla. — At the end of the day on Monday, on the last week of the school year, students at Plaza Towers Elementary in this blue-collar suburb were zipping their backpacks. A fifth-grade class had just finished watching “Hatchet,"....MORE

Shelter requirements resisted in tornado alley

May 22, 2013 1:02 am

The website for Moore, Okla., recommends “that every residence have a storm safe room or an underground cellar." It says below-ground shelters are the best protection against tornadoes. But no local ordinance or building code requires such....MORE

Twister tracked path of 1999 tornado

May 21, 2013 4:00 am

NEW YORK — Monday’s powerful tornado in suburban Oklahoma City loosely followed the path of a killer twister that slammed the region in May 1999. The National Weather Service estimated that the storm that struck Moore, Okla., on Monday....MORE

Oklahoma tornado

Mile-wide tornado kills at least 91 'Hearts are broken'

• Death toll is mounting, and two elementary schools are crushed • Photos from the devastation • Deadliest tornadoes since 1900 • In the path of a 1999 twister, A5

May 21, 2013 4:00 am

MOORE, Okla. — A giant tornado, a mile or more wide, killed at least 91 people, 20 of them children, as it tore across parts of Oklahoma City and its suburbs Monday afternoon, flattening homes, flinging cars through the air and crushing at....MORE

Need to know

Rising seas a new reality for many

May 18, 2013 4:00 am

PHILADELPHIA — The night Meghan Wren got stranded by floodwaters and had to sleep in her car, she knew it was time for a reckoning. She had been driving to her waterfront home along the Delaware Bay in South Jersey. As she crossed the wide....MORE

Powerful tornadoes rip through Texas

May 17, 2013 4:00 am

Emergency workers search the debris in Granbury, Texas, on Thursday after 10 tornadoes touched down overnight here and in several other small communities in North Texas, leaving at least six people dead, dozens injured and hundreds homeless. The....MORE

Carbon dioxide passes long-feared milestone

May 11, 2013 4:00 am

The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the Earth for millions of years. Scientific monitors reported....MORE

Wildfires

‘We could be in for a doozy of a season’

May 8, 2013 4:00 am

Early May has been more like midsummer, the heart of fire season around Oregon. Wildfires east and west of the Cascades have already charred more than 100 acres. High temperatures around the state have reached or are expected to reach 80 degrees.....MORE

Snowpack is melting at record pace

May 4, 2013 4:00 am

Relatively dry weather in Central Oregon since the start of 2013 could leave reservoirs low come fall, says the state official tasked with managing water supplies here.“We are very, very dry in parts of the basin," said Jeremy Giffin,....MORE

Greenhouse gas nears milestone

May 2, 2013 4:00 am

LOS ANGELES — The ratio of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere is flirting with 400 parts per million, a level last seen about 2.5 million to 5 million years ago, according to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of ....MORE

More rain means no rest in Midwest

April 24, 2013 4:00 am

AmeriCorps member Tom Schweiss walks atop a sandbag levee Tuesday as he monitors pumps in Clarksville, Mo., along the Mississippi River. More rain on Tuesday was the last thing flood fighters across the Midwest wanted to see, adding more water to....MORE

Phenomenon

Everybody talks weather, but it’s not easy to predict

April 20, 2013 4:00 am

While we may all desperately want forecasting months in advance, we’re still a ways from getting there. The National Weather Service moved from a five-day forecast to seven-day in 2000, and is now considering 10 days. I remember my first-grade....MORE

Discovery

Dark lightning: mysterious energy in thunderclouds

April 20, 2013 4:00 am

ORLANDO, Fla. — Central Floridians are no strangers to violent thunderstorms, living in the lightning capital of the country. But now scientists have discovered an exotic and dynamic form of energy lurking in the thunderclouds above: dark....MORE