History > 2007 > USA >

Nature, Wildlife, Climate, Weather (II)

The effects of the drought

are dramatically seen at Lake Mead, Nev.,

where the shoreline has shrunk so considerabl

that it has forced a marina to relocate

from newly dry land.

Photograph: Jim Wilson

The New York Times

No Longer Waiting for Rain, an Arid West Takes Action

NYT

4 April 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/us/04drought.html

Polly Hill Is Dead at 100;

Tested Hardiness of Plants

April 30, 2007
The New York Times
By DENNIS HEVESI

Polly Hill, a horticulturist who stretched the boundaries of plant hardiness by gathering seeds from around the world, especially those of trees and shrubs that thrive in warmer climates, and studying which would sprout and then endure New England winters, died on Wednesday at her home in Hockessin, Del. She was 100.

The death was announced by Barbara Conroy, administrator of the Polly Hill Arboretum, a 70-acre former sheep farm on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. It was there, in 1958, that Mrs. Hill first began planting seeds — including those of camellias, azaleas and something called the monkey puzzle tree.

More than 1,700 plant varieties now grow on the arboretum, in West Tisbury, Mass. It has been open, free of charge, for leisurely strolls and more scientific pursuits for more than 40 years.

Visitors might ponder, for example, the sprawling branches of Araucaria araucana, the stout monkey puzzle tree, which is native to Chile and Argentina. That is, if they are there at the right time. The tree, which Mrs. Hill first planted in 1968, thrives for several years, is withered for several years, then revives again.

“A lot of people wouldn’t put something in their garden that isn’t reliably hardy,” said Michael Van Valkenburgh, the Charles Eliot professor of landscape architecture at Harvard. “Polly’s quest was to ask: What is on the margins, what could live here?

“So in her gardens,” Professor Valkenburgh continued, “you see a fantastic camellia collection — reds, pinks, other vibrant colors.” Camellias, he pointed out, come from Asia and can mostly be found in gardens far to the south. Mrs. Hill’s arboretum is also rich in hybrid azaleas, rare Japanese ground covers and broad-leaf Southern magnolias.

Mrs. Hill was known in the field for her detailed record-keeping, tracing the viability of every seed variety she planted. She maintained a complete “dead file,” as she called it, as well as daily, weekly and monthly descriptions of those specimens that survived. One of her rare plants, a rhododendron grown from a wild seed, was nurtured for 29 years before it bloomed.

Mary Louise Butcher (she was known as Polly since childhood) was born on Jan. 30, 1907, in Ardmore, Pa., a daughter of Margaret Keen and Howard Butcher Jr. Her husband of 65 years, Julian Hill, died in 1996. She is survived by a daughter, Louisa Coughlin of Philadelphia; two sons, Joseph, of Radnor, Pa., and Jefferson, of Washington; a brother, Keen Butcher of Philadelphia; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

After graduating in 1928 from Vassar College, where she majored in music, Mrs. Hill went to Japan to teach English at a women’s college. While there, she studied traditional Japanese flower arrangement — a skill she later lectured about, while wearing a kimono, after returning to the United States. In the late 1940s she studied botany and horticulture at the University of Maryland.

Mrs. Hill’s parents had bought the Massachusetts farm in 1926 and used it as a summer home. After the Hills took over the property in 1956, they built a small nursery outside the main house, and Mrs. Hill began acquiring seeds from around the world, in particular from a collector in Japan.

Seedlings that survived the winter were planted beside the farm’s stone walls and 18th-century wooden buildings, among its meadows and in the shade of native oak trees.

“What Polly did wasn’t entirely unique in the field, but she was distinguished for how avidly she studied,” Professor Valkenburgh said. “And all this stuff that she’s known for, she did in her second 50 years.”

    Polly Hill Is Dead at 100; Tested Hardiness of Plants, NYT, 30.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/30hill.html

Court Adheres to 2003 Clean Air Rules

April 30, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:26 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Monday dealt the utility industry its second setback this month on a program designed to clean up pollution at aging, coal-fired power plants.

The justices refused to review Bush administration standards favored by the companies and blocked a year ago by some state and local regulators and environmental groups.

The court's action, however, is undercut by a new Bush administration regulatory proposal that would relax clean air standards at coal-fired plants. Environmental groups say the rule, if adopted, would give the industry what it could not win in the courts.

The court's action Monday leaves in place a March 2006 court decision that went against both the Bush administration and the utility industry. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia declared Environmental Protection Agency regulations were so lenient that they violated the Clean Air Act.

The 2003 EPA rules on a program called New Source Review would allow older coal-fired facilities to undergo extensive changes without having to install pollution controls.

The office of then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer led the fight against the 2003 regulations in the lower courts, saying the Bush administration was trying to ''gut'' federal clean air law.

Last week, the Bush administration issued its latest proposal. It would undercut an April 2 Supreme Court decision and the court's decision Monday not to consider the 2003 EPA rules.

In the April 2 decision, the court ruled against Duke Energy Corp., which has been resisting regulators' demands to install pollution controls in units in North and South Carolina. The Duke ruling impacts other pending Clinton-era enforcement cases against several utilities.

The cases are EPA v. New York, 06-736, and Utility Air Regulatory Group v. New York, 06-750.

    Court Adheres to 2003 Clean Air Rules, NYT, 30.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Power-Plants.html

More Marine Animals Sickened by Acid

April 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:09 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Rescuers worked Saturday to save more dead and dying dolphins and sea lions that have washed up on Southern California beaches, believed poisoned by a naturally occurring toxic acid.

A bloom of ocean algae that produces domoic acid may be responsible for killing or sickening dozens of the sea mammals, including birds, in recent weeks, environmentalists said.

On Friday state health officials warned consumers against eating certain locally harvested shellfish and seafood because they may be contaminated with the acid.

At least four sea lions were found Saturday on shores in Marina del Rey, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach and Venice, said Peter Wallerstein of the Whale Rescue Team.

''We've done at least 35 rescues in the past couple weeks,'' Wallerstein said. ''The local marine care center is at full capacity and they are putting restrictions on how many animals we can bring in.''

Another six dolphins have been picked off the beach in the past six days, he said, and about 110 animals have been rescued this year, he added. All were either dead, comatose or suffering from seizures.

Officials said consumers should avoid sport-harvested shellfish, sardines, anchovies, lobsters and crabs caught off the coast between Santa Barbara and Orange County. Dogs, cats and other pets also should not be fed the products, the state Department of Health Services said.

In the past week, 40 birds have been taken to the International Bird Rescue Center in San Pedro with symptoms of domoic acid poisoning, which attacks the brain and can cause seizures.

In previous seasons, the center might see seven birds a week, director Jay Holcomb said.

The algae population goes through an annual increase as ocean waters warm, but biologists say this year's bloom is especially early and extensive.

A similar outbreak in 2002 and 2003 sickened or killed more than a thousand sea lions and 50 dolphins.

    More Marine Animals Sickened by Acid, NYT, 29.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Deadly-Acid.html

Climate Change Talks Grow in Importance

April 28, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:04 p.m. ET
The New York Times

As the world warms and scientists' warnings grow urgent, climate negotiators are counting down toward make-or-break talks later this year, hoping for progress on a long-term deal to sharply reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

Experts are beginning to fear, however, that as time runs down the best that can be hoped for may be an extension of the relatively weak Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012. The alternative is a world without any carbon-reduction rules at all.

The year's bad news on climate change is coming in installments.

In February, a U.N.-sponsored scientific network reported that unabated global warming would produce a far different planet by 2100, from rising seas, drought and other factors. In early April, the scientists said animal and plant life was already being disrupted.

In the third installment, coming Friday in Bangkok, Thailand, the authoritative panel is expected to say the world could still head off severe damage if all countries act urgently, with the best policies and technology, to rein in carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions -- an improbable scenario.

There are signs of movement. In March, the European Union formally committed to at least a 20-percent cut in emissions, below 1990 levels, by 2020. The Democrats newly in control of Congress are pushing for mandatory caps on U.S. emissions. China is talking more seriously about controls.

''There's a lot happening. Whether that translates into a change in negotiating positions is a complicated story,'' said Leon Charles, a veteran negotiator for the Caribbean nation of Grenada who will have a lead role in the upcoming talks.

The key complication is a ''you first'' standoff between the United States, on one side, and China and the developing world on the other.

President Bush, who is expected to veto any Democratic effort to reduce carbon emissions, rejects the Kyoto Protocol and its mandatory cutbacks, complaining they would hobble the U.S. economy and should have applied to China, India and other industrializing countries that were exempted because they're poorer.

China, meanwhile, isn't expected to submit to an international regime unless the U.S. takes on a major commitment. It points to the fact that its per-capita emissions of carbon dioxide, byproduct of power plants, automobiles and other fossil fuel-burning sources, has stood at less than one-sixth the American per-person emissions.

''Prematurely'' committing to mandatory cutbacks could keep China from climbing out of its poverty, the Beijing government said in a climate report April 23.

The Kyoto pact, a 1997 annex to a 1992 U.N. climate treaty, requires 35 industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by, on average, 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. But specialists say 50-percent reductions will be needed to stabilize concentrations of the global-warming gases in the atmosphere.

The annual U.N. climate conferences -- this year's is in December in Bali, Indonesia -- have made no real progress toward turning such deeper cuts into treaty obligations once Kyoto expires.

In a discussion forum that's a sidebar to the conference, government delegates have been talking about narrower, innovative ways for fast-developing countries like China to contribute without committing to blanket, quantified reductions.

''They could commit to a certain share of renewables,'' that is, a higher proportion of wind, solar or other non-carbon power sources in their energy mix, said Hermann E. Ott of Germany's Wuppertal Institute, which has conducted in-depth studies of post-Kyoto paths.

''You could also think of efficiency standards for electrical appliances,'' Ott said, ''or measures for certain sectors -- for the steel industry, for example.''

That non-negotiating forum ends this year. If, as expected, no mandate emerges in Bali to negotiate binding post-Kyoto targets, the U.N. process risks running out of time, given that it will take years to produce a new agreement and win ratification worldwide.

That would open a post-2012 gap -- a world without carbon-reduction rules -- that could wreck the emerging, Europe-centered market in trading carbon allowances among industries. The allowances would become unnecessary and worthless.

Elliott Diringer, international strategist at Washington's private Pew Center on Climate Change, said at Bali ''it may be time to think about bridging strategies,'' that is, extending Kyoto's limited quotas past 2012 while working on deeper cuts.

Ott agreed a ''bridge'' looks ever more likely. He doesn't want to sound pessimistic, he said, but ''it is important to stress that time is of the essence.''

    Climate Change Talks Grow in Importance, NYT, 29.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Climate-Talks.html

Algae Killing Birds, Sealife in Calif.

April 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:40 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A bloom of ocean algae that produces a toxic acid has sickened and killed hundreds of birds, sea lions and dolphins in California, environmentalists said.

Birds and animals have been washing up on shores from San Diego to San Francisco Bay.

In the past week, 40 birds have been taken to the International Bird Rescue Center in San Pedro with symptoms of domoic acid poisoning, which attacks the brain and can cause seizures.

In previous seasons, the center might see seven birds a week, director Jay Holcomb said.

''I have been doing this work for 35 years and I have never seen anything like this as far as the number of species affected, other than an oil spill,'' Holcomb said Thursday.

Domoic acid is produced by microscopic algae. Birds and sea mammals ingest the acid by eating fish and shellfish who dine on the algae.

The algae population increases or ''blooms'' every year as the ocean waters warm but this year's bloom seems early, extensive and ''very, very thick,'' said David Caron, who teaches in the biological sciences department at University of Southern California.

''In five years of study I have not seen a bloom this large at this particular time of year,'' Caron said. ''It's having an extraordinary impact on pelicans and many other species.''

''There are conceivably thousands of animals being affected,'' Caron said.

The Wetland and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach had received 73 sick or dead birds since Sunday, assistant director Lisa Birkle said.

The toxin has been swifter and deadlier than usual, she said.

''The concentration of the toxin is so great this year that we haven't had a chance to react to it,'' Birkle said. ''Normally we're able to flush out the toxin with a treatment regimen ... This year they're just coming in dead.''

Fourteen sea lions have been treated for domoic acid poisoning at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach. Seven died, said Michele Hunter, the center's director.

Humans can't be harmed by swimming in algae blooms but consuming fish and shellfish tainted with the acid can cause nausea, seizures and even death.

The state Department of Health Services issued a warning against eating sport-harvested shellfish, anchovies, sardines, and both sports-harvested and commercially caught lobsters and crabs.

The warning came early this year. The advisory usually runs from May 1 to Oct. 31.

A domoic outbreak in 2002 and 2003 sickened or killed more than a thousand sea lions and 50 dolphins, said Joe Cordaro, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Services.

    Algae Killing Birds, Sealife in Calif., NYT, 27.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Deadly-Acid.html

Ga. Residents Flee As Wildfire Spreads

April 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:14 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WAYCROSS, Ga. (AP) -- About 70 homes were evacuated and authorities briefly closed a highway early Wednesday after a wildfire spreading through a swamp moved toward communities south of Waycross.

A 35-mile stretch of U.S. 1 was initially closed to traffic, though portions of the highway were later reopened, said Tracy Smith, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.

The fire crossed state Route 177 and was threatening the small communities of Astoria and Braganza about three miles south of Waycross, Smith said.

Waycross, a city of 15,300, was not in immediate danger, she said, though heavy smoke covered the city. Wildfires have burned 53,000 acres, or about 67 square miles, of forest parched by drought in southeast Georgia in the past nine days.

Darryl Cribbs and his family left their home in Braganza after sheriff's deputies came to their door around 1 a.m. Wednesday. They piled spare clothes, a few valuables and their six dogs into three cars as the fire burned less than a mile from their house.

''It looked like it was snowing with all the ash falling. You could feel the heat,'' said Cribbs, 44, who took his family to stay with his parents. ''They said as soon as we left they were going to bring in tanker trucks and try to save the house.''

The wildfire spread rapidly Tuesday night and early Wednesday near the private, nonprofit Okefenokee Swamp Park, fueled by dense and dry trees and brush. Firefighters tried to protect nearby homes after their occupants fled.

At a Red Cross shelter in Waycross, Curtis Cowart said his family had been warned twice last week that they might have to evacuate. They had already unpacked valuables they planned to take with them by the time they were told to flee Wednesday.

''I wasn't going to leave, but I looked and saw the flames and the smoke and it looked like it was getting closer'' said Cowart, 61, whose property near Astoria backs onto the swamp. ''If it comes through those woods, I don't know if they can stop it.''

The fire, less than 10 miles southeast of Waycross, sent up a towering cloud of smoke near the entrance to the park.

Firefighters tried to slow the blaze by igniting underbrush ahead of it, hoping the fires would merge and burn each other out competing for fuel. They also hoped U.S. 1, the four-lane highway at the park entrance, would keep fire from spreading to nearby homes.

About a dozen residents who live within a mile of the park gathered Tuesday across the highway and nervously watched the orange glow from the fire behind the trees.

''I wasn't scared last week, but this is scary,'' said Kelli Lee, 33, who said she has kept valuables packed for the past week in case she has to evacuate. ''I know I won't sleep tonight, that's for sure.''

The fire started April 16 when a downed power line ignited tinder-dry trees in Ware County. Officials said Tuesday the blaze was 50 percent contained by fire breaks plowed along its perimeter.

But winds have kept shifting direction over the past week, threatening to cause pockets of smoldering embers to flare back to life.

More than 1,000 Ware County residents have been forced to evacuate since the fire began, and 5,000 others have been urged to leave voluntarily because of health risks associated with heavy smoke.

The fire has destroyed 18 homes.

    Ga. Residents Flee As Wildfire Spreads, NYT, 25.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Georgia-Wildfire.html

Severe Storms Kill 6 in Texas

April 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:02 a.m. ET
The New York Times

EAGLE PASS, Texas (AP) -- Six people were killed when severe storms spawned a tornado that struck a small community near the Mexican border Tuesday, officials said.

The six people killed were reportedly in one home, said Eagle Pass Fire Chief Roy Delacruz. The tornado took the greatest toll on the unincorporated areas of Maverick County known as Loma Linda, Chula Vista and Rosita Valley, officials said.

The tornado destroyed Rosita Valley Elementary School, more than 20 homes and the Eagle Pass municipal sewer treatment plant, Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster said. Nobody was in the school when the tornado hit, he said.

Fort Duncan Regional Medical Center, the Eagle Pass hospital, received 74 injured patients, Foster said. Four patients in critical condition were transported to other regional hospitals, four patients were admitted locally and 32 were discharged, Foster added.

''The hospital in the early stages was being overrun, but they had called in additional doctors and were able to take care of business,'' Foster said. ''I spoke with the hospital administrator and they're under control.''

Hospital officials could not immediately be reached Tuesday.

The Eagle Pass school district canceled classes for Wednesday, Foster said.

The National Weather Service said the tornado struck a few miles south of Eagle Pass just after 7 p.m.

More than 200 emergency responders, including National Guard units attached to the Border Patrol, were conducting search and rescue efforts, he said. Their door-to-door checks were halted late Tuesday as another series of dangerous storms swept the area.

The thunderstorm that produced the deadly tornado developed over Mexico and moved southeast over the Rio Grande and across Maverick County, said Clay Anderson, a senior forecaster with the Austin-San Antonio office of the weather service.

In Piedras Negras, Mexico, at least three people were killed and at least 40 were injured in the severe weather, authorities said. The violent storm ripped roofs from homes, toppled power poles and damaged dozens of cars and homes, said Oscar Murillo, the city's civil protection director.

Eagle Pass is located about 145 miles southwest of San Antonio.

    Severe Storms Kill 6 in Texas, NYT, 25.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Texas-Storms.html?hp

Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons

April 24, 2007
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
The New York Times

BELTSVILLE, Md., April 23 — What is happening to the bees?

More than a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million bee colonies have been lost — tens of billions of bees, according to an estimate from the Apiary Inspectors of America, a national group that tracks beekeeping. So far, no one can say what is causing the bees to become disoriented and fail to return to their hives.

As with any great mystery, a number of theories have been posed, and many seem to researchers to be more science fiction than science. People have blamed genetically modified crops, cellular phone towers and high-voltage transmission lines for the disappearances. Or was it a secret plot by Russia or Osama bin Laden to bring down American agriculture? Or, as some blogs have asserted, the rapture of the bees, in which God recalled them to heaven? Researchers have heard it all.

The volume of theories “is totally mind-boggling,” said Diana Cox-Foster, an entomologist at Pennsylvania State University. With Jeffrey S. Pettis, an entomologist from the United States Department of Agriculture, Dr. Cox-Foster is leading a team of researchers who are trying to find answers to explain “colony collapse disorder,” the name given for the disappearing bee syndrome.

“Clearly there is an urgency to solve this,” Dr. Cox-Foster said. “We are trying to move as quickly as we can.”

Dr. Cox-Foster and fellow scientists who are here at a two-day meeting to discuss early findings and future plans with government officials have been focusing on the most likely suspects: a virus, a fungus or a pesticide.

About 60 researchers from North America sifted the possibilities at the meeting today. Some expressed concern about the speed at which adult bees are disappearing from their hives; some colonies have collapsed in as little as two days. Others noted that countries in Europe, as well as Guatemala and parts of Brazil, are also struggling for answers.

“There are losses around the world that may or not be linked,” Dr. Pettis said.

The investigation is now entering a critical phase. The researchers have collected samples in several states and have begun doing bee autopsies and genetic analysis.

So far, known enemies of the bee world, like the varroa mite, on their own at least, do not appear to be responsible for the unusually high losses.

Genetic testing at Columbia University has revealed the presence of multiple micro-organisms in bees from hives or colonies that are in decline, suggesting that something is weakening their immune system. The researchers have found some fungi in the affected bees that are found in humans whose immune systems have been suppressed by the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or cancer.

“That is extremely unusual,” Dr. Cox-Foster said.

Meanwhile, samples were sent to an Agriculture Department laboratory in North Carolina this month to screen for 117 chemicals. Particular suspicion falls on a pesticide that France banned out of concern that it may have been decimating bee colonies. Concern has also mounted among public officials.

“There are so many of our crops that require pollinators,” said Representative Dennis Cardoza, a California Democrat whose district includes that state’s central agricultural valley, and who presided last month at a Congressional hearing on the bee issue. “We need an urgent call to arms to try to ascertain what is really going on here with the bees, and bring as much science as we possibly can to bear on the problem.”

So far, colony collapse disorder has been found in 27 states, according to Bee Alert Technology Inc., a company monitoring the problem. A recent survey of 13 states by the Apiary Inspectors of America showed that 26 percent of beekeepers had lost half of their bee colonies between September and March.

Honeybees are arguably the insects that are most important to the human food chain. They are the principal pollinators of hundreds of fruits, vegetables, flowers and nuts. The number of bee colonies has been declining since the 1940s, even as the crops that rely on them, such as California almonds, have grown. In October, at about the time that beekeepers were experiencing huge bee losses, a study by the National Academy of Sciences questioned whether American agriculture was relying too heavily on one type of pollinator, the honeybee.

Bee colonies have been under stress in recent years as more beekeepers have resorted to crisscrossing the country with 18-wheel trucks full of bees in search of pollination work. These bees may suffer from a diet that includes artificial supplements, concoctions akin to energy drinks and power bars. In several states, suburban sprawl has limited the bees’ natural forage areas.

So far, the researchers have discounted the possibility that poor diet alone could be responsible for the widespread losses. They have also set aside for now the possibility that the cause could be bees feeding from a commonly used genetically modified crop, Bt corn, because the symptoms typically associated with toxins, such as blood poisoning, are not showing up in the affected bees. But researchers emphasized today that feeding supplements produced from genetically modified crops, such as high-fructose corn syrup, need to be studied.

The scientists say that definitive answers for the colony collapses could be months away. But recent advances in biology and genetic sequencing are speeding the search.

Computers can decipher information from DNA and match pieces of genetic code with particular organisms. Luckily, a project to sequence some 11,000 genes of the honeybee was completed late last year at Baylor University, giving scientists a huge head start on identifying any unknown pathogens in the bee tissue.

“Otherwise, we would be looking for the needle in the haystack,” Dr. Cox-Foster said.

Large bee losses are not unheard of. They have been reported at several points in the past century. But researchers think they are dealing with something new — or at least with something previously unidentified.

“There could be a number of factors that are weakening the bees or speeding up things that shorten their lives,” said Dr. W. Steve Sheppard, a professor of entomology at Washington State University. “The answer may already be with us.”

Scientists first learned of the bee disappearances in November, when David Hackenberg, a Pennsylvania beekeeper, told Dr. Cox-Foster that more than 50 percent of his bee colonies had collapsed in Florida, where he had taken them for the winter.

Dr. Cox-Foster, a 20-year veteran of studying bees, soon teamed with Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the Pennsylvania apiary inspector, to look into the losses.

In December, she approached W. Ian Lipkin, director of the Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory at Columbia University, about doing genetic sequencing of tissue from bees in the colonies that experienced losses. The laboratory uses a recently developed technique for reading and amplifying short sequences of DNA that has revolutionized the science. Dr. Lipkin, who typically works on human diseases, agreed to do the analysis, despite not knowing who would ultimately pay for it. His laboratory is known for its work in finding the West Nile disease in the United States.

Dr. Cox-Foster ultimately sent samples of bee tissue to researchers at Columbia, to the Agriculture Department laboratory in Maryland, and to Gene Robinson, an entomologist at the University of Illinois. Fortuitously, she had frozen bee samples from healthy colonies dating to 2004 to use for comparison.

After receiving the first bee samples from Dr. Cox-Foster on March 6, Dr. Lipkin’s team amplified the genetic material and started sequencing to separate virus, fungus and parasite DNA from bee DNA.

“This is like C.S.I. for agriculture,” Dr. Lipkin said. “It is painstaking, gumshoe detective work.”

Dr. Lipkin sent his first set of results to Dr. Cox-Foster, showing that several unknown micro-organisms were present in the bees from collapsing colonies. Meanwhile, Mr. vanEngelsdorp and researchers at the Agriculture Department lab here began an autopsy of bees from collapsing colonies in California, Florida, Georgia and Pennsylvania to search for any known bee pathogens.

At the University of Illinois, using knowledge gained from the sequencing of the bee genome, Dr. Robinson’s team will try to find which genes in the collapsing colonies are particularly active, perhaps indicating stress from exposure to a toxin or pathogen.

The national research team also quietly began a parallel study in January, financed in part by the National Honey Board, to further determine if something pathogenic could be causing colonies to collapse.

Mr. Hackenberg, the beekeeper, agreed to take his empty bee boxes and other equipment to Food Technology Service, a company in Mulberry, Fla., that uses gamma rays to kill bacteria on medical equipment and some fruits. In early results, the irradiated bee boxes seem to have shown a return to health for colonies repopulated with Australian bees.

“This supports the idea that there is a pathogen there,” Dr. Cox-Foster said. “It would be hard to explain the irradiation getting rid of a chemical.”

Still, some environmental substances remain suspicious.

Chris Mullin, a Pennsylvania State University professor and insect toxicologist, recently sent a set of samples to a federal laboratory in Raleigh, N.C., that will screen for 117 chemicals. Of greatest interest are the “systemic” chemicals that are able to pass through a plant’s circulatory system and move to the new leaves or the flowers, where they would come in contact with bees.

One such group of compounds is called neonicotinoids, commonly used pesticides that are used to treat corn and other seeds against pests. One of the neonicotinoids, imidacloprid, is commonly used in Europe and the United States to treat seeds, to protect residential foundations against termites and to help keep golf courses and home lawns green.

In the late 1990s, French beekeepers reported large losses of their bees and complained about the use of imidacloprid, sold under the brand name Gaucho. The chemical, while not killing the bees outright, was causing them to be disoriented and stay away from their hives, leading them to die of exposure to the cold, French researchers later found. The beekeepers labeled the syndrome “mad bee disease.”

The French government banned the pesticide in 1999 for use on sunflowers, and later for corn, despite protests by the German chemical giant Bayer, which has said its internal research showed the pesticide was not toxic to bees. Subsequent studies by independent French researchers have disagreed with Bayer. Alison Chalmers, an eco-toxicologist for Bayer CropScience, said at the meeting today that bee colonies had not recovered in France as beekeepers had expected. “These chemicals are not being used anymore,” she said of imidacloprid, “so they certainly were not the only cause.”

Among the pesticides being tested in the American bee investigation, the neonicotinoids group “is the number-one suspect,” Dr. Mullin said. He hoped results of the toxicology screening will be ready within a month.

    Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons, NYT, 24.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/science/24bees.html

NYC Pledges 1 Million New Trees by 2017

April 22, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:38 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- One million new trees will join the urban landscape of New York City by the year 2017 to reduce air pollution, cool temperatures and help improve the city's long term sustainability, officials said Saturday.

The tree program is one of 127 environmental proposals that Mayor Michael Bloomberg was set to outline Sunday in a speech at the Museum of Natural History, timed with the observance of Earth Day.

His administration has been working for more than a year on the package of ideas, which is also expected to include a controversial plan to charge motorists extra for driving into certain parts of Manhattan, as a way to cut down on traffic congestion and pollution.

Bloomberg, whose second term expires at the end of 2009, has a goal of reducing New York City's carbon emissions by 30 percent over the next two decades. He has said that the population is likely to grow by another million in that time -- up from 8.2 million today -- and that the city needs a plan now to deal with the strain on infrastructure and the environment.

The effort was put together by the mayor's Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability.

On Saturday, city officials announced the tree program, which is to begin this July.

For the next 10 years, the city will plant 23,000 trees each year along city streets, to reach a goal of having a tree in ''every single place where it is possible to plant a street tree,'' Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff said.

The remaining will be planted in parks and public lots, while the private sector will also be encouraged to plant trees on their properties as well.

A number of different species will be planted. For each case, foresters assess the sun and shadow levels and other factors to determine the best type for that spot.

Today, New York City has 5.2 million trees, or 24 percent canopy cover. By comparison, Chicago's canopy cover is 11 percent and the rate for Atlanta is 37 percent.

The city said the increase in trees will help cool temperatures, because trees over roads help decrease the near-surface air temperature by 3.5 degrees. They also remove air pollution and reduce ozone, officials said.

The Bloomberg administration will commit another $37.5 million annually to forestry programs, up from $11 million currently, officials said.

    NYC Pledges 1 Million New Trees by 2017, NYT, 22.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Green-NYC.html

Sudden sea level surges threaten 1 billion

Thu Apr 19, 2007
5:55PM EDT
Reuters
By Michael Kahn

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - More than 1 billion people live in low-lying areas where a sudden surge in sea level could prove as disastrous as the 2004 Asian tsunami, according to new research presented on Thursday.

New mapping techniques show how much land would be lost and how many people affected by rapid sea level rises that are often triggered by storms and earthquakes, a U.S. Geological Survey-led team determined.

E. Lynn Usery, who led the team, said nearly one-quarter of the world's population lives below 100 feet above sea level -- the size of the biggest surge during the 2004 tsunami that pulverized villages along the Indian Ocean and killed 230,000 people.

"What we are suggesting is what kind of areas are at risk (in) a catastrophic event," Usery told a meeting of the Association of American Geographers.

"The fact that there are that many people living at that sea level means there are probably a lot of people potentially in harm's way."

The team also found that a 100-foot (30-meter) rise in sea level would cover 3.7 million square miles of land worldwide.

A rise of just 16 feet would affect 669 million people and 2 million square miles of land would be lost.

Sea levels are currently rising about 0.04 to 0.08 inches (1 to 2 millimeters) each year, making it unlikely such a scenario would suddenly occur across the globe, Usery said.

But he said 10,000 years ago sea levels rose 20 meters in 500 years -- a relatively short span -- after the collapse of the continental ice sheets.

"It can happen in a short period of time if we look at the historical data," Usery said.

More importantly, he said, the new mapping technique provides detail that was previously unavailable and gives policymakers better tools to prepare for potential disasters. With just a mouse click on the computer, researchers can gauge how much land would be lost at various sea levels, and where.

The team developed its own mapping projection software and then plugged in U.S. Geological Survey data on population, elevation and different types of land cover.

"This can be used by nations in the world to put contingency plans in place," Usery said. "We haven't had data sets at this kind of resolution before."

The impetus for the project came after the 2004 tsunami and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 underlined the devastating impact sudden sea level surges can have on those living in coastal areas, Usery said.

Even though people know low-lying areas like the Netherlands or many parts of Asia are at risk of flooding, many do not realize just how big a risk they are facing.

"A 30-meter surge in Florida would leave the whole state covered except for a little plateau area," Usery said.

    Sudden sea level surges threaten 1 billion, R, 19.4.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSLAU97720220070419

Utilities Still Struggling After Storm

April 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:11 p.m. ET
The New York Times

PORTLAND, Maine (AP)-- Utility crews cut their way through downed trees Wednesday to restore service to thousands of customers still without power since the huge weekend storm battered the East Coast.

Communities from New Jersey to Maine were still coping with stream flooding caused by the storm, which dumped more than 8 inches of rain in places, along with coastal flooding brought on by astronomical high tides and heavy surf.

Seventeen deaths were blamed on the weather system.

More than 50,000 businesses and residences remained without power Wednesday in Maine, where Central Maine Power Co. was being helped by repair crews from neighboring New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and as far away as Pennsylvania.

Utility officials warned that some people might be without power until the end of the week.

''It's a huge number of trees that are down, so it's a big job cutting those away,'' said CMP spokesman John Carroll. ''Plus there are 250 broken poles. That's an enormous number of poles.''

Utilities in New Hampshire reported nearly 19,000 homes and businesses still had no electricity Wednesday and said some might not be reconnected until the weekend.

In many areas, road damage and fallen trees blocked repair crews' access, said New Hampshire Electric Cooperative spokesman Seth Wheeler.

''There are 18 different tree crews we've hired ... just clearing trees first before the line crews can get in there and do construction,'' Wheeler said.

More than 80 New Hampshire roads remained closed by high water or damage, said Department of Transportation spokesman Bill Boynton. Most were expected to be reopened soon, but it could take weeks to repair landslide damage to Route 101 in Wilton, he said.

New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch had asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to start a preliminary damage assessment in all 10 counties to determine the state's eligibility for federal disaster relief. ''Many New Hampshire communities have been overwhelmed by all the flooding,'' he said.

Swollen rivers in Massachusetts were receding but waves still crashed over sea walls and flooded coastal roads early Wednesday, authorities said.

Two families were evacuated at their own request from oceanfront homes in Duxbury, Mass., late Tuesday but were able to return Wednesday morning, fire Capt. Skip Chandler said. Their homes had knee-deep water on the ground floor, he said. ''Thank goodness it wasn't worse,'' he said.

Most roads had reopened in the suburbs north of New York City, as homeowners in Westchester County piled water-ruined carpets and furniture in heaps outside.

On Fire Island, the barrier island along the south side of New York's Long Island, some homes were clinging to narrow beaches atop rickety pilings because the storm's waves had scoured the sand out from beneath them.

''There's nothing I can do,'' said homeowner Bill Raymond, 55. ''You've got to keep your fingers crossed.''

    Utilities Still Struggling After Storm, NYT, 18.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Spring-Storm.html

Over 250,000 still without power in U.S. East and Canada

Tue Apr 17, 2007 12:28PM EDT
Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - More than 250,000 homes and businesses remained without power Tuesday morning after a rare spring nor'easter hit on Sunday and Monday, knocking out electric service to more than 1.3 million customers from the Carolinas to Maine and Quebec.

Duke Energy Corp. said about 130,000 customers still had no power in the Carolinas following the severe windstorm Monday, down from over 217,000 customers affected.

Duke said it could take until the end of the week to restore service to some customers in the hardest hit areas.

Energy East Corp.'s Central Maine Power Co. said crews continued to restore service to the remaining 105,000 customers without power following a strong coastal storm that blanketed that region with snow, ice and rain, a spokeswoman for the utility said Tuesday morning.

At the peak, Central Maine said, about 127,000 customers had no service.

Like Duke, Central Maine said it could take several days to restore power to customers in the hardest hit areas.

In Quebec, Hydro-Quebec said it restored service to more than half of the estimated 160,000 customers affected by the storm, leaving about 42,000 homes and businesses still without service Tuesday morning.

A spokeswoman for the province-owned power company said the utility expected to restore most customers over the next day or so but would likely take a few more days to restore those in the hardest hit areas.

In addition to these three hardest hit utilities, several other power companies reported thousands of scattered outages.

Duke, of Charlotte, North Carolina, owns and operates more than 43,000 megawatts of generating capacity in North America, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes electricity and natural gas to more than 3.5 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky.

Energy East, of Portland, Maine, transmits and distributes energy to about 3 million customers in upstate New York and New England.

Hydro-Quebec, of Montreal, owns and operates about 35,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes electricity to more than 3.8 million customers in Quebec.

One MW powers about 800 homes, according to the North American average.

    Over 250,000 still without power in U.S. East and Canada, R, 17.4.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1741996020070417

Deadly Storm Lingers in Northeast

April 17, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:33 a.m. ET
The New York Times

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- Floodwaters swirled through low-lying communities and evacuated residents waited for rivers to crest early Tuesday as a deadly spring storm lingered in the Northeast for a third day.

The nor'easter left a huge swath of devastation, from the beaches of South Carolina to the mountains of Maine. It knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people and was blamed for at least 15 deaths nationwide.

The storm dumped up to 9 inches of rain on parts of New Jersey on Monday, and more than 8 inches fell on New York City's Central Park, quadrupling the 101-year-old record for the date.

New Jersey was placed under a state of emergency and more than 1,400 residents were evacuated -- many by boat.

The storm was especially harsh in Bound Brook, where five homes burned down after fire crews could not reach the buildings because of floodwaters.

The Raritan River was more than 10 feet above flood stage in Bound Brook late Monday and was not expected to return to below flood stage before Tuesday afternoon. The river overran Route 18 in New Brunswick, forcing Rutgers University to cancel Tuesday classes at its New Brunswick and Piscataway campuses.

Dale Johnson said he and his girlfriend fled their second-story apartment through swirling, waist-deep water. They sought shelter at the Presbyterian Church of Bound Brook, where more than 100 cots were set up.

''I want to move out. I can't take it after this one,'' said Johnson, 48, noting that it was his third evacuation. The community also was hard hit by Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

In New Hampshire, more than 5,000 people were evacuated from 13 communities and more than 400 roads were closed because of flooding, Gov. John Lynch said. A mudslide blocked the state's main east-west route.

Winds blew loose the boards protecting oceanfront windows at Hampton Beach, shattering windows and flinging merchandise into the street. Waves crashed over the sea wall at high tide. Residents reported up to 5 feet of water gushing into their front doors.

''We went to look, but the wind was so strong that you couldn't walk,'' said Linda Pepin of Bristol, Conn., who owns a second-floor condominium less than 50 feet from the shore.

Snow fell in inland areas, including 17 inches in Vermont. Wind gusts to more than 80 mph toppled trees on highways in Maine, and snow drifts stranded tractor-trailers on highways in Pennsylvania. Washouts, flooding, mudslides and fallen trees blocked roads from Kentucky to New England.

Amtrak's Downeaster suspended service in Maine because tracks were washed out in Berwick. Flooding delayed or canceled Amtrak service between Boston and Washington. And New Jersey Transit said morning commuters could expect delays and cancellations for a second straight day on Tuesday.

New York had activated 3,200 National Guard members to help with evacuations. New Hampshire and New Jersey also sent Guardsmen to hard-hit towns, while the Connecticut National Guard supplied amphibious vehicles to the hard-hit southwestern part of the state.

Suburbs north of New York City were among the hardest hit. Mamaroneck resident Nicholas Staropoli said a truck near his home ''actually floated up on the riverbank.''

In Maine, a woman and her 4-year-old granddaughter died when they were swept into a river by the fast-moving floodwaters as they tried to cross a washed-out section of road in Lebanon, near the New Hampshire line, the Maine Warden Service reported. Rescuers pulled two people from the Little River, but they were pronounced dead at a hospital.

A man died in a car stalled in deep water in an underpass in New Jersey, while another drowned in a flooded street. Another person was killed by a tornado in South Carolina, and three died in car accidents -- one in upstate New York, one in Connecticut and one in North Carolina. The same storm was blamed for five deaths earlier in Texas and Kansas.

The storm was expected to turn into the worst of its kind since the December 1992 nor'easter that caused millions of dollars worth of damage to buildings, boardwalks and beaches.

There was no immediate sign of a letup. The National Weather Service predicted the storm would stall over New York City before starting to move out to sea Wednesday.

Associated Press writers Philip Elliott in Goffstown, N.H., Clarke Canfield in Portland, Maine, David Bauder in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., and Stephen Singer in Wallingford, Conn., contributed to this report.

    Deadly Storm Lingers in Northeast, NYT, 17.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Spring-Storm.html

Nor'easter Pummels East Coast With Rain

April 16, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:36 a.m. ET
The New York Times

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- One of the nastiest spring nor'easters in years roared over the East Coast early Monday, bringing umbrella-breaking wind and relentless rain that forced evacuations from New Jersey to West Virginia.

Residents of many low-lying areas along the coast left their homes, hundreds of flights were canceled, power was knocked out in pockets across the region and many roads were swamped.

''My one word of advice is to stay home,'' state Transportation Commissioner Kris Kolluri said Sunday. ''People think they can drive through flooding, and they get stuck.''

One person was killed by a tornado in South Carolina, and two died in car accidents -- one in upstate New York and one in Connecticut. The storm rattled the Gulf states Friday and Saturday with violent thunderstorms, raked Texas with at least two tornadoes and was blamed for five deaths before heading northeast.

The storm gave runners in Monday's Boston Marathon something to worry about besides Heartbreak Hill. The forecast called for up to 5 inches of rain, temperatures in the 30s and wind gusts of up to 25 mph.

In Rhode Island, storm-related high winds forced the shutdown of T.F. Green Airport in Warwick early Monday. The winds damaged a construction area near the departure lounge on the second floor, airport spokeswoman Patti Goldstein said.

Up to 18 inches of heavy, wet snow was expected across the higher elevations of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. On the coast, strong winds and driving rain sent fishing boats to port, and residents prepared for coastal flooding.

More than 5.5 inches of rain fell in the New York City region Sunday, shattering the record for the date of 1.8 inches set in 1906, according to the National Weather Service. Residents in at least one Queens neighborhood paddled through streets in boats.

New Rochelle, a suburban coastal town about 10 miles from New York City, declared a state of emergency and about 250 people packed a shelter in nearby Mamaroneck at a high school gymnasium overnight.

Mamaroneck Town Administrator Stephen Altieri said police and fire departments spent the night rescuing about 60 to 70 people from their homes.

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer deployed 3,200 members of the National Guard to areas that might be affected by the storm. The Long Island Power Authority said about 7,500 customers lost power across the island Sunday.

Hundreds of people living below an earthen dam near Hamlin, W.Va., were asked to evacuate because of concerns that heavy rain had destabilized the structure. Gov. Joe Manchin declared a state of emergency for all of West Virginia on Sunday night.

At least three tornadoes touched down in South Carolina on Sunday. The most destructive cut a 14-mile long, 300-yard-wide swath through Sumter County in the central part of the state, killing a woman who was thrown from her mobile home and seriously injuring four other people.

Dozens of mobile homes were destroyed or knocked off their foundations, said Robert Baker Jr., director for the Sumter County Emergency Management Agency.

Airlines canceled more than 500 flights at the New York area's three major airports, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Dozens more were canceled in Philadelphia, Boston and elsewhere in New England.

There were sustained winds of 30 to 35 mph and gusts of up to 48 mph at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Some residents along the Long Island Sound were urged to evacuate and more than 43,000 power outages were reported across Connecticut.

In the tony Connecticut town of Greenwich, the American Red Cross opened an emergency shelter and the water rose so fast in the western section of town that responders had to put four boats into the water and bring in bucket trucks to rescue residents.

In New Jersey, flooding was reported along the Ramapo and Saddle rivers in Bergen County, while minor flooding was occurring along the Delaware River. Tides were running about 3 feet above normal in the western end of Long Island Sound.

The storm was expected to be the worst of its kind since the December 1992 nor'easter that caused millions of dollars worth of damage to buildings and forced thousands of evacuations.

Near Hamlin, W.Va., heavy rains caused Lee's Fishing Lake Dam to become destabilized, said Allen Holder, Lincoln County emergency services director.

A break in the dam would affect an area where 500 to 1,000 people live. The 22-foot dam holds at least 5 million gallons of water. At least 100 residents had already complied with a voluntary evacuation.

Earlier Sunday, dozens of people were rescued from homes and vehicles in Boone, Logan and Wyoming counties after flooding spawned by the storm system rolled through southern West Virginia. At least two people were injured and two others were unaccounted for, emergency officials said.

''It's about as bad as it can get,'' said Scott Beckett, chief of the Logan Fire Department. ''This thing came down at 2 or 3 in the morning, when people were sleeping in their beds. They just didn't know what was happening.''

------

Associated Press writers Daniela Flores and Matthew Verrinder in Trenton; Tom Breen in Madison, W.Va.; David Sharp in Portland, Maine; and Karen Matthews and David B. Caruso in New York contributed to this report.

------

On the Net:

Weather Underground: http://www.wunderground.com/

National Weather Service: http://iwin.nws.noaa.gov/

Intellicast: http://www.intellicast.com/

    Nor'easter Pummels East Coast With Rain, NYT, 16.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Spring-Storm.html

East Coast Storm Breaks Rainfall Records

April 16, 2007
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
The New York Times

A rare spring northeaster masquerading as a classic winter storm roared up the coast and across the New York region and the Northeast yesterday with bullying winds and torrential rains that flooded shorelines and rivers, disrupted travel, brought down power lines and washed out Sunday plans for millions of people.

The storm — a globular nebula 800 miles across that reached from the Carolinas to New England — inundated many low-lying roads, set rainfall records, canceled flights, closed businesses and ballparks and prompted evacuations, National Guard patrols and warnings to ships at sea. By midnight, 7.46 inches had fallen in Central Park, making yesterday the second wettest day there since recordkeeping began in 1869.

Invading the New York area before dawn with pounding wind and rain, the storm sent tides surging against coastal beaches and riverfront communities, forced the cancellation of more than 500 flights at the three major airports, closed 20 roads in New Jersey and others in New York, cut off power to 18,500 customers in three states and tore off a roof at an apartment complex on Long Island.

By late afternoon, rainfall records were toppling all over the region. The Central Park total was second only to the 8.28 inches that fell there on Sept. 23, 1882. The previous record for the date — 1.82 inches — was erased early in the day. At La Guardia Airport, 6.5 inches fell, surpassing the 1.64 inches of 1990, and at Kennedy International Airport, 2.2 inches was recorded, topping the previous record of 1.84.

Other records that fell by 5 p.m. were in Philadelphia, with 3.36 inches (1 inch in 1906); Trenton, with 3.08 (1.3 in 1906); and Reagan National Airport in Washington, with 2.53 (1.94 in 1983).

Wind gusts of up to 48 miles an hour were clocked at Kennedy. The highest wind hit 71 miles an hour at Charleston, S.C., the National Weather Service said. Before tapering off today, the storm was expected to have dropped more than 4 inches of rain across the region, as well as a foot or more of snow in parts of upstate New York and northern New England.

Coming on a weekend, the storm had a relatively light impact on most residents. Many shops and restaurants that normally would have been open yesterday were shuttered, but without jobs or schools to attend, many people spent the day indoors with the Sunday papers, relaxing with music to go with the silken lash of rain hissing at the windows, dripping on a lazy afternoon.

The day was, in a way, like great theater: the drama of the approaching storm, the searching wind at the panes and rain dancing on the pavement, the smudged sky, the iron-gray day like a movie in black and white. The overcast was solid, great plates of corrugated iron fused from horizon to horizon, and the streets glistened in the rain: a metallic futureworld.

Today was expected to be normal for most commuters, though the Long Island Rail Road said last night that it was expecting some delays and diversions. Forecasters said showers would linger, but the storm’s worst had gone and temperatures were expected to hover in the 40s. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg urged commuters to take mass transit today. It was a different story yesterday. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey reported flight delays of up to seven hours at Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark Liberty International Airports, and said that airlines had canceled more than 500 flights, including some scheduled for today. Railroads ran with delays but, aside from a brief shutdown on two Metro-North lines, no major disruptions. But many roads and streets ran like millraces.

In Westchester County, flooding forced the closing of sections of the Cross County, Saw Mill River, Bronx River, Taconic and Hutchinson River Parkways, and officials in Mamaroneck ordered 20 families to evacuate two gated waterfront communities on Long Island Sound. Other families in the Washingtonville neighborhood were voluntarily evacuated to a shelter in a high school.

In Nassau County, the Wantagh and Ocean Parkways were partly closed yesterday as a result of flooding, along with secondary roads in Glenhead and Syosset. Jim Callahan, the county commissioner of emergency management, voiced concern about high tides in Freeport, Long Beach, Bayville Centre Island and Glen Cove. Bayville had asked residents to evacuate voluntarily, but few people showed up at a shelter.

In Patchogue, in Suffolk County, high winds ripped the roof off a building in the Fairfield Apartments, and eight families were moved to another building in the complex, said Joe Williams, commissioner of the county’s office of emergency management.

On Fire Island, where winds up to 50 miles an hour howled in from the ocean, more than 1,000 people voluntarily evacuated Saturday night and yesterday morning, about 50 taking the last ferry to Bay Shore at 9:20 a.m. before the ferry was shut down for the day. The Islip town supervisor, Phil Nolan, toured the island in the morning and said that fewer than 200 residents had chosen to remain.

In the Rockaways, traffic lights and lamp stanchions swung wildly along Shore Front Parkway, and an occasional garbage can rolled along the Boardwalk, which was deserted except for a flock of ducks that sipped from puddles in a playground. Street signs trembled and waves lapped at the top of a retaining wall separating Beach Channel Drive from Jamaica Bay.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer put 3,200 National Guard members on alert for deployment into areas of New York that were affected by the storm. State crews west of Albany were getting snowplows out of storage.

In New Jersey, Richard J. Codey, the acting governor, urged residents to stay indoors, and at a late afternoon news conference said major highways had been partly or fully closed. Col. Joseph R. Fuentes, the state police commander, said, “Every major river in the state is going to achieve flood stage or just over.”

Hundreds of car accidents were reported across the region. The rain by late yesterday had created a pond several feet deep on a service road along Route 495 East, the New Jersey approach to the Lincoln Tunnel. A red Subaru was half-submerged, a woman still at the wheel. Nearby, two men talked after their cars collided; one took a picture of the other’s license plate.

It might have been worse, one meteorologist noted. “Thankfully, it’s not in the winter,” said Jim DeCarufel, a National Weather Service spokesman in Sterling, Va., who said more than 3 inches of rain fell in the Baltimore area between midnight and 1 p.m. “If this was snow, we’d be in trouble. It would be a blizzard.”

All along the East Coast, boats were secured against pounding tidal surges, and the Coast Guard warned mariners at sea to head for port because wind-driven waves were soaring to 18 to 26 feet — as tall as a two-story house. New York Harbor was a vast field of whitecaps, and on the coasts of New Jersey, Long Island and Connecticut, the waves thundered on the beaches.

In Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., Marie Doherty, who has lived on the beach since 1977, said she was not worried about the storm. Her home, separated from the ocean by a big dune, had been flooded only once, in 1992. Storms make things exciting, she said. “It’s really the fun of living here,” she said, standing on her porch as she watched two giant black waves crash on the beach. “I would hate to be cooped up in an apartment in the city.”

The storm rained out Major League Baseball in the Northeast on a day when teams were to mark the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s breaking the color line.

In Massachusetts, where the storm was expected to diminish today, Boston and Lexington canceled events including re-enactments of Paul Revere’s ride and parades to mark today’s Patriot’s Day holiday, which commemorates the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord. But there were no plans to cancel the 111th Boston Marathon.

Power failures affected 3,400 Con Edison customers in Westchester County and New York City, 4,500 Long Island Power Authority customers, 4,000 Public Service Electric and Gas customers in New Jersey and 6,600 customers of the Connecticut Light and Power Company, the utilities reported.

At least two people were killed in car accidents attributed to the weather in Connecticut and northern New York.

Elsewhere, one person was reported killed in South Carolina yesterday as dozens of mobile homes were hit by high winds, and two people were missing in flash floods in West Virginia. Earlier, the storm had been blamed for five deaths in Kansas and Texas, and had spawned tornadoes in Florida and Alabama.

Tracked by forecasters who compared it to a 1992 storm that killed six people in the New York region and gouged beaches, damaged homes and disrupted life for days, yesterday’s blow was a genuine northeaster, churning counterclockwise up the coast, gathering strength from the Atlantic and hurling it at the land. But experts said it was the kind of storm more typical of winter.

“This storm has the traditional path and makeup of a winter northeaster,” said Jeff Warner, a meteorologist with Pennsylvania State University. “But it doesn’t have the cold air traditional with a winter storm. This is going to be a rainstorm, although there will be some snow inland and some pretty good snow in the Adirondacks and other places in upstate New York.”

Reporting was contributed by Kareem Fahim, Abby Gruen, Danny Hakim, John Holl, Jennifer 8. Lee, Trymaine Lee, Angela Macropoulos, Barry Meier, Fernanda Santos, Nate Schweber, Melody Simmons, Michael Wilson and Katie Zezima.

    East Coast Storm Breaks Rainfall Records, G, 16.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/nyregion/16storm.html?hp

Global Warming Called Security Threat

April 15, 2007
The New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

For the second time in a month, private consultants to the government are warning that human-driven warming of the climate poses risks to the national security of the United States.

A report, scheduled to be published on Monday but distributed to some reporters yesterday, said issues usually associated with the environment — like rising ocean levels, droughts and violent weather caused by global warming — were also national security concerns.

“Unlike the problems that we are used to dealing with, these will come upon us extremely slowly, but come they will, and they will be grinding and inexorable,” Richard J. Truly, a retired United States Navy vice admiral and former NASA administrator, said in the report.

The effects of global warming, the study said, could lead to large-scale migrations, increased border tensions, the spread of disease and conflicts over food and water. All could lead to direct involvement by the United States military.

The report recommends that climate change be integrated into the nation’s security strategies and says the United States “should commit to a stronger national and international role to help stabilize climate changes at levels that will avoid significant disruption to global security and stability.”

The report, called “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change,” was commissioned by the Center for Naval Analyses, a government-financed research group, and written by a group of retired generals and admirals called the Military Advisory Board.

In March, a report from the Global Business Network, which advises intelligence agencies and the Pentagon on occasion, concluded, among other things, that rising seas and more powerful storms could eventually generate unrest as crowded regions like Bangladesh’s sinking delta become less habitable.

One of the authors of the report, Peter Schwartz, a consultant who studies climate risks and other trends for the Defense Department and other clients, said the climate system, jogged by a century-long buildup of heat-trapping gases, was likely to rock between extremes that could wreak havoc in poor countries with fragile societies.

“Just look at Somalia in the early 1990s,” Mr. Schwartz said. “You had disruption driven by drought, leading to the collapse of a society, humanitarian relief efforts, and then disastrous U.S. military intervention. That event is prototypical of the future.”

“Picture that in Central America or the Caribbean, which are just as likely,” he said. “This is not distant, this is now. And we need to be preparing.”

Other recent studies have shown that drought and scant water have already fueled civil conflicts in global hot spots like Afghanistan, Nepal, and Sudan, according to several recent studies.

This bodes ill, given projections that human-driven warming is likely to make some of the world’s driest, poorest places drier still, experts said.

“The evidence is fairly clear that sharp downward deviations from normal rainfall in fragile societies elevate the risk of major conflict,” said Marc Levy of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, which recently published a study on the relationship between climate and civil war.

Given that climate models project drops in rainfall in such places in a warming world, Mr. Levy said, “It seems irresponsible not to take into account the possibility that a world with climate change will be a more violent world when making judgments about how tolerable such a world might be.”

    Global Warming Called Security Threat, NYT, 15.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/us/15warm.html

Challenge to Emissions Rule Is Set to Start

April 10, 2007
The New York Times
By DANNY HAKIM

The fight over cars and carbon dioxide moves today from the Supreme Court to a federal courtroom in Burlington, Vt., in a case that automakers say could reshape vehicles sold on the East and West Coasts.

The industry is suing to block a 2004 California regulation on global warming from taking effect. The rule would require a 30 percent cut in emissions of greenhouse gases from cars and trucks sold in Vermont and New York, which follow California’s air quality rules, to be fully phased in by the 2016 model year.

In court filings, automakers have argued that regulating the emissions will increase pollution, cause more traffic deaths and lead domestic automakers to stop selling most of their passenger models in states that adopt such regulations.

The companies have disputed that global warming is a problem, even though they have acknowledged it in different forums as a serious problem. And they tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to close much of this case to the public.

“This is a huge issue to consumers, because it may well determine what vehicles are available for them to purchase,” said Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which includes General Motors, Toyota and most other large automakers. “If it’s a big issue for consumers, it’s a big issue to us.”

Environmental groups and the offices of the attorneys general in Vermont and New York, which is a party to the case, say the automakers are overstating the complexity and hardship of such a regulation.

“It’s that sky-is-falling approach, but the sky didn’t fall with catalytic converters,” Attorney General William H. Sorrell of Vermont said, referring to the antipollution technology forced on the industry in the 1970s.

Last week, in a 5-to-4 decision in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Supreme Court ruled that the agency has the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases in automobiles. The Bush administration has long opposed that.

Instead, more than 12 states, including California, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont, have already or are in the process of moving to regulate such emissions.

California has the authority to set air-quality rules, and Northeastern states have long chosen to follow those rules instead of Washington’s. The Supreme Court victory was important for the states, because the approval of the environmental agency is needed before California can regulate emissions involving global warming.

Automakers have sued to block the California regulation in federal courts in California, Rhode Island and Vermont, though just the Vermont case has gone forward. That case is scheduled to enter the trial phase today.

The battle has exposed fault lines among automakers. Two trade groups representing the major manufacturers are involved in the suit, one dominated by domestic producers and one by foreign.

They have clashed in their legal strategies, and just G.M. and DaimlerChrysler, two of the more outspoken companies opposing the new regulation, are directly listed as plaintiffs. The trade groups had initially sued separately but are now plaintiffs in a consolidated suit.

The main legal argument uniting the industry is their contention that states cannot regulate carbon dioxide emissions because that would be little different from regulating fuel economy, and Washington has the sole authority to set mileage standards. The recent Supreme Court ruling, however, appeared to undermine that argument.

The industry estimates that the new regulation would impose a 50 percent increase in fuel economy for passenger cars and small sport-utility vehicles but a more modest increase for large trucks, effectively making it harder for a company like G.M. to bring smaller vehicles like the Chevrolet Malibu into compliance than its Hummers.

An expert hired by automakers said, according to court filings, that DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor and G.M. “will need largely to exit” from the passenger car and small truck markets.

Environmental groups say the industry is ignoring the potential effects of its move to bolster alternative fuels like ethanol, as well as the advent of hybrid electric technology and other technologies.

Automakers argued in a court filing in January that “defendants make unsubstantiated predictions that global climate change is having a number of alarming adverse effects.”

Michael J. Stanton, the president of the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, a plaintiff group, said in an interview the position did not represent the views of the mostly Asian automakers who are his constituents, some of whom are trying to create “eco-friendly” reputations.

“We believe that there is enough information out there to address climate change and we know that cars — passenger cars and light trucks — contribute, and we want to be part of the solution,” Mr. Stanton said.

The regulation California adopted in 2004 was to begin taking effect with 2009 models and to be phased in over eight years. President Bush and Congress more recently discussed fuel economy rules that could potentially accomplish similar reductions for gases tied to global warming, though no firm plan is in place.

Among other points, the industry says more fuel efficient cars could be dangerous, because they will be cheaper to drive and lead people to drive more and potentially have more accidents.

“Everybody’s getting a good laugh out of the safety claim,” said David Bookbinder, a lawyer for the Sierra Club, which is a party to the case. “Detroit is saying it’s a bad idea for everybody to drive more.”

    Challenge to Emissions Rule Is Set to Start, NYT, 10.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/us/10dioxide.html

The Western drought that began in 1999 has resumed after a couple of wetter years that now feel like a cruel tease.
At the Hoover Dam, the water level has dropped more than 80 feet.

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

No Longer Waiting for Rain, an Arid West Takes Action        NYT        4.4.2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/us/04drought.html?hp

No Longer Waiting for Rain, an Arid West Takes Action        NYT        4.4.2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/us/04drought.html?hp

No Longer Waiting for Rain, an Arid West Takes Action

April 4, 2007
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and KIRK JOHNSON
The New York Times

A Western drought that began in 1999 has continued after the respite of a couple of wet years that now feel like a cruel tease. But this time people in the driest states are not just scanning the skies and hoping for rescue.

Some $2.5 billion in water projects are planned or under way in four states, the biggest expansion in the West’s quest for water in decades. Among them is a proposed 280-mile pipeline that would direct water to Las Vegas from northern Nevada. A proposed reservoir just north of the California-Mexico border would correct an inefficient water delivery system that allows excess water to pass to Mexico.

In Yuma, Ariz., federal officials have restarted an idled desalination plant, long seen as a white elephant from a bygone era, partly in the hope of purifying salty underground water for neighboring towns.

The scramble for water is driven by the realities of population growth, political pressure and the hard truth that the Colorado River, a 1,400-mile-long silver thread of snowmelt and a lifeline for more than 20 million people in seven states, is providing much less water than it had.

According to some long-term projections, the mountain snows that feed the Colorado River will melt faster and evaporate in greater amounts with rising global temperatures, providing stress to the waterway even without drought. This year, the spring runoff is expected to be about half its long-term average. In only one year of the last seven, 2005, has the runoff been above average.

Everywhere in the West, along the Colorado and other rivers, as officials search for water to fill current and future needs, tempers are flaring among competing water users, old rivalries are hardening and some states are waging legal fights.

In one of the most acrimonious disputes, Montana filed a suit in February at the United States Supreme Court accusing Wyoming of taking more than its fair share of water from the Tongue and Powder Rivers, north-flowing tributaries of the Yellowstone River that supply water for farms and wells in both states.

Preparing for worst-case outcomes, the seven states that draw water from the Colorado River — Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico in the upper basin and California, Arizona and Nevada in the lower basin — and the United States Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the river, are considering plans that lay out what to do if the river cannot meet the demand for water, a prospect that some experts predict will occur in about five years.

“What you are hearing about global warming, explosive growth — combine with a real push to set aside extra water for environmental purpose — means you got a perfect situation for a major tug-of-war contest,” said Sid Wilson, the general manager of the Central Arizona Project, which brings Colorado River water to the Phoenix area.

New scientific evidence suggests that periodic long, severe droughts have become the norm in the Colorado River basin, undermining calculations of how much water the river can be expected to provide and intensifying pressures to find new solutions or sources.

The effects of the drought can be seen at Lake Mead in Nevada, where a drop in the water level left docks hanging from newly formed cliffs, and a marina surrounded by dry land. Upriver at Lake Powell, which is at its lowest level since spring 1973, receding waters have exposed miles of mud in the side canyons leading to the Glen Canyon Dam.

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has sounded alarm bells by pushing for a ballot measure in 2008 that would allocate $4.5 billion in bonds for new water storage in the state. The water content in the Sierra Nevada snowpack has reached the lowest level in about two decades, state hydrologists have reported, putting additional pressure on the nation’s most populous state to find and store more water.

“Scientists say that global warming will eliminate 25 percent of our snowpack by the half of this century,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said recently in Fresno, Calif., “which will mean less snow stored in the mountains, which will mean more flooding in the winter and less drinking water in the summer.”

In Montana, where about two-thirds of the Missouri River and half of the Columbia River have their headwaters, officials have embarked on a long-term project to validate old water-rights claims in an effort to legally shore up supplies the state now counts on.

Under the West’s water laws, claims are hierarchal. The oldest, first-filed claims, many dating to pioneer days, get water first, with newer claims at the bottom of the pecking order.

Still, some of the sharpest tensions stem more from population growth than cautionary climate science, especially those between Nevada and Utah, states with booming desert economies and clout to fight for what they say is theirs.

Las Vegas, the fastest-growing major city in the country, and the driest, developed the pipeline plan several years ago to bring groundwater from the rural, northern reaches of the state. The metropolitan area, which relies on the Colorado River for 90 percent of its water, is awaiting approval from Nevada’s chief engineer.

Ranchers and farmers in northern Nevada and Utah are opposed to the pipeline plan and have vowed to fight it in court, saying it smacks of the famous water grab by Los Angeles nearly a century ago that caused severe environmental damage in the Owens Valley in California.

“Southern Nevada thinks it can come up here and suck all these springs dry without any problems,” said Dean Baker, whose family’s ranch straddles the Nevada-Utah border, pointing out springs that farmers have run dry with their own wells. “We did this ourselves. Now imagine what pumping for a whole big city is going to do.”

Meanwhile, Utah has proposed a $500 million, 120-mile pipeline from Lake Powell to serve the fast-growing City of St. George and Washington County in the state’s southwestern corner. Nevada officials have said they will seek to block that plan if Utah stands in the way of theirs.

“Utah is being very disingenuous, and we’re calling them on it,” said Patricia Mulroy, the chief executive of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the agency responsible for finding water for Las Vegas and its suburbs. “St. George, Utah, is growing as fast as southern Nevada, because the growth is going right up the I-15 corridor.”

Dennis J. Strong, director of the Utah Division of Water Resources, said Nevada was protesting too much and instead should be cheering the Lake Powell project because Colorado River water that Utah does not use would flow in Nevada’s direction. Mr. Strong said that Nevada’s protests “may be a bargaining chip.” He said he hoped for a compromise that would allow both projects to move forward.

In Yuma, near the Arizona border with Mexico, officials have pinned hopes on a desalination plant built 15 years ago. The plan then had been to treat salty runoff from farms before it made its way into Colorado River headed to Mexico, thus meeting the terms of an old water treaty.

But a series of unusually wet years made it more efficient to meet the treaty obligations with water from Lake Mead, so the plant sat idle. Drought has changed all that. Arizona water managers, who are first in line to have their water cut in a shortage under an agreement with other states, called for the plant to be turned on.

Under an agreement with environmentalists, the federal Bureau of Reclamation plans to monitor the environmental effects of using the plant, and study, among other things, using the purified water for purposes other than meeting its treaty obligations, like supplying the growing communities around Yuma.

“It never made sense to me to just dump bottled-water quality water into the river anyway,” said Jim Cherry, the bureau’s Yuma area manager.

What unites the Western states is a growing consensus among scientists that future climate change and warmer temperatures, if they continue, could hit harder here than elsewhere in the continental United States.

“The Western mountain states are by far more vulnerable to the kinds of change we’ve been talking about compared to the rest of the country, with the New England states coming in a relatively distant second,” said Michael Dettinger, a research hydrologist at the United States Geological Survey who studies the relationships between water and climate.

Mr. Dettinger said higher temperatures had pushed the spring snowmelt and runoff to about 10 days earlier on average than in the past. Higher temperatures would mean more rain falling rather than snow, compounding issues of water storage and potentially affecting flooding.

In some places, the new tensions and pressures could even push water users toward compromise.

Colorado recently hired a mediator to try to settle a long-running dispute over how water from the Rocky Mountains should be shared among users in the Denver area and the western half of the state. Denver gets most of the water and has most of the state’s population. But water users in the mountains, notably the ski resort industry, also have clout and want to keep their share.

Robert W. Johnson, the Bureau of Reclamation commissioner, said he shared the optimism that the disputes could be worked out, but he said he thought it might take a reconsideration of the West’s original conception of what water was for.

The great dams and reservoirs that were envisioned beginning in the 1800s were conceived with farmers in mind, and farmers still take about 90 percent of the Colorado River’s flow. More and more, Mr. Johnson said, the cities will need that water.

An agreement reached a few years ago between farmers and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the chief supplier of water to that region, is one model. Under the terms of the agreement, farmers would let their fields lie fallow and send water to urban areas in exchange for money to cover the crop losses.

“I definitely see that as the future,” Mr. Johnson said.

Randal C. Archibold reported from Yuma, Ariz., and Kirk Johnson from Denver.

    No Longer Waiting for Rain, an Arid West Takes Action, NYT, 4.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/us/04drought.html?hp

Storm Brings Tornadoes to Plains

March 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:10 p.m. ET
The New York Times

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- A tornado as wide as two football fields carved a devastating path through an eastern Colorado town as a massive spring storm swept from the Rockies into the Plains, killing at least four people in three states.

An Oklahoma couple died when their home was blown to pieces late Wednesday, a woman died after the Colorado twister hit, and a Texas man was found dead in the debris of his tangled trailer.

The massive storm system stretched from South Dakota to Texas on Thursday morning, threatening flash flooding in central Nebraska and Kansas and more severe weather farther south. Winter storm warnings were still posted for most of Wyoming, where heavy snow was blamed for pileups on the interstates, forecasters said.

Some of the worst devastation was in Holly, Colo., where at least eight people were injured when the tornado hit late Wednesday, damaging dozens of homes and littering the streets with broken power lines, tree limbs and debris.

''Homes were there and now they're gone,'' county administrator Linda Fairbairn said. ''Many, if not all, the structures in town suffered some degree of damage.''

A 28-year-old woman whose home was hit in the Holly area died after being airlifted to a Colorado Springs hospital, Prowers County Coroner Joe Giadone said Thursday.

At least 11 tornadoes were reported throughout western Nebraska, destroying or damaging three homes and 10-12 miles of power lines, emergency management officials said. Two tornadoes touched down in far northwest Kansas, severely damaging three homes, the Cheyenne County sheriff's department said.

Near Elmwood, Okla., Vance and Barbra Woodbury were killed when the storm blew apart their home, said Dixie Parker, Beaver County's emergency management director.

''We set off the tornado sirens, but they live too far out to hear them,'' Parker said. ''The house was just flattened, the out buildings are gone. All that's left is debris.''

The Texas Panhandle was hit with baseball-sized hail, rain and tornadoes that uprooted trees, overturned trucks and injured at least three people. Monte Ford, 53, was killed near Amarillo when he was thrown about 15 feet from his oilfield trailer, which was rolled by the wind, Department of Public Safety spokesman Dan Hawthorne said.

In Holly, a town of about 1,000 residents 235 miles southeast of Denver, the storm tore the back off Cheryl Roup's home and flipped it into her front yard, the Denver Post reported. Somehow, her China closet survived the damaged, and her border collie, Lacy, escaped harm.

''Lacy managed to crawl out from under the rubble, but she seemed OK,'' Roup told the Post. ''She's a little shocked, much like I am right now.''

The same storm system dumped snow on Wyoming, where a school bus carrying 36 students from Tongue River High School to a competition in Cheyenne collided with two minivans on Interstate 90 Wednesday, school officials said.

Soon after that crash, another pileup started nearby involving several passenger vehicles and seven big rigs, two of which were hauling diesel fuel. One of the diesel haulers rolled over, and authorities said the other leaked around 1,000 gallons of fuel. No one on the bus was hurt, but four other people were taken to a hospital, Wyoming Highway Patrol spokesman Sgt. Stephen Townsend said.

The wintry weather closed a 250-mile stretch of Interstate 80 in southern Wyoming. Large parts of Interstate 25 and more than 80 miles of I-90 were also closed.

    Storm Brings Tornadoes to Plains, NYT, 27.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Spring-Storm.html

Deadly Tornados in Colorado and Oklahoma

March 29, 2007
The New York Times
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

Three people died in Colorado and Oklahoma after tornados swept through their towns last night as part of a storm system that also brought violent weather to at least four other states, officials said today.

More damage from the storms could be uncovered throughout today as officials assess the extent of destruction left by the 65 tornados that rolled through six states on Wednesday.

Two people died when a tornado swirled through their rural Oklahoma neighborhood near Elmwood, said a state emergency official, Dixie Parker, in a telephone interview today.

Authorities had fanned out in the Beaver County area on Wednesday, warning residents to take shelter from the tornado and to offer assistance, she said. When they tried to find the couple, a husband and wife, there was no sign of them at their one-story wood house on a rural road.

“There was no house left, it was demolished, and we found them in the field,” she said. “One was still alive, the husband. He passed away just before the ambulance got there.”

The tornados also swept through Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska and Texas, said Patrick Slattery of the National Weather Service. Some areas were also pummeled by large hailstones and heavy snowfall.

“It was a big storm, a big system,” he said. “The majority of these were almost in a straight north-south line along the Kansas-Nebraska border.”

“The effects stretched from Colorado and Wyoming, with blowing snow,” he said. An area in Carbon County, Wyoming got 19 inches of snow. Hail measuring about an inch and three-quarter inches in diameter, about the size of a golf ball, fell in the Nebraska Panhandle, he said.

There were no active tornado warnings in effect as of this morning, said Mr. Slattery, but there were a number of severe thunder storm warnings today in Colorado and Wyoming.

Mrs. Parker, the official in Oklahoma, said that emergency teams were sent out today to assess the extent of structural damage but so far there were no reports of anyone missing in the county, which is about 1,800 square miles with a population of 1,500. The house of the couple, whose ages were not available, was in a relatively isolated area.

The tornado appeared to have cut a powerful path through their house, as the neighboring properties closest to them had only uprooted trees, Mrs. Parker said.

In Holly, Colorado, a small town of about 1,500 people, a woman and two children were found dangling in a tree last night, said the county coroner, Joe Giardone, by telephone. The 28-year old woman later died of her injuries. The children and at least nine other people were injured, he said, seven of them so seriously that they needed to be evacuated to area trauma centers.

Houses were damaged and power lines dangled from their posts.

Officials were assessing damage in the southwestern region of Nebraska this morning, but early reports showed Dundy and Perkins counties each had four houses either heavily damaged or destroyed. There were no reports of casualties because residents had evacuated the areas, which are hilly in some parts but also include flat farmland and cattle grazing fields.

“One thing we can say is they are areas of low population,” said Cindy Newsham, the response and recovery division manager of the state Emergency Management Agency. “We can have tornados that go through a lot of area but don’t hit anything.”

Tornados are normal in the state starting about this time of year through May, she said.

At least three people were injured in the Texas Panhandle as storms that brought winds up to 70 miles per hour, hail and rain, spawned several tornadoes, The Associated Press reported.

    Deadly Tornados in Colorado and Oklahoma, NYT, 29.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/nyregion/29cnd-weather.html?hp

Heat Invades Cool Heights

Over Arizona Desert

March 27, 2007
The New York Times
By TIMOTHY EGAN

SUMMERHAVEN, Ariz. — High above the desert floor, this little alpine town has long served as a natural air-conditioned retreat for people in Tucson, one of the so-called sky islands of southern Arizona. When it is 105 degrees in the city, it is at least 20 degrees cooler up here near the 9,157-foot summit of Mount Lemmon.

But for the past 10 years or so, things have been unraveling. Winter snows melt away earlier, longtime residents say, making for an erratic season at the nearby ski resort, the most southern in the nation.

Legions of predatory insects have taken to the forest that mantles the upper mountain, killing trees weakened by record heat. And in 2003, a fire burned for a month, destroying much of the town and scarring more than 87,000 acres. The next year, another fire swept over 32,000 acres.

“Nature is confused,” said Debbie Fagan, who moved here 25 years ago after crossing the country in pursuit of the perfect place to live. “We used to have four seasons. Now we have two. I love this place dearly, and this is very hard for me to watch.”

The American Southwest has been warming for nearly 30 years, according to records that date to the late 19th century. And the region is in the midst of an eight-year drought. Both developments could be within the range of natural events.

But what has convinced many scientists that the current spate of higher temperatures is not just another swing in the weather has been the near collapse of the sky islands and other high, formerly green havens that poke above the desert.

Fire has always been a part of Western ecology, particularly when the land is parched. But since the late 1980s, the size and reach of the fires have far exceeded times of earlier droughts. And the culprit, according to several recent studies, is higher temperatures tearing at a fabric of life that dates to the last ice age.

“A lot of people think climate change and the ecological repercussions are 50 years away,” said Thomas W. Swetnam, director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “But it’s happening now in the West. The data is telling us that we are in the middle of one of the first big indicators of climate change impacts in the continental United States.”

And it comes at a time when millions of Americans are moving to these places. Since 1990, more than eight million homes have been built in Western areas that foresters call “the urban-wild land” interface, also the focus of recent federal firefighting efforts.

The fear is that what happened to Summerhaven is a taste of things to come. As heat-stressed ecosystems provide fuel at the edges of new homes, catastrophic fires could become the new normal. Dr. Swetnam compares it to new developments in hurricane-prone areas in the Southeast.

Others say the projections are overly alarmist, and note that fuel buildup is a legacy of fire repression, not necessarily higher temperatures. They also say the higher reaches of the West may simply be evolving into less alpine settings, and could resemble life that exists at lower elevations.

Still, there is a broad consensus that much of the West is warmer than it has been since record keeping began, and that changes are happening quickly, particularly in places like the sky islands.

“The West has warmed more than any other place in the United States outside Alaska,” said Jonathan T. Overpeck, a University of Arizona scientist and co-author of the recent draft by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released last month in Paris.

A trip up to any one of the 27 sky islands shows the ravages of heat on the land. The forests are splotched with a rusty tinge, as trees die from beetle infestation. Frogs with a 10,000-year-old pedigree have all but disappeared. One of the sky islands is the world’s only habitat for the Mount Graham red squirrel, an endangered species down to its last 100 or so animals.

For the squirrel, the frog and other species that have retreated ever higher, there may be no place left to go.

“As the climate warms, these species on top of the sky islands are literally getting pushed off into space,” Dr. Overpeck said.

The Coronado National Forest, which includes Mount Lemmon and Mount Graham, lists 28 threatened or endangered species. Heat has greatly diminished the web of life that these creatures depend on, and they “have not evolved to tolerate these new conditions,” Forest Service officials wrote in a report on the declining health of the sky islands.

For people moving to the breezy pines to escape desert heat, the fires that swept through places like Summerhaven can be terrifying. Fire comes much earlier, and much later, in the season.

“You can tell the weather is changing,” said Michael Stanley, head of the water district here, which lost two-thirds of its customers after the fire. “The snow melts earlier. The fires are big. It makes life very interesting.”

On her regular hikes around Mount Lemmon, Ms. Fagan has noticed many changes. She recently saw a type of rattlesnake that usually lives in the lowlands, and — while hiking over snow — was surrounded by gnats.

“I’m standing on snow while swatting away gnats,” she said. “I said, ‘Oh my God, what are these guys doing out in the winter?’ ”

Last year, wildfires burned nearly 10 million acres in the United States — a record, surpassing the previous year. The Forest Service has become the fire service, devoting 42 percent of its budget to fire suppression last year — more than triple what it was in 1991.

The current drought is not nearly as bad as the one in the 1950s, or one in the mid-16th century, but it has caused a huge forest die-off.

The only difference this time around is higher temperatures, said David D. Breshears, co-author of a study published by the National Academy of Sciences on the subject.

The increased heat, Dr. Breshears believes, is the tipping point — stressing ecosystems in the Southwest so quickly that they are vulnerable to prolonged beetle infestation and catastrophic fires.

“The changes are so big, and happening so fast,” Dr. Breshears said. “We saw it happen all the way up the elevation grade and across the region.”

Dr. Swetnam, who said he used to be skeptical about some of the projections on Western landscape changes, came to a different conclusion after studying fires. Since the mid-1980s, about seven times more federal land has burned than in the previous time frame, he found, and the fire season has been extended by more than two months.

Dr. Swetnam laments the loss of areas unique to the Southwest.

“The sky islands have existed since the Pleistocene,” he said, “and now with these huge fires you stand to lose some unique species.”

All of which should be a caution to people moving to reaches of the desert prone to dramatic change.

“The Chamber of Commerce doesn’t like people like me saying things like this, but large parts of the arid Southwest are not going to be very nice places to live,” Dr. Swetnam said.

Here at Summerhaven, Ms. Fagan, who lost her home and gift shop to the fire, is staying put, even though she knows — firsthand — about the changes under way on the sky island where she built a business and raised her two boys. She made her last mortgage payment on her house a few months before the fire took it.

“We lost 90 percent of our community and two-thirds of our mountain to fire,” she said recent one warm morning. “There may be nothing left to burn. But I can’t ever leave this place. I love it too much.”

    Heat Invades Cool Heights Over Arizona Desert, NYT, 27.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/us/27warming.html

In Maine, Trying to Protect

an Old Way of Life

March 25, 2007
The New York Times
By KATIE ZEZIMA

PORT CLYDE, Me. — For generations fishermen have trawled for flounder, haddock and lobster in the waters off this picturesque port, unloading their catch on the docks that line the harbor.

But the fishermen here, like most others who operate on the state’s rapidly shrinking working waterfront, do not own the docks they work on. Throughout Maine, fishermen, ferry operators, boat builders and parts suppliers worry that these waterfront workplaces could be sold to the highest bidder in a real estate market with a hot demand for waterfront property.

To help stem the tide, fishermen, towns and residents are buying up Maine’s working waterfront with public grants and private money.

“We’re running out of working waterfront, and they aren’t making any more,” said Jim Barstow, who operates a ferry service from a wharf in this fishing village on the tip of a peninsula 15 miles southwest of Rockland. Mr. Barstow is part of a group considering buying the wharves here out of concern that their sale would forever change the community.

The state has a matching grant program to help communities and businesses that have raised money to buy and preserve working waterfront. Most are concerned that developers will buy working property and convert it into high-end condominiums or mammoth homes.

“It’s a crisis in slow motion,” said Jim Connors of the state’s Working Waterfront Access Pilot Program, which awarded its first grants this year. “The access is not being lost all at once. It’s happening incrementally. If you look over the past 20 years at what used to be wharf, it’s now houses. You get a sense over time that it’s intensifying.”

Only about 175 miles of Maine’s deceptively long coastline — 5,300 miles, due to the thousands of inlets, coves and islands — provide the shelter and deep water access that a working waterfront requires. Currently only about 20 of those miles are operational waterfront, down from 25 a decade ago.

While demand for waterfront property has always been high in Maine, it was traditionally concentrated in the southern and middle part of the coastline. But with the real estate market there saturated and extremely expensive, more second-home buyers and developers are looking beyond Bar Harbor toward sparsely populated eastern Maine, where converting working waterfront into residential real estate was unheard of until recently.

“It’s really just an unstoppable force. It’s something everyone wants,” Tobin Malone, a real estate agent in Rockport, said of waterfront property. “If we’re going to keep the working aspects of the waterfront, it really takes a huge effort and a lot of forethought.”

In Harpswell, 14 miles northeast of Portland, residents formed a nonprofit group that raised $1.5 million through pancake breakfasts, corporate donations and door-to-door solicitations to buy a dock and businesses at Holbrook’s Wharf. The sale was completed in December.

“This is our contribution,” said Cal Hancock, vice president of the group. “We now know that we’ll keep our sense of community and the working waterfront will be working forever.”

The site holds a wharf for groundfishermen to unload and sell their catch, a restaurant, the neighborhood’s shuttered general store where residents once met for coffee each morning, and two small apartments. All will be leased.

“This is just a perfect little place, and we worried what would happen when it hit the property market,” Ms. Hancock said inside one of the apartments, carved out of a house from the 1860s whose top floor offers harbor views. “That traditional access to the water would be lost.”

In January the state working waterfront program distributed $1.2 million in matching grants to six communities and organizations. The state received dozens of proposals, Mr. Connors said, and is accepting a second round of applications for grants to be awarded in July.

The money is part of a $12 million bond to preserve open space that voters passed in 2005, the same year they approved a constitutional amendment giving tax breaks to owners of working waterfront property. Governor John Baldacci recently authorized $5 million in new bonds for the program, which the Legislature must approve.

The Town of Machiasport used a grant of about $6,000 to buy a 50-foot right of way that leads to public clamming beds at Larabee Cove, said Phil Rose, a town official. The town bought the land to ensure that clammers would not have to trespass to get to the beds that can be worked in high and low tide.

“All around Larabee Cove there was no current public access,” said Judy East of the Washington County Council of Governments, which helped the town write its grant proposal. “Once you start losing access, you’ll start losing the ability to get it back because of price.”

Here in Port Clyde, residents are worried about just that. A sardine cannery burned a few years ago and was bought, and the general store is for sale. Residents are in the very early stages of exploring what it would take to buy the docks.

Kim Libby, whose family has worked the waters here for generations, said they had taken a huge financial hit because of regulations limiting groundfishing days.

If waterfront access is lost, Ms. Libby said, her family will probably go out of business.

“We’re hanging on by our bloody fingernails,” she said, choking up. “It’s like the perfect storm.”

    In Maine, Trying to Protect an Old Way of Life, NYT, 25.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/us/25waterfront.html

Gore Warns Congress

of ‘Planetary Emergency’

March 21, 2007
The New York Times
By FELICITY BARRINGER and ANDREW C. REVKIN

Former Vice President Al Gore, rejecting complaints by Republican lawmakers that he was waging an alarmist war on coal and oil use, insisted before Congressional panels today that human-caused global warming constitutes a “planetary emergency” requiring an aggressive federal response.

Mr. Gore, accompanied by his wife, Tipper, delivered the same blunt message to a joint meeting of two House subcommittees this morning and in written testimony prepared for a Senate hearing this afternoon: Humans are artificially warming the world, the risks of inaction are great, and meaningful cuts in emissions linked to warming will only happen if the United States takes the lead.

Evoking the hit movie “300,” about the ancient Spartans’ stand at Thermopylae, Mr. Gore called on Congress to put aside partisan differences, accept the scientific consensus on global warming as unambiguous and become “the 535,” a reference to the number of seats in the House and Senate.

Democrats and Republicans, he said, should emulate their British counterparts and compete to see how best to curb emissions of smokestack and tailpipe “greenhouse” gases that scientists have now firmly linked to a global warming trend.

Mr. Gore also proposed a 10-point legislative program, calling for everything from a tax on carbon emissions to a ban on incandescent light bulbs and a new national mortgage program to promote the use of energy-saving technologies in homes.

Sounding at times like a professor addressing a class and at others like a revivalist preacher, Mr. Gore arrived at the Rayburn House Office Building in his new black Mercury Mariner hybrid sports utility vehicle, gave a quick summary of the most recent science and statistics, then punctuated his mini-lecture with exhortations from his witness’s pulpit.

Waving his finger at some 40 House members, he said, “A day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and they’ll ask one of two questions.”

Either, he said, “they will ask: what in God’s name were they doing?” or “they may look back and say: how did they find the uncommon moral courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy?”

The hearing that followed was partially a reunion — Mr. Gore had served on the House Energy and Commerce committee as a young congressman in the 1980s — and in part an opportunity for the vice president’s Republican detractors to question the science of climate change and argue about the cost of Mr. Gore’s proposed solutions.

There were no references to the 2000 election, which Mr. Gore conceded to President Bush after a monthlong battle, except perhaps the small slip by Representative John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, who referred to Mr. Gore as “Mr. President.”

But there were plenty of references to Mr. Gore’s Academy Award-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Representative Bob Inglis, Republican of South Carolina, said he had paid to see it, while Republicans like Representative Joe Barton of Texas, the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, challenged its conclusions.

Mr. Gore, facing a litany of criticisms of his portrayal of the science from Mr. Barton, threw out his hands and smiled in exasperation. Mr. Barton, however, appeared out of step with some of his Republican colleagues, several of whom, including Representative J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the former House speaker, accepted the scientific consensus that humans are warming the climate.

A few minutes later, Mr. Gore said, “The planet has a fever. “If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor.” He added, “If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don’t say ‘I read a science fiction novel that says it’s not a problem.’ You take action.”

He credited hundreds of mayors and many states for moving ahead with pledges or laws limiting carbon emissions, but said regional actions were insufficient.

Mr. Gore also conceded that without meaningful shifts in energy use in countries with the world’s fastest-growing economies, warming would not be curtailed, but said that the United States, the main source of the gases so far, still had to act first.

“The best way — and the only way — to get China and India on board is for the U.S. to demonstrate real leadership,” he said in written testimony prepared for both hearings. “As the world’s largest economy and greatest superpower, we are uniquely situated to tackle a problem of this magnitude.”

Representative Ralph Hall, Republican of Texas, said that calls for cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases amounted to an “all-out assault on all forms of fossil fuels” that could eliminate jobs and hurt the economy.

In written testimony for the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician and author critical of people who present environmental problems as a crisis, asserted that Mr. Gore’s portrayal of global warming as a problem and his prescription for solving it were both deeply flawed.

Mr. Lomborg said that “global warming is real and man-made,” but that a focus on intensified energy research would be more effective and far cheaper than caps or taxes on greenhouse gas emissions or energy sources that produce them.

“Statements about the strong, ominous and immediate consequences of global warming are often wildly exaggerated,” he said. “We need a stronger focus on smart solutions rather than excessive if well-intentioned efforts.”

Felicity Barringer reported from Washington, and Andrew C. Revkin from New York.

    Gore Warns Congress of ‘Planetary Emergency’, NYT, 21.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/washington/21cnd-gore.html?hp

Bush Consoles

Victims of Tornadoes in the South

March 4, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

AMERICUS, Ga., March 3 — President Bush picked his way through the rubble of the tornado-stricken South on Saturday, promising federal aid for some Alabamians and turning up unexpectedly in a largely African-American neighborhood here in Georgia, where startled residents rushed out of their damaged houses, cell phone cameras in hand, to greet him.

The hastily arranged trip, following a massive storm system that produced at least 31 tornadoes from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, was intended to send an image of a compassionate president leading a competent government response, in sharp contrast with the lingering images of federal indifference and ineptitude after Hurricane Katrina.

The president’s day began in Enterprise, Ala., where eight students were killed as a tornado on Thursday ripped apart Enterprise High School. Mr. Bush, accompanied by Mayor Kenneth Boswell and several student leaders, made his way through a destroyed wing of the school, stopping in the hallway, where raining chunks of metal and concrete cost the students their lives.

“Out of this rubble will emerge a better tomorrow,” the president said afterward, his hands resting gently on the shoulders of the 17-year-old student government president, Megan Parks. He called the scene one of “devastation that’s hard to believe,” adding, “The biggest effect of the storm is the shattered lives.”

Ms. Parks, clearly shaken, bit her lip and wiped away tears as Mr. Bush spoke. She had left school 30 minutes before the storm hit, stopping along the way to pick up her little brother from elementary school to take him home. Saturday was her first time back.

“It’s so hard to see our school like this,” she said.

The president declared Coffee County, which encompasses Enterprise, a federal disaster area. The designation allows affected households to receive up to $28,200 in aid, according to R. David Paulison, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who accompanied Mr. Bush on the trip.

Mr. Paulison said he had worked through the night preparing paperwork for the disaster declaration, which Mr. Bush approved aboard Air Force One on Saturday morning. White House officials said a similar declaration for Georgia was being considered.

After the Enterprise visit, Mr. Bush took an hour-long helicopter ride to hard-hit Americus, south of Atlanta, where his published schedule listed only a briefing here by local officials in the parking lot of a damaged hospital. Instead, the president’s motorcade drove straight to a modest neighborhood of faded clapboard homes, stopping at a duplex where two people had died seeking shelter from the storm.

As Mr. Bush made his way from house to house to shake hands, giddy residents thrust their cell phones at him, imploring him to stop for pictures and, in some cases, to talk to boyfriends or girlfriends on the other end of the line. Laughing, he obliged.

It was a striking post-Katrina image for a president whose standing among black voters — never very high to begin with — fell even lower after the hurricane.

“He’s lifting spirits in a very difficult situation,” said Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, who accompanied Mr. Bush.

One person whose spirits appeared lifted was Felicia Stafford, who said the tornado had blown the roof off her house and ruined its wood floors. “He’s very nice, loving and warm,” she said after meeting Mr. Bush. “He’s got very soft hands.”

    Bush Consoles Victims of Tornadoes in the South, NYT, 4.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/us/04tornado.html?hp

'40 seconds and it was gone'

Non daté > sans doute 3.3.2007
By Oren Dorell, Alan Gomez and Lisa Horn
USA TODAY

ENTERPRISE, Ala. — A tornado ripped through this town Thursday, killing at least six people, including five who died at a high school when walls and a roof collapsed on them.
There was no word on how many of the victims were children, state Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Yasamie Richardson said.

In all, tornadoes killed at least seven people in Alabama, she said, and 35 people were hospitalized for injuries.

Emily Balliew, 16, a junior at Enterprise High School, said she ran through the school's math and science wing as it started to collapse.

"Cinderblocks started to fall out of the walls. I had two fall on my leg, and one hit me in the back," Balliew said. "It only lasted maybe 40 seconds and it was gone. We could hear people screaming and crying, and you couldn't breathe because of all of the dust."

Student Dillon Griggs said a teacher yelled at students to get down just before the tornado hit after 1 p.m.

"We heard a loud noise. Glass was breaking and debris flying," he said. "I got down and covered up my friend who was lying on the floor next to me."

"When it stopped, people started yelling: 'Get up! Get up! Get out of here!' There were kids on the ground crying, kids bleeding," he said.

Later, rescue crews used heavy equipment to dig through piles of rubble, looking for other victims.

One person died elsewhere in Enterprise, and another person was killed in Wilcox County, Richardson said.

One death in Missouri

Meanwhile, a 7-year-old girl was killed by a tornado in Missouri as thunderstorms stretching from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast spawned violent winds across the central USA.

In this town in southeast Alabama, high winds tossed cars and trees and blasted homes. The tornado sliced through a football stadium at the school, destroying most of the stands.

Tornado sirens blared before the tornado hit, said Lena Smith, who lives a half-mile from the school.

Branches and construction materials were strewn across State Highway 84. The tornado's path through town was marked by a line of trees whose tops were ripped off.

Christina Phillips, a nurse at the Enterprise Cancer Center, arrived at the school just before 1 p.m. to pick up her daughter Morgan, 16, a junior.

"As soon as I walked in the door, the windows blew in, and they were yelling for us to get down," Phillips said.

Bob Phares, assistant superintendent of city schools, said authorities "do not yet know the full extent of the student and personnel injuries."

Kristina Smith, 17, said she was sitting in her environmental science class at midday when her mother came to get her. They got out.

The area where she had been was destroyed, she said.

Kristina's father, Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Smith, an Army helicopter pilot at nearby Fort Rucker, was preparing for afternoon flights when he saw the tornado warnings and called his wife to get their daughter out of the school.

Michelle Smith said she ran into heavy traffic from other parents who had the same idea.

"Tops of houses gone," Andrew Smith said. "Debris on the road, glass, stuff all over the roads. We all just pray for the rest of the kids who were in there."

His daughter spent the rest of the afternoon calling friends to make sure they all made it out.

"I've cried a few times already," Kristina Smith said. "I'm hurting, just hoping that everybody is OK."

Hospitalized

Susan Holmes, executive director of the American Red Cross chapter in nearby Dothan, said injured students and family were taken to Flowers Hospital in Dothan.

High winds prevented helicopters from taking patients to another hospital outside this city of 20,000 people. Nearby but untouched was Fort Rucker, an Army base with 19,000 people, 8,000 in uniform.

Thursday's tornadoes occurred at the southern edge of a huge storm system that centered over Iowa and stretched from Minnesota to Louisiana, said Rich Thompson, lead forecaster at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.

Tornadoes are formed in powerful thunderstorms when warm, moist air rises through layers of wind moving in different directions and takes a spiral shape. On the ground, it causes crazy changes in wind speed and direction that wreak havoc on buildings.

As wind speed rises, the pressure increases exponentially, Thompson said.

"When it accelerates from 30 mph to 180 mph in 5 to 10 seconds, bad things tend to happen," Thompson said. "Buildings aren't made to resist those kind of pressures."

Large, airy school buildings, with their long, open roof spans, are especially at risk, he said, because "once the air flow gets into the building there's nothing to stop it."

    '40 seconds and it was gone' , UT, non daté > sans doute 3.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/stormcenter/2007-03-02-severe-southeast_N.htm

Warming Trends

Warm Winters Upset

Rhythms of Maple Sugar

March 3, 2007
The New York Times
By PAM BELLUCK

MONTPELIER, Vt. — One might expect Burr Morse to have maple sugaring down to a science.

For more than 200 years, Mr. Morse’s family has been culling sweet sap from maple trees, a passion that has manifested itself not only in jug upon jug of maple syrup, but also in maple-cured bacon, maple cream and maple soap, not to mention the display of a suggestively curved tree trunk Mr. Morse calls the Venus de Maple.

But lately nature seems to be playing havoc with Mr. Morse and other maple mavens.

Warmer-than-usual winters are throwing things out of kilter, causing confusion among maple syrup producers, called sugar makers, and stoking fears for the survival of New England’s maple forests.

“We can’t rely on tradition like we used to,” said Mr. Morse, 58, who once routinely began the sugaring season by inserting taps into trees around Town Meeting Day, the first Tuesday in March, and collecting sap to boil into syrup up until about six weeks later. The maple’s biological clock is set by the timing of cold weather.

For at least 10 years some farmers have been starting sooner. But last year Mr. Morse tapped his trees in February and still missed out on so much sap that instead of producing his usual 1,000 gallons of syrup, he made only 700.

“You might be tempted to say, well that’s a bunch of baloney — global warming,” said Mr. Morse, drilling his first tap holes this season in mid-February, as snow hugged the maples and Vermont braced for a record snowfall. “But the way I feel, we get too much warm. How many winters are we going to go with Decembers turning into short-sleeve weather, before the maple trees say, ‘I don’t like it here any more?’ ”

There is no way to know for certain, but scientists are increasingly persuaded that human-caused global warming is changing climate conditions that affect sugaring.

While some farmers and other Vermonters suggest the recent warm years could be just a cyclical hiccup of nature or the result of El Niño, many maple researchers now say it seems more like a long-term trend. Since 1971, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, winter temperatures in the Northeast have increased by 2.8 degrees.

“It appears to be a rather dire situation for the maple industry in the Northeast if conditions continue to go toward the predictions that have been made for global warming,” said Tim Perkins, director of the Proctor Maple Research Center at the University of Vermont.

Dr. Perkins studied the records of maple syrup production over the last 40 years and found a fairly steady progression of the maple sugaring season moving earlier and earlier, and also getting shorter.

“We had this long list of factors we started with that could possibly explain it,” Dr. Perkins said. “We have eliminated all of those various factors. We are at this point convinced that it is climatic influence.”

Over the long haul, the industry in New England may face an even more profound challenge, the disappearance of sugar maples altogether as the climate zone they have evolved for moves across the Canadian border.

“One hundred to 200 years from now,” Dr. Perkins said, “there may be very few maples here, mainly oak, hickory and pine. There are projections that say over about 110 years our climate will be similar to that of Virginia.”

Dr. Perkins and Tom Vogelmann, chairman of the plant biology department at the University of Vermont, said that while new sap-tapping technology is helping sugar makers keep up syrup production, for now, at some point the season will become so short that large syrup producers will no longer get enough sap to make it worthwhile.

“It’s within, well, probably my lifetime that you’ll see this happen,” Professor Vogelmann said. “How can you have the state of Vermont and not have maple syrup?”

Experts say gradual warming has already contributed to a shift of syrup production to Canada, although other factors may be more responsible, including Canadian subsidies, improved technology, and a decline in New England family farms.

“In the ’50s and ’60s, 80 percent of world’s maple syrup came from the U.S., and 20 percent came from Canada,” said Barrett N. Rock, a professor of natural resources at the University of New Hampshire. “Today it’s exactly the opposite. The climate that we used to have here in New England has moved north to the point where it’s now in Quebec.”

Maple trees are so iconic here that a good deal of tourism revolves around leaf peeping of the maples’ fall tapestry, maple syrup festivals and visits to maple sugar bushes, the name for sugar maple orchards.

While there have always been some weather fluctuations, certain conditions are critical to syrup production. To make sap, trees require what Professor Rock called a “cold recharge period,” several weeks of below-freezing temperatures that traditionally fell in December and January, followed by a span of very cold nights and warmer days.

Catching the first sap of the season is important because it “makes the best syrup,” Dr. Perkins said. But tapping too early can cause a sugar maker to miss the back end of the season because eventually bacteria clog the holes in the trees and prevent more sap from emerging.

“It’s a real conundrum the sugar producers face,” Professor Rock said. “Do I tap early to catch the early sap flow or do I wait until the regular season, and maybe not get the highest quality syrup, but the tap flow remains open until the first buds on trees in April?”

In Vermont, which makes a third of the country’s syrup, sugar makers are trying different approaches.

Rick Marsh, president of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers’ Association, has kept his production high by tapping his 8,000 maples in January and using a tap with a disposable tip designed to minimize bacteria growth and keep the holes open longer. Instead of having the tap spill the sap into buckets, Mr. Marsh, like many sugar makers, hooks the tap to a labyrinth of plastic tubes and uses a high-powered vacuum to suck out the sap through the tubes.

“Farmers say, ‘I can’t afford to keep making these changes’ ” in technology, Mr. Marsh said. “I say you can’t afford not to.”

Still, Mr. Marsh, whose sugar bush in Jeffersonville is near a “Think Maple!” sign, said it was a “crapshoot” to decide when to tap. “Anybody plays poker, you’re a sugar maker. If you don’t get the right weather, it’s like not getting the right cards. And if you misjudge the weather, it’s like you misplayed your cards.”

Tim Young in Waterville tapped his 10,000 maple trees in November. “The environment’s changing, and I want to change with it,” said Mr. Young, who made 1,800 gallons of syrup by January and has left the taps in in hopes of catching a second sap run by April.

Not every sugar maker believes global warming is responsible or that the weather changes are part of a long-term trend. Don Harlow, 75, of Putney, said there were some warm years in the 1950s, and he blames El Niño for the current weather pattern.

Still, he said, “I think what we’re experiencing is a tragic, disastrous change.” He added that he tapped too late last year and made only 1,800 gallons of syrup, instead of his usual 2,500. This year, he said, “in the first week of January, heaven sakes, it was 60 degrees in Vermont.”

Global warming is such a concern to Arthur Berndt, one of Vermont’s largest sugar makers, that he became a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by environmentalists and four cities against the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. The suit says the agencies contribute to carbon dioxide emissions by financing overseas fossil fuel projects like oil fields and pipelines, and seeks to compel them to abide by American restrictions.

December was so warm, Mr. Berndt said, “I was seeding my asparagus bed on Christmas day.”

    Warm Winters Upset Rhythms of Maple Sugar, NYT, 3.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/us/03maple.html?hp

Evangelical’s Focus on Climate

Draws Fire of Christian Right

March 3, 2007
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Leaders of several conservative Christian groups have sent a letter urging the National Association of Evangelicals to force its policy director in Washington to stop speaking out on global warming.

The conservative leaders say they are not convinced that global warming is human-induced or that human intervention can prevent it. And they accuse the director, the Rev. Richard Cizik, the association’s vice president for government affairs, of diverting the evangelical movement from what they deem more important issues, like abortion and homosexuality.

The letter underlines a struggle between established conservative Christian leaders, whose priority has long been sexual morality, and challengers who are pushing to expand the evangelical movement’s agenda to include issues like climate change and human rights.

“We have observed,” the letter says, “that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time.”

Those issues, the signers say, are a need to campaign against abortion and same-sex marriage and to promote “the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children.”

The letter, dated Thursday, is signed by leaders like James C. Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family; Gary L. Bauer, once a Republican presidential candidate and now president of Coalitions for America; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; and Paul Weyrich, a longtime political strategist who is chairman of American Values.

They acknowledge in the letter that none of their groups belong to the National Association of Evangelicals, a broad coalition that represents 30 million Christians in hundreds of denominations, organizations and academic institutions. But, they say, if Mr. Cizik “cannot be trusted to articulate the views of American evangelicals,” then he should be encouraged to resign.

Mr. Cizik (pronounced SIZE-ik) did not respond to requests for an interview yesterday, and the association’s chairman, L. Roy Taylor, was unavailable. But the Rev. Leith Anderson, president of the association, said, “We’re talking about somebody here who’s been in Washington for 25 years, has an amazing track record and is highly respected.”

“I’m behind him,” said Mr. Anderson, who was named president in November after the sudden resignation of the Rev. Ted Haggard, the Colorado pastor caught up in a scandal involving a gay prostitute.

Mr. Cizik, who is well known on Capitol Hill, has long served as one of the evangelical movement’s agenda-setters. He helped put foreign policy on the evangelical agenda in the late 1990s, focusing on the persecution of Christians in other countries.

He said in an interview last year that he experienced a profound “conversion” on the global warming issue in 2002 after listening to scientists at a retreat. Now an emblem for a new breed of evangelical environmentalists, he has been written about in Vanity Fair and Newsweek and has appeared in “The Great Warming,” a documentary on climate change.

Evangelicals have recently become a significant voice in the chorus on global warming. Last year more than 100 prominent pastors, theologians and college presidents signed an “Evangelical Climate Initiative” calling for action on the issue. Among the signers were several board members of the National Association of Evangelicals; Mr. Anderson, who has since been named its president; and W. Todd Bassett, who was then national commander of the Salvation Army and was appointed executive director of the association in January.

Mr. Haggard, then the president, and Mr. Cizik did not sign, after criticism from some of the same leaders who have now sent the letter about Mr. Cizik.

In interviews, some signers of this latest letter said they were wary of the global warming issue because they associated it with leftists, limits on free enterprise and population control, which they oppose.

“We’re saying what is being done here,” Mr. Perkins said, “is a concerted effort to shift the focus of evangelical Christians to these issues that draw warm and fuzzies from liberal crusaders.”

    Evangelical’s Focus on Climate Draws Fire of Christian Right, NYT, 3.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/us/03evangelical.html

U.S. Predicting Steady Increase

for Emissions

March 3, 2007
The New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The Bush administration estimates that emissions by the United States of gases that contribute to global warming will grow nearly as fast through the next decade as they did the previous decade, according to a long-delayed report being completed for the United Nations.

The document, the United States Climate Action Report, emphasizes that the projections show progress toward a goal Mr. Bush laid out in a 2002 speech: that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases grow at a slower rate than the economy. Since that speech, he has repeated his commitment to lessening “greenhouse gas intensity” without imposing formal limits on the gases.

Kristen A. Hellmer, a spokeswoman for the White House on environmental matters, said on Friday, “The Climate Action Report will show that the president’s portfolio of actions addressing climate change and his unparalleled financial commitments are working.”

But when shown the report, an assortment of experts on climate trends and policy described the projected emissions as unacceptable given the rising evidence of risks from unabated global warming.

“As governor of Texas and as a candidate, the president supported mandatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions,” said David W. Conover, who directed the administration’s Climate Change Technology Program until February 2006 and is now counsel to the National Commission on Energy Policy, a nonpartisan research group that supports limits on gases. “When he announced his voluntary greenhouse-gas intensity reduction goal in 2002, he said it would be re-evaluated in light of scientific developments. The science now clearly calls for a mandatory program that establishes a price for greenhouse-gas emissions.”

According to the new report, the administration’s climate policy will result in emissions growing 11 percent in 2012 from 2002. In the previous decade, emissions grew at a rate of 11.6 percent, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The report also contains sections describing growing risks to water supplies, coasts and ecosystems around the United States from the anticipated temperature and precipitation changes driven by the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

Drafts of the report were provided to The New York Times by a government employee at the request of a reporter. The employee did not say why this was done, but other officials involved with producing it said they have been frustrated with the slow pace of its preparation. It was due more than one year ago.

The report arrives at a moment when advocates of controls are winning new support in statehouses and Congress, not to mention Hollywood, where former Vice President Al Gore’s cautionary documentary on the subject, “An Inconvenient Truth,” just won an Academy Award. Five western governors have just announced plans to create a program to cap and then trade carbon-dioxide emissions. And on Capitol Hill, half a dozen bills have been introduced to curb emissions, with more expected.

Ms. Hellmer defended Mr. Bush’s climate policy, saying the president was committed to actions, like moderating gasoline use and researching alternative energy, that limited climate risks while also increasing the country’s energy and national security. She said Mr. Bush remained satisfied with voluntary measures to slow emissions.

Myron Ebell, who directs climate and energy policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group aligned with industries fighting curbs on greenhouse gases, said Mr. Bush was right to acknowledge the inevitability of growing emissions in a country with a growing population and economy. Mr. Ebell added that the United States was doing better at slowing emissions than many countries that had joined the Kyoto Protocol, the first binding international treaty limiting such gases.

“Since 1990, for every 1 percent increase in emissions the economy has grown about 3 percent,” Mr. Ebell said. “That’s good, and it’s better than the European Union’s performance.”

Several environmental campaigners said there was no real distinction between Mr. Bush’s target and “business as usual,” adding that such mild steps were unacceptable given recent findings by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other research groups tying recent warming more firmly than ever to smokestack and tailpipe gases.

“If you set the hurdle one inch above the ground you can’t fail to clear it,” said David D. Doniger, the director of climate policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has long criticized the administration and sought binding cuts in greenhouse gases.

The report is the fourth in a series produced periodically by countries that are parties to the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, a treaty signed by the first President Bush. It is a self-generated summary of climate-related trends and actions, including inventories of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, research on impacts of climate change, and policies to limit climate risks and emissions.

The last such report, completed in 2002, put the administration in something of a bind because it listed many harmful or costly projected impacts from human-caused warming. Environmental groups used those findings to press President Bush to seek mandatory caps on greenhouse gases, while foes of such restrictions criticized the findings and criticized the administration for letting them stay in the document.

While that report was approved by senior White House and State Department officials, Mr. Bush quickly distanced himself from it, saying it was “put out by the bureaucracy.”

The new report has been bogged down for nearly two years. In April 2005, the State Department published a notice in the Federal Register saying it would be released for public comment that summer.

Several government officials and scientists involved with preparing or reviewing parts of the report said that the recent departures of several senior staff members running the administration’s climate research program delayed its completion and no replacements have been named. The delays in finishing the report come even as Mr. Bush has elevated global warming higher on his list of concerns. This year, for the first time since he took office in 2001, he touched on “global climate change” in the State of the Union Message, calling it a “serious challenge.”

The draft report contains fresh projections of significant effects of human-caused warming on the environment and resources of the United States and emphasized the need to increase the country’s capacity to adapt to impending changes.

Drought, particularly, will become a persistent threat, it said: “Warmer temperatures expected with increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases are expected to exacerbate present drought risks in the United States by increasing the rate of evaporation.”

Water supplies in the Northwest and Southwest are also at risk. “Much of the water used by people in the western United States comes from snow melt,” the report said. “And a large fraction of the traditionally snow-covered areas of this region has experienced a decline in spring snow pack, especially since mid-century, despite increases in winter precipitation in many places.” Animal and plant species face risks as climate zones shift but urbanized regions prevent ecosystems from shifting as well, according to the draft report.

“Because changes in the climate system are likely to persist into the future regardless of emissions mitigation, adaptation is an essential response for future protection of climate-sensitive ecosystems,” it said.

    U.S. Predicting Steady Increase for Emissions, NYT, 3.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/science/03climate.html?hp

After Tornado,

an Alabama School Tallies the Grief

March 3, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

ENTERPRISE, Ala., March 2 — After the sudden pitch-black darkness, there was chaos, then screaming. And when that subsided, the students of Enterprise High School recalled on Friday, some young men and women they had grown up with were nowhere to be found, while others climbed shakily to their feet.

Eight students were killed here on Thursday afternoon, quick victims of a tornado that tore apart their school soon after they were told to hit the floor. Concrete from a collapsed interior wall rained down on them as they huddled together for safety, the authorities said.

Officials defended their decision not to evacuate the school earlier, saying the impending tornadoes would have made it too dangerous.

On Friday, dazed survivors — teachers and students — recounted their luck as they toured the perimeter of the painful ruins, the building’s spilled-out insides visible even from the great distance at which the authorities kept onlookers.

For grief-stricken parents like those of Andrew J. Jackson, a sturdy 16-year-old cheerleader and weightlifter, there was no consolation in their bewilderment.

“We lost a good man yesterday,” said Andrew’s father, Tim Jackson, his lip trembling as he stood in the family carport.

Mr. Jackson said witnesses had told him and his wife a heroic story of their son’s last moments. Andrew held up a falling concrete beam long enough for another student to escape, they told him, and was then crushed by it.

The tornado here was only the sharpest shard in huge storm system that produced at least 31 tornadoes on Thursday and battered the nation’s midsection from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, killing 10 in Alabama, 9 in Georgia and 1 in Missouri. In Georgia, six of those killed were residents of a trailer park in Newton, and at least two died in Sumter.

“I actually thought that this was the end, that, like, I was about to be taken away from earth,” said Antoine Perry, 31, of Newton.

Grief hung especially heavy over Enterprise, a hardscrabble, military-dominated town of 23,000 adjacent to Fort Rucker, just above the Florida Panhandle. It seemed as if everyone’s son or daughter, or nephew or grandchild, had a story to tell. Great swaths of insulation jutted from the top of an accordioned central section of the high school. Cars were lifted nose first into the air. The search for bodies continued until after 1 a.m. Friday.

“You don’t expect to take a child to school, then go back and pull him out of the rubble,” said Maxie Searcy of Searcy’s Funeral Home, where some of the relatives of the victims were headed.

The Jacksons’ agony had been prolonged over 12 hours of waiting. After the tornado, parents and students assembled in a dark church next to the school, and church officials called out the students’ names. Parents awaited anxiously in the gloom for their child’s name to be spoken, and for the longed-for response.

When nobody responded to “A. J. Jackson,” Laura Jackson, Andrew’s mother, said, she knew something was wrong.

“Oh, gosh, they probably called it out four times,” Mrs. Jackson said. “I knew, when he wasn’t at the church, I knew he was trapped.”

It was not until hours later that they got word.

“He would have helped anybody he could,” said his father, who owns a car wash.

Neither parent wondered about what they had been told.

“Even knowing the outcome, he would do it again,” Mrs. Jackson said. “For Andrew not to survive, it must have been bad. He was strong as an ox.”

In the carport, the Jacksons embraced each other and their surviving child, a daughter, April. Relatives arrived to comfort them.

There was too much grief just yet for any criticism of school officials for failing to clear the school before the tornado hit at 1:15, despite hours of weather warnings. Some parents had pulled out their children anyway, a few said.

When the tornado hit, students and teachers “were sitting on the floor in the fetal position, kind of up against the wall,” said Sheriff Dave Sutton of Coffee County. The hallways had been considered the safest place, but an interior wall collapsed, “and a lot of concrete came down on them,” the sheriff said.

Like other officials here, the sheriff lauded the response and said the school’s disaster plan had been properly put into effect.

Gov. Bob Riley descended into the ruins by helicopter Friday morning, praised the military and local officials, and spoke of the outpouring for the bereaved from across the country.

“This country is praying for them,” Mr. Riley said.

Squads of soldiers and police officers were deployed on the streets, stopping cars and challenging onlookers. Traffic was backed up for blocks. In Washington, President Bush announced plans to visit the region on Saturday.

“Looking back,” said Bob Pares, the assistant superintendent of schools, “we would not have evacuated any sooner.

“There was one warning after another, after 10:30 a.m.,” Mr. Phares said. “We didn’t want to send the students out in the middle of a tornado.”

In the end, the tornado came to get them.

“It was like hell, it was so dark,” said Kevin Smith, an 11th grader. “I heard people screaming. Everybody was very, very scared.”

Jim McClellan, a special-education teacher, said: “I kept saying, ‘We’re going to be all right, we’re going to be all right,’ and frankly not believing a word of it. “At the time, I heard screams from every direction, including the two I was holding onto. And I saw a lot of blood.”

Many recalled how short the interruption was.

“I pretty much watched it lift the roofs of houses across the street, and then I saw it lift cars in the air,” said Josh Beene, a cousin of Andrew Jackson. “Then I pretty much tucked my head under and protected myself,” Mr. Beene said. . “Then in five seconds, it was over, and the roof was gone, and the lights were hanging from the ceiling. And then everybody was screaming.”

Storms Pummel Midwest

MINNEAPOLIS, March 2 (AP) — Fierce winds blew snow across roads and stranded hundreds of drivers on highways in the Midwest on Friday, as thousands of homes and business were without power and airlines canceled hundreds of flights.

The storm system brought more than a foot of snow to some areas, and even though the flakes had stopped falling by afternoon, gusts of wind at 40 miles per hour prompted blizzard warnings and prevented major highways from reopening.

The system was blamed for nine deaths since Wednesday, eight related to traffic accidents.

The governors of Iowa and South Dakota issued disaster declarations.

Christine Sexton contributed reporting from Newton, Ga., and Tanya Bricking Leach from Enterprise.

    After Tornado, an Alabama School Tallies the Grief, NYT, 3.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/us/03tornado.html?hp


 

20 Dead

As Tornadoes Hit Ga., Ala., Mo.

March 2, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:34 p.m. ET
The New York Times

ENTERPRISE, Ala. (AP) -- A violent storm system ripped apart an Alabama high school as students hunkered inside and later tore through Georgia, hitting a hospital and raising the death toll to at least 20 across the Midwest and Southeast.

Eight students died when a tornado struck Enterprise High School, Mayor Kenneth Boswell said Friday. The teenage victims were all in a wing of the school that took a direct hit as the tornado blew out the walls and roof.

''It was in a split second that we sat down and started to cover ourselves before the storm hit,'' said 17-year-old Kira Simpson, who lost four friends to the storm. ''Glass was breaking. It was loud.''

''It's like a bad dream. I have to keep reminding myself that it actually happened,'' she said.

As the massive storm system swept into Georgia, another tornado apparently touched down near the Sumter Regional Hospital in Americus, 117 miles south of Atlanta, blowing out the windows, tossing cars into trees and killing at least two people, said Buzz Weiss of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.

Doctors, nurses and volunteers had worked into the night to evacuate dozens of patients.

''It was controlled chaos,'' said Dr. Tim Powell, an anesthesiologist.

Six more people were killed in the town of Newton, Ga., including a child, and several homes were destroyed, Fire Chief Andy Belinc said early Friday.

''It's just a blessing, frankly, that we didn't have more fatalities than we did,'' Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue said after viewing the damage Friday. He declared a state of emergency in six counties, clearing the way for state aid.

The burst of tornadoes was part of a larger line of thunderstorms and snowstorms that stretched from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast. Authorities blamed tornadoes for the deaths of a 7-year-old girl in Missouri, 10 people in Alabama and nine in Georgia, and twisters also damaged homes in Kansas.

President Bush planned to visit two of the storm-damaged areas on Saturday, the White House said. The destinations were still being worked out Friday with governors in the affected states.

As the storm swept out to sea off South Carolina on Friday, the Coast Guard searched for six people on a small boat who had sent a distress call overnight saying they were taking on water.

In all, the National Weather Service received 31 reports of tornadoes Thursday from Missouri, Illinois, Alabama, Georgia and Florida, plus a report Friday of a waterspout near Cartaret, N.C.

The normal peak tornado season is April and May, but weather service meteorologist Dennis Feltgen said tornadoes can occur at any time.

At Enterprise High School, officials had been watching the storm Thursday as it swept through southern Missouri and headed into Alabama. The students were preparing to leave for the day when the sirens started up and the lights went out.

Teacher Grannison Wagstaff was with them.

''I said 'Here it comes. Hit the deck,'' he told CBS's ''The Early Show'' Friday. ''I turned around and I could actually see the tornado coming toward me.''

As the students scrambled for shelter, a section of roof and a wall near 17-year-old senior Erin Garcia collapsed on her classmates.

''I was just sitting there praying the whole time,'' Erin said. ''It sounded like a bunch of people trying to beat the wall down. People didn't know where to go. They were trying to lead us out of the building.

''I kept seeing people with blood on their faces.''

Outside, debris from the school was strewn around the neighborhood, where cars were flipped or tossed atop each other. Searchers pulled the final body, a boy, from the high school's wreckage around 1:30 a.m. Friday, assistant superintendent Bob Phares said.

The mayor said officials had yet to determine where the school's students would attend classes for the rest of the year. He appeared drained as his staff and National Guard crews tried to assess the damage at dawn and search the torn-up neighborhoods for more victims.

''You take it methodically,'' Boswell said. ''You prioritize, and you move on.''

At least one other person was killed in Enterprise, a city of about 23,000 some 75 miles south of Montgomery. Another died across the state in rural Millers Ferry, where trailer homes were flipped and trees toppled, officials said.

In Sumter County, Ga., home of former President Jimmy Carter, Sumter Regional Hospital was in shambles Friday morning. Officials weren't sure whether the people injured and the two reported dead in town were inside the hospital when the storm struck, Weiss said.

Near Newton, about 50 miles to the south, Marvin Hurst was home with his wife and 31-year-old son when the storm hit and the house ''exploded.'' Only a few sections of rear wall were left standing.

''It's just by the grace of God that we got out,'' Hurst said.

Between 40 and 60 homes were also damaged in nearby Clay County, on the Alabama line, Weiss said. Another tornado killed a man in a mobile home in Taylor County, north of Americus, county Emergency Management Agency Director Gary Lowe said.

Around Americus, the storm uprooted trees and knocked down power lines. Several homes and businesses were destroyed. At Cheek Memorial Church, the wooden steeple had toppled.

Marcia Wilson, who lives across the street from the Church, said she heard a huge roar as the storm went through.

''It felt like the whole house was fixing to fall in,'' she said. ''All I could do was pray that God take care of us and he did.''

Associated Press Writers Greg Bluestein in Americus, Ga., and Elliot Minor in Newton, Ga., contributed to this report.

    20 Dead As Tornadoes Hit Ga., Ala., Mo., NYT, 2.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Tornadoes.html

Widespread Storms Kill 11 in 3 States

March 2, 2007
The New York Times
By BRENDA GOODMAN

ATLANTA, March 1 — A storm system that stretched nearly 1,000 miles from the Midwest to the Southeast on Thursday killed at least 11 people in three states, including five who died when what appeared to be a tornado caused the roof to collapse at a high school in Enterprise, Ala., state emergency management officials said.

Two other people were killed in Alabama, three in Georgia and one in Missouri.

Some students remained unaccounted for late Thursday and could be trapped inside the building, said Larry Walker, deputy director of the Emergency Management Agency in Coffee County, in southeastern Alabama.

Students at Enterprise High School had just been ordered to take cover in hallways when fierce winds bore down at 1 p.m., plunging them into darkness and pounding them with falling debris.

“The ceiling part fell on us and rocks hit me on the back,” said Ezekiel Jones, 17, a senior who was in the gym when the apparent tornado struck. “I was thinking of my mom, my girlfriend, my sister and my friends. Everybody was screaming.”

Steven Carter, 16, a junior, said he was in the science wing when the lights went out.

“It happened fast,” Steven said. “There wasn’t much warning.”

He said he could smell methane leaking from the Bunsen burners in the classrooms.

“A lot of kids were trapped,” Steven said.

Steven said he saw science teachers tending to some of the wounded with first-aid kits salvaged from the wrecked classrooms.

Toni J. Kaminski, a spokeswoman for Medical Center Enterprise, said the hospital treated 50 to 60 people.

“We have seen a myriad of injuries, including a ruptured spleen, head trauma, chest trauma, broken bones,” Ms. Kaminski said.

Though the high school seems to have taken a direct hit, neighborhoods throughout Enterprise reported extensive damage.

Jeanne Davis, 55, a clerk at nearby Fort Rucker Army Base, said she rushed home after the winds stopped to find shingles torn off her roof and a two-by-four driven into the ground in her front yard.

Throughout Enterprise, which has a population of about 21,000 people, cars were upended, trees were snapped and homes flattened, with other reports of injuries coming from the downtown area. A state emergency management spokeswoman, Yasamie Richardson, said that five people had been killed at the high school and that one other person in Enterprise was also killed.

Seth Hammett, speaker of the Alabama House, said one person died in Millers Ferry, about 80 miles northwest of Enterprise, where 12 to 15 trailer homes had been destroyed.

Because of confusion at the school scene, emergency management officials initially said 15 had died there. Thursday night they were still trying to assess the damage across the state, . and Gov. Bob Riley declared a state of emergency.

In Georgia, the storms killed at least three people and caused an unknown number of injuries, Reuters reported, quoting Buzz Weiss, spokesman for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.

Two were killed in Americus, Ga., when the Sumter Regional Hospital was hit by what appeared to be a tornado, Mr. Weiss said.

In Missouri, a 7-year-old girl was killed and four members of her family were injured when a tornado flattened their mobile home near West Plains, at 7 a.m., said Sheriff Robbie Crites of Howell County.

Tanya Bricking Leach contributed reporting from Enterprise, Ala.

Widespread Storms Kill 11 in 3 States, NYT, 2.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/us/02tornado.html