Climate — older stories

Evapotranspiration — corn's version of sweating — is quietly making already brutal Midwest heat waves feel worse, and meteorologists say the effect is only ramping up for the season.

The Weather Channel has named winter storms for 14 seasons running, using a population-and-area formula it built itself. The National Weather Service — and the AP — still won't use the names.

The same alert can mean 100 degrees in one city and 105 in the next, because heat-index thresholds are set locally, not nationally.

A flash drought can turn a healthy field into a stressed one within days, driven by heat and wind rather than a lack of rain. Farmers and forecasters are racing to catch up.

Bogus Fire. Dinosaur Fire. Not Creative Fire. Behind every odd wildfire name is a strict federal rulebook, and no committee, just whoever answers the call first.

One alert gives you up to three days of notice. The other means the National Weather Service thinks conditions are already dangerous enough to spread a fire fast. Confusing the two can cost the exact hours evacuation guides say matter most.

A technical test called additionality decides whether a carbon credit means anything — and it's now at the center of a fight over the UN's first Paris Agreement credits.

Category number measures wind. It says nothing about how long a hurricane plans to sit still, and stalling is often what turns a storm catastrophic.

Streaks of rain hang from a cloud, curl, and vanish before reaching the ground. It's a real weather event with a name, and sometimes a dangerous one.

A dry, hot stretch of weeks has pushed North Carolina into its worst drought in nearly two decades, draining the Triangle region's main reservoirs along the way.

NOAA gives the 2026 Atlantic season a 55% chance of running below normal, largely because of a strengthening El Nino. The forecast comes with an explicit caveat: it only takes one storm.

The National Weather Service quietly retired "Excessive Heat Warning" in 2025. Here's what the new terms mean, and the exact thresholds regional offices use to issue them.

Three humidity-adjusted heat numbers dominate the summer forecast, and they answer different questions. The one everybody quotes assumes you are standing in the shade.

A central AC running flat out at 79 degrees on a 99-degree afternoon is usually doing exactly what it was engineered to do. The symptom that actually signals a fault is different, and easy to miss.

Closing vents in unused rooms feels like it should cut your bill. The physics of your ductwork says otherwise, and the habit can quietly damage your HVAC system.

A heat dome is the stalled high-pressure lid behind record-breaking heat waves. Here is how it forms, why humidity makes it deadly, and how long it lasts.

Shelters are filling and the ports are shut as a Category 5-equivalent storm bears down on Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, with landfall due Monday.

More than 165 million Americans face major or extreme heat risk this week as a record-threatening heat dome settles over the East Coast and Midwest through the July Fourth weekend — and complicates World Cup matches.

Rain ran nearly 40% below normal for the month, with no low-pressure systems forming and El Nino building, before the monsoon finally turned toward Delhi.

Six to seven inches of rain in hours killed at least four people and forced dozens of water rescues across central Kentucky.