Month: October 2017

Enlarge / Hurricane Nate, now in the Gulf of Mexico, makes nine Atlantic hurricanes in row. (credit: NOAA)

On August 9th, deep in the southern Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Franklin reached 85mph winds before moving into Mexico. Although the storm dropped some heavy rains over the Mexican state of Veracruz, Franklin's effects were relatively moderate, and it was soon forgotten.

But Franklin's formation two months ago, eight additional tropical systems have developed and been assigned names by the National Hurricane Center. And during this frenetic season, all of those systems have become hurricanes as well. That's nine in a row, which is unprecedented in the modern hurricane era.

According to Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane scientist at Colorado State University, nine consecutive named storms have not reached hurricane status since 1893. The record is 10 such storms, which happened in 1878, 1886, and 1893. However, it is unlikely that those years really recorded 10 hurricanes in a row, given that most observations were made on land or by ships.

Enlarge / Satellite measured elevation loss (greatest in the dark blue) between 2011 and 2017. The linear break in color is an inactive fault that walls off part of the aquifer. (credit: ASI/University at Buffalo/NASA-JPL/Caltech/Google Earth/U of Basilicata)

The GRACE satellites are, unfortunately, about to die. The pair of formation-flying gravity sensors has provided revolutionary data over the past 15 years, tracking ice loss and groundwater depletion through the subtle change in gravity triggered by that lost mass. Replacements will hopefully be launched soon.

But GRACE isn’t the only way to track groundwater in places like California. InSAR is a satellite radar measurement technology that can detect extremely small changes in ground elevation—including before-and-after mapping of the shifts around an earthquake. But they also work well for tracking elevation changes that occur as areas gain or lose groundwater. A new study takes advantage of that to track the golden state's response to its recent drought, and it even detected changes due to the policy response.

Rise and fall

Parts of California have lost impressive amounts of elevation over the years as groundwater levels were lowered. The loss of water in between grains of sediment allows the sediment to compact more densely. And if you compact the sediments, the surface elevation drops.

Enlarge / A makeshift memorial for the victims of Sunday night's mass shooting stands at an intersection of the north end of the Las Vegas Strip. (credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

A 60-year-old Pennsylvania vegan says she's receiving death threats and abusive phone calls—and she's been forced to hide her Mother Nature Vegan Cuisine food truck—following her comments on Facebook mocking the deaths of dozens of Las Vegas concert-goers killed Sunday by a man shooting at them randomly from a hotel room.

Delinda Jensen

"It seems like a lynch mob is forming," Delinda Jensen told The Times Leader newspaper of Wilkes-Barre.

Jensen's life turned upside down following this Monday post to Facebook: "Yes I am jaded. Fifty nine meat eaters dead. How many animals will live because of this?" Under her post, Jensen eventually commented: “I don’t give a fuck about carnists anymore," according to a screenshot published by Metro.

Update: During Fantastic Fest 2017, we saw a movie so good we couldn't wait for others to see it (and simply ran the review). Anna and the Apocalypse is an extremely clever mash-up of several beloved genres that seems too odd on paper to work: zombie movie, Christmas story, and high school musical. Luckily, the film quickly attracted a distributor in early 2018. Now with Anna and the Apocalypse hitting select theaters this weekend and expanding elsewhere on December 7, 2018, we're resurfacing our review. The piece originally ran on October 7, 2017, and it appears unchanged below.

AUSTIN, Texas—Even if it looks straight out of the DCOM (Disney Channel original movie) playbook, do not be fooled by the familiar bubblegum-ness of Anna and the Apocalypse's first 15 minutes.

Yes, likable young people fill in various archetypes, from the artistic outcast to the popular jerk to the nice-guy best friend who'll forever be "just friends" with our heroine. And yes, Top 40-pop styled musical numbers focus on familiar adolescent themes of defying the expectations of others or how life doesn't follow movie scripts in practice. At one point, a stick-in-the-mud principal devoted to rules and regulations literally proclaims, "hand sanitizer is your friend; kissing on the mouth is not your friend."

But if the title itself or its debut at the genre-melting pot that is Fantastic Fest don't give it away, Anna and the Apocalypse has no interest in being the next obsession of the pre-teen in your life. Instead, the film only sets up High School Musical expectations so it can swiftly and cleverly dismantle them throughout the rest of this funny, impressive, and genuinely moving ride.