Tropical Cyclone Sagar is taking a path that few storms have taken before, as the compact storm draws on energy from the Gulf of Aden. Forecasts call for Tropical Sagar to make landfall between Somalia and Djibouti on Friday night, eastern time.
Humanitarian concerns: Somalia is still in the midst of unrest, and U.S. military forces operate there and in neighboring Djibouti, where most of America's African counterterrorism operations are based. This storm threatens to dump a year's worth of rain in just one or two days, causing flooding that may displace thousands of people, depending on the exact landfall location.
The electricity grid that serves most of Texas, known as ERCOT, operates on a relatively rare energy-only electricity market. An energy-only market pays power plants only for producing electricity, while other markets provide "capacity payments" to generators to be available even when not producing power. Texas built this lean market to keep down costs, but this summer could pose a threat to its survival.
The big picture: A combination of sustained low natural gas prices and increasing supply from renewables has kept ERCOT’s electric wholesale market prices so low for so long that some power plants have been driven out of the market.
Sailors taking part in the daring round-the-world Volvo Ocean Race collected water samples at a place called Point Nemo, which is the most remote spot in the world's oceans. They found that, despite the location's distance from land, the water there contained a considerable amount of plastic.
Why it matters: The finding, announced Friday at an oceans conference in Newport, Rhode Island, bolsters conclusions from a recent study that found a plastic bag adrift in the Mariana Trench — the deepest spot in the ocean.
