Florida's Tyndall Air Force Base took a direct hit from Hurricane Michael, causing catastrophic damage to its hangars and buildings — and there are reports of damage to some of the Air Force's newest fighter planes.
Why it matters: Tyndall is one of the largest F-22 bases in the country. Gen. Joseph Lengyel, chief of the National Guard Bureau, told reporters he's heard direct comparisons between Tyndall's destruction and the devastation sustained by Homestead Air Force Base by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 — which was ultimately decimated and turned into a reserve base.
Doug Parker, the CEO of American Airlines, doubled down on his remarks last year that the airline isn't "ever going to lose money again," saying airlines need to get past the boom-and-bust cycle of the past. "We're not going to go through these cycles," Parker said at an Axios Smarter Faster Revolution event at the University of Texas in Austin.
Big picture: Parker said things like oil prices approaching 4-year highs shouldn't tip airlines into unprofitability, and now companies like American are stronger to weather those changes. "In the old days it was all about how we're going to survive the next 12 months ... we have the luxury now of thinking long term."
Hurricane Michael hit with such ferocity that parts of the Florida Panhandle resemble the site of a nuclear blast, rather than a weather event. The storm's full fury was reserved for a narrow strip of land between Panama City and Apalachicola, particularly the area in and around Mexico Beach.
The impact: Michael wreaked havoc in the region where the menacing, 12-mile-wide eye came ashore. As seen in satellite images, the storm's winds and surge were potent enough to create a new island, destroy an entire beach town and lay waste to a strategically valuable Tyndall Air Force Base.
Sale of the one millionth electric vehicle in the U.S. is likely to occur this month, according to an estimate by the group Securing America's Future Energy (SAFE) that's based on data compiled by Inside EVs.
Why it matters: It's a symbolic threshold that signals growing adoption of the technology, even though it remains a small part of the overall U.S. market.
The International Energy Agency warned Friday that higher prices may bring global economic headwinds — even though crude oil markets are adequately supplied for the moment and the agency has trimmed its demand growth forecast.
What they're saying: "[O]ur position is that expensive energy is back, with oil, gas and coal trading at multi-year highs, and it poses a threat to economic growth," IEA said in its closely watched monthly oil market report.
Hospitals and nursing homes in Florida and Georgia have been ravaged by Hurricane Michael, and some are now evacuating their patients, the New York Times reports.
The big picture: 4 hospitals and 11 nursing homes in Florida are closed. In Georgia, 35 hospitals or nursing homes are without power and using generators.
Lime, the Uber-backed startup that wasn't awarded one of the coveted permits to deploy scooters in San Francisco, is planning to formally apply for a temporary restraining order on Friday against the city, arguing that its selection process was unfair.
The big picture: It's hard not to see this as a last-ditch effort by Lime to stop its rivals from operating in San Francisco as they're set to begin on Monday. The company reportedly appealed the transportation agency's decision last month after it snubbed all three companies that rolled out their scooters before the city had created a pilot program in favor of two startups that had waited. Go deeper: How Skip wants to win the scooter wars by following the rules
Update: On Friday, a San Francisco judge denied Lime's attempt to stall the program's start on Monday, but did order five transportation agency officials to testify as the company's lawsuit continues. Lime called the decision "a victory for the people of San Francisco and Lime."
Drone footage released Thursday shows the devastation left by Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Florida, which slammed the Florida Panhandle as a near-Category 5 hurricane, packing sustained winds of 155 mph.
Hurricane Michael has wreaked havoc in the Florida Panhandle since making landfall as a Category 4 storm Wednesday afternoon, killing at least two people and creating "catastrophic" damage in the region.
The big picture: Hurricane Michael exploded from a tropical storm to a near-Category 5 hurricane in just four days, making it one of the strongest hurricanes ever to strike the continental U.S.
Hurricane Michael intensified at an extraordinarily rapid pace, growing from a tropical storm on Sunday to a borderline Category 5 storm featuring one of the lowest air pressure readings ever observed in a landfalling hurricane in the U.S. by Wednesday.
Why it matters: Hurricane Michael is occurring just days after the United Nations released a major report on climate change, concluding that potentially irreversible and major consequences, including extreme weather events, will grow far worse much earlier than previously thought.
Hurricane Michael made landfall in Mexico Beach, Fla., as a high-end Category 4 storm early Wednesday afternoon, killing at least two people and causing catastrophic damage.
The big picture: It's the strongest such storm on record to hit the Florida Panhandle and one of the strongest ever to strike the continental U.S. — and it severely impacted Florida's electricity grid and oil production in the Gulf of Mexico.
This chart shows every Atlantic storm tracked by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration since 1987, including Hurricane Michael. The higher the line within each year, the higher the recorded wind speed.
By the numbers: Hurricane Michael exploded from a tropical storm to a near-Category 5 hurricane in just four days — that's why the chart shows such a rapid increase in wind speed. It hit the Florida panhandle with the third-lowest atmospheric pressure of any storm ever to hit the continental United States (919 millibars), and was among the five strongest by sustained winds at landfall (155 mph).
Hurricane Michael made landfall in Mexico Beach, Florida as a high-end Category 4 storm early Wednesday afternoon — the strongest such storm on record to hit the Florida Panhandle and one of the strongest ever to strike the continental U.S.
Why it matters: This storm has caused catastrophic damage in parts of the Florida Panhandle where the core of the storm first moved ashore. Hurricane Michael will continue to cause damage overnight as it moves through Georgia and into South Carolina, with hundreds of thousands likely losing power. The storm has set milestones even as it moved further inland, becoming the first Category 3 storm to hit Georgia in 120 years (and doing so after it passed through another state, no less).
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