A dangerous scenario is taking shape across the Gulf Coast as Hurricane Ida, currently a Category 1 storm, is poised to intensify and hit coastal Louisiana on Sunday night or early Monday as a major hurricane of Category 4 intensity.
Driving the news: Ida made landfall on the Isle of Youth after rapidly strengthening over a span of several hours from a tropical storm into a Category 1 hurricane Friday afternoon. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 80 mph, with higher gusts, as it approached western Cuba.
Tropical Storm Ida formed Thursday afternoon over the Caribbean Sea and has the potential to become a powerful hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico and strike the northern Gulf Coast by Monday, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The big picture: The Hurricane Center included unusually sobering wording for the first advisory on a storm, partly because the timing of landfall means there is only a few days for residents in the storm's potential path to prepare.
A recent satellite image of the southwestern portion of the Greenland Ice Sheet shows the existence of cerulean blue pockmarks — phenomena that provide scientists with a worrying message about sea-level rise and the risk of massively consequential changes in ocean behavior.
Why it matters: The melt ponds, rivers and moulins, cracks in the ice where surface water can plummet to where the ice sheet meets bedrock, are a symptom of a summer season that has brought large spikes in melt extent.
Reps. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and fellow Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) from Colorado are urging President Biden to declare a drought disaster in the West.
Driving the news: The lawmakers wrote to Biden Wednesday, calling on his administration to support Western governors' Federal Emergency Management Agency drought disaster declaration request issued earlier this month, as they experience water cuts driven by rapidly depleting supplies.
Gov. Greg Abbott has issued an executive order banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates by any Texas government entity and urged state lawmakers to pass it into law during the ongoing special session.
Why it matters: The announcement comes as Texas grapples with a massive surge in coronavirus cases and as the state reported the most COVID hospitalizations since the pandemic began.
