National Weather Forecast

As we head into Saturday of the Memorial Day weekend, the main story will be an area of low pressure near the Southeast Atlantic Coast. While this area of low pressure has a low chance of becoming a tropical system, it will bring heavy rain to the Mid-Atlantic, especially in some coastal areas. Otherwise, scattered showers and storms will be possible from the Northwest to the Plains, and in the Plains a few storms could be strong. Meanwhile, we’ll start the morning off with record-warm lows in the Mid-Atlantic/Southeast.

Through Sunday, the heaviest rain will fall in portions of the Mid-Atlantic (particularly North and South Carolina), where at least 3-6” of rain could fall. Some scattered reports of flooding will be possible. Portions of the Plains could also see 1-3” of rain through the first two days of the extended holiday weekend.

As we head into Sunday and Memorial Day Monday, most of the same areas (Mid-Atlantic, Northwest, and Plains) that see rain chances Saturday will continue to see at least scattered shower and storm chances.

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With $200M for electric vehicles, Minnesota aims to boost ownership, charging infrastructure

More from Smart Cities Dive: “Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed legislation Wednesday that will provide more than $200 million in incentives and other funding to expand transportation electrification in the state. The funding supports consumer rebates for the purchase of electric vehicles, EV infrastructure at auto dealerships and electric school buses and their related charging equipment. The new law also provides $13.6 million in additional matching funds to help establish a statewide EV charging infrastructure through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program. “Taken together, these investments put Minnesota on the map as a serious investor in our electric transportation future,” said Brendan Jordan, vice president for Transportation and Fuels at the Great Plains Institute, in a press release.

The US doesn’t have a law mandating EV battery recycling. Should it?

More from Grist: “The race to electrify the world’s vehicles and store energy will require batteries — so many of them, in fact, that meeting the demand we will see by 2040 will require 30 times the amount of critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel that those industries currently use. That presents an enormous challenge, one exacerbated by the mining industry’s alarming allegations of labor crimes, environmental destruction, and encroachments on Indigenous land. There are ways to mitigate electrification’s extractive impacts, one of which may seem obvious: Recycle every battery we make. Doing so would reduce the world’s need to mine these minerals by 10 percent within 16 years, because the critical materials in batteries are infinitely reusable. Eventually, a robust circular battery economy could all but eliminate the need to extract them at all.

Supreme Court rolls back federal safeguards for wetlands under Clean Water Act

More from CNN: “The Supreme Court on Thursday cut back on the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate wetlands under the Clean Water Act, with a 5-4 majority continuing a trend in which the conservative-leaning court has narrowed the reach of environmental regulations. The Clean Water Act extends only to those “wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are waters of the United States in their own rights,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority. The decision is a victory for Chantell and Michael Sackett, who purchased a vacant lot near Idaho’s Priest Lake. Three years later they broke ground, hoping to build a family home, but soon got entangled in a regulatory dispute. As they began backfilling the property with 1,700 cubic yards of sand and gravel to create a stable grade, the EPA sent them an order halting construction.

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– D.J. Kayser