Hot Weather In Southern & Northwestern U.S. – National Weather Outlook For August 14, 2023

by | Aug 14, 2023 | Weather

National Weather Forecast

On Monday, a couple of areas of low pressure across the central United States working east will produce showers and storms from the Mississippi River eastward. Some monsoonal storms are possible in the Southwestern U.S. as well. Heat concerns are in place across the southern U.S. and the Pacific Northwest.

The central U.S. will be the focus of heavy rain from Sunday through Tuesday in two different areas – across the Ozarks, and from southern Minnesota to Michigan. In these areas, rain of at least 2-3” will be possible.

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Hawaii underestimated the deadly threat of wildfire, records show

More from CNN: “When Hawaii officials released a report last year ranking the natural disasters most likely to threaten state residents, tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic hazards featured prominently. Near the bottom of a color-coded chart, the state emergency management agency described the risk of wildfires to human life with a single word: “low.” A year and a half later, the catastrophic fires that engulfed Maui and the historic town of Lahaina this week have already become the state’s deadliest natural disaster in more than six decades, with a fatality count of at least 93. Hawaii officials underestimated the deadly threat of wildfires even as they acknowledged a lack of necessary resources to mitigate them, according to a CNN review of state and local emergency planning documents that show how ill-prepared the state was for the disaster.”

Our wildfire problem is growing beyond our ability to tame it

More from the Washington Post: “Global warming means the scale of the wildfire problem is quickly growing far beyond our capacity to respond. For example, under the terms of the bipartisan infrastructure law, nearly $81 million will go to reducing hazardous fuels and boosting restoration efforts in forests and rangelands. That’s a worthy undertaking — and it sounds like a lot — but it will treat only 2 million acres of wildland this year, a fraction of what remains untreated. An even bigger challenge will be in treating the most dangerous urban fuels — our homes. We need to promote fire-resistant materials in our building codes, improve warning systems and work harder to reduce human-started fires. Evacuation routes are an increasingly hard-to-solve problem in the West, where housing growth into remote, flammable places leaves communities at risk. We need to think about ways to shift incentive structures around private development away from fire-prone areas and toward those with multiple exits.”

How To Upgrade & Electrify Millions Of US Homes & Buildings

More from CleanTechnica: “The White House and Department of Energy (DOE) recently laid the foundation for two monumental home energy upgrade initiatives: the Home Efficiency Rebates program, which offers up to $8,000 to households, and the Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates program, which provides up to $14,000. These rebate programs — made possible by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — represent one of the largest-ever federal investments to decarbonize the US building stock and help Americans pay for home efficiency improvements such as better insulation, all-electric heat pumps, and induction stoves. Altogether, the two new home energy rebate programs are anticipated to deliver $1 billion in annual energy cost savings for consumers, support 50,000 clean energy jobs, and produce significant climate and air pollution reduction benefits for homes and communities across the country. A recent RMI analysis showed that in all 48 continental states, replacing a gas furnace with a heat pump alone could reduce climate pollution by up to 93 percent, depending on the state. Combine these benefits with the latest demonstrations that energy efficiency can help save lives during extreme weather events and that heat pump installations will reduce climate pollution beginning in the first year, and states can see the win-win of efficiency and electrification.”

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– D.J. Kayser