National Weather Forecast

An area of low pressure will continue to plague the Southeast on Friday, bringing shower and storm chances. Showers and storms will also be possible in the mid-section of the nation, with a few strong storms possible in the Plains. On the colder side of that system, some light snow or a mix of precipitation will be possible. Snow will continue to fall in the northern Rockies.

Numerous record highs will be possible from the Great Lakes to the Northeast on Friday, including in New York City.

A foot or more of snow could fall through Saturday in portions of the northern Rockies. The heaviest rain will be across parts of the Southeast, with up to 3” possible in locations (with isolated higher amounts).

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Earth just had its second-warmest March on record

Image: NOAA

More from NOAA: “The planet continued its exceptionally warm start to the year with its second-warmest March on record. Global sea ice coverage also felt the heat, with sea ice running at its second-smallest extent since records began in 1979, according to scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. … The average global land and ocean-surface temperature for March was 2.23 degrees F (1.24 degrees C) above the 20th-century average of 54.9 degrees (12.7 degrees C), ranking as the second-warmest March in the 174-year global climate record, behind March 2016. March 2023 also was the 47th-consecutive March and the 529th-consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th-century average. Looking at the continents, Asia had its second-warmest March on record, and South America and Africa each had their fourth-warmest. Europe saw its 10th-warmest March on record, while North America had a warmer-than-average March, but it did not rank among the top-20 warmest on record.

The Climate Data Wars Are Just Beginning

More from HeatMap: “Large companies generate a gargantuan amount of carbon-dioxide pollution. Take the big-box retailer Costco. During the financial year 2020, it emitted 144.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide — a number on par with the Philippines’ annual emissions. Nike pumped out the equivalent of 11 million metric tons of carbon during the same period, a footprint roughly equal to Zimbabwe’s. Apple, meanwhile, was somewhere on the order of Estonia. You’ve probably seen data like this before. But here’s a question: How do companies actually arrive at these numbers? How did Costco know its carbon footprint in 2020? Carbon dioxide and other climate-warming gases are invisible, potent even in trace amounts, and constantly absorbed and produced by hundreds of billions of different organisms and chemicals around the world. Costco alone directly or indirectly choreographs the actions of millions of people and things: sailors and longshoremen, factory workers and cotton farmers, employees coming in for their shift and marketing managers spending down an advertising budget.

Biden’s new vehicle emissions rules could speed the EV revolution

More from Grist: “Although the global market for electric vehicles has surged over the past decade, EVs still account for only a small percentage of new cars sold in the United States. Since 2014, their domestic market share has risen from around 1 percent to around 6 percent. The Biden administration has far bigger plans for the next eight years: Under a sweeping set of vehicle emissions rules unveiled by the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday, EVs would make up as much as two-thirds of all U.S. car sales by 2031 — a more than tenfold increase from current levels. The EPA’s new pollution standards target conventional passenger cars, vans, and pickup trucks. They set much stricter emission limits for planet-warming gasses like carbon dioxide and methane as well as toxic pollutants like nitrogen oxide. When the vehicle emissions rules take effect, new automobiles will be allowed to spew less than half as much carbon as they can now. A separate set of rules will limit carbon emissions from larger heavy-duty trucks.

Midwest CO2 pipelines push ahead as bills fizzle

More from E&E News: “Companies planning carbon capture projects in the Midwest are defeating legislative proposals to add regulations or block them, increasing the likelihood that a sprawling network of planned pipelines to transport the greenhouse gas will move ahead. The pipeline proposals, which envision moving carbon dioxide from ethanol and fertilizer plants to sequestration sites in Illinois and North Dakota, are viewed by supporters as pivotal for addressing climate change even as they are opposed by some landowners. The legislative debates in the Corn Belt are raising concerns about eminent domain and underground CO2 injection in the region. Of more than two dozen bills filed in six states this year affecting carbon capture and sequestration projects, none has passed so far. Those measures that did advance later fizzled.

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– D.J. Kayser