Weather and Climate

The governor of North Carolina said on Sunday that Hurricane Florence “has never been more dangerous than it is right now.” At least 17 deaths have been attributed to the storm.

A new study published in The New England Journal of Medicine places the death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria at 4,645. That’s far higher than the government’s official count: 64 people. The report, done by researchers at Harvard, follows other studies and reports that said over 1,000 people died.

After one of the most destructive hurricane seasons ever, the names of four hurricanes are being retired. The World Meteorological Organization, the international body responsible for naming hurricanes, says it will no longer use Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate to name hurricanes. The organization says it retires names for hurricanes when "a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity."

José López doesn't have a deed for the little house at the edge of a dairy farm where he was raised and still lives — only the stories his grandfather told him about how the house came to be.

It began with an agreement between gentlemen 39 years ago. His grandfather, a foreman on the farm, needed a house for his recently divorced daughter, López's mother. So he asked the farm's owner if he could have a little corner of the sprawling estate to build her one.

"My grandfather worked on the farm for 44 years," López said, "and his boss was a good man. He said yes."

An international human rights group, Refugees International, has issued a scathing report on the U.S. response in Puerto Rico to Hurricane Maria. The group says "poor coordination and logistics on the ground" by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Puerto Rican government "seriously undermined the effectiveness of the aid delivery process."

The Puerto Rican effort to advance from response to recovery after Hurricane Maria continues. For some, water and electricity are still elusive. And that makes it hard to get back to normal — especially for children.

Wildfires continue to spread in the western United States, blazing through nearly every state west of the Rockies and leaving at least 17 people dead in California.

On the side of a busy expressway in northern Puerto Rico, dozens of cars stand in a line, parked at careless angles off the shoulder. Drivers hold their phones out of car windows; couples walk along the grass raising their arm skyward.

This is not a picturesque stretch of road. It's about 90 degrees out, and the sun is beating down relentlessly. All you can hear is the rumble of cars and trucks passing by, sometimes dangerously close. Then, inside a Ford Escape near the edge of the highway, Casandra Caba exclaims, "Look!"

Reports of severe devastation have been pouring in from the Caribbean since Hurricane Irma slammed into the islands last week.

Communities have been all but destroyed. Food and water are scarce. And local economies that rely on a constant flow of tourist dollars could tank.

Many parts of the United States face dual watery threats. First, giant storms like Harvey, which has dropped nine trillion gallons of water on Texas (enough to cover the lower 48 states with a puddle as deep as the height of three pennies).