TV News LIES

A huge wildfire in central California has threatened hundreds of homes, with blazes churning through the brush-covered hillsides in Los Padres national forest.

At least three people were reported injured, and more than 450 structures were under threat by the Gifford fire, officials said on Monday.

The fire had scorched more than 72,000 acres (29,000 hectares)as of Monday evening, after the blaze grew out of several smaller fires that erupted Friday along State Route 166 between Santa Maria and Bakersfield.

The fire was burning along coastal Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, north of Los Angeles.

By Monday night, the fire was considered 5% contained, according to the CalFire state agency. Officials had earlier cautioned residents conditions could rapidly change due to erratic fire behavior. Hotter and drier weather in the forecast is expected to “facilitate rapid and sustained fire growth”, according to an incident report issued on Monday.

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Hazy skies hung over parts of the midwest and northeastern U.S. on Sunday, caused by smoke drifting across the border from hundreds of wildfires in Canada.

Canada is experiencing its second worst wildfire season on record, according to government data, with almost 4,000 fires recorded already this calendar year.

Smoke coming across the border has affected air quality in several U.S. states. This weekend, air quality reached concerning levels across Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. Parts of Illinois and Indiana are also under air quality alerts. People in New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine are also being advised to limit outdoor activity due to pollution from the smoke.

National Weather Service Lead Forecaster Bob Oravec told NPR that the current wind patterns are once again driving the spread of polluted air into the U.S. from Canada.

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Tsunami advisory issued in parts of Alaska after 7.3-magnitude earthquake

Noaa initially issued a tsunami warning in the state’s southern coast, which it later downgraded to an advisory.

A stretch of Alaska’s southern coast was under a tsunami advisory on Wednesday after a strong earthquake was felt throughout the region.
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The US Geological Survey described the earthquake as a magnitude 7.3. After the quake, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a tsunami warning, which it later downgraded to an advisory.

The US Tsunami Center said the advisory was in effect from about 40 miles (64.4km) south-west of Homer to Unimak Pass, a distance of about 700 miles (1,126.5km). The area is sparsely populated – among the larger communities in the area is Kodiak, which is home to 5,200 people.

Meanwhile, officials in the Pacific north-west were evaluating whether there was any threat to coastlines there.

The first waves were projected to hit the village of Sand Point, a community of about 580 people on Popof Island, in the Aleutian chain. The first waves were projected to land there, but the state’s emergency management division said an hour after the quake that it had received no reports of damage.

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In the wake of the deadly flash floods in Texas on July 4, Texas leaders are betting on the lifesaving potential of flood warning sirens.

"What can we do better looking forward? We need sirens," said Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in an interview this week with NBC 5 in Dallas-Fort Worth. The floods killed at least 120 people.

Weather warning sirens are installed outside on tall poles and make a loud wailing sound to warn people in the area when water levels rise, signaling an imminent flood. Some also broadcast spoken warnings and directions about how to get to safety. These types of sirens are widely used in the United States to warn people about tornadoes and tsunamis but are much less common in areas that flood.

"If you had sirens blasting," Patrick said, "and if people had known 'if you hear a siren get to high ground,' maybe that would have saved some lives."

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A series of earthquakes struck the northern California coast on Thursday morning, rattling communities and activating emergency alerts for both shaking and tsunami risks just before 11am local time.

The largest, registered as a magnitude 7.0 and originating near the historic and picturesque town of Ferndale in Humboldt county, could be felt in San Francisco more than 260 miles (418km) away. Roughly 1.3 million people felt the shaking, according to initial estimates provided by the US Geological Survey (USGS), which also reported that risks to human life remained low.

Cellphones buzzed throughout the region, warning of the incoming shaking and offering ample time to brace and cover. Tsunami alerts also rang out for at least 5.3 million people on the California coast and into Oregon, warning of large waves, strong currents and coastal flooding that could persist through the afternoon.

Following the alert, Bay Area Rapid Transit trains were held as underground stations were cleared, as major delays were announced throughout the system, and the San Francisco fire department began clearing the beaches. The tsunami warning was withdrawn shortly after noon as officials announced the highest risks had subsided.

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California experienced its hottest month on record in July as grueling heat baked the American west for weeks on end.

The state’s average temperature for the month was 81.7F (27.6C), according to the National Centers for Environmental Information, but some areas endured days of temperatures greater than 100F (about 38C). Several cities broke temperature records during a heatwave in early July – Palm Springs hit 124F on 5 July, while Redding in the state’s far north saw a high of 119F on 6 July.

Death Valley, the hottest place on Earth, recorded its hottest month ever in July, according to the National Park Service (NPS). In Nevada, Las Vegas reached 120F on 7 July, its hottest day in history, and set a record for number of days over 115F.

The impacts of extreme heat are being felt across the US and the world as the climate crisis drives increasingly severe and dangerous weather conditions. Last month about one-third of the US population was under warnings for record heat. The Earth saw its hottest day in recorded history on 22 July, breaking a record set just one day earlier.

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Four key pillars of the global climate are melting in the heat trapped by rising fossil fuel emissions, a new study has found.

The relatively stable climate that nurtured human civilization depends in large part on these structures: the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica, the Amazon rainforest and the Atlantic currents that warm Europe.

Under current policies, the world faces a scenario in which those pillars have roughly even odds of either surviving or collapsing during the next three centuries, according to results published Thursday in Nature Communications.

The scientists warned that if the pillars are fatally undermined by heat, the resulting damage could prove impossible to undo — even if temperatures are successfully brought down later in the 21st century.

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