Weather Signs

GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) — Entering a flooded city on inflatable boats, U.N. peacekeepers found hundreds of hungry people stranded for two days on rooftops and upper floors Wednesday as the fetid carcasses of drowned farm animals bobbed in soupy floodwaters. Haiti seems cursed this hurricane season, with its crops ruined and at least 137 people killed by three storms in less than three weeks. Even as Tropical Storm Hanna edged away to the north, forecasters warned that a fourth storm — Hurricane Ike — could hit the Western hemisphere's poorest country as a major storm next week. Rescue convoys had been trying to drive into Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city, but kept turning back because lakes formed over every road into town.

NEW ORLEANS — Thousands who fled Hurricane Gustav's destructive path returned to darkened homes and debris-clogged streets Wednesday as workers scrambled to restore power to more than 1 million Louisiana residents. As of Wednesday afternoon, 1.3 million customers remained without power throughout the state, including 175,000 in Baton Rouge and 77,000 in New Orleans, according to state figures. Gustav's death toll jumped to 18 in the USA. Most died in traffic accidents, two in a post-storm tornado, and at least one was attributed to carbon monoxide poisoning related to generator use. The storm killed 94 during its march through the Caribbean. During Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana's capital city was a haven for Gulf Coast evacuees — the staging area that shipped food, fuel and manpower to flood-ravaged communities. Three years later, Baton Rouge itself needs help after Hurricane Gustav became the worst storm to hit there since Hurricane Betsy in 1965. Gustav ravaged the city's oldest neighborhoods. On Wednesday, 85% of the 300,000 electric customers in the combined city and parish remained without power.

USA TODAY — The strongest hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean have become more intense due to global warming over the past 25 years, according to a new study in Wednesday's edition of the British journal Nature. The findings add fuel to the simmering argument in the meteorological community about the Earth's changing climate, and its relationship to the power of tropical systems worldwide. Scientists from Florida StateUniversity and the University of Wisconsin-Madison analyzed satellite data from nearly 2,000 tropical cyclones around the world from 1981 to 2006, and found that the strongest storms are getting stronger, especially over the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Tropical cyclones are the umbrella term for hurricanes (in the Atlantic and east Pacific), typhoons (in the West Pacific) and cyclones (in the Indian). Elsner's team found that wind speeds for the strongest hurricanes increased from an average of 140 mph in 1981 to 156 mph in 2006, while the average global sea-surface temperature — as measured in all regions where tropical cyclones form — increased from 82.8 degrees to 83.3 degrees during those 25 years. The authors calculated that this increase in ocean temperature results in a 31% increase in the global frequency of strong cyclones from 13 to 17 per year.

TORONTO (AP) — A massive 19-square-mile ice shelf in Canada's northern Arctic has broken away from Ellesmere Island, surprising scientists who say the floating ice shelf is another dramatic indication of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar frontier. Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario, said Wednesday that the 4,500-year-old Markham Ice Shelf separated in early August and is now drifting into the Arctic Ocean. Luke Copland, director of the Laboratory for Cryospheric Research at the University of Ottawa, says reduced sea ice conditions and unusually high air temperatures have facilitated the ice shelf loss this summer.

• JJ Commentary: Once again, please note that while global warming is real, human causes are but a fraction of what is, and always has been, a cycle of nature (and now, a sign of the end-times)