Hurricane Laura and the California Fires Are Part of the Same Crisis
Human-caused climate change has made the world warmer than it used to be, and the consequences have started to show.
As Hurricane Laura pounded the U.S. Gulf Coast with nearly 150 mile-per-hour winds, causing water levels to rise almost 10 feet above normal in the wee hours of the morning, wildfires in California were still raging across more than a million acres, the result of a heatwave that spiked as high as 130° Fahrenheit (54.4° Celsius)—possibly the hottest temperature ever sustained on Earth. In the middle of the country, an inland hurricane flattened a large part of Iowa and darkened Chicago homes. And a tropical storm left thousands in New York without electricity for a week or more.
That was just some of the extreme weather the U.S. suffered this month.