Officials are scrambling to restore water service in northwest Georgia after flash flooding submerged pumps and flooded buildings. Chattooga County officials said Tuesday that taps for 8,000 customers in Summerville, Menlo and surrounding areas would stay dry through at least Wednesday.
The nightly temperature reached 71 degrees Fahrenheit, one of only three nights in the city's climate record where the nighttime temperature rose above 70 degrees.
People are flocking to pools, beaches and cooling centers in a swath of the Midwest and South spanning from northern Florida to the Great Lakes, as a heat wave pushed temperatures into the 90s and beyond.
Temperatures will rise into the triple digits across the Southwest and western U.S. this weekend. Daytime temps will be 10 to 20 degrees hotter than normal, according to the National Weather Service.
A major winter storm was expected to bring up to a foot of snow in the Southern Appalachians, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey on the first Monday of the new year.
According to the National Weather Service, at 3:20 p.m. EDT today, the Autumnal Equinox (the moment when the length of daylight and darkness are almost perfectly equal) occurs.
Elsa is expected to be near the Florida Keys early Tuesday and then pass near or over portions of Florida's west coast by late Tuesday and into Wednesday, forecasters say.
Rick Spinrad previously served as the agency's top scientist. His nomination comes at a difficult period for NOAA, which spent the Trump administration mired in scandal and without a permanent leader.
The computer model that predicts the weather is getting more power. Climate change is upping the stakes for forecasters as extreme weather gets more common and residents demand earlier warnings.
The powerful storm is bringing record-low temperatures, widespread power outages and hazardous conditions to a swath of the country the National Weather Service calls "unprecedented and expansive."
