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Governor in U.S. Virgin Islands Orders Gun Grab

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A hurricane is on the way, and preparations always include boarding up windows, stocking up on food, water and batteries, and sometimes fleeing inland.

A governor in one U.S. territory, however, has another plan: Grab all the guns.

According to the Daily Caller, the governor of the Virgin Islands, a U.S. territory, has signed an order to that effect.

The order explains that Gov. Kenneth E. Mapp authorized the territory’s adjutant general “to mobilize such units of the National Guard as are necessary to maintain or restore public order, and to guarantee the safety of life and property,” as Hurricane Irma approaches from the Atlantic.

The adjutant general, he said, “is authorized and directed to seize arms, ammunition, explosives, incendiary material and any other property that may be required by the military forces for the performance of this emergency mission, in accordance with the Rules of Force promulgated by the Virgin Islands National Guard and approved by the Virgin Islands Department of Justice.” (Read more from “Governor in U.S. Virgin Islands Orders Gun Grab” HERE)

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Linking Hurricane Matthew to Climate Change Is Overblown Hype

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Hurricane Matthew is big, dangerous, and (if it makes landfall) something not seen in the continental United States for a decade. This, of course, means it will be linked to global warming.

There will be a lot of “scientists say we can expect,” but little actual data. That’s because the data show for the last 10 years we have had an unusual drought of landfalling major hurricanes (Category 3 and higher) on the continental U.S. That’s right, no major hurricanes have made landfall for over a decade. This is the longest such drought on record.

A lot of it is luck. There have been major hurricanes in the Atlantic whose paths have not taken them onshore. However, there has not been the steady increase in hurricane activity that the doom-and-gloomers predicted following a swarm of major hurricanes in 2005. Yes, there is a lot of change from year to year, but there is no worrisome trend.

In fact, taking a tally of the scariest hurricanes (Categories 4 and 5) indicates things were worse nearly a century ago. For the 44 years from 1926 to 1969, 14 of these most powerful storms made landfall, while the 46 years since then had only three.

Good luck will almost certainly run out and we will have years with multiple major hurricanes making landfall. If so, that is a return to normalcy, not a harbinger of impending climate doom. Since record-keeping began in the 1800s, the average annual landfall of major hurricanes is about two. However, it is far from constant as recent experience shows.

Further, a return to normalcy very likely will be associated with record levels of financial losses. This is due to the explosion of coastal development of recent decades. Again, it will not be due, as some will assert, to more frequent or more intense hurricanes.

The last decade has been a very mild one regarding major hurricanes hitting American shores. If Hurricane Matthew makes its expected landfall in the U.S. this week, the drought will be broken, but it won’t be a sign that we are headed to a man-made climate catastrophe. (For more from the author of “Linking Hurricane Matthew to Climate Change Is Overblown Hype” please click HERE)

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Major Hurricane to Impact Over 65 Million From South Carolina to Massachusetts

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Flooding from Hurricane Joaquin will impact areas from South Carolina to Massachusetts even though the hurricane is unlikely to make landfall in the United States.

People should not let their guard down due to a shifting track of the hurricane as the risk to lives and property in this complex situation remains high.

A copious amount of moisture will unload very heavy rainfall along parts of the Atlantic Seaboard and the Appalachians into early next week. Strong winds, coastal flooding and beach erosion will occur and could be very damaging even in the absence of a landfall.

Hurricane Joaquin strengthened rapidly Wednesday into Thursday. Joaquin reached Category 3 status late Wednesday evening and Category 4 status on Thursday afternoon.

The storm will bring pounding surf, dangerous seas, strong winds, drenching squalls and flash flooding to the central Bahamas. Wind gusts could reach between 75 and 120 mph on some of the east-central islands. (Read more from “Major Hurricane to Impact Over 65 Million From South Carolina to Massachusetts” HERE)

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Wow! Monster Hurricane on Saturn Spied by NASA Spacecraft

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Photo Credit: NASASpectacular new images from a NASA spacecraft orbiting Saturn have captured the most detailed views ever of an enormous hurricane churning around the ringed planet’s north pole.

The stunning new images and video of the Saturn hurricane, which were taken by NASA’s Cassini probe, show that the storm’s eye is 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide — about 20 times bigger than typical hurricane eyes on Earth. And the Saturn maelstrom is more powerful than its Earth counterparts, with winds at its outer edge whipping around at 330 mph (530 km/h).

“We did a double take when we saw this vortex because it looks so much like a hurricane on Earth,” Cassini imaging team member Andrew Ingersoll, of Caltech in Pasadena, said in a statement. “But there it is at Saturn, on a much larger scale, and it is somehow getting by on the small amounts of water vapor in Saturn’s hydrogen atmosphere.”

Saturn’s hurricane swirls inside a mysterious, six-sided vortex. Unlike hurricanes on Earth, which tend to drift northward as our planet rotates, the Saturn storm and its hexagonal vortex have been camped out at the north pole for a while.

“The polar hurricane has nowhere else to go, and that’s likely why it’s stuck at the pole,” Kunio Sayanagi, a Cassini imaging team associate at Hampton University in Hampton, Va., said in a statement.

Read more from this story HERE.

Bloomberg Booed At Annual St. Patrick’s Parade In Storm-Ravaged Rockaways

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Photo Credit: Michael HicksMayor Bloomberg was booed yesterday as he walked in the annual St. Patrick’s Parade in the hurricane-ravaged Rockaways.

The jeers grew so loud toward the end of the Queens parade that mayoral candidate and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn appeared to break away from the mayor to march separately.

A spokesman for Quinn later said she always intended to walk separately from the mayor. Locals didn’t spare their ire over the area’s slow recovery, hoisting signs reading, “Mr. Mayor, we need jetties” and “Listen to the Rockaways.”

“We’ve been dying down here, up to our ears in muck trying to rebuild, get back to a regular life,” one heckler told The Post.

“For the politicians to come down here and try to take our celebration and make it their thing . . . it’s disgusting.” At the end of the route, Bloomberg thanked the Sanitation Department, cops and firefighters who worked to restore the neighborhood after the storm.

Read more from this story HERE.

Mother Screamed for 12 Hours About Babies Swept out of Her Arms by Hurricane but No One Helped

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Police searching for two young brothers who were ripped from their mother’s arms during Superstorm Sandy have found their bodies.

The remains of Brandon, two, and Connor Moore, four, were discovered only yards from where they went missing in Staten Island, New York.

The boys’ mother Glenda Moore, 39, is said to have spent 12 hours screaming in the street after they were swept away, but residents would not help her look for them.

The boys were sucked away by floodwater after Mrs Moore’s car stalled and became stuck just before 6pm on Monday near the 400-block of Fr. Capodanno Boulevard in South Beach.

Mrs Moore, a nurse, tried to hold on to them but was overpowered by the force of the storm.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hurricane Sandy: Over $20 Billion in Damages, Longest Weather-Related Stock Market Shutdown Since 1888

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Photo credit: Paul LowryHurricane Sandy’s economic toll is poised to exceed $20 billion after the biggest Atlantic storm slammed into the Eastern U.S., damaging homes and offices and flooding subways in America’s most populated city.

The total would include insured losses of about $7 billion to $8 billion, said Charles Watson, research and development director at Kinetic Analysis Corp., a hazard-research company in Silver Spring, Maryland. Much of the remaining tab will be picked up by cities and states to repair infrastructure, such as New York City’s subways and tunnels, he said.

“It is really hard to tell at this stage since the system is still moving, but it will be among the 10 to 15 most damaging storms and probably the top three in the Northeast after Irene and Agnes from 1972,” Bill Keogh, president of Eqecat Inc., an Oakland, California-based provider of catastrophic risk models, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.

Sandy, spanning 900 miles, slammed into southern New Jersey at about 8 p.m. local time and brought a record storm surge of 13.88 feet (4.2 meters) into Manhattan’s Battery Park. Flooding, high winds and fallen trees cut power to about 8 million customers from South Carolina to Maine, and travelers were stranded as U.S. airlines grounded more than 16,000 flights. U.S. stock trading is closed again today in the first back-to- back shutdown for weather since 1888.

New York City committed $29.2 million to emergency contractors and the costs related to Sandy will probably reach “the tens of millions of dollars,” City Comptroller John Liu said. The city “will easily be able to absorb the actual cost of the clean out” and state or federal agencies will help cover the expenses, he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Soldiers Guarding Tomb of Unknown Soldier Even in Hurricane Sandy (+video)

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By Cecelia Hanley. A photo is being shared all through the internet of soldiers guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery through a storm.

While the photo showing three soldiers in front of the tomb is from September of this year, the fact remains that the “Old Guard” is currently standing guard in Hurricane Sandy’s 90 mph winds.

The Old Guard, which is the name for the 3rd Division Infantry Regiment, is the official Army Honor Guard, has escorted presidents since World War II and provides military funeral escorts at Arlington National Cemetery. The unit also provides security for Washington during a national emergency.

The cemetery itself is closed due to the storm, but some funerals were held this morning, according to the regiments Facebook page. The photos attached to this article are from this morning.

The Old Guard has continually guarded the tomb since 1948. Read more from this story HERE.

Although Hurricane Sandy packed 90 mph winds, the weather was calmer at the time this video was taken on Monday:

Epic, “Life-Threatening Frankenstorm” to Hit Eastern United States Tonight, NYC Shut Down

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By Alan Rappeport, Hannah Kuchler, Shahien Nasiripour, and Shannon Bond. An epic hurricane is due to hit the eastern United States on Monday night, affecting up to 60m people and forcing the closure of equity market trading on Wall Street. The approach of hurricane Sandy, which has already killed more than 60 people in the Caribbean, has already derailed presidential campaigning plans and caused New York to shut down its public transport system.

The US National Weather Service said that Sandy, packing winds of up to 75mph, was expected to bring “life-threatening storm surge flooding” to the mid-Atlantic states. Hurricane Sandy has brought tropical storm conditions, including rain and strong winds, to North Carolina and Virginia. It is expected to come ashore on the central New Jersey coast on Monday evening, according to the National Weather Service, with effects stretching as far north as New England.

Sandy is forecast to combine with two other storms in the coming days, creating what the weather service has called a “Frankenstorm”.

Thousands of people have been evacuated and power blackouts and damage could affect up to 60m people, said forecasters. The region is expected to be paralysed, as more than 3,000 flights have already been cancelled and Amtrak’s train service will be shut down in the northeast on Monday. Read more from this story HERE.

Grand Central Deserted and Subway CLOSED for Only Second Time in History as New York Goes into Lock Down

By Beth Stebner and Louise Boyle. Frantic passengers sprinted for the last trains pulling out of Grand Central Station in New York City this evening as the transport system shut down for only the second time in history.

New York is on lock down in anticipation of Hurricane Sandy causing trains, the subway and buses to stop at 7pm on Sunday night.

Cavernous Grand Central on 42nd Street was eerily deserted as the NYPD patrolled to make sure every passenger had left.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that those living in low-lying areas must evacuate and that all public schools will be closed tomorrow as the storm barrels towards the city.

Police officers went door-to-door tonight, taking the names of those who had ignored the mandatory evacuation order. Read more from this story HERE.

Storm spells problems for ‘bump’ GOP expected from Tampa convention

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Photo credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video

By Jim Rutenberg and Michael Shear. With the Tropical Storm Isaac now forecast to roar northwest past Tampa on Monday and Tuesday, officials scrambled to reconfigure what had been a four-night schedule into three and to make contingency plans for further changes.

But even if the storm largely bypasses this region, it holds the risk of creating an uncomfortable split-screen image, especially if it continues barreling toward New Orleans. The governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama declared states of emergency in anticipation of the storm.

Republicans were wary of the optics of television coverage split between the revelry and partisanship surrounding Mr. Romney’s nomination and the threat of the storm making landfall in Louisiana or Mississippi seven years to the week after Hurricane Katrina left an American city in ruins.

At the very least, Mr. Romney’s image makers were coming to terms with sharing the news spotlight with the storm just as they were hoping their gathering would give their candidate the exposure he needs to surge ahead of President Obama.

Instead of focusing on the convention and on Republicans descending on the swing state of Florida, local news outlets were giving constant and increasingly urgent updates on the storm’s path. Network correspondents here were girding to be reassigned from convention coverage to hurricane coverage, heavy rain gear and all. Fox News Channel said it was diverting a marquee anchor, Shepard Smith, to New Orleans from here. Read more from this story HERE.

Due to state of emergency, Gov. Bobby Jindal decides to stay in Louisiana rather than attend the Tampa GOP convention

By Adam Levy. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is staying in his home state for now as Tropical Storm Isaac heads towards New Orleans.

The two-term governor was to arrive in Tampa on Tuesday to address the delegates of Republican National Convention that evening. Instead of preparing for his high-profile speech, he declared a state of emergency Sunday and asked for voluntary evacuations in 15 low-lying parishes on or near the Gulf Coast.

“My priority is the safety of our people. And certainly as this storm threatens the public safety here in Louisiana, I’m not going anywhere,” Jindal said at a news conference. “As long as we’re in harms way, I need to be right here doing my job and that’s what I’m going to be doing.”

Under the RNC’s new revised schedule, Jindal is expected to speak Wednesday night should he attend the convention.
Jindal isn’t the only member of the Louisiana delegation not attending the convention. Jefferson Parish President John Young canceled his plans due to the potential impact Isaac could have on his constituents. State Rep, Lenar Whitney and New Orleans public service commission member Eric Skrmetta are currently driving back to Louisiana as well.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus announced Saturday night that all programs for Monday, the first day of the convention, were canceled. Read more from this story HERE.