Tornado season usually starts in March and then ramps up for the next couple of months, but it got off to an early and deadly start in late January when two people were killed by separate twisters in Alabama. Preliminary …
Tornado season is starting, but don’t ask meteorologists how bad it will be this spring and summer. They don’t know. They’re having a hard enough time getting a fix on the likely path of storms expected in the next 48 …
With the month of March looming, United States tornado chasers are already watching the Southeast as a nasty storm brews with the potential to spin off a batch of tornadoes. But if funnel clouds develop Thursday or Friday as some …
Nature is pummeling the United States this year with extremes. Unprecedented triple-digit heat and devastating drought. Deadly tornadoes leveling towns. Massive rivers overflowing. A billion-dollar blizzard. And now, unusual hurricane-caused flooding in Vermont. If what’s falling from the sky isn’t …
What makes an oil spill really bad? Most of the ingredients for it are now blending in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts tick off the essentials: A relentless flow of oil from under the sea; a type of crude that …
U.S. oil refineries have an ongoing problem with accidents that turn deadly, losing four times as much money from such incidents than refineries in the rest of the world, according to an insurance company report obtained by The Associated Press. …
Giant chunks of manmade space junk — like the dead satellite that the U.S. government recently shot down — regularly fall to Earth. Yet no one has ever been reported hurt by them. Chunks of debris weighing two tons or …
Top federal safety officials urged the Labor Department in 2006 to adopt critical regulations to prevent deadly dust explosions– like the one suspected in the deadly blast in a Georgia sugar plant last Thursday– but the government has failed to …
The main protection against collapsing bridges in America are the eyes and ears of inspectors like Jody Ferris, who on Friday was checking a repaired weld on a 34-year-old bridge with some pretty low-tech tools: flashlight, hammer, ruler and camera. …
If government can’t do it, business will. Once the domain of government and charitable relief groups, hurricane response and preparedness are a booming billion-dollar business — from the self-heating food packets to the souped-up cell phone towers on wheels. Call …
