Despite being declared the third-hottest year on record, 2025 was a relatively quiet year for climate disasters in the US. No major hurricanes made landfall, while the total number of acres burned in wildfires last year--a way of measuring the intensity of wildfire season --fell below the 10-year average. But starting this week, the West is experiencing what looks to be a record-breaking heat wave, while forecasting models predict that a strong El Niño event is likely to emerge later this year. These two unrelated phenomena could set the stage for a long stretch of unpredictable and extreme weather reaching into next year, compounding the effects of a climate that's getting hotter and hotter thanks to human activity. Beginning this week and heading into next, a massive ridge of high-pressure air will bring record-breaking temperatures to the American West.

Horrifying next twist in the Alexander brothers case: MAUREEN CALLAHAN exposes an unthinkable perversion that's been hiding in plain sight Hollywood icon who starred in Psycho after Hitchcock dubbed her'my new Grace Kelly' looks incredible at 95 Alexander brothers' alleged HIGH SCHOOL rape video: Classmates speak out on sickening footage... as creepy unseen photos are exposed Model Cindy Crawford, 60, mocked for her'out of touch' morning routine: 'Nothing about this is normal' Kentucky mother and daughter turn down $26.5MILLION to sell their farms to secretive tech giant that wants to build data center there Tucker Carlson erupts at Trump adviser as she hurls'SLANDER' claim linking him to synagogue shooting NFL superstar Xavier Worthy spills all on Travis Kelce, the Chiefs' struggles... and having Taylor Swift as his No 1 fan Heartbreaking video shows very elderly DoorDash driver shuffle down customer's driveway with coffee order because he is too poor to retire Amber Valletta, 52, was a '90s Vogue model who made movies with Sandra Bullock and Kate Hudson, see her now Nancy Mace throws herself into Iran warzone as she goes rogue on Middle East rescue mission: 'I AM that person' Monster winter storm to unleash up to 4 feet of snow across multiple states as officials warn'delay all travel' A sprawling blast of winter weather is sweeping across the US, unleashing snow, dangerous winds and treacherous travel conditions . Parts of Washington, Oregon, Montana and Wyoming are under multiple winter weather advisories until Friday, with regions expected to see two to four feet of snow and winds up to 55 mph throughout the week. Officials are urging motorists to delay travel if possible, as heavy snowfall and low visibility threaten to make driving extremely dangerous. Forecasters warned the powerful system could create whiteout conditions in mountainous areas, while snow-covered roads and slick highways may disrupt travel for days. The most intense snowfall is expected across the Cascade Mountains, where several feet of snow could pile up through the end of the week.

What We Know About the Winter Storm About to Hit the US--and What We Don't A huge portion of the United States is going to be hit with snow or freezing rain this weekend. Exactly where, what, and how much remains uncertain. Over the past weekend, when weather models first started forecasting a winter storm that would sweep over large parts of the country, Sean Sublette, a meteorologist living in Virginia, started telling people in his area to prepare for snow . At the time, Sublette says, "a lot of the data started to point to a substantial snow storm for the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, with significant ice farther southward into Carolina's Tennessee Valley." Then, Sublette woke up Wednesday morning.

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. Chance of more showers in L.A., with a new storm set to hit Thursday A driver navigates a flooded street during a storm Monday in Santa Barbara. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . Showers could linger in Los Angeles on Tuesday following four straight days of rain -- and even more rain is likely on Thursday and Friday.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. In October 2017, a single flash of lightning during a thunderstorm streaked across the Great Plains for 515 miles. The flash traveled from eastern Texas all the way to Kansas City--and now into the record books. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) certified that this megaflash is now the longest single lightning flash in the United States. The massive lightning bolt is detailed in a study published July 31 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Weather forecasts are notoriously unreliable. Most people can relate to booking a trip or making plans expecting a sunny day, only to have it disappointingly rained out. While seven-day weather forecasts are accurate about 80 percent of the time, that figure drops to around 50 percent when extended to 10 days or more. Recent staffing cuts at the National Weather Service have already led to reduced weather balloon data collection, which experts warn could further degrade forecast accuracy.

Sweeping calls for Americans in swathes of the country to alter their behavior to reduce air pollution were today slammed as'outrageous.' Indiana's environment department urged residents to turn off their lights to reduce unhealthy levels of ozone, while officials in Southern California are advising people drive slow this weekend to limit the amount of dust released into the air. Both recommendations appear to have been passed down by AirNow, a federal agency that issues guidelines for what to do in situations where air pollution is high. While these unusual advisories have only officially been instated in two states, Government data shows at least 25 states have similar air pollution levels. Ohio and other parts of the Midwest appear to be most at risk.

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. Commuters wait for a train against dark skies at the MTA's Expo/Bundy station in Culver City on Thursday. An unseasonable shift in weather is bringing the chance of showers and thunderstorms across Southern California, prompting some concerns about flooding as temperatures also drop well below average for mid-September. In much of the Los Angeles area, the system is expected to bring only light rain or drizzling Thursday and Friday, but there is a possibility for pockets of thunderstorms that could bring heavier rain. The greatest chance for thunderstorms is in the mountains, including along the Interstate 5 corridor and across the San Gabriels, according to Bryan Lewis, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Oxnard. "We're looking at mostly less than a tenth of an inch, maybe up to a quarter of an inch in the mountains," Lewis said.

We present a knowledge-guided machine learning (KGML) framework for modeling multi-scale processes, and study its performance in the context of streamflow forecasting in hydrology. Specifically, we propose a novel hierarchical recurrent neural architecture that factorizes the system dynamics at multiple temporal scales and captures their interactions. This framework consists of an inverse and a forward model. The inverse model is used to empirically resolve the system's temporal modes from data (physical model simulations, observed data, or a combination of them from the past), and these states are then used in the forward model to predict streamflow. In a hydrological system, these modes can represent different processes, evolving at different temporal scales (e.g., slow: groundwater recharge and baseflow vs. fast: surface runoff due to extreme rainfall). A key advantage of our framework is that once trained, it can incorporate new observations into the model's context (internal state) without expensive optimization approaches (e.g., EnKF) that are traditionally used in physical sciences for data assimilation. Experiments with several river catchments from the NWS NCRFC region show the efficacy of this ML-based data assimilation framework compared to standard baselines, especially for basins that have a long history of observations. Even for basins that have a shorter observation history, we present two orthogonal strategies of training our FHNN framework: (a) using simulation data from imperfect simulations and (b) using observation data from multiple basins to build a global model. We show that both of these strategies (that can be used individually or together) are highly effective in mitigating the lack of training data. The improvement in forecast accuracy is particularly noteworthy for basins where local models perform poorly because of data sparsity.

Your trip to the beach could someday be a lot safer, thanks to artificial intelligence. Researchers at the University of California Santa Cruz, led by Professor Alex Pang, are developing potentially life-saving A.I. algorithms geared toward detecting and monitoring potential dangers along the shoreline, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel. The life-saving technology could also alert lifeguards of potential hazards and detect rip currents or riptides, which, according to water rescues and safety expert Gerry Dworkin, account for 80% of ocean lifeguard interventions. WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)? Flags warn that the beach is closed to swimmers at Rockaway Beach in New York as high surf from Hurricane Franklin delivers strong rip tides and large waves to most of the eastern seaboard on August 31, 2023 in New York City.