Slashdot Mirror

112-mph winds from Hurricane Florence battered the Carolinas on Saturday, resulting in at least 13 deaths and leaving more than 796,000 households with no electricity, according to CNN, with over 20,000 people evacuating to emergency shelters.

One Myrtle Beach resident spotted an alligator walking through their neighborhood, and the New York Post warns the hurricane "could displace venomous snakes from South Carolina's wetlands," uprooting "some 38 species of snakes -- including dangerous cottonmouths and copperhead vipers."

Cellphone carriers are offering free calling, texting, and data services to affected customers in the Carolinas, and Quartz reports that other tech companies are also trying to help: People fleeing Florence can find hundreds of places on Airbnb to stay for free; the company will screen applicants and cover homeowners for any damage up to $1 million. Harmany is an app created specifically to connect people during natural disasters. It's set up so that people who have a place can list it, adding it to a map where those needing shelter can find them. Gas Buddy, which lets users search for gas prices and availability by zip code, has set up a special "Florence Live Updates" page and section on its app so users can identify which gas stations are out of fuel, diesel, or power....

The main federal disaster agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has an app that is supposed to provide up-to-the minute information about the storm, shelters, and evacuation routes. It is crashing constantly, according to Android users. (Quartz's didn't have the same problems, but hitting the "get directions" button to one North Carolina shelter inexplicably opened up Uber.) FEMA also recommends the Red Cross's Hurricane app, which shows location specific weather alerts, has a flashlight and an alarm, and allows users to connect with people in their contacts, but doesn't have information on shelters.
And the data backup company Datto is even deploying equipment for free to bring back critical infrastructure. "With this storm, it looks like flooding will be as much of a danger as wind. It doesn't take a lot of water to knock out infrastructure like cable and internet. Things that can take weeks to build it back..."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from EarthSky: NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said on September 15, 2016 that summertime Arctic sea ice appears to have reached its annual minimum on September 10. With fall approaching and temperatures in the Arctic dropping, it's unlikely more ice will melt, and so the 2016 Arctic sea ice minimum extent will likely be tied with 2007 for the second-lowest yearly minimum in the satellite record. Satellite data showed this year's minimum at 1.60 million square miles (4.14 million square km). NASA said in a statement: "Since satellites began monitoring sea ice in 1978, researchers have observed a steep decline in the average extent of Arctic sea ice for every month of the year [...] The sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas helps regulate the planet's temperature, influences the circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, and impacts Arctic communities and ecosystems. Arctic sea ice shrinks every year during the spring and summer until it reaches its minimum yearly extent. Sea ice regrows during the frigid fall and winter months, when the sun is below the horizon in the Arctic." The NASA/NSIDC statement explained why the melt of Arctic sea ice surprised scientists in 2016. For one thing, it changed pace several times: "The melt season began with a record low yearly maximum extent in March and a rapid ice loss through May. But in June and July, low atmospheric pressures and cloudy skies slowed down the melt. Then, after two large storms went across the Arctic basin in August, sea ice melt picked up speed through early September." NASA posted an animation on YouTube that "shows the evolution of the Arctic sea ice cover from its wintertime maximum extent, which was reached on Mar. 24, 2016, and was the lowest on record for the second year in a row, to its apparent yearly minimum, which occurred on Sept. 10, 2016, and is the second lowest in the satellite era."

It's already underway just 364 miles south of Florida, according to the Associated Press. "The first wave of genetically modified mosquitoes were released Wednesday in the Cayman Islands as part of a new effort to control the insect that spreads Zika and other viruses," according to an article shared by Slashdot reader Okian Warrior: Genetically altered male mosquitoes, which don't bite but are expected to mate with females to produce offspring that die before reaching adulthood, were released in the West Bay area of Grand Cayman Island, according to a joint statement from the Cayman Islands Mosquito Research and Control Unit and British biotech firm Oxitec.
"What could possibly go wrong?" asks The Atlantic, citing history's great pest-control fails in Hawaii and Australia. But a similar release is already being considered in the Florida Keys, though Accuweather reports it apparently depends on the results of a November referendum which could also "affect the likelihood of Oxitec trials taking place in other parts of the United States."

New submitter chromaexcursion writes "Several news source are reporting the likelihood of an impressive show of the Aurora Borealis visible as far south as Washington D.C. this evening. Accuweather explains: 'On the Kp index, the flare has been categorized at 6 to 8. This is a scale for measuring the intensity of a a geomagnetic storm. The 6 to 8 rating means that the effects of the radiation will have a greater reach. ... The radiation from such a flare may cause radio wave disturbances to electronics such as cell phones, GPS and radios, causing services to occasionally cut in and out. While traveling slower than was originally anticipated, the flare effects are moving towards Earth at 1000 km per second. ... The lights are currently estimated for 8 p.m. EDT Saturday arrival, with a possible deviation of up to seven hours.' Check the map; if you're in a fair-to-good zone, head out after sunset to see the show."

ClimateHacker writes "The struggle for freedom is still ongoing in Egypt and one of the many challenges that face the demonstrators in Tahrir Square is the sweltering heat. Skies are mostly clear and temperatures can reach up to 44 degrees Celsius (111 F) with hardly any shade. The risk of life-threatening heat stroke is quite real. I ask clever Slashdotters out there for novel DIY passive and active ambient cooling techniques. Perhaps some ideas could be a model for saving energy on cooling elsewhere."

An anonymous reader writes "The National Weather Service wants to update a 1991 policy that limits what data it can put on the Internet. The proposed new policy makes putting free data on the Internet official. The Private Weather Sector wants NWS to provide its new digital forecasts only in specialized data formats and would like NWS to shut down new XML data feeds. Barry Myers (MS Word doc), president of Accuweather wants you to have pay before using Kweather and other similar tools. Myers is asking friends to comment against the new NWS policy by June 30. Should we have to pay twice to get weather forecasts?"

Let's start this off with some Microsoft parodies: Polo pointed us to a version of office2000 that many Slashdotters might prefer to the Microsoft version. Lexie (ask out CowboyNeal!) sent us a Microsoft Monopoly that you probably won't see in stores. G. Crisp sent us a Lego Penguin: proof that someone has both too much spare time, and too many legos. An anonymous reader noted that you can get AccuWeather®5-Day Forecast for AREA 51. Forecast calls for black helecopters and Gillian Anderson. witten sent us a random Jon Katz story generator called (not surprisingly) Katzdot. While we're on the subject of Slashdot, it's worth nothing that ThinkGeek is now carrying new Slashdot T-Shirts. Of course personally I'd prefer the 'Kernel Panic' shot glasses, but then again, I've had a pretty long week. dayeight sent us something that is pretty indescribible. It involves video games, but presumably it also involved some sort of illegal substances too. I think its a metaphor for something. How about a few 'True Stories' to brighten up your day (no I'm not talking about zany Talking Heads movies). First zentropy sent us what seems to be a true story about why sports and Taco Bell just don't mix. An anonymous reader showed us a woman who is trying to get workers comp from her employer since she got carpal tunnel... her job involves phones, but it wasn't dialing them that caused the *ahem* injury.