Organizers Of New Website, Climate.us Hope To Replace Deleted, Politicized Government Climate Site

A new website, climate.us is being set up by 
to replace climate.gov the climate change 
information website all but destroyed by 
the Trump administration. Climate.us
plans to put up information erased from
the old web site, and add info. 

Before the Trump administration took over, the Climate.gov site was one of the most widely used places on the internet to find climate information. 

That site is now gutted. You can still access it, but most of the information has been removed or redirected to government websites more in line with Donald Trump's climate denial mindset.

Thanks to some volunteers, though, much of that missing information might be coming back. Welcome to climate.us

The website's mission statement says in part: "Our goal is to build an enduring, independent, and scientifically rigorous platform that the world can rely on for climate communication, education and engagement." 

Reports The Guardian:

"Now, a team of climate communications experts - including many members of the former climate.gov team - is working to resurrect its content into a new organization with an expanded mission.

Their effort's new website, climate.us, would not only offer public-facing interpretations of climate science, but could also begin got directly offer climate-related services, such as assisting local governments with mapping increased flooding risk due to climate change."

The climate.us web page is up, and its home page tells us the following:

"From climate.gov to the National Climate Assessment, climate information you can trust is being hidden, erased, and replaces with misinformation. We're not letting that happen. We're building Climate.us - independent, nonprofit and immune to politics. But we can't do it without you."

It is a non-profit, so they are asking us to donate. 

Climate.gov was a sort of clearinghouse for climate change information, helping the public interpret what the science meant for them. Now, under Trump, Climate.gov has essentially gone dark, redirecting users to a different NOAA website controlled by political appointees, Rebecca Lindsey told CNN. 

Lindsey is climate.gov's former managing editor. She was fired last winter along with other employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She is now among the group of former colleagues starting up climate.us. 

"The things that were most popular on climate.gov were things that basically just taught people about climate, both natural climate and climate change..... There is a need for content that helps people achieve basic climate literacy independent of an agency," Lindsey said. 

She went on with this good point: "This is information that the taxpayers already paid for... This administration is trying to hide it and take it away from us. It's an abuse of government. It's a waste of resources. People should be indignant. That's not the way the government should work."

The effort to establish climate.us is gaining support, including legal help and a short-term grant to help develop the overall vision for the website. 

Other organization are trying to preserve government data sets going dark because of the Trump administration. Climate.us is different because it plans to keep building on the old climate.gov content.  

Worries Grow About Isolated North Carolina/Tennessee Wracked By Helene

 I, along with lots of other people, are especially worried about the people in the mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. 

Western North Carolina's 
road network is virtually
destroyed by the Helene
flooding, as can be seen here 

It's isolated from the catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Helene. I'm not just talking about a few backwoods hollows in the mountains. It's virtually the whole region. The crisis is worsening, and I fear the death toll up there will skyrocket.

Much like Vermont, there's tons of narrow, winding mountain roads in the region leading to an unknown number of houses, trailers, camps, resorts and local tourist attractions.  The flooding and mudslides up there were cataclysmic. Since there's no communications and electricity working, and nobody can get up there, nobody knows how many people have passed away, or are dying while they wait.

"This is looking to be Buncombe County's own Hurricane Katrina," Avril Pinder, the manager of the county which includes Asheville, told the Washington Post.  

And this from CNN:

"Officials in Buncombe County, North Carolina have received more than a thousand missing person reports through an online form, County Manager Avril Pinder said Sunday, cautioning that figure likely includes duplicate submissions and that communications outages mean people are struggling to reach one another, 

Gov. Cooper echoed that, telling reporters in a news conference, 'We know that a lot of these people are simply out of communication and are OK,"

In other words, there are certainly not 1,000 people out there that have lost their lives. The vast majority - I hope - just can't be reached via roads or phone or any means. 

But that doesn't mean everybody. Social media posts described people being swept away and not found. As the Washington Post tells us:

"The toll from the storm is likely to rise. Taylor Jones, Buncombe County's director of emergency management, said there had been multiple fatalities there, though he declined to provide exact figures. He said officials were resorting to their 'mass fatality plan' and trying to notify relatives, a process complicated by service outages."

 At 10 a.m. today, officials at a press conference confirmed at least 10 deaths in Buncombe County, reports the Asheville Citizen Times. 

As of Sunday morning, Asheville, an absolutely lovely, artsy city of about 94,000 at the foot of the Smokey Mountains, is pretty much cut off.  (Think Burlington, Vermont, only somewhat bigger and generally more upscale).

Most roads in and out of the city were still impassable. True, only parts of the city were inundated and destroyed by flood waters. But the entire metro area had no electricity, no cell service, in internet, no water through Saturday and into today at least.  

A scene from western North Carolina this week that 
almost exactly matches a similar photo taken after
devastating floods in Lyndonville, Vermont on July 30.

One news crew from Raleigh found a long roundabout way out of Asheville via South Carolina, but the service station was almost out of gas and probably is by now.  

Crowds gathered at the public library in downtown Asheville Sunday morning because wifi was available there. It was perhaps the only place in town where wifi was reachable. It does look like a crew arrived in Asheville this afternoon to set up Starlink so that other people could access wifi.

Still, it might be two or more days before electricity is restored. Power lines are down everywhere, and the city's water treatment plant was badly damaged by the flooding. 

As of Sunday morning, water and food distribution sites had not yet been set up, mostly because of transportation problems caused by the flooding. Helicopters have begun dropping supplies in remote areas. 

Small towns outside of Asheville like Castle Rock, Old Fort, Roan Mountain and Swannanoa have been almost completely destroyed. Accessing them will be harder than getting into Asheville.

I've vacationed in this part of North Carolina in the past and absolutely loved it. I hope the death toll doesn't really go up, and I hope, like everyone, that adequate aid gets there right away. As bad as the flooding and the suffering from it was in Vermont in the summers of 2023 and 2024, North Carolina and surrounding areas are far worse. 

Bernie Meme That Broke The Internet Has Big Weather Following, Too

Here's Bernie, ready to provide today's weather forecast

The Bernie Sanders photo that launched a billion memes has also left its mark on the weather community.  

There are a lot of fun images on social media, Bernie with the big mittens, the no-nonsense Burton overcoat sitting in that chair, to keep weather geeks happy, too.

I shared some of the best memes, on my sister blog, Matt of All Trades, that you might want to check out. 

This,  however, is a weather blog, so here, we'll check out how Bernie and his mittens fare with the outdoor conditions. So, scroll on through below, and click on each image to make them bigger and easier to see. 

Also, please comment with some other great Bernie weather memes that I'm sure are out there. 

Did you know Bernie chases tornadoes? Two pics to prove it.  But you can tell he's not that impressed with them:

That's scorching weather in the desert, but again, Bernie's not impressed. The mittens don't come off until it reaches 120 degrees

The wind chills in Minnesota are getting low, but Bernie's prepared! 

Bernie is MUCH less enthusiastic about thundersnow than Jim Cantore