• Damp ocean air aids fight against California wildfire

    For a fourth straight day, a California fire burned wild and fast as firefighters moved in to contain it. However, calmer winds and lower temperatures helped to contain the largest fire by more than 50 percent. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.

    By The Associated Press

    CAMARILLO, Calif. - A flow of damp air from the Pacific Ocean helped firefighters in their battle against a huge wildfire burning through coastal mountains in Southern California.

    Fire crews on Saturday worked to create miles of containment lines as the high winds and hot, dry air of recent days were replaced by the normal Pacific air, significantly reducing fire activity.

    The 43-square-mile blaze at the western end of the Santa Monica Mountains was 56 percent surrounded. The progress made led authorities to lift evacuation orders for residences in several areas.

    "The fire isn't really running and gunning," said Tom Kruschke, a Ventura County Fire Department spokesman.

    The humidity level rose so much that an overnight effort to burn away fuel at one section of the fire did not work well, Kruschke said.

    There was more good news for Sunday. The National Weather Service said an approaching low pressure system would bring a 20 percent chance of showers in the afternoon, with the likelihood increasing into the night and on Monday.

    "Anything we get is going to help us," Kruschke said.

    Nearly 2,000 firefighters using engines, bulldozers and aircraft worked to corral the blaze.

    Firefighting efforts were focused on the fire's east side, rugged canyons that are a mix of public and private lands, Kruschke said.

    David Mcnew / Getty Images

    A firefighter surveys burned hills near Hidden Valley at the Springs fire on Saturday near Camarillo, California.

    The change in the weather was also expected to bring gusty winds to some parts of Southern California, but well away from the fire area.

    Despite its size and speed of growth, the fire that broke out Thursday and quickly moved through neighborhoods of Camarillo Springs and Thousand Oaks has caused damage to just 15 homes, though it has threatened thousands.

    The fire also swept through Point Mugu State Park, a hiking and camping area that sprawls between those communities and the ocean. Park district Superintendent Craig Sap told the Ventura County Star that two old, unused ranch-style homes in the backcountry burned. Restrooms and campgrounds also were damaged. Sap estimated repairs would cost $225,000.

    The only injuries as of Saturday were a civilian and a firefighter involved in a traffic accident away from the fire.

    Residents were grateful so many homes were spared.

    "It came pretty close. All of these houses — these firemen did a tremendous job. Very, very thankful for them," Shayne Poindexter said. Flames came within 30 feet of the house he was building.

    Over 28,000 acres have been burned in southern California, and officials say the fire is at 20 percent containment. Officials are hoping to get a lucky break to fight the fires. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.

    On Friday, the wildfire reached the ocean, jumped Pacific Coast Highway and burned a Navy base rifle range on the beach at Point Mugu. When winds reversed direction from offshore to onshore, the fire stormed back up canyons toward inland neighborhoods.

    The blaze is one of more than 680 wildfires in the state so far this year — about 200 more than average.

    East of Los Angeles in Riverside County, a new fire that broke out Saturday afternoon burned 650 acres of wilderness south of Banning. It was 20 percent contained. Banning has been flanked by a nearly 5-square-mile fire to the north which destroyed one home shortly after it broke out Wednesday. That fire was fully contained late Saturday.

    In Northern California, a fire that has blackened more than 10 square miles of wilderness in Tehama County was a threat to 10 unoccupied summer homes near the community of Butte Meadows, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

    Thunderstorms Saturday were expected to bring erratic winds but little rain to the area about 200 miles north of San Francisco.

    Nearly 1,300 firefighters were on the lines and the blaze, which started Wednesday, was 20 percent contained.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Related: 'Long, hot, incendiary summer': Early wildfires bode ill for California

    This story was originally published on Sun May 5, 2013 8:57 AM EDT

    © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Hotter, wetter climate slashes labor capacity by 10 percent: study

    Mark Webb / The Herald Dispatch / AP, file

    In this Thursday, July 21, 2011 photo, Patrick Nelson wipes the sweat from his face while working on a project for Huntington Community Gardens as temperatures reach over 90 degrees in Huntington, W. Va.

    By Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters

    WASHINGTON — Earth's increasingly hot, wet climate has cut the amount of work people can do in the worst heat by about 10 percent in the past six decades, and that loss in labor capacity could double by mid-century, U.S. government scientists reported on Sunday.

    Because warmer air can hold more moisture than cooler air, there's more absolute humidity in the atmosphere now than there used to be. And as anyone who has sweltered through a hot, muggy summer knows, it's more stressful to work through hot months when the humidity is high.

    To figure out the stress of working in hotter, wetter conditions, experts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration looked at military and industrial guidelines already in place for heat stress, and set those guidelines against climate projections for how hot and humid it's likely to get over the next century.

    Their findings were stark: "We project that heat stress-related labor capacity losses will double globally by 2050 with a warming climate," said lead author John Dunne of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton.

    Work capability is already down to 90 percent during the most hot and humid periods, Dunne and his co-authors wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change. Using a middle-of-the-road projection of future temperature and humidity, they estimate that could drop to 80 percent by 2050.

    A more extreme scenario of future global warming, which estimated a temperature rise of 10.8 degrees F, would make it difficult to work in the hottest months in many parts of the world, Dunne said at a telephone briefing.

    Labor capacity would be all but eliminated in the lower Mississippi Valley and most of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains would be exposed to heat stress "beyond anything experienced in the world today," he said.

    Bahrain-on-the-Hudson?

    Under this scenario, heat stress in New York City would exceed that of present-day Bahrain, while in Bahrain, the heat and humidity could cause hyperthermia - potentially dangerous overheating - even in sleeping people who were not working at all.

    Humans are endothermic creatures, which means they give off heat. If they can't get rid of it faster than they create it, they go into hyperthermia. Typically, humans cool off by doing less heat-producing activity, but it may get so hot and humid that even a sleeping person wouldn't be able to dissipate heat fast enough.

    "This planet will start experiencing heat stress that's unlike anything experienced today," said Ronald Stouffer, a co-author of the study.

    The only way to retain labor capacity, Dunne said, is to limit global warming to less than 5 degrees F.

    Global average temperature has risen by about 1.2 degrees F compared to pre-industrial times. It is likely to rise another 1.8 degrees F by mid-century, Dunne said.

    The way some workers already adapt to heat stress - taking a siesta during the hottest hours of the day, working outdoor jobs like construction at night when temperatures drop or ceasing work entirely during periods of peak heat and humidity — could migrate to places where heat stress is increasing.

    The U.S. West Coast and Northern Europe are likely to be two of the regions that will be affected last by the trend toward more hot and humid climate, the scientists said.

    Part of the issue is how well-adapted certain regions are to extreme heat stress, Dunne said.

    As an example, he noted that some 70,000 people were killed during a disastrous 2003 heat wave in Europe, where heat stress was highly unusual. However, the same kind of stress was normal for a place like India, where a similar heat wave killed 3,000.

    "It's very regionally dependent and highly determined by adaptation," Dunne said.

  • Death Valley recognized with posting world's hottest temperature -- 99 years later

    Gabriel Bouys / AFP-Getty Images

    California's Death Valley is known for its heat, and now it will be known as home to the hottest place on Earth.

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    Nearly a century after the fact, California's Death Valley on Thursday was recognized as having posted the hottest temperature on Earth — replacing Libya, which experts now say was a case of overcooked data.


    A reading of 136.4 degrees Fahrenheit had been claimed at a Libyan outpost on Sept. 13, 1922. That stood as the record until Thursday's announcement by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that a panel of experts had concluded otherwise.

    As a result, the WMO now recognizes 134 degrees F (56.7 degrees Celsius) as the highest surface temperature ever recorded. The measurement came from Death Valley, Calif., on July 10, 1913.

    In a study published Thursday, the experts said they had "identified five major concerns" with the Libya data, starting with "potentially problematic instrumentation" — in other words, an unreliable thermometer. 

    "Several experts informed the committee that this type of thermometer was more frequently used in private households rather than as official recording instruments," the group reported.

    The "Bellani-Six thermometer" was already obsolete at the time and had a pointer that could easily be misread, introducing an error of as much as 12.6 degrees Fahrenheit, they noted. 

    Other concerns included a likely "inexperienced observer" who repeatedly entered temperatures on the wrong side of the log.

    The reading was probably also taken at "an observation site over an asphalt-like material which was not representative of the native desert soil," the WMO said in a statement.

    The new record does raise an obvious question: Was the Death Valley data any more reliable?

    "That record was investigated pretty thoroughly by Dr. Arnold Court, a meteorology professor from California, back in the 1940s and determined to be valid," Randy Cerveny, an Arizona State University professor who was on the Libya committee, told NBC News.

    Aug. 7, 2006: KSL-TV's John Hollenhorst introduces us to a man who lives in a very remote area of Death Valley.

    Court determined the reading was "taken with good instruments by a trained weather observer," Cerveny added. "At this time, unless new evidence comes out, we will accept the record."

    In a statement released by the university, Cerveny said the Libya investigation required "significant sleuthing and a lot of forensic records work." 

    But it came naturally, he said, noting that "in the heart of every meteorologist and climatologist beats the soul of a detective."

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  • Texas mom arrested after death of baby who was left in back of hot SUV

    KRIS TV

    Police arrested the mother of a 15-month-old baby who died in the back seat of a hot SUV in Corpus Christi, Texas.

    By Melissa Schroeder, KRIS-TV

    CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas -- Police arrested the mother of a 15-month-old baby who died after being left in the back seat of a hot SUV on Wednesday afternoon.

    Concepcion Rodriguez, 26, is charged with injury to a child after officers say she left the baby in the vehicle for nearly three hours after returning from a trip to a store, according to a statement from local police.

    Neighbors say the child's name was Benny Jr.


    Cornelio Reyna, a family friend, said, "He was a very happy little kid. He was always around with mommy and daddy and they always played around with him and stuff."

    Devices can't save babies in hot cars, agency warns

    Police say the mother returned from the store at 1 p.m. local time (2 p.m. ET) with her own children and others in her care. In total there were seven children in the SUV aged between three and seven.

    Six children left the vehicle.

    Read the full story at NBC station KRIS-TV

    Detectives say when the father got home just before 4 p.m. (5 p.m. ET) he asked about the child – and that when the parents realized he was still in the SUV.

    Temperatures reached nearly 100 degrees outside, so inside the vehicle it was much hotter.

    "I don't know how something like this could've happened, I really don't know," Reyna added.

    Report: Boy, 4, dies after being left for hours in sweltering SUV

    Neighbors said they would see the boy playing outside with his siblings.

    Neighbor Melinda Moore said, "It's terrible. I just can't imagine that we're hearing this all the time and to have it just three houses down the street, I don't understand how it happens."

    The Corpus Christi police statement added:

    Police are carefully investigating this event to evaluate if criminal charges are appropriate.  Child Protective Services are evaluating the circumstances to determine the appropriate placement of the other children.

    Corpus Christi Police urge parents and child caregivers to prevent hyperthermia in a few ways to avoid heat related injuries or death. Never leave a child alone in a vehicle and consistently leave all unattended vehicles locked. Create reminders and habits such as leave a purse, cell phone, or item you need at your next stop near the child. 

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  • Oklahoma officials try to identify wildfire victim, battle flare-ups

    Over the weekend the fires that burned across the state damaged nearly 94,000 acres and on Monday a body was found in a Norman home. NBC's Gabe Gutierrez reports.

    By NBC News and wire services

    Updated at 8:34 p.m. ET: Oklahoma firefighters on Monday battled flare-ups and hot spots across the state as medical officials tried to identify a body burned beyond recognition in a rural Norman home.

    The Oklahoma medical examiner's office requested dental records to identify the body found Saturday, said spokesperson Amy Elliott.

    Tina Frost, is overcome as she sifts through what is left of her Mannford home.

    The area south of Oklahoma City had been evacuated after a wildfire erupted Friday, and some residents weren't allowed to return until Sunday.

    About 7,900 acres burned and about 100 structures were lost in the Cleveland County fire including the Noble, Norman and Slaughterville areas, NBC station KFOR of Oklahoma City reported.

    One fire chief reported the wildfires were so violent in the area that structures were “pretty much incinerated,” KFOR reported.

    Jim Beckel / AP file

    Victoria Landavazo holds her 1-year-old child, Axel, after arriving with other members of her family on Saturday to see for the first time what a wildfire had done to their home in Luther, Okla.

    Watch US News videos on NBCNews.com

    Crews had battled 18 wildfires that hopscotched across Oklahoma since Friday, torching at least 121 structures and charring almost 94,000 acres amid a drought.

    Fires left only ashes in some spots, while property just feet away looked remarkably untouched. In some cases, the flames shifted with the wind, while in others, streams or ponds forced a detour.

    Keli Cain, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, said all the fires were either under control or in "mop-up" stages early Monday afternoon. Mop-ups could go on for days, Cain said.

    Tom Gilbert / AP file

    Smoke covers Highway 48 on Saturday, east of Drumright, Okla.

    Twelve fires, including "a couple of new ones," continued, Cain said.

    "High heat, low humidity and very strong winds make it difficult for crews and easy for fires to spread," Cain said.

    One, which threatened the small town of Luther over the weekend, is being investigated as a possible arson. Witnesses told Oklahoma County sheriff's deputies they saw a man throwing a lighted newspaper from a black Ford pickup, but no arrests have been made.

    The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • Blame blistering heat waves on global warming, study says

    Sue Ogrocki / AP

    In this Sept. 30, 2011, file photo, sailboats and a floating dock lie on the dry, cracked dirt in a harbor at Lake Hefner in Oklahoma City as drought continues to be a problem across the state. The relentless type of heat that has blistered the U.S. and other parts of the world in recent years is due to man-made global warming, a new study from a top government scientist says.

    By The Associated Press and NBC News staff

    The relentless, weather-gone-crazy type of heat that has blistered the United States and other parts of the world in recent years is so rare that it can't be anything but man-made global warming, says a new statistical analysis from a top government scientist.


    The research by a man often called the "godfather of global warming" says that the likelihood of such temperatures occurring from the 1950s through the 1980s was rarer than 1 in 300. Now, the odds are closer to 1 in 10, according to the study by NASA scientist James Hansen. He says that statistically what's happening is not random or normal, but pure and simple climate change.

    "This is not some scientific theory. We are now experiencing scientific fact," Hansen told The Associated Press in an interview.

    Hansen is a scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and a professor at Columbia University. He has called for government action to curb greenhouse gases for years. While his study was published online Saturday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, it is unlikely to sway opinion among the remaining climate change skeptics.

    However, several climate scientists praised the new work.

    In a departure from most climate research, Hansen's study — based on statistics, not the more typical climate modeling — blames these three heat waves purely on global warming:

    —Last year's devastating Texas-Oklahoma drought.

    —The 2010 heat waves in Russia and the Middle East, which led to thousands of deaths.

    —The 2003 European heat wave blamed for tens of thousands of deaths, especially among the elderly in France.

    The analysis was written before the current drought and record-breaking temperatures that have seared much of the United States this year. But Hansen believes this too is another prime example of global warming at its worst.

    In an opinion column published Saturday in The Washington Post, Hansen said his predictions in the late 1980s of the dire consequences of steadily increasing temperatures have proven to be worse than he thought.

    “Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.

    The deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma last year can each be attributed to climate change. And once the data are gathered in a few weeks’ time, it’s likely that the same will be true for the extremely hot summer the United States is suffering through right now.

    These weather events are not simply an example of what climate change could bring. They are caused by climate change. The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills."

    The new research makes the case for the severity of global warming in a different way than most scientific studies and uses simple math instead of relying on complex climate models or an understanding of atmospheric physics. It also doesn't bother with the usual caveats about individual weather events having numerous causes.

    The increase in the chance of extreme heat, drought and heavy downpours in certain regions is so huge that scientists should stop hemming and hawing, Hansen said. "This is happening often enough, over a big enough area that people can see it happening," he said.

    Scientists have generally responded that it's impossible to say whether single events are caused by global warming, because of the influence of natural weather variability.

    Watch the most-viewed videos on NBCNews.com

    However, that position has been shifting in recent months, as other studies too have concluded climate change is happening right before our eyes.

    Hansen hopes his new study will shift people's thinking about climate change and goad governments into action. He wrote an op-ed piece that appeared online Friday in the Washington Post.

    "There is still time to act and avoid a worsening climate, but we are wasting precious time," he wrote.

    The science in Hansen's study is excellent "and reframes the question," said Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia who was a member of the Nobel Prize-winning international panel of climate scientists that issued a series of reports on global warming.

    "Rather than say, 'Is this because of climate change?' That's the wrong question. What you can say is, 'How likely is this to have occurred with the absence of global warming?' It's so extraordinarily unlikely that it has to be due to global warming," Weaver said.

    For years scientists have run complex computer models using combinations of various factors to see how likely a weather event would happen without global warming and with it. About 25 different aspects of climate change have been formally attributed to man-made greenhouse gases in dozens of formal studies. But these are generally broad and non-specific, such as more heat waves in some regions and heavy rainfall in others.

    Another upcoming study by Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, links the 2010 Russian heat wave to global warming by looking at the underlying weather that caused the heat wave. He called Hansen's paper an important one that helps communicate the problem.

    But there is bound to be continued disagreement. Previous studies had been unable to link the two, and one by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that the Russian drought, which also led to devastating wildfires, was not related to global warming.

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    White House science adviser John Holdren praised the paper's findings in a statement. But he also said it is true that scientists can't blame single events on global warming: "This work, which finds that extremely hot summers are over 10 times more common than they used to be, reinforces many other lines of evidence showing that climate change is occurring and that it is harmful."

    Skeptical scientist John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville said Hansen shouldn't have compared recent years to the 1950s-1980s time period because he said that was a quiet time for extremes.

    But Derek Arndt, director of climate monitoring for the federal government's National Climatic Data Center, said that range is a fair one and often used because it is the "golden era" for good statistics.

    Granger Morgan, head of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, called Hansen's study "an important next step in what I expect will be a growing set of statistically-based arguments."

    In a landmark 1988 study, Hansen predicted that if greenhouse gas emissions continue, which they have, Washington, D.C., would have about nine days each year of 95 degrees or warmer in the decade of the 2010s. So far this year, with about four more weeks of summer, the city has had 23 days with 95 degrees or hotter temperatures.

    Hansen says now he underestimated how bad things would get.

    And while he hopes this will spur action including a tax on the burning of fossil fuels, which emit carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, others doubt it.

    Science policy expert Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado said Hansen clearly doesn't understand social science, thinking a study like his could spur action. Just because people understand a fact that doesn't mean people will act on it, he said.

    In an email, he wrote: "Hansen is pursuing a deeply flawed model of policy change, one that will prove ineffectual and with its most lasting consequence a further politicization of climate science (if that is possible!)."

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    © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Towns' residents flee Oklahoma wildfires that have destroyed dozens of homes

    Firefighters are struggling to control more than a dozen blazes that have scorched thousands of acres. NBC's Gabe Gutierrez reports.

    By NBC News staff and wire services

    Updated at 12:20 a.m ET: At least 121 structures, many of them homes, have been destroyed by wildfires in Oklahoma, officials said Saturday as temperatures topped 100 degrees for a 19th straight day.


    New evacuations were under way Saturday as well: Authorities ordered evacuations in the towns of Glencoe, population of around 600, and Mannford, population about 3,000 in Creek County about 20 miles west of Tulsa.

    Thousands were on the move as the fire in Creek County spread quickly, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported. 

    A Glencoe official said 15 to 20 homes had burned in that area on Saturday, KOCO of Oklahoma City reported.

    A grass fire near Luther consumed 56 structures and hot spots there and at two other large fires kept crews busy Saturday. It has burned 2,600 acres by Saturday evening.

    Gov. Mary Fallin toured the Luther area on Saturday, calling the devastation "heartbreaking." 

    "A lot of people were at work and didn't realize how quickly the fire was moving," Fallin told Reuters in a telephone interview. "It's emotional. For the children, it's very emotional to lose their possessions."

    Authorities suspect that fire might be arson: The Oklahoma County Sheriff's Department said it received a 911 call from a man who reported seeing another man toss a lighted newspaper from a pickup truck window on Friday afternoon. 

    Residents returning to their homes Saturday found charred timbers poking from the debris and the burned out shells of refrigerators, washers and dryers.

    "It's all gone. All of our family pictures, everything was there," said Victoria Landavazo, clutching a young child in her arms. 

    Tracy Streeper was working in Oklahoma City, about 40 miles southwest, when she learned the fire was approaching. Caught in traffic, it took her a long time to reach home and then, "once we got here, we had maybe 30 minutes."

    A wildfire has consumed over 2,000 acres in Cleveland County, Oklahoma, burning buildings and forcing evacuations. NBCNews.com's Al Stirrett reports.

    She grabbed a few clothes, medicine and her three dogs and left quickly.

    Reuters

    Remains of a home burnned to the ground are seen in Luther, Okla., on Saturday.

    "Your adrenaline is running. You're pumped up," Streeper said. "You could just see a wall of flames coming this way. Everything was on fire."

    Casey Strahan said he went outside after power went out in the home he rents about 4:30 p.m. He looked south and saw smoke rising in the distance. He thought it was moving away from him until police ordered him to leave. He rushed through the house, grabbing clothing, photos and a computer as he went. When he returned Saturday, he found the house burned to the ground.

    "I just never thought it was really going to get us," said Strahan, a softball and girls basketball coach at Luther High School.

    Fires near Mannford and Noble claimed another 65 structures.

    Two new fires broke out on Saturday, and Oklahoma now is fighting 13 across the state, said Forestry Services spokeswoman Michelle  Finch-Walker.

    A state-wide burn ban was issued by Fallin on Friday.

    Oklahoma has contacted neighboring states for help but, with the exception of Texas, neighbors have had to focus on their own fire threats, Fallin said on Friday. 

    "There's fires in Arkansas. There's fires in Kansas and Texas. Everybody else is on high heat alert," she said. 

    Sarah Phipps / AP

    A home burns during a large wildfire Friday, Aug. 3, 2012 in Luther, Okla.

    Oklahoma joins several states that have been plagued by wildfires this summer, including Colorado, Arkansas and Nebraska. Fires are being fed by a widespread drought. Nearly two-thirds of the contiguous United States was under some level of drought as of July 31. 

    Low humidity, strong southerly winds and drought conditions enabled the wildfires to spread quickly across treetops, said Michelann Ooten, deputy director of the state's Office of Emergency Management.

    "It's just a very difficult situation we're facing that's all weather related," Ooten said. 

    The heat in Oklahoma City, the state capital, has reached historic levels. 

    On Friday, Oklahoma City tied its all-time record for the highest temperature ever recorded when the thermometer reached 113 Fahrenheit, a mark last recorded in the Dust Bowl days in 1936. 

    It's so hot that some volunteer fire departments have made a public plea for Gatorade donations to keep their crews hydrated in the scalding conditions. 

    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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  • Foundation repair business soars as drought hits homes

    Settling soil in drought stricken Indiana causes problems for home owners. WTHR's Jennie Runevitch reports.

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    As if shriveled crops, dead fish, water rationing and brown lawns aren't bad enough, some residents across the Midwest and South are seeing the drought in their own homes as foundations shift in dried-up soil.


    Sometimes they'll even hear the shift.

    "We will get calls where homeowners hear a loud pop," John Clark, general manager at Indiana Foundation Service, told NBC News. "They'll explain that they've heard the house move."

    Adding insult to injury, insurers typically consider such damage an "act of God" and thus homeowners are on the hook for funding repairs.

    Clark said drought-repair business in and around Indianapolis is booming, with calls almost doubling in the last month and his crews doing about 10 home repairs a week.

    Competitors are just as busy.

    "I've never seen it to this magnitude, this early in the season" said Tim Combs, vice president at Helitech, a foundation and waterproofing specialist based in St. Louis, Mo. "I've been at Helitech for 19 years, and this is the driest ever."

    Between 60 and 70 percent of Helitech's customer calls involve foundation repairs, Combs told NBC News, when typically it's half foundations and half waterproofing this time of year.

    The problem is everywhere Helitech operates -- Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. "The drought is so widespread that it's really balanced" as far as repair work, he said.

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    Some homeowners report new cracks, Combs said, while others say small cracks have gotten worse with the dry spell.

    The foundation damage is on top of drought problems that include lost corn and soy crops, fish killed by low oxygen levels in lakes and rivers, and water rationing in some cities.

    In Illinois, NBC affiliate WEEK-TV reported Wednesday that the drought is causing home damage in the Peoria area. 

    Severe drought in Arkansas is causing home foundations to shift and crack. WTHR's Josh Berry

    Similar foundation issues exist in Little Rock, Ark, NBC affiliate KARK-TV reported Monday.

    Clark earlier told NBC affiliate WTHR-TV that foundation repairs tied to dry soil can cost anywhere from $1,000 up to $40,000.

    Slideshow: Drought Crisis

    R.J. Matson / Roll Call, Politicalcartoons.com

    Click here to view this cartoon slideshow.

    Launch slideshow

    Homeowners should look for "doors that are sticking, windows that stick and drywall cracks," Clark said.

    As for prevention, WTHR noted that some experts suggest a sprinkler around a home's foundation -- as long as no cracks currently exist. 

    Related: Drought widens, outlook grim through October

    Another approach is to water under an exposed slab area to beef up the soil.

    "On shallow footings, crawl spaces, footings that might be under a slab of some sort you can actually water with a water hose and it can help that expansive soil swell and preserve that footing from settling," Jeff Tharp, a specialist at Helitech, told WEEK.

    In Indianapolis, however, that's not on option: the drought has led to a ban on watering lawns this summer.

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  • Drought widens over past week, unlikely to yield through October

    The National Weather Service issued this map along with its Seasonal Drought Outlook on Thursday.

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    A double-barreled dose of bad news came out Thursday: Not only did the drought worsen over the last week, but it's likely to widen and intensify through the end of October, according to the seasonal outlook prepared by government forecasters.


    "Unfortunately, all indicators (short and medium-term, August, and August-October) favor above normal temperatures," the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center said in its Seasonal Drought Outlook released Thursday. 

    "We don't see a reason to say it will improve," Kelly Helm Smith, a specialist at the National Drought Mitigation Center, told reporters. "I'm in the Midwest," she said, referring to her office at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, "it's really unpleasant."

    The outlook noted that "a dramatic shift in the weather pattern" would be required "to provide significant relief to this drought, and most tools and models do not forecast this."

    Drought could take hold in the northern plains by October, the Climate Prediction Center added.

    Moreover, last week saw a continued "downward spiral of drought conditions," according to the weekly Drought Monitor issued Thursday.

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    Nearly 81 percent of the contiguous U.S. was "abnormally dry" or in drought, weather.com reported in analyzing the data, while 64 percent was in some degree of drought, up 3 percentage points from the previous week. About 42 percent was "severe" or worse.

    The Weather Channel's Carl Parker reports on the worst drought in years, and the state of agriculture in the Midwest.

    The monitor also noted these dire indicators for food production:

    • 38 percent of the U.S. corn crop was in "poor to very poor condition" -- up from 30 percent a week ago;
    • 30 percent of soybeans were in poor to very poor condition -- up from 27 percent. 
    • 54 percent of pastures and rangelands were in poor to very poor condition -- up from 50 percent and an all-time high since that measure began in 1995.  
    • Stream flows were at or near  record low values across much of the Midwest and parts of the central Plains, West, Southeast, and even parts of New England. 

    Forecasters have called the drought the most widespread since 1956, though 1988 was worse in terms of crop losses due to an extremely dry year for the Midwest.

    Experts said that could still change.

    "It's too soon to know how much this one will cost" since farmers are still harvesting, Helm Smith told NBC News. 

    "There's a possibility that this could get worse," added Jake Crouch, an expert at the National Climatic Data Center.

    "It's something to keep an eye on in the next couple of weeks," he told NBC News.

    The federal government on Wednesday added 39 more counties to its drought disaster list, speeding up low-cost loans for farmers and ranchers. That's now 1,297 counties across 29 states with access to those loans.

    Related: Sagging homes a sign of the times

    The head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, said it was particularly painful for farmers because they planted for bumper crops, with many now instead potentially facing bankruptcy.

    "Part of the problem we're facing is that weather conditions were so good at the beginning of the season that farmers got in the field early, and as a result this drought comes at a very difficult and painful time in their ability to have their crops have good yield," Vilsack told reporters Wednesday after briefing President Barack Obama on the drought. 

    "I get on my knees everyday and I'm saying an extra prayer right now," he added. "If I had a rain prayer or a rain dance I could do, I would do it." 

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  • 'No relief' from drought as sweltering temperatures return to Midwest, Northeast

    The Weather Channel's Eric Fisher says the dry conditions affecting half of the country will have enormous financial implications.

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    About 200 million Americans once again saw furnace-like temperatures as the latest heat wave slammed the Midwest and Northeast. 


    Heat advisories were issued Tuesday throughout those areas. Detroit, for example, matched its record of 101 degrees for a July 17 (set in 1887) -- and it felt like 105, the National Weather Service reported. 

    Chicago reached 99 degrees and it felt like 102, while New York City topped out at 94 degrees.

    "The jet stream has been way up to the north in the midsection of the country," TODAY meteorologist Al Roker said Tuesday. It's being kept there by what's called an upper-level ridge, and that's keeping that section of the U.S. very warm, he added.

    The jet stream will drop a bit farther south next week but overall the ridge trapping heat will continue into next week, dire news for drought-hit farmers and ranchers. "There's no relief in sight for at least the next week from drought," Roker said.

    As the U.S. experiences another heat wave, farmers are being hit hard by the worst drought conditions recorded since 1956 and consumers can expect to see corn prices rising. The Weather Channel's Eric Fisher reports.

    The heat-trapping ridge will also "stretch out" to the west over the next week, Roker added.

    Storms will bring some relief to the upper Midwest, but not enough to put a dent in the drought. 

    In Chicago, the cool front should move in Tuesday night after two days around 100. Last week, the city saw three straight days of triple-digit temperatures -- and a Lake Michigan with 80-degree water along the beaches.

    In New York City, the heat wave will break by Wednesday evening with the arrival of strong thunderstorms.

    New York is in its fourth heat wave of the summer, NBCNewYork.com reported Tuesday, and Central Park has already hit 90 degrees or higher 13 times this summer -- nearly the 15 days it averages for an entire summer.

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    On the upside, there's still a long way to go to break Central Park's record of 39 days, set in 1993 and 1991.

    Newark, N.J., has seen 18 days at 90 degrees or higher; LaGuardia Airport 17, NBCNewYork.com added.

    Chicago has had it even worse: 28 days above 90 -- on track to top its record for a summer, 47 days in the 90s in 1988, WBBM-TV reported.

    Washington, D.C., has had 26 days above 90 -- way ahead of its 16-17 days for this time of year, NBCWashington.com reported.

    Besides scores of cities reporting record daily highs this month, several have also posted record temperatures for any day in July. Among them, reported The Weather Channel's Eric Fisher, are Chicago, Denver, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.

    Boston nearly joined that list on Tuesday, reaching 96 degrees -- just 2 shy of its July record.

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  • Exploding hay, watering bans are latest signs of worsening drought

    Hot weather has devastated agriculture; 30 percent of the corn crop is now in poor, or very poor, condition. NBC's Janet Shamlian reports.

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    From exploding hay bales to a sprinkler ban in Indianapolis, the Midwest and Plains states continue to be tested by a hot, dry summer.

    A drought update Thursday didn't offer much hope either: 61 percent of the contiguous U.S. was listed in drought, up from 56 percent last week, according to the National Weather Service's Drought Monitor. 

    "Anytime we have a drought maturing in mid-summer, the chances for rapid intensification will be there," Gary McManus, Oklahoma's associate state climatologist, told msnbc.com. "Even normal heat and dry conditions can speed that drought along."

    More than 1,000 counties in 26 states were named natural-disaster areas on Thursday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The move gives that designation to any county in severe drought for eight consecutive weeks, speeding up low-cost loan assistance to farmers. 

    Representing a third of all U.S. counties, it's the largest ever USDA disaster declaration, the Bloomberg news service reported.

    Michael Conroy / AP file

    A dock extends into a dry cove at Morse Reservoir in Noblesville, Ind., on July 5. The central Indiana reservoir is down 3.5 feet from normal levels.

    Besides dried up fields, farmers from Iowa to Oklahoma in recent weeks have reported hay bales catching fire through spontaneous combustion.

    Near Salix, Iowa, five fire departments responded to a hay fire on Tuesday that quickly consumed a storage facility, NBC affiliate KTIV reported.

    While that can happen any time there's moisture in hay mixed with heat, this summer is particularly dangerous after late spring rains provided the needed moisture in the hay.

    "The chance of hay bales spontaneously combusting is higher when we’ve had a lot of rain," Nigel Collinson, director of Agrical, a major insurance adjuster, told Farmers Weekly in June as the hay baling season was in full swing.

    NBC's Janet Shamlian reports from Arkansas, where severe drought has turned pasture into "desert," threatening the future of the cattle ranching industry.

    In western Oklahoma, where hay bales also recently burst into flames, the threat of brush and grassland fires is greater this year than last because the state enough spring rain to allow vegetation to grow.

    "The rains allowed the growth to get up pretty good, so there are a lot of troubles this year," Mike Karlin, assistant chief of the Weatherford Fire Department, told the Associated Press. "That moisture has gone and it's gotten extremely dry out. 

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    "We're dealing with a situation that's fast approaching what we saw last year," he said, referring to the drought that started in 2010 and left much of the landscape cracked and dry.

    In Indiana, water rationing has spread to Indianapolis. Plummeting reservoirs have led to a ban, starting Friday, on watering lawns with sprinklers. Plants, flowers and trees can still be watered with a hose.

    Extreme heat in Indianapolis last week was too much for a chocolatier's air conditioning system. It reluctantly closed rather than risk having the inventory melt. WTHR's Emily Longnecker reports.

    Fines start at $100, increasing up to $2,500 for repeat offenders.

    "If we have some people who are solidly abusing it we're certainly going to make an example," Mayor Greg Ballard told NBC affiliate WTHR-TV. 

    Indianapolis is going through its longest dry spell in 104 years of records, weather.com noted. Since June 1, just .09 inches of rain have fallen there, when the average is closer to 6 inches.

    Nearly a third of Indiana was listed as in "extreme drought" in the latest Drought Monitor, up from 23 percent last week. Nearly all of the rest of the state is seeing either severe or moderate conditions.

    In northeast Indiana, rainfall in some parts is 11 inches below normal for the last three months, according to the monitor.

    In Indiana and 17 other key corn-growing states, "30 percent of the crop is now in poor or very poor condition, up from 22 percent the previous week," the report stated. "In addition, fully half of the nation’s pastures and ranges are in poor or very poor condition, up from 28 percent in mid-June.

    "The hot, dry conditions have also allowed for a dramatic increase in wildfire activity since mid-June," the report noted. "During the past 3 weeks, the year-to-date acreage burned by wildfires increased from 1.1 million to 3.1 million (acres) as of this writing."

    Other parts of the Midwest are rationing water as well. In Kansas, the town of Russell this week approved restrictions. So too have many towns in Illinois and Wisconsin.

    Rain is forecast for some drought areas over the next week, but overall the outlook remains grim for what's the most widespread drought since 1988.

    Warming raised odds of Texas drought last year, study finds

    "Unfortunately, parts of the Plains from the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma and Kansas potentially eastward into Illinois and Indiana may see little significant rainfall over the next 5-7 days," weather.com meteorologist Jon Erdman warned in his drought post.

    "Rainfall is the cure," added McManus, "but it is normally in short supply during July and August."

    The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • Feeling the heat: First half of 2012 is warmest on record

    Although temperatures have dropped across the Midwest and Northeast, irrigation ponds in southern Illinois are drying up and crops such as corn and soybeans are shriveling in the fields. NBC's John Yang reports.

    By Vignesh Ramachandran, msnbc.com

    It's been a hot year.

    In fact, the first six months of 2012 accounted for the warmest January-through-June period on record for the contiguous U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Monday.


    The national temperatures averaged 52.9 degrees — "4.5 degrees above the long-term average," NOAA said in a statement. "Most of the contiguous U.S. was record and near-record warm for the six-month period, except the Pacific Northwest." East of the Rockies, 28 states were "record warm," NOAA said.

    The past year also registered as the hottest 12-month period on record in the contiguous U.S., narrowly surpassing the mark set last month, NOAA said.

    Climate models indicate the hot temperatures are not expected to ease anytime soon. “It looks like it’s going to stay above normal, for much of the remainder of the summer,” said Jon Gottschalck at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.

    Last month was the 14th hottest June on record. The average June temperature for the contiguous 48 states was 71.2 degrees — two degrees higher than the 20th century average.

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    With much of the nation experiencing scorching temperatures, NOAA found 170 American cities met or broke record-high temperatures in June. South Carolina's 113-degree high and Georgia's 112-degree high could be the highest temperature records ever in their respective states.

    Conditions have also been incredibly dry — it was the tenth-driest June on record. More than half the contiguous U.S. — 56 percent — have drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

    The start of the monsoon season around Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado are some relief for areas affected by wildfire, Gottschalck said.

    Colorado, which experienced its worst wildfire season in a decade, was 6.4 degrees above normal June temperatures. Wildfires ravaged land across the country with more than 1.3 million acres burned overall — "the second most on record during June," NOAA said.

    While much of the country was bone dry, Florida had its wettest June on record. The Sunshine State was more than six inches above average precipitation, much of it caused by Tropical Storm Debby. Washington state, Oregon and Maine each saw a top-ten wet June.

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