Extreme storms such as Hurricane Sandy have pushed the U.S. electrical grid to its breaking point. The technology exists to keep the lights on—we just need to implement it.
When a failure occurs along a line now, everything downstream from that point loses power. But there's a better way.
When Hurricane Sandy struck New York City a few weeks ago, seven of the 14 under-river subway tunnels flooded as a result of the storm surge, halting operation of some subway lines for more than a week. One possible future safeguard for this kind of disaster: huge, inflatable tunnel plugs.
Some methods that people have suggested for preventing, or stopping, a hurricane--and why they might not work
By Charlie Jane Anders/ io9
Posted 11.08.2012 at 11:00 am
Ken Mampel, the Floridian man who repeatedly edited the Wikipedia entry on Hurricane Sandy to remove any mention of climate change, has been blocked from Wikipedia for a period of 24 hours due to "edit warring" on the Hurricane Sandy page. He appealed the block and was denied, though he's not banned for good--he's encouraged to keep editing now that his block is lifted. Read more on his Talk page.
Petroleum tanks damaged during the storm spilled an estimated quarter million gallons of oil into New Jersey waterways. Now crews are working around the clock to clean it up.
By Emily Gertz
Posted 11.02.2012 at 4:00 pm
Ken Mampel, an unemployed, 56-year-old Floridian, is in large part the creator of the massive Hurricane Sandy Wikipedia page. He's also the reason that, for nearly a week, the page had no mention of climate change.
Satellite images show ravages to the coastal community of Seaside Heights
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has had Barack Obama and Mitt Romney trying to court him for some time now, both hoping the third-term independent could help move some swing staters to their respective corners. It wasn't clear either candidate would get the nod from Bloomberg, but the mayor just endorsed Obama. Bloomberg wrote in an op-ed for Bloomberg View that, whether it contributed to Hurricane Sandy or not, climate change was a serious issue and Obama would be the better candidate to stop it. [New York Times]
Deployed off the coast of New Jersey earlier this week, the modified Wave Glider robot gathered realtime data from Sandy as the storm approached landfall Monday.
The white stuff can stick around and ruin, well, pretty much everything. That puts the officials trying to fix it on a ticking clock.
Wondering what it was like in New York when Sandy made landfall? Popular Science senior editor Martha Harbison took to the streets (and now totally regrets it).
By Colin Lecher, Clay Dillow
Posted 10.30.2012 at 4:00 pm
Having weathered the storm, PopSci staff in New York venture out on Tuesday to inspect the aftermath.
By PopSci Editors
Posted 10.30.2012 at 3:54 pm
Infographic artists visualize a storm's haunting beauty, using real-time forecast data.
