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Tag Archives: Warmer
‘The Last of Us’ Come Alive: Fungi Are Adapting to Warmer Temperatures
Dangerous fungal infections are on the rise, and a growing body of research suggests warmer temperatures might be a culprit.
The human body’s average temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit has long been too hot for most fungi to thrive, infectious-disease specialists say. But as temperatures have risen globally, some fungi might be adapting to endure more heat stress, including conditions within the human body, research suggests. Climate change might also be creating conditions for some disease-causing fungi to expand their geographical range, research shows.
“As fungi are exposed to more consistent elevated temperatures, there’s a real possibility that certain fungi that were previously harmless suddenly become potential pathogens,” said
Peter Pappas,
an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Deaths from fungal infections are increasing, due in part to growing populations of people with weakened immune systems who are more vulnerable to severe fungal disease, public-health experts said. At least 7,000 people died in the U.S. from fungal infections in 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, up from hundreds of people each year around 1970. There are few effective and nontoxic medications to treat such infections, they said.
Photos: What We Know About Deadly Fungal Infections
In the video game and HBO show “The Last of Us,” a fungus infects people en masse and turns them into monstrous creatures. The fungus is based on a real genus, Ophiocordyceps, that includes species that infect insects, disabling and killing them.
There have been no known Ophiocordyceps infections in people, infectious-disease experts said, but they said the rising temperatures that facilitated the spread of the killer fungi in the show may be pushing other fungi to better adapt to human hosts and expand into new geographical ranges.
A January study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that higher temperatures may prompt some disease-causing fungi to evolve faster to survive.
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Researchers at Duke University grew 800 generations of a type of Cryptococcus, a group of fungi that can cause severe disease in people, in conditions of either 86 degrees Fahrenheit or 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The researchers used DNA sequencing to track changes in the fungi’s genome with a focus on “jumping genes”—DNA sequences that can move from one location on the genome to another.
Asiya Gusa, a study co-author and postdoctoral researcher in Duke’s Molecular Genetics and Microbiology Department, said movement of such genes can result in mutations and alter gene expression. In fungi, Dr. Gusa said, the movement of the genes could play a role in allowing fungi to adapt to stressors including heat.
Dr. Gusa and her colleagues found that the rate of movement of “jumping genes” was five times higher in the Cryptococcus raised in the warmer temperature.
Cryptococcus infections can be deadly, particularly in immunocompromised people. At least 110,000 people die globally each year from brain infections caused by Cryptococcus fungi, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Candida auris, a highly deadly fungus that has been reported in about half of U.S. states, also appears to have adapted to warmer temperatures, infectious-disease specialists said.
“Fungi isn’t transmitted from person to person, but through fungal spores in the air,” Dr. Gusa said. “They’re in our homes, they’re everywhere.”
An analysis published last year in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases said some potentially deadly fungi found in the soil, including Coccidioides and Histoplasma, have significantly expanded their geographical range in the U.S. since the 1950s. Andrej Spec, a co-author of the analysis and an associate professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said warming temperatures, as well as other environmental alterations associated with climate change, could have played a role in this spread.
Cases of Coccidioidomycosis or Valley fever, a disease caused by Coccidioides, were once mostly limited to the Southwest, Dr. Spec said. Now people are being diagnosed in significant numbers in most states. Histoplasma infections, once common only in the Midwest, have been reported in 94% of states, the analysis said. Histoplasma is also spread through bat droppings and climate change has been linked to changing bat migration patterns, Dr. Spec said.
The World Health Organization has identified Cryptococcus, Coccidioides, Histoplasma and Candida auris as being among the fungal pathogens of greatest threat to people.
“We keep saying these fungi are rare, but this must be the most common rare disease because they’re now everywhere,” Dr. Spec said.
Write to Dominique Mosbergen at dominique.mosbergen@wsj.com
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Oldest DNA yet sequenced shows mastodons once roamed a warmer Greenland
Enlarge / An attempt to reconstruct what northern Greenland looked like about 2 million years ago.
When once-living tissue is preserved in a cold, dry environment, fragments of its DNA can survive for hundreds of thousands of years. In fact, DNA doesn’t even have to remain in tissue; we’ve managed to obtain DNA from the soil of previously inhabited environments. The DNA is damaged and broken into small fragments, but it’s sufficient to allow DNA sequencing, telling us about the species that once lived there.
In an astonishing demonstration of how well this can work, researchers have obtained DNA from deposits that preserved in Greenland for roughly 2 million years. The deposits, however, date from a relatively warm period in Greenland’s past and reveal the presence of an entire ecosystem that once inhabited the country’s north coast.
A different Greenland
Over the last million years or so, the Earth’s glacial cycles have had relatively short warm periods that don’t reach temperatures sufficient to eliminate the major ice sheets in polar regions. But before this time, the cycles were shorter, the warm periods longer, and there were times the ice sheets underwent major retreats. Estimates are that, around this time, the minimum temperatures in northern Greenland were roughly 10° C higher than they are now.
During this period, a set of deposits called the Kap København Formation was put in place in what was likely to be an estuary environment. Some of the layers of this deposit are likely to be sediments that washed into the area from a land-based environment, and other layers are sandy and were likely laid down by salt water.
Studies of these deposits have found pollen from various plant species and a handful of animal fossils. These indicate that more species were present in this past ecosystem than are presently found in northern Greenland, but it’s unclear how representative the finds are. Pollen can travel long distances, for example, and only a fraction of the animals are likely to be preserved.
The same area today, as researchers gather samples while avoiding contamination.
NOVA, HHMI Tangled Bank Studios & Handful of Films
So, a large international team decided to find out whether they could learn more about the ecosystem using environmental DNA. While Greenland remained warm for some time after these deposits, it was only relatively warm; winter lows were still well below freezing. And, for hundreds of thousands of years, the area has generally been about as cold as you would expect an area near the border between the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans would be.
The researchers then attempted to figure out just how old these deposits are. Based on a magnetic field reversal that occurred as the Kap København Formation was being laid down, they concluded that it was deposited either 1.9 or 2.1 million years ago—reasonably close to past estimates of 2.4 million years. They then plugged that age and the local climate conditions into software that estimates the amount of damage the DNA should accumulate. This suggested that there should only be a tiny fraction of the damage the DNA would have picked up in a warmer climate—damage was likely down by more than 700-fold.
The researchers argue that the minerals in the deposit interact with DNA, pulling it out of a solution and protecting it from any environmental enzymes.
Antarctica’s Only Native Insect Could Be Destined For Extinction as Winters Warm
Over tens of millions of years, the wingless midge Belgica antarctica has perfected the art of freezing itself to push through the darkest and coldest of Antarctica’s winter months, carving out an exclusive niche as the continent’s only native insect.
As climate change nudges polar temperatures ever higher, this hard-earned set of survival skills could ironically be detrimental to its very existence, potentially driving it to the brink of extinction.
Laboratory experiments conducted by a team of researchers from the US, UK, and South Africa showed warmer winters in the frozen south greatly impacted the insect’s movements and energy stores, jeopardizing the chances of it seeing another summer.
Usually smaller than a centimeter from tip to tail, the itty-bitty arthropod also happens to hold the unlikely position of being the largest animal in the land to never set a toe in the ocean. Its entire life cycle – spent mostly in one of four larval states – takes place amid moist beds of moss and algae, chomping on the greenery and rotting waste.
Even these humble refuges freeze over during Antarctica’s bitter winters, locking up precious moisture and threatening to turn the tiny critters into popsicles. So to hold out against the cold, the midge evolved a clever strategy to avoid death and bide its time.
As a guard against the trauma caused by ice crystals piercing its tissues, the midge slowly desiccates itself. Under the right conditions, individuals stand a good chance of making it through to summer, even after losing as much as three-quarters of its moisture.
That good chance depends a great deal on the humidity and whether it rehydrates using water vapor from the air or soaks it up directly from liquid water. Even small changes in the environmental conditions could make a big difference in survival rates.
In the Antarctic Peninsula – a region relatively rich in biodiversity – microclimates like those occupied by the midge tend to hover somewhere between -5 and 0 degrees Celsius (23 and 32 Fahrenheit). Protected by layers of snow and ice, temperatures can plummet in the atmosphere above, with little effect on the midge’s mossy garden.
With temperatures steadily rising as much as half a degree per decade on the peninsula, those relatively protected conditions could be set to change. Higher temperatures could mean more precipitation, meaning more snow, creating thicker insulation and less chance of winter freezing.
To see exactly what effect this would have on B. antarctica, the researchers collected midge larvae from the surrounds of a station on Anvers Island at the very tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.
These specimens were then sent back to a lab in the US where they spent six months living under subtly different wintery conditions, ranging from a chilly -5 degrees Celsius up to a balmy -1 degree. Different kinds of substrate, such as moss and algae, were also tested.
On defrosting in ice water, the survivors were examined for signs of movement, tissue damage, and energy stores of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.
That slight difference in temperature had a profound effect on the midge’s recovery. Under typical conditions, around half of the insects made it through. Warmed by just a few degrees, a mere third survived. Energy stores also varied significantly, with more fat and protein stores being retained under cold conditions than in warmer ones.
“These results correspond with locomotor activity levels, where larvae from the warm winter regime were slowest, potentially due to energy drain,” the researchers note in their report.
“With limited time prior to pupation after winter, and as adult B. antarctica lack functional mouthparts, energy store depletion during late larval instars would likely have irreversible consequences on the energy available for reproduction.”
It’s hard to say just what kind of impact this would have in the long run if temperatures continue to rise. Depending on the stresses posed by climate change, it could be a minor inconvenience or a blow that wipes out whole populations.
There is a possible silver lining, though: Warmer, winters could also be shorter, leaving the midge more time to collect larger stores during the summer months.
Whether this behavioral check counterbalances the negative impact of a warming environment is left to be measured.
With record heatwaves smashing the poles, the only insect to call Antarctica home could become yet one more victim of our rapidly changing climate.
This research was published in Functional Ecology.
Flawed Climate Models? Arctic Ocean Started Getting Warmer Decades Earlier Than We Thought
An international group of researchers reconstructed the recent history of ocean warming at the gateway to the Arctic Ocean in a region called the Fram Strait, between Greenland and Svalbard, and found that the Arctic Ocean has been warming for much longer than earlier records have suggested. Credit: Sara Giansiracusa
The Arctic Ocean has been getting warmer since the beginning of the 20th century – decades earlier than records suggest – due to warmer water flowing into the delicate polar ecosystem from the Atlantic Ocean.
An international group of researchers reconstructed the recent history of ocean warming at the gateway to the Arctic Ocean in a region called the Fram Strait, between Greenland and Svalbard.
Using the chemical signatures found in marine microorganisms, the researchers found that the Arctic Ocean began warming rapidly at the beginning of the last century as warmer and saltier waters flowed in from the Atlantic – a phenomenon called Atlantification – and that this change likely preceded the warming documented by modern instrumental measurements. Since 1900, the ocean temperature has risen by approximately 2 degrees 
Using the chemical signatures found in marine microorganisms, researchers have found that the Arctic Ocean began warming rapidly at the beginning of the last century as warmer and saltier waters flowed in from the Atlantic – a phenomenon called Atlantification. Credit: Sara Giansiracusa
All of the world’s oceans are warming due to climate change, but the Arctic Ocean, the smallest and shallowest of the world’s oceans, is warming fastest of all.
“The rate of warming in the Arctic is more than double the global average, due to feedback mechanisms,” said co-lead author Dr. Francesco Muschitiello from Cambridge’s Department of Geography. “Based on satellite measurements, we know that the Arctic Ocean has been steadily warming, in particular over the past 20 years, but we wanted to place the recent warming into a longer context.”
Atlantification is one of the causes of warming in the Arctic, however instrumental records capable of monitoring this process, such as satellites, only go back about 40 years.
As the Arctic Ocean gets warmer, it causes the ice in the polar region to melt, which in turn affects global sea levels. As the ice melts, it exposes more of the ocean’s surface to the sun, releasing heat and raising air temperatures. As the Arctic continues to warm, it will melt the permafrost, which stores huge amounts of methane, a far more damaging greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
The researchers used geochemical and ecological data from ocean sediments to reconstruct the change in water column properties over the past 800 years. They precisely dated sediments using a combination of methods and looked for diagnostic signs of Atlantification, like change in temperature and salinity.
“When we looked at the whole 800-year timescale, our temperature and salinity records look pretty constant,” said co-lead author Dr. Tesi Tommaso from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council in Bologna. “But all of a sudden at the start of the 20th century, you get this marked change in temperature and salinity – it really sticks out.”
“The reason for this rapid Atlantification of at the gate of the Arctic Ocean is intriguing,” said Muschitiello. “We compared our results with the ocean circulation at lower latitudes and found there is a strong correlation with the slowdown of dense water formation in the Labrador Sea. In a future warming scenario, the deep circulation in this subpolar region is expected to further decrease because of the thawing of the Greenland ice sheet. Our results imply that we might expect further Arctic Atlantification in the future because of climate change.”
The researchers say that their results also expose a possible flaw in climate models, because they do not reproduce this early Atlantification at the beginning of the last century.
“Climate simulations generally do not reproduce this kind of warming in the Arctic Ocean, meaning there’s an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms driving Atlantification,” said Tommaso. “We rely on these simulations to project future climate change, but the lack of any signs of an early warming in the Arctic Ocean is a missing piece of the puzzle.”
Reference: “Rapid Atlantification along the Fram Strait at the beginning of the 20th century” by Tommaso Tesi, Francesco Muschitiello, Gesine Mollenhauer, Stefano Miserocchi, Leonardo Langone, Chiara Ceccarelli, Giuliana Panieri, Jacopo Chiggiato, Alessio Nogarotto, Jens Hefter, Gianmarco Ingrosso, Federico Giglio, Patrizia Giordano and Lucilla Capotondi, 24 November 2021, Science Advances.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abj2946
Francesco Muschitiello is a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
Is your mom warmer with her grandkids than with you? A new study says blame biology
You’re not just imagining it, according to a new study.
Unlike other primates, humans rely on one another to help raise their children, and often those offspring do better when they have other adults, like their grandmothers, involved in their lives, said lead study author James Rilling, a professor of anthropology and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University in Atlanta. The importance of grandmothers can be traced neurologically, this study suggests.
Researchers found that grandmothers shown images of their biological grandchildren had a neurological response in the areas of their brain that are important for emotional empathy and motivation.
The study, published by the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, worked with 50 grandmothers who reported having positive relationships with their grandchildren and high levels of involvement with them.
The women underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures changes in blood flow that happen with brain activity, while being shown images of their grandchild, another child they didn’t know, an adult they didn’t know, and the same-sex parent of their grandchild. For some that was their own biological child, and for others it was their daughter- or son-in-law.
“This work points to the fact that there are important brain changes in members of a ‘village’ that raise a child. It’s not just the brain of birthing parents and partners that change,” said Jodi Pawluski, a neuroscientist and therapist based in France who was not associated with the study. “That is exciting.”
More emotional response for grandchildren
Studies have examined maternal and paternal brain functions in the past, but this is one of our first glimpses into how a grandmother’s brain reacts to their grandchildren, Rilling said.
“The study was partially motivated by the well-known ‘grandmother hypothesis,’ which posits that human female post-menopausal longevity evolved because of the benefits grandmothers were able to bestow on their grandchildren,” Rilling said via email.
The novelty of the study and the nature of it being early days in brain-scan findings mean that the results are preliminary, said anthropologist and primatologist Sarah B. Hrdy, professor emerita of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, who was not associated with the study, said.
Some findings aren’t surprising: Grandmothers showed more of a response when looking at their grandchildren than children they didn’t know, according to the study.
Interestingly, grandmothers showed brain activity correlated with cognitive empathy more when looking at their biological children and in-laws than their grandchildren. When looking at their grandchildren, they showed stronger emotional empathy than they did with their children.
“Emotional empathy is feeling the emotions that another person is feeling. Cognitive empathy is understanding what someone is thinking or feeling and why,” Rilling said.
That could mean that while grandparents were wired to seek to understand their adult children’s feelings, they are more geared to an emotional response when it comes to grandchildren.
“Not only is it showing that the brain of grandmothers is activated with grandparenting, it also shows that the parental brain areas are activated late in life, or perhaps are always activated. Once a mother, always a mother,” Pawluski said. “This supports and expands what others have recently reported in that there are continued effects of parenting on the brain into aging.”
Dragonflies and climate change: Warmer temperatures causes males to lose wing patterns
The new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that male dragonflies are adapting to a warming climate by shedding more of their darker wing patterns.
Researchers worry that female species may no longer recognize their male counterparts without their intricate wing patterns and, thus, won’t be able to reproduce as temperatures get hotter.
“Our research shows that males and females of these dragonfly species are going to shift in pretty different ways as the climate changes,” Michael Moore, lead author of the study and an evolutionary biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told CNN. “These changes are going to happen likely on a much faster timescale than the evolutionary changes in these species have ever occurred before.”
Moore and his colleagues analyzed a database of more than 300 dragonfly species across the US, Canada and northern Mexico, and cross-referenced the wing colors of roughly 2,700 individual dragonflies from different species across different locations and climate.
According to a study Moore co-authored in 2019, male dragonflies with darker wing patterns thrive under colder conditions, whereas warmer conditions dramatically reduce their performance. The latest study highlights that male dragonflies adapted to warmer temperatures by evolving less melanin on their wing patterns.
“Evolutionary changes and wing coloration are a really consistent way that dragonflies adapt to their climates,” he said. “This got us wondering what the role of evolutionary changes in wing coloration might be as dragonflies respond to the rise in global temperatures.”
A darker wing coloration is a crucial mating trait for male dragonflies, enticing female mates. But just as dark roads absorb the sun’s heat, dark wing pigments increase the dragonflies’ body temperatures by up to 2 degrees Celsius, damaging their wing tissue, overheating them and reducing their defense abilities — all of which pose deadly ramifications for the insects.
Moore likens it to wearing black clothing on a sunny, hot day: it’s going to make you feel hotter.
The findings, however, only apply to male dragonflies. Female dragonflies respond less to climate changes, and when they do, it’s usually the opposite way as male dragonflies. The reason, Moore says, remains unknown.
“We don’t yet know what’s driving these evolutionary changes in female wing coloration,” he said. “But one of the very important things that this indicates is that we shouldn’t assume that males and females are going to respond to climatic conditions in exactly the same way.”
The disparate evolution between the two, researchers say, pose challenges when it comes to mating or breeding.
In a 14-year period, from 2005 to 2019, Moore and his colleagues analyzed which dragonflies make it to the breeding stages and discovered that natural selection has prevented ornamented male dragonflies from breeding in warmer years, compared to cooler years.
The study’s climate projections also show that changes in dragonfly wing coloration will be a crucial aspect in seeing how the species would respond to warming temperatures over the next 50 years, predicting more decreases by 2070.
It’s not just dragonflies, according Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society, a nonprofit conservation group that protects insect habitats.
“This is evolution and adaptation in real time, but will they be able to adapt quickly enough?” Black, who is not involved with the study, told CNN. “The climate crisis is happening at a speed that is really unprecedented in human history. It’s all of these animals potentially adapting to be able to move to a climate or habitats that are able to support them.”
Black also said that adaptation alone will not help these species if they do not have enough water, in which their nymphs depend on to grow to adulthood. With large parts of the Western US facing record-breaking heat waves and drought while much of the Northeast region are under heat advisories, it’s clear that historic temperatures and climate impacts are taking a toll on various species and ecosystems including dragonflies.
“We must work on nature-based climate solutions, including wetland protection and restoration, to maintain this important biodiversity,” Black said. “Dragonflies are very important because they eat insects like mosquitoes so this is not just about dragonflies but disrupting the entire ecosystem.”
Meanwhile, Moore adds that climate and land management policies shouldn’t just focus on how species will survive, but also how they can continue to mate and reproduce to create a lasting population as climate change shifts habitats and ecosystems.
“What our research shows strongly is that as we make these recommendations to folks who work on policy and land management,” he said, “we need to make sure that they understand that these organisms also need reproduce and not just survive.”
Mars is leaking water into space during dust storms and warmer seasons
Water is leaking from Mars’ atmosphere through changing seasons and swirling Martian storms, scientists found in two new studies.
There is water on Mars, but it seems to only exist either in ice caps at the planet’s poles or as gas in the planet’s thin atmosphere. Water has been escaping the planet for billions of years, since Mars lost its magnetic field (and subsequently much of its air and water), and two new studies show how water moves through and leaves the planet’s atmosphere.
The two new studies, led by Anna Fedorova, a researcher at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Jean-Yves Chaufray, a scientist at the Laboratoire Atmospheres Observations Spatiales in France, use data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars orbiter, which began its main science mission in 2018, and ESA’s Mars Express orbiter, which to show that the escape rate of mars’ water is determined by changing weather and climate on Mars and the planet’s distance from the sun.
“The atmosphere is the link between surface and space, and so has much to tell us about how Mars has lost its water,” Fedorova said in an ESA statement.
Related: Mars may be wetter than we thought (but still not that habitable)
In these studies, the teams used data from ExoMars’ SPICAM (Spectroscopy for the Investigation of the Characteristics of the Atmosphere of Mars) instrument, which observed Mars’ atmosphere.
“We studied the water vapor in the atmosphere from the ground up to [62 miles] 100 kilometers in altitude, a region that had yet to be explored, over eight Martian years,” Fedorova said. (One year on Mars is about two Earth year.)
The researchers found that when the planet is farthest from the sun, at about 250 million miles (400 million km) away, water vapor in Mars’ atmosphere really only exists less than 37 miles (60 km) from the planet’s surface. However, when the planet is closest to the sun, at about 207 million miles (333 million kilometers), water can be found as far out as 56 miles (90 km) above the surface.
When Mars and the sun are farther apart, the cold makes the water vapor at a certain altitude in Mars’ atmosphere freeze out, but as the planet gets closer and warmer, that water can circulate farther. Because water vapor can travel out farther in Mars’ atmosphere during warmer seasons, those are also the times when the planet loses more water.
“The upper atmosphere becomes moistened and saturated with water, explaining why water escape rates speed up during this season — water is carried higher, aiding its escape to space,” Fedorova added.
But it’s not just seasons that dictate how much of Mars’ water leaks out into space; dust storms also play an important role, the researchers found in these studies. In poring over eight years of data, the scientists found that in the years that Mars experienced global dust storms, water traveled higher in the planet’s atmosphere. In these years, the researchers found water vapor over 50 miles (80 km) from the planet’s surface.
The scientists found that every billion years, Mars loses the equivalent of “a global [six feet] two-meter-deep layer of water,” according to the statement.
“This confirms that dust storms, which are known to warm and disrupt Mars’ atmosphere, also deliver water to high altitudes,” Fedorova said. “Thanks to Mars Express’ continuous monitoring, we were able to analyze the last two global dust storms, in 2007 and 2018, and compare what we found to storm-free years to identify how the storms affected water escape from Mars.”
Still, this work does not fully explain the amount of water that Mars has lost over the past 4 billion years, according to the statement. “A significant amount must have once existed on the planet to explain the water-created features we see,” Chaufray said. “As it hasn’t all been lost to space, our results suggest that either this water has moved underground, or that water escape rates were far higher in the past.”
These two studies were published Dec. 11, 2020, in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets and Jan. 1 in the journal Icarus.
Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Winter storm, Texas: Warmer temperatures, price gouging
Cars in a neighborhood in Austin, Texas slid down an icy hill, bumping into other vehicles and towards pedestrians.
Storyful
Texas rolled into full-blown recovery mode Sunday after a winter storm that at its powerful peak left more than 4 million in the dark and almost half the state’s 29 million people under boil-water advisories.
More than 70 deaths have been linked to the intense cold and damaging storms that swept through a wide swath of the nation last week, what AccuWeather described as “one of the stormiest weather patterns in decades.” About half the reported fatalities occurred in Texas, but there were deaths reported in several other states, from Oregon to Tennessee.
A warming trend brought welcome relief. In Tennessee, where Memphis was walloped with 10 inches of snow, temperatures soared into the high 50s on Sunday. In battered Texas, Houston’s temperature climbed into the 70s, and Austin was almost there.
Texas, where many power plants and water facilities were ill-equipped to handle the wintry onslaught, took the brunt of the damage. And state leaders took the brunt of the blame for failing to ensure that the power system could handle the strain. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said her home was without power for three nights.
“It’s worth asking the question: Who set up this system and who perpetuated it knowing that the right regulation was not in place?” Hidalgo, a Democrat, said. “Those questions are going to have to be asked, and I hope that changes will come. The community deserves answers.”
Winter storm moves into Northeast: Texans will see better weather
More than 33,000 Texas homes and businesses remained without power Sunday. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner called the power crash “foreseeable and preventable.”
Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has had harsh words for grid operators and managers of iced-locked wind turbines but has been less critical of oil and gas industry corporations that dominate Texas industry and support his political campaigns.
Power plants struggled to operate in the extreme cold, and some natural gas wellheads froze. The governor called on Texas lawmakers to require that power plants be winterized. Saturday, he promised to “work collaboratively” with lawmakers from both parties to get a handle on energy prices.
“We have a responsibility to protect Texans from spikes in their energy bills that are a result of the severe winter weather and power outages,” Abbott said.
Water systems also struggled. Almost 1,500 public water systems in Texas reported disrupted operations, said Toby Baker, executive director of the state Commission on Environmental Quality.
In Austin, temperatures remained below freezing for almost a week. Austin Water said Sunday that storage in reservoirs had climbed to 72 million gallons, but at least 100 million gallons were needed to help build water pressure systemwide.
“We urge customers with water service to limit water use to essential needs and follow mandatory water restrictions,” Austin Water tweeted. “Violations of these restrictions should be reported to Austin 3-1-1.”
In San Antonio, authorities said Sunday that water had been restored to 98% of the city.
A thin silver lining for residents of Austin and San Antonio: Lick Honest Ice Creams planned an ice cream giveaway Sunday from noon to 9 p.m. at its Austin and San Antonio shops.
“It’s been a week for the history books, y’all, and we hope we can make yours a little bit better,” the company posted on Facebook. “We’ve missed scooping for you and can’t wait to see you again!”
You need a break: Lick Honest Ice Creams serves free ice cream Sunday
Help was coming from all over. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., volunteered at the Houston Food Bank on Saturday and announced her fundraising effort for the storm recovery effort in the state had surpassed $4 million.
“That’s the New York spirit, that’s the Texas spirit, that’s the American spirit,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Almost 50,000 homes and businesses in West Virginia were without power Sunday. The number was almost 40,000 in Mississippi, where a high temperature in Jackson of 61 degrees was forecast Sunday.
“Crews continue to work around the clock,” Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves tweeted. “Weather continues to improve with high temps well above freezing in most places.”
As power is restored across the state, Entergy Mississippi President and CEO Haley Fisackerly cautioned customers to slowly phase in use to avoid overloading the system. He suggested turning off major appliances before the power is turned back on.
“I know when those lights come back on, you’re going to be ready to clean up that house and wash those dishes in your dishwasher or wash your clothes,” he said. “Do that in stages, (or it) could create problems back on the grid.”
Most of Jackson, a city of about 160,000, lacked running water, and officials blamed city water mains that are more than 100 years old and not built for freezing weather.
The city provided water for flushing toilets and drinking, but residents had to pick it up, leaving the elderly and those living on icy roads vulnerable.
In Tennessee, Memphis remained under a boil advisory Sunday after officials said they were concerned that low water pressure caused by problems at aging pumping stations and a rash of water main ruptures could lead to contamination.
National Weather Service meteorologist Josh Barnwell said Nashville’s shaded streets remained icy and treacherous over the weekend. A high of 50 degrees Sunday was likely to help.
“If this was all snow, it might melt faster,” Barnwell said. “It’s going to take a little bit.”
Contributing: Addie Broyles, Austin 360; Rachel Wegner, The (Nashville) Tennessean; Mississippi Clarion Ledger staff; The Associated Press
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