Hurricane Irene is going to hit the United States’ east coast this weekend, as you have likely heard. It looks to be a pretty nasty storm, capable of causing billions of dollars of damage. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been carefully tracking Irene, forecasting its path up the coast and its intensity. Of course, America’s Republican-demanded White House-encouraged austerity budget includes cuts to the NOAA. Cuts that will delay — by years — the construction and launch of an extreme weather forecasting satellite. So let’s hope there aren’t any serious hurricanes in 2016, I guess?

Think Progress links to the words of NOAA administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco:

Speaking at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on a day when the weather forecast warned of possible tornadoes and golf-ball-size hail east of the city, Dr. Lubchenco said there would be a gap of at least a year and a half, and possibly much longer, during which NOAA has no operational satellite circling the planet on a north-south orbit.

The polar-orbiting satellite enables scientists to predict severe storms five to 10 days before they hit.

“Whether the gap is longer than that depends on whether we get the money”— $1 billion — “in the next budget,” warned Dr. Lubchenco, an environmental scientist. “I would argue that these satellites are critically important to saving lives and property and to enabling homeland security.”

This is an old story: Before or after a natural disaster, you can usually find a Republican who wanted to cut funding for departments and organizations that predicted and protected people from said disaster.

Remember when Louisiana governor and poor public speaker mocked the concept of funding for “volcano monitoring” and then a volcano promptly erupted in Alaska? And remember how after Eric Cantor pushed for across-the-board budget cuts for the United States Geological Survey, his district was hit with an earthquake? And remember how the House Republican budget cut funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and then there was an earthquake and tsunami in Japan?

Yes, well, as Matt Yglesias points out, when you want to cut funding for everything the government does, sometimes there will be major news events that involve something the government should be doing something about, and people will say, hey, shouldn’t the government be doing something about this?

Cutting money for disaster preparedness programs is a really good method of eventually wasting much more money, in the future, than you saved in the present, but that’s sort of been the entire Republican spending philosophy for years now, actually.

This afternoon’s earthquake had barely stopped before the online jokes started.

Since the geological incident — which occurred in Virginia, but was felt up and down the East Coast — Twitterers (and other merry Internet pranksters) have invoked everyone from God to Ryan Gosling in their efforts to mock sensationalist responses and calm frazzled nerves.

Thousands of rescuers dug through thick mud for survivors of deadly landslides and flooding as South Korea’s military warned Thursday that buried land mines may have slid down mountains weakened by rain.

Massive rainfall in Seoul and surrounding areas since Tuesday has killed at least 47 people, and another four were missing. The rain stopped or decreased Thursday, but more was forecast until Friday morning.

At a mountain where a deadly slide hit Wednesday, digging for missing people was halted Thursday until the rain stopped because the Defense Ministry said mines placed there in the 1960s could have shifted. Soldiers with metal detectors were waiting to search for the mines, said Yoon Yong-sam, a spokesman for the air force, which planted the land mines around an air defense base on the mountain.

At dusk yesterday evening, Phoenix, Ariz., disappeared as a nearly mile-high wall of dust descended on the city. The storm — called a “haboob” — isn’t uncommon in the region, though Arizonans who spoke with the AP said last night’s event was worse than usual. Planes at the Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix were grounded for a little than an hour by the storm, which also left about 10,000 customers without power. We’ve collected a handful of video and photos from the storm, which you can view below:

AP

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Monday, Jun 27, 2011 3:35 PM UTC

Flooding seeps into Nebraska nuclear plant

Rising water has breached a turbine building at Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station, near Omaha

By Associated Press

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FILE - In this June 14, 2011 file photo, the Fort Calhoun nuclear power station, in Fort Calhoun, Neb., is surrounded by flood waters from the Missouri River. The pictures of a Nebraska nuclear power plant were startling: Floodwaters from the swollen Missouri River had risen nearly to the reactor building, with the potential to climb even higher. Coming only a few months after Japan's nuclear disaster, the Associated Press images alarmed many people who saw them earlier this week. But nuclear regulators and the utility that runs the Fort Calhoun reactor say there is little cause for immediate concern. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)(Credit: AP)

Missouri River floodwater seeped into the turbine building at a nuclear power plant near Omaha on Monday, but plant officials said the seepage was expected and posed no safety risk because the building contains no nuclear material.

An 8-foot-tall, water-filled temporary berm protecting the plant collapsed early Sunday. Vendor workers were at the plant Monday to determine whether the 2,000 foot berm can be repaired.

Omaha Public Power District spokesman Jeff Hanson said pumps were handling the problem at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station and that “everything is secure and safe.” The plant, about 20 miles north of Omaha, has been closed for refueling since April. Hanson said the berm’s collapse didn’t affect the shutdown or the spent fuel pool cooling.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Victor Dricks described the situation as stable. NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko plans to inspect the Fort Calhoun plant on Monday as part of a pre-arranged visit to Nebraska.

Hanson said OPPD fired up generators and cut the power supply after water surrounded the main electrical transformers on Sunday. The generators powered the plant until an off-site power supply was connected later in the day.

Officials said the berm wasn’t critical to protecting the plant, which sits across the river from Iowa.

“There are other structures and systems in place that can ensure they will continue operating safely,” Jaczko said Sunday.

The river was not expected to rise higher than the level the plant is designed to handle.

Jackzo inspected the Cooper Nuclear Station, which sits on the Missouri River about 75 miles south of Omaha, on Sunday. He asked plant officials and the NRC’s local inspectors questions about the plant and this year’s flooding.

The plant, which is owned by Nebraska Public Power District, remains dry because it sits at an elevation above the river and continues to operate at full capacity. The base of Cooper and its storage area for used nuclear fuel is 903 feet above sea level. The river was 900.2 feet above sea level early Monday.

Both nuclear plants issued flooding alerts earlier this month, although they were routine as the river’s rise has been expected.

Flooding remains a concern all along the Missouri because of massive amounts of water the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has released from upstream reservoirs. The river is expected to rise as much as 5 to 7 feet above flood stage in much of Nebraska and Iowa and as much as 10 feet over flood stage in parts of Missouri.

The corps expects the river to remain high at least into August because of heavy spring rains in the upper Plains and substantial Rocky Mountain snowpack melting into the river basin.

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Friday, Jun 24, 2011 11:01 AM UTC

No tsunami for coastal Alaska after strong quake

A magnitude-7.2 earthquake shook Alaska's Aleutian Islands on Thursday evening; no damage has been reported

By Mark Thiessen, Associated Press

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The Aleutian Islands and the Alaska Peninsula.

A magnitude-7.2 earthquake shook a large swath of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands on Thursday evening, sending residents of small coastal towns to higher ground as officials issued a tsunami warning in the temblor’s wake.

The quake was centered about 122 miles east of Atka, about 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage. It was recorded at a depth of 26 miles, the Alaska Earthquake Information Center said.

The quake was felt through the central Aleutians and as far east as Dutch Harbor and Unalaska, but no damage was reported, said Jeremy Zidek, a spokesman with the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

“It was shaking, it was just a little rumbly” and lasted about 20 seconds, said Atka resident Rodney Jones.

The West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center posted a tsunami warning for some coastal areas of Alaska, but canceled the warning about an hour after the quake. The warning covered an area from 80 miles northeast of Dutch Harbor to about 125 miles west of Adak.

Jones said it appeared all of the town’s 61 residents took to higher ground when they heard the tsunami warning, which he heard issued over CB radio. The townspeople gathered on a high hill for about an hour, near the city’s new water tank.

During their wait for the all-clear signal, he said a priest with the town’s Russian Orthodox Church recited prayers.

In Dutch Harbor, longshoreman Jim Paulin said warning sirens caused also caused hundreds of people to begin climbing up a nearby hill.

“Right now there’s hundreds of people up on the hilltop,” he told The Associated Press before the all-clear was given. “I can look across the bay and see people on another hilltop.”

After the tsunami warning was canceled, he said everybody was “calm. It seems like everybody’s kind of enjoying it. It’s good weather.”

Paulin said no one seemed panicked because the city has been evacuated in the past. But, he said, “It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

——

Associated Press writers Kathy McCarthy in Seattle and Michelle Price in Phoenix contributed to this report.

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