Climate

Hurricane Rafael cut off power across the island even before it made landfall on Wednesday as a Category 3 storm. Authorities are still working to restore power after weeks of widespread, prolonged blackouts exacerbated by another hurricane that struck Cuba in late October.

Utility planning documents show rising costs for customers in some regions of the US as tech companies build out energy-hungry data centers, the Washington Post reports:

“A lot of governors and local political leaders who wanted economic growth and vitality from these data centers are now realizing it can come at a cost of increased consumer bills,” said Neil Chatterjee, former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Meta wanted to build a nuclear-powered AI data center in the US — until a rare species of bee was found at the site, according to the Financial Times.

Tech giants have inked a string of nuclear energy deals lately to try to meet growing electricity demand for AI data centers.

The Quartz Corp CEO Thomas Guillaume said the company’s assets have been “largely preserved” after Hurricane Helene brought devasting flooding and power outages to the area.

Sibelco, another quartz mining company crucial to the chip-making process, resumed operations earlier this month.

Power outages affect more than 3.3 million customers in Florida, out of the 11.5 million customers tracked by poweroutage.us (which collects data from utilities). Milton made landfall as an “extremely dangerous category 3 hurricane” Wednesday night.

Correction: It is 11.5 million customers, not 11.5.

We might not hear from them for a while if Milton knocks out power and communicates like Hurricane Helene did. “Life-threatening” hurricane-force winds and flash floods are on the way, the National Hurricane Center warns.

Hurricane Milton has rapidly intensified into a Category 5 storm and is quickly making its way toward the western coast of Florida, threatening communities still recovering from Hurricane Helene.

Key sites for producing high-purity quartz used in chipmaking “only sustained minor damage,” according to an initial assessment by Sibelco, one of the mining companies in Spruce Pine, NC. But power outages are still a big problem for its operations after the devastating storm.

The Quartz Corp, meanwhile, says “damage is mostly concentrated around ancillary units,” and that it’s confident it can “avoid” supply disruptions.

The 320-mile line would connect the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) power grid to other states for the first time. Unlike most states that send each other electricity in times of need, the Lone Star state has historically been isolated. That made it more vulnerable to power outages during extreme weather like deadly Winter Storm Uri in 2021.

The monstrous storm devastated North Carolina, a key swing state in the presidential election. Communities face a long recovery ahead after Helene leveled towns. With so many people displaced and polling locations flooded, officials are worried about how much harder it could be now for people to cast their votes.

NASA and other federal agencies launched a new website last week that shows past, present, and future sea level rise along America’s coastlines. It combines data from satellites with readings from sensors on the ground to create an interactive map.

A report by CBS 17 in Raleigh goes into how some of the communities in North Carolina’s mountains are communicating after the floods.

In Asheville, they said some people and organizations with Starlink satellite dishes have set them up at shelters so others can get online, along with “Satellite Cells on Light Trucks” and other temporary cellular towers.

About as much water as a single-use bottle holds, the The Washington Post reports. The electricity it takes is about as much as 14 LED light bulbs might burn through in an hour.

These are rough estimates, but they come with helpful illustrations to show the environmental costs of operating data centers for new AI tools.