More than fifty dead as Hurricane Ida batters the American east coast.

More than fifty people have now died in the US in incidents linked to Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday 29 August 2021. The majority of the deaths occurred in northeastern states, which historically have not suffered many such events and were poorly prepared, with the highest number of deaths was recorded in New Jersey, where at least 23 people have died, mostly of drowning after becoming trapped in cars or flooded apartments, although the state was hit by at least one tornado generated by the hurricane, which is reported to have destroyed its largest dairy farm. 

 

Flooding in Manville, New Jersey, on Thursday 2 September 2021. Andrew Mills/NJ Advance Media.

At least fourteen people, including a two year old boy, have lost their lives in New York City, with eleven victims confirmed to have drowned after becoming trapped in flooded basements. The city was forced to temporarily close its streets to non-emergency vehicles to enable rescue work to be carried out, the subway network was closed due to flooding, and thousands of homes were left without power. 80 mm of rain fell in an hour in Central Park, surpassing a previous record of 49 mm, set only a month ago by another tropical storm that hit the city.

 

Flooding in New York linked to Hurricane Ida. AP.

Nine people are reported to have died in storm-related events in Louisiana, including at least one person who drowned, and three who died of carbon monoxide poisoning. However, the fact that the death toll was not much higher has been hailed as a vindication of the billions of dollars that have been invested in the leve system protecting the city of New Orleans following the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Katrina sixteen years ago. The city, which was directly in the path of the storm, suffered wind damage as it was battered by 240 km per hour winds, but only a limited amount of flooding. A plan to evacuate large parts of New Orleans in the event of it being hit by another major hurricane was not put into place because of the rapidity with which the storm formed, developing over the Caribbean Sea only four days before making landfall as the fifth largest storm ever to hit the US coast.

 

Buildings demolished by high winds as Hurricane Ida swept over New Orleans. Brandon Bell/Getty Images.

Elsewhere, at least five people have died in Pennsylvania, two each in Mississippi and Alabama, and one death each in Connecticut, Maryland, and Virginia. Many officials in the US, including President Joe Biden, have linked the storm directly to global warming, noting that the average storm hitting the US today does seven times as much damage as in the 1970s, that 'hundred year' storms now happen several times a decade, and that states formerly to the north of the hurricane zone are now regularly hit by these storms.

 

Floodwaters in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, associated with Hurricane Ida. Pittsburgh Post Gazette/AP.

Tropical storms, known as hurricanes in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific, are caused by solar energy heating the air above the oceans, which causes the air to rise leading to an inrush of air. If this happens over a large enough area the inrushing air will start to circulate, as the rotation of the Earth causes the winds closer to the equator to move eastwards compared to those further away (the Coriolis Effect). This leads to tropical storms rotating clockwise in the southern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere. These storms tend to grow in strength as they move across the ocean and lose it as they pass over land (this is not completely true: many tropical storms peter out without reaching land due to wider atmospheric patterns), since the land tends to absorb solar energy while the sea reflects it.

 

The formation of a tropical cyclone. Natural Disaster Management.

Despite the obvious danger of winds of this speed, which can physically blow people, and other large objects, away as well as damaging buildings and uprooting trees, the real danger from these storms comes from the flooding they bring. Each drop millibar drop in air-pressure leads to an approximate 1 cm rise in sea level, with big tropical storms capable of causing a storm surge of several meters. This is always accompanied by heavy rainfall, since warm air over the ocean leads to evaporation of sea water, which is then carried with the storm. These combined often lead to catastrophic flooding in areas hit by tropical storms.

 

The formation and impact of a storm surge. eSchoolToday.

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Tropical Storm Isias kills at least twelve in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, and the United States.

Tropical Storm Isias has killed at least twelve people as it swept across the Caribbean and the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. The storm reached hurricane strength in the Caribbean, sweeping to the south of Puerto Rico, where it caused high winds and flooding, and led to three known deaths. Chiche Peguero, 53, of Río San Juan in María Trinidad Sánchez Province, who was electrocuted by a falling power line, a woman drowned after being swept into a river in Rincón Province, and a five-year-old boy who was killed by a falling tree at Altamira in Puerto Plata Province. Across the island about 448 000 people were left without electricity, and many roads were flooded. severley hampering travel and communication. The storm swept across the Dominican Republic, causing widespread flooding, and causing the death of a horse and its rider who were again hit by a falling power line. The storm reached the Bahamas on 31 July 2020, causing widespread flooding and wind-damage, before moving towards the coast of the United States.

Workers clearing debris left by Hurricane Isias in the Dominican Republic. Erika Santelices/AFP.

The passed to the east of Florida on 1 August 2020, causing some flooding and power outages, but few serious problems, however as it made landfall in North Carolina it caused more severe flooding, and triggered a series of tornadoes, one of which struck a trailer park in Bertie County, killing at least two people, with around twenty injured and three more still missing. From here it passed northward through Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, causing widespread flooding, wind damage and power-outages, with one person killed in Milford, Delaware, when her vehicle was struck by a falling tree. The storm caused further flooding in Pennsylvania, where it claimed another life as a 44-year-old woman and her car were swept away by floodwaters in Lehigh County.

Damage to boats at Southport Marina in Brunswick County, North Carolina, following the passage of Hurricane Isias. Ken Blevins/Star News.

Further north the storm caused flooding and tornadoes in New Jersey, causing damage to a number of homes and businesses, and the collapse of a church steeple in Ocean City. A 21-year-old man drowned off the coast of Cape May in New Jersey, another person was killed when a falling tree hit their car in Queens, New York, and a third death was also caused by a falling tree in New Haven County, Connecticut.

Damage to hourses in Cape May County, New Jersey, caused by Tropical Storm Isias. NCB10.

Tropical storms are caused by solar energy heating the air above the oceans, which causes the air to rise leading to an inrush of air. If this happens over a large enough area the inrushing air will start to circulate, as the rotation of the Earth causes the winds closer to the equator to move eastwards compared to those further away (the Coriolis Effect). This leads to tropical storms rotating clockwise in the southern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere. These storms tend to grow in strength as they move across the ocean and lose it as they pass over land (this is not completely true: many tropical storms peter out without reaching land due to wider atmospheric patterns), since the land tends to absorb solar energy while the sea reflects it.

The path and strength of Tropical Storm Isias. Thick line indicates the past path of the storm (till 9.00 am GMT on Wednesday 5 August 2020), while the thin line indicates the predicted future path of the storm, and the dotted circles the margin of error at nine and twenty one, hours ahead. Colour indicated the severity of the storm. Tropical Storm Risk.

Despite the obvious danger of winds of this speed, which can physically blow people, and other large objects, away as well as damaging buildings and uprooting trees, the real danger from these storms comes from the flooding they bring. Each drop millibar drop in air-pressure leads to an approximate 1 cm rise in sea level, with big tropical storms capable of causing a storm surge of several meters. This is always accompanied by heavy rainfall, since warm air over the ocean leads to evaporation of sea water, which is then carried with the storm. These combined often lead to catastrophic flooding in areas hit by tropical storms.

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Outbreak of Eastern Equine Encephalitis kills at least thirteen people in the United States.

At least thirteen people have died in an outbreak of Eastern Equine Encephalitis in the United States since August 2019. Outbreaks of the disease are expected in the US at this time of year, but this year's epidemic is exceptional both in terms of the number of cases reported and the number of fatalities. Five people have died in Michigan alone, out of a total of ten cases reported in the state, with three fatalities each in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and one each in Rhode Island and Indiana.  Only a single fatality was reported from the disease in 2018, out of 23 cases reported across the US, with 2 deaths in 2017 out of a total of 45 cases.

Eastern Equine Encephalitis is caused by the Eastern Equine Encephalitis Alphavirus, a form of Togavirus closely related to the Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Alphavirus, and the Western Equine Encephalitis Alphavirus. These are single stranded positive-sense RNA Viruses. 

Colourised TEM micrograph of a mosquito salivary gland: The virus particles (virions) are coloured red. Fred Murphy and Sylvia Whitfield/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Public Health Image Library/Wikimedia Commons.

Eastern Equine Encephalitis is a Mosquito-born disease which primarily infects Birds, but is occasionally passed to Mammals through Mosquito bites. It gets the name 'Equine Encephalitis' because it is much more virulent in Horses than Humans, having first been discovered after an outbreak in Massachusetts killed 75 Horses in 1831. 

About 95% of people infected by the disease develop no symptoms, and are only detected if screening programs are introduced during an epidemic. Those who do develop symptoms suffer chills, fever, malaise, arthralgia, and myalgia for about two weeks, with about a quarter developing encephalitis (swelling of the brain), which can cause symptoms such as fever, headache, irritability, restlessness, drowsiness, anorexia, vomiting, diarrhea, cyanosis, convulsions, and coma. Around a third of patients that develop encephalitis die of the illness, with many others suffering permanent brain damage.

A vaccine against Eastern Equine Encephalitis is available for Horses, but none has been developed for Human use, nor is any specific treatment available, though fluid replacement, plus treatment with anticonvulsants (drugs to reduce convulsions) and antipyretics (drugs to reduce fever) have been shown to help.

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Colobops noviportensis: A new species of Archosuaromorph from the Late Triassic of Connecticut.

Archosauromorphs, defined as everything more closely related to Dinosaurs and Crocodiles than to Lepidosaurs (Lizards, Snakes and Sphenodon, flourished in the aftermath of the End Permian Extinction, becoming the dominant Vertebrates in most terrestrial ecosystems. They have suffered heavily in each of the subsequent mass extinction events, particularly the End Triassic and End Cretaceous, but each time recovered, with over 10 000 species still alive today (mostly Birds). Almost all post-Triassic Archosauromorphs belomg to three highly successful groups, the Testudines (Turtles and Tortoises), the Crocodylomorphs, and the Dinosaurs (including the Birds), however, in the Triassic a much more diverse range of these animals was present. 

In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications on 23 March 2018, Adam Pritchard of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University, Jacques Gauthier, also of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University, and of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Michael Hanson, again of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University, Gabriel Bever of the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at Johns Hopkins University, and Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, once again of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University, and of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, describe a new species of Archosauromoph from the Late Triassic New Haven Arkose of Connecticut.

The new species is named Colobops noviportensis, where 'Colobops' means 'short-snout', and 'noviportensis' means 'from Newhaven'. The species is described from a nearly complete cranium and coronoid process of right mandible, lacking tooth-bearing portions of premaxillae, maxillae, palate, and mandible, preserved largely within a sandstone matrix and μCT scanned at the Laboratory of Integrative Science’s Center for Nanoscale Systems at Harvard University.

Reconstructed skull of Colobops noviportensis. Three-dimensional volume rendering of the skull produced in VG Studio Max 3.0 in (a) dorsal, (b) ventral, (c) left lateral, and (d) anterior views. Gray portions indicate portions of the skull of uncertain homology. Scale bar equal to 1 cm. Abbreviations: cp, coronoid process; fo, fontanelle; pf, parietal foramen; sc, sagittal crest. Pritchard et al. (2018).

The skull of Colobops noviportensis is estimated to have been only 2.5 cm in length, providing a valuable insight into smaller Triassic Archosauromorphs, which are less well understood than their larger relatives. The precise affinities of Colobops noviportensis are uncertain, but it appears likely that it was a Rhynchosaur, an early group of Archosauromorphs closely related to the Archosauroformes, the group which includes Dinosaurs and Crocodylomorphs. This species was relatively short-snouted, and appears to have had a powerful bite.

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Holcoptera spp.: Aquatic Beetles from the Mesozoic of England and the United States.

Insects are abundant in the fossil record, but historically have been overlooked at many sites by fossil hunters looking for larger, more glamorous specimens. However some more distinctive and eye-catching Insects have been widely collected, making them over-represented in collections compared to contemporary Insect species. Whilst this can give a distorted view of ancient ecologies, such specimens are not without use, as they can track the survival of Insect groups across extinction events and other major ecological changes. One such group of Insects are Beetles of the genus Holcoptera, which are known from several Late Triassic and Early Jurassic sites in England and the eastern United States. These Beetles are known almost entirely from isolated elytra (wing-cases) which have a distinctive banded pattern. Due to the fragmentary nature of most of these specimens it has been difficult to assign them to a higher group, though it has been suggested that their general morphology is similar to that of the Coptoclavidae, a Mesozoic Beetle family thought to have been aquatic due to their horizontally divided eyes (which could give each eye an above water and below water component), and which may be ancestral to the modern Whirligig Beetles, Gyrinidae.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association on 27 June 2017, Richard Kelly of the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol and the Department of Natural Sciences at the National Museum of Scotland, Andrew Ross, also of the Department of Natural Sciences at the National Museum of Scotland, and of the Department of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum, and Philip Davidson of the Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre, present a review of the genus Holcoptera, presenting new, previously undescribed specimens which shed light on the group’s affinities and describing three new species.

Firstly Kelly et al. examined Holcoptera schlotheimi, the first species described in the genus, by Christian Giebel in 1856, from an isolated elytra found in Late Triassic Deposits near the village of Apperley in Gloucestershire. This specimen is 5.3 mm in length and 1.6 mm wide, with four dark bands and a dark patch at its base. A large number of similar specimens, ranging in length from 4.8 to 7.5 mm, have been described since this time, from the Triassic beds of Gloucestershire and Early Jurassic deposits in Warwickshire and Dorset in England, and Hartford County, Connecticut. Kelly et al. describe two new specimens of this species, both from the Early Jurassic of Binton in Warwickshire. One of these is a complete Beetle with only the legs and antennae missing, and good preservation of the eyes, the other is a partial Beetle specimen with part of the hind legs preserved. 

 More complete specimens of Holcoptera schlotheimi, (A) NHMUK I.11085, (B) NHMUK I.6682. Both Hettangian, from Binton, Warwickshire. Kelly et al. (2017).

Nexr Kelly et al. re-examined Holcoptera giebeli, a species first described by Anton Handlirsch in 1907, again, from a specimen from Late Triassic Deposits near the village of Apperley in Gloucestershire, and has subsequently been identified in Triassic deposits from Worcestershire, and Jurassic deposits from Dorset. This species has elytra with five dark bands. Kelly et al. describe a new specimen of this species from the Early Cretaceous of Dorset, preserved as part and counterpart on a split slab, with the underside of the elytra, legs and eyes present on the half preserved in ventral view.

Holcoptera giebeli NHMUK PI II.3101 a, Sinemurian, from Black Ven, Dorset. Kelly et al. (2017).

Based upon these specimens Kelly et al. conclude that this genus can be placed confidently in the Coptoclavidae, and shows some adaptations to an aquatic lifestyle, including split eyes and slightly flattened limbs.

Next Kelly et al. describe a new species, Holcoptera pigmentatus, where 'pigmentatus' means 'pigments' in reference to the heavy colouration of the specimen. The species is described from a single elytra from the Late Triassic of Warwickshire.

Holcoptera pigmentatus. NHMUK I.10714. Rhaetian, from Brown’s Wood, Warwickshire. (A) photo, (B) line drawing. Kelly et al. (2017).

After this they describe a secoond new species, Holcoptera alisonae, named in honour of Alison Crighton, Richard Kelly's mother. The species is described from three specimens from the Early Jurassic of Dorset, one of which preserves an outline of the head and forepart of the body.This species has three bars on its elytra.

Holcoptera alisonae. NHMUK In.59115. Sinemurian, from Stonebarrow, Dorset. Kelly et al. (2017).

Finally Kelly et al. describe a third new species, Holcoptera solitensis, where 'solitensis' means 'from Solite' in reference to the Solite Quarry in North Carolina. This species is described from two Late Triassic specimens, with four bands, only one of which reaches the tip of the elytra.

Holcoptera solitensis  (part) VMNH 49735. Norian, from the Solite Quarry, North Carolina. Kelly et al. (2017).

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