Topic: Great Plains
Top galleries, list articles, quizzes
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Tornado checklist: What to do – and what myths to ignore
Here are six items severe-weather experts advise putting on your tornado-emergency checklist – along with four tornado-response myths to ignore.
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5 irresistible children's picture books
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been reading or how grown-up you think you’ve become – children’s picture books remain one of the greatest delights a reader can experience.
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Bestselling books the week of 10/28/10, according to IndieBound*
What's selling best in independent bookstores across America.
All Content
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Southern Great Plains could run out of groundwater in 30 years, study finds
A new study looking at key aquifers beneath the Great Plains and California's Central Valley suggests that areas of Texas and Kansas are drawing groundwater at an unsustainable rate.
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Cover Story
CSI Tornado: Decoding – and chasing – supercells with the experts
CSI Tornado: Chasing supercells, interviewing a homeowner sucked off his front porch in an Oklahoma tornado outbreak, and examining the path of a destructive funnel, an expert expedition shows how science is close to decoding the way a tornado works.
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Editor's Blog
Riding the whirlwind
The Monitor's intrepid science writer rode with the storm-chasers who help federal forecasters warn those in twisters' paths.
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As extreme weather events increase, so does acceptance of climate science (+video)
A new survey finds that a majority of Americans believe that weather in the United States is getting worse, and they are linking it to global warming.
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Spring into summer: Unseasonable heat helps pave way for violent weather
Spring is just beginning, but in many parts of the country it already feels like summer. As a storm moves into especially warm humid air in the center of the country, Texas is under the gun for violent storms.
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Robert Reich
The GOP slides right, and the rest of us should worry
Even if they don't win on Election Day, the fringe right-wingers who have taken over the Repuplican party, will have a deep, negative impact on our government.
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The Circle Bastiat
Why we're paying more for corn
Thanks to government subsidies supporting a specific type of corn farm, land value is increasing, and prices are going up. The same is true of other federally supported crops.
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Cover Story
Wind power: Clean energy, dirty business?
In the developing world, where land-intensive wind turbines are being rapidly constructed, wind power has often turned clean energy into dirty business.
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Tornadoes hit Birmingham and broader South. Is that normal for January?
The severe weather damaged homes in communities in central Arkansas, as well as in communities around Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Ala. Both Alabama cities were also hit by tornadoes last April.
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The hidden issue in South Carolina primary: labor union clout
Mitt Romney in particular has used the South Carolina primary to test anti-labor union policies as a campaign issue. His pitch to expand right-to-work laws could lead to Wisconsin redux.
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Obama puts Keystone pipeline on hold, decries 'rushed and arbitrary' deadline
Speaker Boehner accuses Obama of 'selling out American jobs for politics,' but Keystone pipeline operator TransCanada says it will submit plans for a rerouted project later this year.
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Holiday travel: why airports will be a little emptier this year
The airline industry expects about 20,000 fewer people per day to fly this holiday period – not good news for an ailing industry already hurting from volatile fuel costs.
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Blizzard closes highways from New Mexico to Kansas
Blizzard conditions shut down parts of I-40 and I-70 in New Mexico, Kansas, and Texas. At least six traffic fatalities were blamed on the snowstorm and high winds.
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Winter forecast: La Niña returns, southern drought persists
Last winter – with its droughts, tornado outbreaks, heavy snows, and floods – was a tough one in different ways for millions of people. Be prepared for more of the same this year.
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Keystone XL pipeline pits jobs against the environment
The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would bring Canadian oil to the Gulf of Mexico. Supporters say it would mean 20,000 jobs. Opponents worry about the impact on the vast Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies water to eight states.
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Climate change: Species climbing higher and migrating north, study says
Organisms are responding to climate change at a pace much faster than scientists estimated about a decade ago, according to a new study in the journal Science.
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Midwest flooding: What's at stake in plan to blast open Missouri levee
A judge on Friday gave the go-ahead to the US Army Corps of Engineers to blow an opening into a Missouri levee. Advocates say it's the best way to prevent worse flooding downriver, but residents could be affected.
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'Dixie Alley' as dangerous as the better-known Tornado Alley, say scientists
As storms ravage the South, a recent study suggests that Dixie Alley may just be an extension of its better-known neighbor Tornado Alley, putting much of the eastern US at an 'elevated' risk for tornadoes.
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Tornado checklist: What to do – and what myths to ignore
Here are six items severe-weather experts advise putting on your tornado-emergency checklist – along with four tornado-response myths to ignore.
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Quartz could hold key to explaining earthquakes
Why do some areas of the earth's crust repeatedly swell and crack, while others don't? The answer is in the quartz, a new study suggests.
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9,400-year-old dog found, earliest found in Americas
9,400-year-old dog: Researchers are saying they have found a bone fragment from what they are calling the earliest confirmed domesticated dog in the Americas.
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The Vote
2010 census results: Why did US population growth slow?
The US added some 27 million residents in the past decade. But that population growth is small, percentage-wise – 9.7 percent. Only during the Great Depression decade was the growth rate lower.
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5 irresistible children's picture books
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been reading or how grown-up you think you’ve become – children’s picture books remain one of the greatest delights a reader can experience.
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New energy: climate change and sustainability shape a new era
A new energy revolution – similar to shifts from wood to coal to oil – is inevitable as climate change and oil scarcity drive a global search for sustainability in power production. But even the promise of renewable energy holds drawbacks.
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Bestselling books the week of 10/28/10, according to IndieBound*
What's selling best in independent bookstores across America.
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