WEATHER

Newsweek -  Thick fog warnings are in place across 10 U.S. states, with the National Weather Service (NWS) advising drivers to be aware of potentially dangerous conditions. These "dense fog advisories" have been given to large sections of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, as well as smaller regions within Florida, Idaho, Maine, Texas and Washington.

According to the NWS, dense fog advisories are issued when "widespread fog is expected to reduce visibilities to 1/4 mile or less over a large area for an extended period of time (2 or more hours). "Low visibility could make driving conditions hazardous," they added.

 NPR - Temperatures in the Great Plains are expected to only hit the teens and 20s today. In Central and Southern California, the Great Basin and the Rockies, an atmospheric river event was set to bring rain and, in some places, snow. Parts of the upper Michigan peninsula are expected to get snow. And rain is in store for New York City. Here’s what else is in store for holiday weather and travel. 

Axios Generate -  The active and destructive 2024 Atlantic hurricane season is nearing its official end on Saturday after a puzzling yet profoundly damaging run.  The season featured an early flareup of activity — then a long, mysterious pause, followed by a backloaded blitz of storms that included two major hurricane U.S. landfalls...

Zoom in: Due to a combination of record hot ocean temperatures and predicted La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean, forecasters universally projected an above-average to much-above-average season.

• In the end, the North Atlantic basin spun up 18 named storms, with maximum sustained winds of at least 39 mph. Eleven of these storms were hurricanes, along with five major hurricanes of Category 3 or greater, according to NOAA.
• Five hurricanes hit the mainland U.S., including two major hurricanes, Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Helene alone caused more than 200 fatalities...

A typical Atlantic hurricane season features 14 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes.

The unusually hot sea surface temperatures that existed throughout the season across the Atlantic — from the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean to the central and eastern Atlantic — set records and stemmed in part from human-caused global warming.

• When the atmosphere was cooperative, these hot ocean waters served as a key ingredient for extraordinarily rapid hurricane intensification rates throughout the season.
• Hurricane Milton's maximum sustained winds, for example, jumped by an astonishing 90 mph in a 24-hour period from Oct. 6 to Oct. 7, one of the most significant intensification rates on record...

 While the season wasn't quite as extraordinarily active as some had predicted, it was above average in virtually all categories and wrought impacts that will be remembered for generations.