(NEW YORK) — Texas has been baking in record heat since the weekend, and the rest of the week will be no exception.
Record highs are expected Thursday from Roswell, New Mexico, to Galveston, Texas, forecasts show. Heat alerts have been issued by the National Weather Service for Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Florida on Thursday.
San Antonio and Austin are expected to break records if they reach the forecast highs of 104 and 103, respectively. Record heat will last in Texas through this weekend but will begin to subside early next week.
More than a dozen record highs were tied or broken in Texas on Wednesday, with more to come in the next several days.
Abilene, Texas, hit an all-time record high temperature of 113 degrees, with records dating back to 1885 for the city. San Antonio hit 108 degrees, the hottest temperature in 11 years, tying for the fourth-hottest temperature on record.
Houston was one of the cities in Texas that hit the hottest day of the year on Tuesday and Wednesday, reaching 102 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Weather Service.
Several Texas cities either tied or broke heat records on Tuesday. Del Rio hit 108 degrees and San Antonio reached 106 degrees. Temperatures reached 104 degrees in Borger; 102 degrees in Amarillo and Corpus Christi; and 98 degrees in Galveston.
(TAMPA, Fla.) — As Danny Pownall looked through the piles of debris on the street in front of one of his rental properties in Redington Shores, Florida, he pointed out suitcases, beds and even a workout ball.
“Their lives just got flipped upside down, literally, and dumped on the street,” he said of residents still recovering from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in Florida on Sept. 30 and then cut a path of destruction and death up through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee.
Pownall told ABC News that Helene destroyed his home as well as some of his rental properties. As a line of dump trucks waited to pick up the piles of debris left by Helene, Pownall and other residents in the Tampa metropolitan area are bracing for Hurricane Milton, which the police chief of Tampa described as “the storm of the century.”
“We don’t know what this storm is going to do,” said Pownall, surveying the sagging second-floor terrace of one of his properties still standing. “That could be a one-two punch to take out this property.”
As of Tuesday, Milton was a Category 4 hurricane swirling in the Gulf of Mexico about 500 miles south-by-southwest of Tampa. It is expected to make landfall around 11 p.m. Wednesday between St. Petersburg and Sarasota, possibly as a Category 3 hurricane, officials said.
From Treasure Island near St. Petersburg to Sanibel Island near Fort Miles, officials are preparing for an emergency on top of the emergency left by Helene and issuing mandatory evacuations.
Florida officials warn that Milton is stacking up to be a monster, forecasting a 10-to-15-foot storm surge, nearly twice as high as what transpired in the area during Helene.
“I know that our residents, our staff, everyone is absolutely, purely exhausted from the recovery effort for Hurricane Helene, but we do need to start preparing for another potential serious hit from another hurricane,” Treasure Island Mayor Tyler Payne said in a video message to his community on Monday. “And you’re still trying to recover from that, and now we have to go through it all over again. But it is absolutely critical that you obey the evacuation orders when they are issued and really protect yourself at this point.”
Sarah Steslicki told ABC News on Tuesday that she has endured more than two decades of hurricanes since building her house in Belleair Beach near Tampa, but said she will decide at the last minute whether to evacuate to higher ground.
“We are still staying put. The storm has been delayed. It’s slowed down a bit. We want to make sure we know the path of the storm. Is it safer to stay at home or are we going to leave?” said Steslicki, adding that she lives on high ground and that her garage got about 2 inches of water during the 8-foot storm surge caused by Helene.
The last time multiple hurricanes hit Florida in such a short period was in 2004, when hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne pummeled the state in just six weeks.
“It was chaotic. They were spread out like a week apart,” Steslicki said of surviving the quadruple hit in 2004. “As soon as we’d put our patio furniture out, we’d have to bring it all back in.”
Milton is lining up for a direct hit on the Tampa metro area, which would be the first since 1921. In the time that has passed, the population of Hillsborough and Pinellas counties has grown 20 times over, now home to 2.5 million people.
“We built our house new about 20 years ago. So we know the construction. It’s concrete block,” Steslicki said. “We’d rather be in a safe environment and maybe be out of power and water than to be in jeopardy in a structure that’s not sound.”
Making matters worse, Steslicki said she and her family plan to travel to California on Saturday for her daughter’s wedding.
“It’s especially stressful for us. If there’s any kind of damage, we’re not going to cancel our daughter’s wedding,” Steslicki said.
Kevin Doyle, the co-owner of the Celtic Public House in Punta Gorda, near Fort Myers, said he was taking no chances after staying put during Hurricane Helene. He told ABC News on Tuesday and that he is evacuating south to Coral Gables on the east coast of southern Florida near Miami.
Doyle also survived the 2004 barrage of hurricanes. He said his pub and much of his town were destroyed by Hurricane Charley, which caused $16 billion in damage and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, killed 18 people. Doyle spent seven years rebuilding his business only to see it damaged again by Hurricane Helene.
“It was treacherous; the worst thing to happen,” Doyle said of riding out Helene at home.
Doyle said Helene flooded his pub with up to 42 inches of water and damaged the inside of the business. He said his two cars were also destroyed by the flooding.
Doyle said he finished installing new drywall in his business “in record time” as officials began issuing warnings of Milton. He said he’s erected a 4-foot-high wall of sandbags around his pub hoping it will protect it.
“I’m just hoping it’s not as high as Helene,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — Police are investigating multiple separate shootings that occurred Monday night on Interstate 5 in Washington state in what authorities called unacceptable “mayhem.”
Six people were injured in six shooting incidents, including a woman who was critically injured, according to the Washington State Patrol.
A suspect whose vehicle was sought in connection with several of the shootings was arrested in the Tacoma area early Tuesday, police said.
In four of the incidents, the victims reported being shot at by a white Volvo, according to Washington State Patrol spokesperson Chris Loftis. Investigators are still working to determine whether all the shooting incidents involved the same suspect vehicle, according to Capt. Ron Mead, the commander of District 2 of the Washington State Patrol, located in King County.
Police are treating this as a mass shooting event, Loftis said.
“The only difference from this and other events that we see across the country in schools and parks and so forth is the area of the shooting was not confined to a very specific place or location,” Loftis told reporters during a press briefing Tuesday afternoon.
There were two “spasms” of violence along I-5, resulting in the six shooting incidents, Loftis said.
The first occurred over 17 minutes, between 8:26 and 8:43 p.m. local time, northbound on I-5, he said.
It unfolded at I-5 and State Road 18, when “several rounds” were fired from a white Volvo, striking the passenger of a car, Loftis said. The driver took the 320th Street exit and contacted a fire station, and the female passenger was transported to a local hospital, where she remains in critical condition, he said.
A few minutes later, at 8:42 p.m. local time, a victim reported being shot at on I-5 near Martin Luther King Jr. Way and sustained abrasions from broken glass, Loftis said. The victim did not have a description of the suspect vehicle.
One minute later, on I-5 just south of I-90, a victim reported being shot at by an unknown vehicle and sustaining a grazing wound to the leg, Loftis said. The victim was transported to a local hospital as a precaution, he said.
The second wave of gun violence occurred between 10:57 p.m. and 11:01 p.m. local time, southbound on I-5, Loftis said.
On I-5 at State Road 18 at 10:57 p.m., a driver and passenger reported being shot at by a white Volvo, Loftis said. They sustained non-life-threatening wounds to the legs and have since been released from the hospital, Loftis said.
One minute later, another shooting involving a white Volvo was reported on I-5 near South 375 Street, Loftis said. Windows in the car were broken, but no one was injured, he said.
Then, at 11:01 p.m., on I-5 near 54th Avenue, a victim reported being shot by a white Volvo, Loftis said. The victim was shot in the neck and transported to a local hospital, he said.
A suspect was subsequently identified and arrested in the Tacoma area, police said.
Pierce County sheriff’s deputies arrived at the home of the possible suspect late Monday, but his vehicle wasn’t there, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department said.
Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, a deputy saw the suspect vehicle pull into an apartment complex, the sheriff’s department said. Backup arrived, and deputies followed the vehicle, which was subsequently disabled by stop sticks set up by a Fircrest police officer, authorities said.
“Once the vehicle ran over the sticks it came to a stop and deputies initiated a felony stop,” the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department said in a press release. “The suspect was compliant and taken into custody by a Fircrest officer and WSP trooper.”
The suspect has been booked into King County Jail on first-degree assault, police said.
State police said they are not releasing the name of the suspect at this time or speaking to an alleged motive.
“I’m not going to give that credibility for the mayhem he created,” Mead told reporters.
All of the victims are believed to have been random in what Mead called an “unwarranted, unprovoked attack.”
“Any one of us could have been that unwitting victim,” he said while decrying the gun violence.
Police said there may be additional victims. A person who was traveling on I-5 to Portland Monday night called police Tuesday to report that their car had been shot, Loftis said.
“They heard the news accounts and realized that they may have been involved in this situation,” he said.
No one was injured in that incident. The person is in the process of traveling to Bellevue to speak with detectives to determine if this is a potential seventh victim of the shooting spate, Loftis said.
“We would like to encourage other folks who may have been in this area last night during these timeframes, if you saw something, call,” he said.
At this time, police said they can only connect the shootings in which the victims reported seeing the white Volvo, Mead said.
“While the timing certainly would suggest that all of these are related, we’re only going to be able to connect what we can connect through physical evidence,” he said. “Beyond that is speculative, and that’s why we will do the investigation to make sure that we can tie them to the additional shootings.”
(NEW YORK) — A Turkish Airlines flight diverted to New York on Wednesday morning after one of its pilots died.
Flight 204 was traveling from Seattle to Istanbul when it was diverted to John F. Kennedy International Airport for an emergency landing at approximately 6 a.m. after “one of the pilots suffered a medical emergency,” according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Capt. İlçehin Pehlivan “lost consciousness” during the flight, and after initial medical intervention proved ineffective, the co-pilot was rerouted to JFK, where the Airbus A350 safely landed, the airline said in a statement.
Turkish Airlines also confirmed that Pehlivan died before the plane touched ground. Since it was a long-haul international flight, two other pilots were on board at the time.
Upon landing, the aircraft was met by emergency personnel, according to airport authorities.
Pehlivan, 59, had been working for Turkish Airlines since 2009. His last routine health check was performed on March 8, 2024, and no health issues were detected that would have prevented him from carrying out his duties as a pilot, according to the airline.
Yahya Üstün, senior vice president of media relations at Turkish Airlines, expressed his condolences in a post on X, saying, “We deeply feel the loss of our captain and extend our sincerest condolences to his bereaved family, colleagues, and all his loved ones.”
The airline said it is making arrangements to rebook the affected passengers on new flights from New York.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the diverted aircraft as an Airbus A320. It was an Airbus A350.
