State of emergency issued in Florida, 90% chance of tropical depression developing: What to expect
(NEW YORK) — A tropical disturbance near Cuba is taking aim at Florida and could strengthen into a tropical depression or tropical storm this weekend.
It has an 80% chance of developing into a tropical depression over the weekend and a 90% chance of developing into a tropical depression over the next seven days. If this strengthens to a named storm, it would be called Debby.
Regardless of how strong the potential storm will be, it’s forecast to bring up to 6 to 8 inches of rain to parts of Florida’s west coast as well as the Georgia and South Carolina coast.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency in 54 counties.
A tropical storm warning is in effect in Florida from East Cape Sable to Boca Grande, including Naples.
A tropical storm watch is in effect for parts of the Florida Keys, the southern coast of the Florida peninsula and the west coast of the Florida peninsula, including Tampa.
A storm surge watch has also been issued for parts of the west coast of the Florida peninsula.
The current forecast track calls for the system to become a tropical depression by Saturday morning as it moves across Cuba.
The outer bands will reach South Florida on Saturday morning and bring scattered thunderstorms, heavy downpours and gusty winds.
The storm will continue to strengthen as it closes in on the west coast of the Florida Peninsula and is forecast to come ashore Sunday or Sunday night. Flash flooding is a threat on Sunday.
By Monday morning, the storm will move into the Atlantic Ocean or near the Southeast coast, potentially bringing rain and wind to the Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina coastline. But this forecast could change.
Heavy rain will likely impact coastal areas of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina through Wednesday.
Atlantic hurricane season ramps up throughout August and typically peaks in September.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts an above-average hurricane season this year. NOAA scientists predict between 17 and 25 named storms, compared to an average of 14; between eight and 13 hurricanes, compared to an average of seven; and between four and seven major hurricanes, compared to an average of three.
(LOS ANGELES) — Agricultural officials in Southern California are battling an active infestation of red imported fire ants that are “highly aggressive in nature,” and pose a risk to California’s agricultural economy.
The infestation occurred at a private property in Montecito, in Santa Barbara County, according to a recent press release from the Santa Barbara County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office.
Located over 90 miles north of Los Angeles, Montecito is best known as a celebrity enclave with Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle among the town’s residents.
Officials did not name the owners of the private property.
Venom released from the ants’ stings can cause “painful pustules on the skin, and can be particularly dangerous, even fatal, to sensitive groups or those with an allergy to the venom,” officials said in the July 18 release.
Red imported fire ants, Solenopsis invicta, pose “an immediate threat” to California’s agricultural economy because they require a quarantine of nursery products, officials said.
The ant species is native to South America but has established populations in parts of Southern California, particularly in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties. The first recorded presence of the species in California was in 1984.
Siavash Taravati, an entomologist and integrated pest management advisor with the University of California’s Cooperative Extension offices, noted the distinction between this species of ants and ants native to California.
Native fire ants and argentine ants appear similar to red imported fire ants in size and color but the quickest way to differentiate them is by their “aggressive behavior,” Taravati told ABC News.
The ants’ stinging behavior is hazardous to fieldworkers and infestations can clog irrigation systems and damage electrical wiring, Taravati said.
The presence of red imported fire ants is known to increase the cost of fruit picking in the region, according to Taravati, due to the health dangers associated with the species.
The ants can also threaten wildlife and displace native ant species, Taravati said.
This is the only known active infestation in Santa Barbara County, according to officials, who said there are currently no red imported fire ant quarantines in place.
The infestation is believed to have originated from a nursery stock shipped from Riverside County in September 2023, which was infested by the red ants and spread to the surrounding property.
Santa Barbara County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office staff are conducting regular surveys of the impacted property and determining appropriate treatments by a licensed and registered pest control business, according to the release.
Officials are working in collaboration with the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE), and Riverside County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office staff.
(NEW YORK) — When Jill Antares Hunkler purchased land in Belmont County, Ohio, in 2007, she never envisioned her home would be surrounded by 78 oil and gas fracking wells a decade later, she said.
“I wanted to build my home where I had roots,” Hunkler, a seventh-generation Ohio Valley resident, told ABC News. “It was a place where I could live a more traditional, natural life.”
Hunkler’s three-acre property at the headwaters of the Captina Creek Watershed was one of hundreds in the area that she said became a magnet for fracking.
Her property sits on the Utica and Marcellus Shales in the Appalachian Basin, geologic formations known to hold large reserves of oil and natural gas.
As of April 2024, the Marcellus Shale contained about 120 million barrels of oil, while the Utica Shale contained 2.3 million barrels, according to the United States Geological Survey.
There are 1,625 fracking wells in Belmont Country this year, which marks a 25% increase from 2023, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), which oversees unitization orders in the state.
Hunkler said when oil and gas representatives called “landmen” came knocking on her door, calling her home and sending repeated notices, she learned of the state’s unitization laws. The fate of her land was largely out of her hands, she said.
“To be perfectly honest, it makes me cry even now,” Hunkler said.
What is unitization?
Unitization is the consolidation of multiple land parcels into a single operational unit for fracking, according to ODNR.
Instead of drilling multiple wells on separate properties, which can be inefficient, unitization combines adjacent properties over a pool to allow for a more coordinated approach to extracting oil or gas.
Because it’s multiple properties, most neighbors in the area must apply to lease their land, according to state law.
In Ohio, 65% of property owners in a project area must sign an application to lease their property for drilling before going forward, according to ODNR.
This leaves a population of dissenting or “non-participatory” landowners forced into fracking in the area, even if it’s not on their property.
Unitization has been legal in Ohio since 1965, however, the last decade has seen unitization orders surge to meet fracking demands.
The ODNR enacted 112 unitization orders in 2022 and nearly 100 in 2023, according to ODNR records.
Before 2021, which saw 73 unitization orders, ODNR enacted less than 50 orders per year between 2012 and 2020, according to records.
Negotiating a lease
Proponents believe fracking brings jobs back to the region, which historically relied on coal and steel manufacturing, and gives residents the opportunity to make passive income by leasing land.
“Natural gas production has been tremendously profitable for Ohio,” state Sen. George Lang and two researchers said in a 2023 press release posted on the Ohio Senate website. “The shale revolution has been the greatest driver of the state’s economic progress since the late 1990s. Ohio now ranks sixth among states in natural gas production, exporting to our neighbors and the world.”
Ohio law states landowners must make “just and reasonable” compensation for leasing sites, which can vary based on location, under state law.
In 2024, some local drillers reported paying landowners an average of $500 per acre, but lease bonus payments in southeast Ohio can range from $3,000–$6,000 per acre, according to McCleery Law Firm, which provides consultation and legal services to landowners considering entering, or impacted by, a leasing agreement.
“It is also an area where landowners are chronically exploited,” the firm says in their “Landowner’s Guide.”
“This is because landmen usually offer significantly less per acre if they suspect you lack knowledge of the market. Without knowledge of fair market value, an increase of two thousand dollars per acre might seem advantageous, when in reality, the starting offer was simply egregiously low,” the firm claims.
Property owners also receive royalties on the gas produced, which typically begins at 12.5%, according to ODNR.
Echoing Hunkler’s story, a study published this month in Nature Energy reviewed detailed records of landmen’s dealings with 37 property owners in Ohio to investigate how they may be disadvantaged in lease negotiations.
The records spanned from January 2014 and April 2021, which saw a boom of fracking increases in the state, according to the study.
Researchers found that companies used persistent and personal strategies to overcome landowner reluctance, such as repeated in-person visits, calls and in some cases, contacting their family members and neighbors.
The study cited a log of contact between a landman and a property owner in Noble County, Ohio.
“When their calls go unanswered, they send letters. When those are returned with ‘REFUSED’ handwritten across them, landmen drive to her house. When she refuses to answer the door, they speak to her neighbours and family members,” according to the study.
When property owners refused all requests, the study found widespread use of compulsory unitization.
“In roughly 40% of the wells drilled in Ohio, compulsory unitization applications were used because voluntary consent from landowners was not obtained,” according to the study.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources did not comment on claims against oil and gas agents to ABC News.
Changed way of life
“People that don’t live in southeast Ohio have no concept of what it’s like,” Randi Pokladnik, a lifelong resident of the Ohio River Valley and retired research chemist, told ABC News about fracking in the area.
“It sounds like a jet engine in the middle of the night and you can smell the emissions. It’s a constant barrage of sand trucks and fracking trucks with brine in them,” Pokladnik said.
She unaffectionately calls the nightly traffic the “brine truck parade.”
Pokladnik and her husband own property in Tappan, Ohio, and despite denying leasing requests from oil and gas representatives for over a decade, in February, Pokladnik’s property was “force pooled” to participate without their consent.
“It made me sick to my stomach when I first got the notice in the mail that they were going to be doing this,” Pokladnik said.
“This is like the ultimate slap in the face for somebody who’s an environmentalist,” she added.
Environmental and health effects
In 2017, the Environmental Protection Agency found scientific evidence that fracking can potentially impact drinking water resources under some circumstances.
Chemicals used for fracking may travel through cracks in the rock into an underground drinking water source and contamination could also occur if a well is improperly installed, if chemicals are spilled from trucks or tanks or if flowback is not effectively contained, according to the agency.
The Yale School of Public Health found that fracking has led to heightened concerns about its impact on the environment and human health due to wastewater and greenhouse gas emissions.
In response to health and environmental concerns, Rob Brundrett, president of the Ohio Oil & Gas Association said companies work to ensure the safety of the properties they work on and the record stands for itself.
Speaking about conventional fracking wells Brundrett told Energy News Network, “The fact that there have been only three major incidents since 2018 is a testament to the industry’s rigorous safety standards and practices.”
“Considering that only .004% of Ohio oil and gas operations have had a major reportable incident during that timeframe, I would put our industry’s safety numbers against any other manual industry in Ohio,” he added.
The incidents include a gas leak, crude oil spill and a combustor fire, according to the outlet.
ODNR says it has addressed water well complaints since 1983 and none of the investigations revealed groundwater quality problems due to fracking, the department said in a fracking fact sheet.
However, Pokladnik believes that the effects of fracking in the Ohio River Valley are not in a bubble and should be considered by everyone.
“There’s not a dome over these well pads and everything that we do here is eventually going to cause more climate change,” Pokladnik said.
“So even though you’re not living here and you won’t have to worry about drinking contaminated water or breathing these emissions directly, it is affecting your life,” she added.
(VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.) — An alleged abduction of three Virginia Beach children ended in a car crash Thursday morning that left the youngest dead, according to police.
Virginia State Police responded to a stabbing Wednesday night in an incident they said they believe to be “domestic-related.”
Two female victims — one adult and one juvenile — were transported to the hospital with multiple stab wounds, and are currently in stable condition, police said.
The suspect, Dana Plummer, 36, is believed to have stabbed the two victims and then fled the scene with his children, police said.
The three children were identified as 7-year-old Zayin Plummer, 5-year-old Zayir Plummer and 1-year-old Za’riyah Plummer.
An AMBER Alert — which has since been canceled — was issued Thursday morning for the children.
Law enforcement identified the suspect’s vehicle thanks to a tip from a member of the public and attempted to initiate a traffic stop, but the vehicle refused to stop and fled north on the highway into Maryland, police said.
While fleeing, the driver lost control of the car and crashed, police said.
The three missing children were located at the scene. The 1-year-old was transported to a hospital, but later succumbed to her injuries, police said.
Police apprehended Plummer at the scene.
He has been charged with two counts of aggravated malicious wounding, three counts of parental abduction, four counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and domestic assault, police said.
“Our hearts go out to the family and loved ones who are grieving this morning,” Virginia State Police Chief Paul Neudigate said in a statement. “This is an unimaginable tragedy, and on behalf of the VBPD, I extend our deepest sympathies to those affected by this loss.”