Extreme weather is now five times more common than it was 50 years ago and causes seven times as much damage.

Hurricane Ida hits Louisiana as a Category 4 storm, knocking out power to all of New Orleans and reversing the flow of the Mississippi River. At least seven people perish. 

An alligator attacks and apparently kills a Louisiana man in the floodwaters of Hurricane Ida. 

The remnants of Ida deluge the Northeast, flooding New York City’s subways and causing at least 43 deaths. Central Park receives 3.15 inches of rain in a single hour, the greatest amount ever recorded. 

A leak from a Syrian power plant creates an oil slick the size of New York City in the Mediterranean Sea. 

The Caldor Fire in California threatens Lake Tahoe. The Heavenly ski resort tries to save itself by running its snow guns full blast. 

All national forests in California close through mid-September due to extreme fire danger. 

A strike team of 16 firefighters is quarantined from the Caldor Fire due to COVID-19. In northern Minnesota, donated food for crews fighting the Greenwood Fire is attracting bears. 

88 Energy Ltd., a small Australian oil company, says that it has discovered an enormous new oilfield—potentially holding 1.6 billion barrels—in Alaska’s Arctic Reserve (a.k.a. National Petroleum Reserve). 

US demand for gasoline and other petroleum products hits an all-time record in late August. 

After a 19-year campaign by the United Nations Environment Program, leaded gasoline is no longer being sold anywhere in the world. 

As of September 1, the maximum speed limit in Paris (19 miles per hour) is lower than in Seattle (20 mph).

Half as many Republicans as Democrats care if their neighborhood is walkable. 

Zimbabwe ramps up its coal industry. 

An Arizona judge throws out the Trump-era “WOTUS” rule, which restricted federal clean water protections. 

The snail darter—a three-inch Tennessee fish that was the subject of the first challenge of the Endangered Species Act to go to the Supreme Court—is recovered and no longer needs protection, says the US Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Light pollution from LED streetlights in England is decimating moth populations there.

A radio-collared wolf, possibly OR-93, is spied in Southern California, in southwest Kern County. 

A July 2020 Arctic expedition discovered an unnamed island that is now considered Earth’s northernmost. It lies 2,560 feet north of Oodaaq, the former most-northerly island.