Severe Weather

Zeta sped across the Southeast on Thursday, leaving a trail of damage and more than 2.5 million homes and businesses without power in Atlanta and beyond after pounding New Orleans with winds and water.

An average season sees six hurricanes and 12 named storms. This extraordinarily busy season has focused attention on climate change, which scientists say is causing wetter, stronger and more destructive storms.

Rivers swollen by Hurricane Sally threatened more misery for parts of the Florida Panhandle and Alabama on Thursday. Georgia and the Carolinas were also warned of flooding.

Hurricane Sally has lumbered ashore near Gulf Shores, Alabama, as a Category 2 storm, with top winds of 105 mph.

Hurricane Paulette has made a rare landfall in Bermuda as a strong Category 1 storm just hours after the wealthy British territory shuttered schools, government agencies and air and sea ports.

Others around the Bay Area also documented hazy horizons, red suns and gray skies -- all the result of the raging wildfires burning around California, which as of this week had scorched a record-setting 2.3 million acres of earth.

Hurricane Nana made landfall in Belize early Thursday, pelting a sparsely populated stretch of the Caribbean coast with heavy rain and wind before weakening to a tropical storm.

Researchers at the University of Bristol analyzed future projections of hurricane rainfall in the Caribbean and found that climate change could result in extreme hurricane events being as high as five times more likely.

The remnants of Hurricane Laura are unleashing heavy rain hundreds of miles inland from a path of death and destruction left along the northwest Gulf Coast.

One of the strongest hurricanes ever to strike the U.S. pounded the Gulf Coast with wind and rain early Thursday morning, but Laura rapidly weakened and was downgraded to a tropical storm by afternoon.

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy has photographed Hurricane Laura from his vantage point on the International Space Station.

The Vermilion Parish Sheriff’s Office issued a mandatory evacuation and grim warning to residents choosing to ride out Hurricane Laura rather than evacuate.

Hundreds of volunteers, from linemen to boat crews to chainsaw crews, were assisting local governments and first responders to prepare to provide relief in the wake of the hurricane’s destruction.

Nasty hurricanes that cause billions of dollars in damage are hitting more often.

The peak intensity was said to be between 105 and 115 mph.

Severe weather in Volusia County, including an EF-2 tornado, brought heavy rain and wind to the DeLand area, caused significant flooding and damage.

The straight-line winds that toppled trees and power lines across much of Iowa was “unlike anything our company has ever seen," Alliant Energy spokesman Mike Wagner said.