Isaac, downgraded to a tropical storm yesterday, is still winding his way slowly up the Mississippi River valley. As the storm meanders north and then east, it will bring much-needed rain to one of the areas hardest-hit by the drought. But following two days of heavy rain, the Gulf Coast isn't yet entirely out of danger. Some 770,000 people are still without power in Louisiana as destruction trails as the storm's shadow.

This is what the rainfall looked like in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, over the past week. See if you can figure out when Isaac hit.

Data from the USGS. Click to embiggen.

Just across the Mississippi border from Tangipahoa sits a small lake. This morning, gorged with rain, it began to overtop its dam. With 90 minutes notice, 50,000 people were ordered to evacuate their homes. From NBC News:

Up to 50,000 people in Louisiana's Tangipahoa Parish were ordered to evacuate Thursday morning when water from Tropical Storm Isaac threatened to overwhelm a dam across the state line in Mississippi. …

Located about 100 miles north of New Orleans, the parish initially said "imminent failure" of the dam was expected but later emphasized that the dam was "damaged but has not failed" and that the evacuations were "out of caution."

In 2009, two farmers from Missouri checked into local hospitals. Each had a fever, nausea, a headache. Their blood platelets dropped severely. Doctors eventually figured out that they had a new virus, now called the Heartland virus. Transmitted by ticks, it's only ever been seen in two people on Earth -- these farmers, two men who live 60 miles apart.

This is the flu virus, not Heartland. But it's not like you can eyeball the thing, like the tick is holding it in its hand, so this will have to do. (Photo by kat m research.)

Research on the new virus has just been published in The New England Journal of Medicine. NPR has the story:

[The Centers for Disease Control's William] Nicholson says the new virus is in the phlebovirus family, which contains more than 70 members. And here's another twist: Heartland virus appears to be a cousin of another new human virus called Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome virus, discovered last year in China. Another possible cousin may be Bhanja virus, a little-studied virus that has been found in some mammals, birds and reptiles in Asia, Africa and Europe.

Nicholson says the CDC ... is looking for other people with symptoms similar to the two Heartland victims to see if they're infected with the same virus. The researchers are also analyzing thousands of samples from Missouri ticks, other crawling insects and animals wild and domestic to see if any harbor Heartland virus.

No, this is not a script for the first five minutes of a horror movie. Unfortunately, it's real.

The world's ugliest puppy.

Another week, another record. Last week, we noted that the U.S. hit its all-time high number of cases of West Nile to that point in the year. Since then, the number of cases his risen 40 percent -- and the number of deaths 61 percent.

From Reuters:

A total of 1,590 cases of West Nile virus, including 66 deaths, were reported through late August this year in the United States, the highest human toll reported by that point in the calendar since the mosquito-borne disease was first detected in the country in 1999, health officials said on Wednesday.

The toll is increasing quickly and "we think the numbers will continue to rise," said Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases.

Through last week, 1,118 cases and 41 deaths had been reported. The updated figures represent a 40 percent increase in the number of cases and a 61 percent spike in the number of deaths, but are short of the all-time record for a full year: 9,862 cases and 264 deaths in 2003.

See? Still something to shoot for this year!

A mountaintop removal coal mining site in Fork Ridge, Virginia. Photo courtesy of SouthWings and Appalachian Voices. In the tranquil, misty mountains of southwest Virginia, the coal industry is trying to build its very own road to nowhere. King Coal's latest scheme is to try and take $2 billion of federal funds -- our tax dollars -- to build the Coalfields Expressway through rural Southwest Virginia. Coal companies plan to use mountaintop removal mining to flatten the area to make way for the road, while they keep the profits from the coal they extract. While the coal companies call it …

The famous (almost obligatory) still from the film Gasland.

Mike Leighton watched as his well overflowed, filled with methane. His neighbors, the Franklins, watched their well go dry, then turn black. Both families live in Leroy Township, Penn. -- over the Marcellus Shale, near where energy companies are fracking for natural gas. NPR has the story.

Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection blames a nearby hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operation. It says methane gas has leaked out of the well, which is operated by Chesapeake Energy, and into the Leightons' and Franklins' water supplies.

The danger goes beyond contaminated water. In a letter to both families detailing test results and preliminary findings, state regulators wrote that "there is a physical danger of fire or explosion due to the migration of natural gas water wells." Chesapeake has installed ventilation systems at the two water wells, but the letter warns, "it is not possible to completely eliminate the hazards of having natural gas in your water supply by simply venting your well."

NPR suggests that part of the problem is the concrete surrounding the pipe that extracts the natural gas.

Deer mice will also steal your chocolate. (Photo by C G-K.)

Yosemite National Park is warning recent visitors about an outbreak of hantavirus that has already killed two people.

Federal epidemiologists learned over the weekend of the fatality. That case and another brings to four the number of people who have contracted Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, which can be carried by dust particles that come into contact with the urine, saliva or feces of an infected deer mouse. …

In each of the four cases, visitors stayed in the Curry Village "Signature Tent Cabins," canvas-sided lodging insulated against the elements. The four people known so far to have contracted the illness stayed around the same time in June.

Yosemite officials are warning those who stayed in the village's tent cabins from mid-June through the end of August to beware of any symptoms of hantavirus, which can include fever, aches, dizziness and chills. Park officials warn anyone with these flu-like symptoms to seek medical help immediately. There is no specific treatment for the respiratory illness.

A study released in 2011 suggested that a die-off of aspens in the Western U.S. following the 2002 drought was linked to hanta-carrying deer mice.

Upwards of 2,000 people attended the Don’t Frack New York demonstration yesterday, Monday, August 27 in Albany, N.Y. That’s a lot of people on a work day in the last week of August. But it wasn’t just the numbers that were impressive. It was the vision articulated by numerous speakers at the pre-march and post-march rallies that Cuomo should be rising to the challenge of history and connecting with the history of past NY state leaders like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Instead of allowing fracking, he should embrace a green energy program to make NY a national leader in the absolutely …

Why do people watch the local weather report, anyway? That was the question floating just below the surface of last week’s 40th annual broadcast meteorology conference in Boston. Just like their print counterparts, local news stations are being buffeted by the winds of online innovation, and weather is particularly vulnerable. Today, detailed forecasts are just a few clicks away. So why would anyone bother to tune in at 6 or 11? Nearly every meteorologist we heard from came back to the same answer: trust. As D.C.-area meteorologist Joe Witte noted, local TV news consistently remains the most trusted source of …

Still from Xinhua news report.

A massive explosion at the largest oil refinery in Venezuela killed at least 41 people and injured more than 80. From the Guardian:

Officials at the 645,000 barrel-per-day Amuay refinery were on Sunday trying to stop the fire still raging at two storage tanks from spreading to other nearby fuel storage facilities. That would delay Amuay's restart beyond the current estimate of two days.

More than 200 homes were reported damaged by the shockwave. Some were across the street from the refinery, which is on a peninsula in the Caribbean Sea in western Venezuela.

Puddles of petroleum mixed with water covered roads in the area. The victims from Saturday's blast included 18 national guard troops and 15 civilians; six remained unidentified.

Prior to the explosion, residents described smelling gas, though the government denied that a leak was to blame for the blast.

At first glance, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's two-year legal assault on Estrella Family Creamery in Washington state appears entirely vindictive. The FDA seems intent on using its enormous enforcement powers to cruelly stomp on and obliterate a tiny business that serves as the livelihood of the Estrella family, and a source of eating pleasure and important nutrition for a community of hundreds of devoted customers. As a prime example, the agency's latest legal action in federal district court in Washington state rejects efforts by the Estrellas to negotiate a compromise that would allow the agency to continue monitoring …