Michael is the first hurricane to make landfall in the United States as a category 5 since Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and only the fourth on record.
"The extensive flooding we've seen in the past two weeks will continue through May and become more dire and may be exacerbated in the coming weeks as the water flows downstream," said Ed Clark, director of NOAA's National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Ala. "This is shaping up to be a potentially unprecedented flood season, with more than 200 million people at risk for flooding in their communities."
NOAA and the National Weather Service want the public to know that flooding is a coast to coast threat across the United States and its territories during all months of the year.
"Two separate independent engineering reviews indicate that a variety of problems existed at the dam prior to the February 2017 floods. FEMA's Public Assistance can only fund work directly linked to the declared disaster, and so the grant assistance request of $306.4 million was not approved for the upper gated spillway," a FEMA spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.
The new assessment updates one done in 2005. It indicates 161 U.S. volcanoes pose potential threats to American lives and property. The eighteen very highest threat volcanoes are in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington, while 39 other volcanoes are high threat, 49 are moderate, 34 are low, and 21 are very low threat.
The 2019 Global Risks Report identifies economic worries, major power tensions, political strains, climate catastrophe, and technological instabilities as areas of concern.