American territories are recovering after a category 5 super typhoon hit Western Pacific islands before peak storm season.
Typhoon Sinlaku hit Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands beginning April 11 after rapidly developing into a category 5 storm. Territorial and federal officials have issued emergency declarations. The storm left power outages, flooded homes and roofs ripped from homes in its wake. So far, no deaths have been reported.
The powerful storm, which had winds reach at least 175 mph, hit before most typhoons form between May and October, though NASA said the season is yearlong in the Western Pacific.
“We’re actively recovering to get our people back into their business and to their lives again,” Guam Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero said in an April 16 video address.
Environmental Glance
Responding to public health concerns about microplastics and pharmaceuticals in the nation's drinking water, the Trump administration for the first time has placed them on a draft list of contaminants maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Towering flash floods and an imminent dam failure in the northern part of Oahu triggered evacuation warnings in Hawaii on Friday, as the state continued contending with a powerful storm this week.
In January, part of a decades-old sewer line in Maryland collapsed by the Potomac River. Over the following days, the broken pipe dumped more than 200 million gallons of raw sewage into the Potomac near Washington, D.C.





























