A ‘weird’ debate: vice-presidential hopefuls to face off ahead of razor-thin election

More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week from Hurricane Helene and a run-of-the-mill rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of it — an unheard of amount of water that has stunned experts.

That’s enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium 51,000 times, or Lake Tahoe just once. If it was concentrated just on the state of North Carolina that much water would be 3.5 feet deep (more than 1 meter). It’s enough to fill more than 60 million Olympic-size swimming pools.

“That’s an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “I have not seen something in my 25 years of working at the weather service that is this geographically large of an extent and the sheer volume of water that fell from the sky.”

The flood damage from the rain is apocalyptic, meteorologists said. More than 100 people are dead, according to officials.

Private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, calculated the amount of rain, using precipitation measurements made in 2.5-mile-by-2.5 mile grids as measured by satellites and ground observations. He came up with 40 trillion gallons through Sunday for the eastern United States, with 20 trillion gallons of that hitting just Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Florida from Hurricane Helene.

Clark did the calculations independently and said the 40 trillion gallon figure (151 trillion liters) is about right and, if anything, conservative. Maue said maybe 1 to 2 trillion more gallons of rain had fallen, much if it in Virginia, since his calculations.

Clark, who spends much of his work on issues of shrinking western water supplies, said to put the amount of rain in perspective, it’s more than twice the combined amount of water stored by two key Colorado River basin reservoirs: Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

Several meteorologists said this was a combination of two, maybe three storm systems. Before Helene struck, rain had fallen heavily for days because a low pressure system had “cut off” from the jet stream — which moves weather systems along west to east — and stalled over the Southeast. That funneled plenty of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico. And a storm that fell just short of named status parked along North Carolina’s Atlantic coast, dumping as much as 20 inches of rain, said North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello.

Then add Helene, one of the largest storms in the last couple decades and one that held plenty of rain because it was young and moved fast before it hit the Appalachians, said University of Albany hurricane expert Kristen Corbosiero.

“It was not just a perfect storm, but it was a combination of multiple storms that that led to the enormous amount of rain,” Maue said. “That collected at high elevation, we’re talking 3,000 to 6000 feet. And when you drop trillions of gallons on a mountain, that has to go down.”

The fact that these storms hit the mountains made everything worse, and not just because of runoff. The interaction between the mountains and the storm systems wrings more moisture out of the air, Clark, Maue and Corbosiero said.

North Carolina weather officials said their top measurement total was 31.33 inches in the tiny town of Busick. Mount Mitchell also got more than 2 feet of rainfall.

Before 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, “I said to our colleagues, you know, I never thought in my career that we would measure rainfall in feet,” Clark said. “And after Harvey, Florence, the more isolated events in eastern Kentucky, portions of South Dakota. We’re seeing events year in and year out where we are measuring rainfall in feet.”

Storms are getting wetter as the climate change s, said Corbosiero and Dello. A basic law of physics says the air holds nearly 4% more moisture for every degree Fahrenheit warmer (7% for every degree Celsius) and the world has warmed more than 2 degrees (1.2 degrees Celsius) since pre-industrial times.

Corbosiero said meteorologists are vigorously debating how much of Helene is due to worsening climate change and how much is random.

For Dello, the “fingerprints of climate change” were clear.

“We’ve seen tropical storm impacts in western North Carolina. But these storms are wetter and these storms are warmer. And there would have been a time when a tropical storm would have been heading toward North Carolina and would have caused some rain and some damage, but not apocalyptic destruction. ”

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

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GREAT FALLS, Mont. (AP) — An 81-year-old Montana man was sentenced Monday to six months in federal prison for illegally using tissue and testicles from large sheep hunted in Central Asia and the U.S. to create hybrid sheep for captive trophy hunting in Texas and Minnesota.

U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris said he struggled to come up with a sentence for Arthur “Jack” Schubarth of Vaughn, Montana. He said he weighed Schubarth’s age and lack of a criminal record with a sentence that would deter anyone else from trying to “change the genetic makeup of the creatures” on the earth.

Morris also fined Schubarth $20,000 and ordered him to make a $4,000 payment to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Schubarth will be allowed to self-report to a Bureau of Prisons medical facility.

“I will have to work the rest of my life to repair everything I’ve done,” Schubarth told the judge just before sentencing.

Schubarth’s attorney, Jason Holden, said cloning the giant Marco Polo sheep hunted in Kyrgyzstan in 2013 has ruined his client’s “life, reputation and family.”

“I think this has broken him,” Holden said.

Holden, in seeking a probationary sentence, argued that Schubarth was a hard-working man who has always cared for animals and did something that no one else could have done in cloning the giant sheep, which he named Montana Mountain King or MMK.

The animal has been confiscated by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and is being held in an accredited facility until it can be transferred to a zoo, said Richard Bare, a special agent with the wildlife service.

Sarah Brown, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, had asked that Schubarth be sentenced to prison, saying his illegal breeding operation was widespread, involved other states and endangered the health of other wildlife. The crime involved forethought, was complex and involved many illegal acts, she said.

Schubarth owns Sun River Enterprises LLC, a 215-acre (87-hectare) alternative livestock ranch, which buys, sells and breeds “alternative livestock” such as mountain sheep, mountain goats and ungulates, primarily for private hunting preserves, where people shoot captive trophy game animals for a fee, prosecutors said. He had been in the game farm business since 1987, Schubarth said.

Schubarth pleaded guilty in March to charges that he and five other people conspired to use tissue from a Marco Polo sheep illegally brought into the U.S. to clone that animal and then use the clone and its descendants to create a larger, hybrid species of sheep that would be more valuable for captive hunting operations.

Marco Polo sheep are the largest in the world, can weigh 300 pounds (136 kilograms) and have curled horns up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) long, court records said.

Schubarth sold semen from MMK along with hybrid sheep to three people in Texas, while a Minnesota resident brought 74 sheep to Schubarth’s ranch for them to be inseminated at various times during the conspiracy, court records said. Schubarth sold one direct offspring from MMK for $10,000 and other sheep with lesser MMK genetics for smaller amounts.

The total value of the animals involved was greater than $250,000 but less than $550,000, prosecutors said. Hybrid sheep were also sold to people in Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota and West Virginia, prosecutors said.

In October 2019, court records said, Schubarth paid a hunting guide $400 for the testicles of a trophy-sized Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep that had been harvested in Montana and then extracted and sold the semen, court records said.

Sheep breeds that are not allowed in Montana were brought into the state as part of the conspiracy, including 43 sheep from Texas, prosecutors said.

“You were so focused on getting around those rules you got off track,” Morris said.

Holden sought reduced restitution, saying Schubarth fed and cared for the hybrid sheep on his ranch until they could be slaughtered and the meat donated to a food bank. The remaining hybrid sheep with Marco Polo DNA on his ranch must be sent to slaughter by the end of the year with the meat also being donated, Morris said. Morris gave Schubarth until December 2025 to sell his Rocky Mountain bighorn hybrid sheep.

Schubarth will not be allowed to breed game stock during the three years he is on probation, Morris said.

The five co-conspirators were not named in court records, but Schubarth’s plea agreement requires him to cooperate fully with prosecutors and testify if called to do so. The case is still being investigated, Montana wildlife officials said.

Schubarth, in a letter attached to the sentencing memo, said he becomes extremely passionate about any project he takes on, including his “sheep project,” and is ashamed of his actions.

“I got my normal mindset clouded by my enthusiasm and looked for any grey area in the law to make the best sheep I could for this sheep industry,” he wrote. “My family has never been broke, but we are now.”

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams launched a legal attack on the federal corruption case against him Monday, with his attorney asking a judge to toss out bribery charges and then holding a combative news conference accusing prosecutors of ethical lapses.

Adams, a Democrat, pleaded not guilty Friday to charges that he accepted lavish travel benefits and illegal campaign contributions from a Turkish official and other foreign nationals, and in return performed favors including pushing through the opening of a Turkish consulate building.

The mayor’s attorneys said in a motion filed early Monday that the cheap flights to overseas destinations, seat upgrades, free meals and free hotel rooms he got were not bribes, as that crime has been defined by federal law.

“Congressmen get upgrades, they get corner suites, they get better tables at restaurants, they get free appetizers, they have their iced tea filled up,” his attorney, Alex Spiro, said at a subsequent news conference. “Courtesies to politicians are not federal crimes.”

While not disputing that Adams accepted flight upgrades and deeply-discounted or free travel, Spiro said his client had never promised to take action on behalf of the Turkish government in exchange for the perks, which prosecutors say were worth more than $100,000.

“There was no quid pro quo. There was no this for that,” Spiro said.

The mayor has vowed to continue serving while fighting the charges, which he has suggested — without providing evidence — are politically motivated.

On top of the case against Adams, federal prosecutors are believed to be leading separate ongoing investigations into several top city officials with deep ties to the mayor. The drumbeat of searches and subpoenas in recent weeks has prompted the resignation of the city’s police commissioner and schools chancellor, along with some calls for the mayor to resign.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, a fellow Democrat who has the power to remove Adams from office, told reporters Monday that she had spoken to the mayor about “what my expectations are” but also indicated she wasn’t ready to give up on his administration.

“I am giving the mayor an opportunity now to demonstrate to New Yorkers — and to me — that we are righting the ship, that we have the opportunity to instill the confidence that I think is wavering right now and to power forward with an effective government,” she said.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, whose office brought the case, has said that politics played no role. At a news conference on an unrelated topic Monday, Williams declined to comment on Spiro’s remarks, saying prosecutors would speak through its court filings going forward.

Prosecutors say Adams accepted at least seven free and steeply discounted flights, along with luxury hotel stays, high-end meals, entertainment and illegal foreign donations, from a Turkish official and others seeking to buy his influence.

In September 2021, the official sought to cash in on the favors by asking Adams to expedite the opening of the 36-story Manhattan consulate building, which fire safety inspectors said was not safe to occupy, ahead of an important state visit by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to the indictment.

Adams then sent a series of text messages to the fire commissioner pushing for him to open the building — something that Spiro also did not dispute.

At the time, Adams was still serving as Brooklyn borough president, a largely ceremonial position, but had already won the mayoral primary and was widely expected to become mayor.

Prosecutors said Adams did not disclose most of the free or heavily discounted trips he took while borough president, as required by city conflict-of-interest laws.

At the news conference, Spiro initially said Adams was not legally obligated to disclose any of the trips or upgrades, but later acknowledged — after reporters noted city rules that required some types of gifts and travel perks to be reported — that he was not an expert in the city’s conflict-of-interest law.

Defense attorneys claim the additional charges against Adams — that he solicited and accepted foreign donations and manipulated the city’s matching funds program — would soon be revealed as “equally meritless.”

They said a former Adams staffer had lied to prosecutors to make it seem like the mayor had firsthand knowledge of the illegal donations.

“Eventually New Yorkers, being New Yorkers, are going to wise up to all this,” Spiro said.

Adams is due back in court Wednesday for a conference.