Storms

Having been born to one of the most famous couples of this century--America's greatest modern writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his talented flapper wife Zelda Sayre--Scottie Fitzgerald was thrust a heavy mantle, particularly as their only child. Add to that the heady cocktail of parental alcoholism, prescription drug abuse, numerous failed suicide attempts and schizophrenia. Talent and tragedy were genetically passed on to Scottie as surely as her blond hair and blue eyes. Until now, very little was known about the Fitzgeralds' daughter beyond her school days.

Re "501(c)(4)s are the real IRS scandal," Column, May 15 Michael Hiltzik is right. The IRS should put every tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organization under a microscope. Vague tax rules, the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and the absurd cost of political campaigns create a perfect storm of opportunity for would-be kingmakers. Being partisan myself, when I saw that key words being used to flag suspect organizations included "tea party" and "patriot," I thought, "Well, yes, and the problem is?"

What do Manhattan and Miami have in common with ancient Pompeii? They are doomed places where the residents cannot imagine that the good times will ever end. Superstorm Sandy got our attention -- like Mike Tyson walking into the house and punching our dog. And the certainty that more freakish, savage storms will pay a visit has made it tough for global-warming deniers to keep denying. But denial is not as tough to reckon with as obliviousness. Being oblivious to approaching doom is a consistent human trait.

NEW DELHI - At least 58 people were missing and feared dead Tuesday after a boat capsized off Myanmar while residents tried to flee an approaching cyclone, United Nations officials said. The boat was carrying about 100 Rohingya Muslims, many of whom lived in camps in low-lying areas to escape Buddhist-Muslim violence, officials said. The boat apparently ran into rocks off Pauktaw township in the western state Rakhine and sank late Monday as people were evacuating, said Aye Win, spokesman for the U.N. Information Center in Myanmar, based on preliminary information.

Violent storms tore through four Midwestern states, killing three people in northern Missouri, damaging hundreds of homes and leaving thousands without power. At least two tornadoes touched down in Missouri's Adair County on Wednesday night, authorities said. One destroyed 10 homes in the town of Kirksville, and more than 200 buildings across the county were damaged.

NEW YORK -- A man caught out on the street during massive storms that tore through New York City and surrounding areas died Thursday night when a church steeple in Brooklyn was struck by lightning, causing scaffolding to collapse on him. It was one of two deaths blamed on storms Thursday that thundered through the eastern edge of the country. They were preceded by hours of warnings from state and local officials who braced for a "derecho" similar to the devastating weather that struck  Washington, D.C., last month.

Winter storm Nemo is keeping many New Yorkers indoors, but it can't stop the Harlem Shake. The Harlem Shake is an Internet meme that has spontaneously gone viral and might just be the perfect way for Northeasterners stuck indoors to pass the time. And to answer your first question: No, the Harlem Shake isn't just a dance move. We wish it were that simple. Instead, the meme involves a group of people recording themselves in a room while the song "Harlem Shake" by Baauer, a New York DJ, plays.

Taking advantage of the dry and sunny weekend, crews with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works were assessing damage caused by last week's pounding storms and were clearing roadways, underground storm drains and debris catch basins near recently burned areas. "When the sun comes out, we start work again," department spokesman Bob Spencer said Saturday. "We have a lot of road crews clearing out the roads of mud and debris. Flood-control people will be in the basins." Crews were inspecting 1,000 miles of underground storm drains and 500 miles of flood-control channels.

Gov. Steve Beshear deployed every last one of his Army National Guard troops Saturday, with his state still reeling after a deadly ice storm last week. More than 700,000 homes and businesses, most of them in Kentucky, remained without electricity from the Ozarks through Appalachia, though with temperatures creeping into the 40s, a swarm of utility workers were able to make headway.

For those of us up late at night concerned about Halle Berry's high-risk pregnancy at age 46, fear not. It appears that the pregnancy, at the very least, will not affect her role in the upcoming "X-Men" film. As if that makes anything any better. Director Bryan Singer teased fans with Berry's return to the franchise in a tweeted photo of the Oscar-winning actress smiling in her all-black costume. Berry confirmed her appearance in "X-Men: Days of Future Past" on "The Tonight Show" in March, and she'll reprise her role as the weather-manipulating mutant Storm.

Storm Thorgerson Creator of album art for Pink Floyd, Zeppelin Storm Thorgerson, 69, an English graphic designer whose eye-popping album art for Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin encapsulated the spirit of 1970s psychedelia, died Thursday. In a statement from London, his family gave few details but said that the artist, who suffered a stroke in 2003, had cancer. Thorgerson, whose art tended toward the unsettling or the bizarre, was best known for his surreal Pink Floyd covers, which guitarist David Gilmour said had long been "an inseparable part of our work.

Influential English album cover designer Storm Thorgerson, whose album covers over a 45-year career included work for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and dozens more, has died after a battle with cancer, his family has announced. The designer's work individually and with the design group Hipgnosis (which he co-founded) helped define the visuals of rock starting in the late 1960s, when album covers were the primary canvas of music and a catchy 12-by-12-inch image could reach an audience of millions.

A geomagnetic storm may be on its way this weekend, and it could be dazzling. Forecasters at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center say there is a good chance that there will be a geomagnetic storm, or a disturbance in the Earth's magnetic field, this weekend after the solar flare that erupted on the sun Thursday morning. Although Thursday's solar flare was the biggest yet in 2013, it was classified as a mid-level flare. It was still strong enough to cause a brief radio blackout NASA said.

Early Thursday morning, solar observers watched as a dark spot on the sun erupted with an enormous flash of light, causing the biggest solar flare of 2013. Solar flares themselves don't last long, but this one was powerful enough to cause a bubble of solar material called a CME (coronal mass ejection) to come bursting off the sun. Up to billions of tons of that solar material is now hurtling through space at the mind-bending speed of more than 600 miles per second, and it is heading directly toward Earth.

The National Weather Service has extended wind warnings into Tuesday morning, warning of gusts topping 80 mph. The winds have reduced visibility in desert areas because of dust, and there have been reports of scattered power outages, including in Ventura County and the Palm Springs area. Fire officials were responding to a small brush fire in Saugus near Bouquet Canyon Road and Esquerra Road . A SigAlert was issued on California 14 in Rosamond in Kern County because blowing dust was causing low visibility.

The Northeast, and New York in particular, had to deal with some fierce storms this week, but the event most likely wasn't a true derecho, officials said Friday. Though the storms carried strong winds that brought down power lines and led to the deaths of at least two people, meteorologists were reluctant to characterize them as a derecho, a series of wind storms over a large area. “There is no official proclamation,” Joey Picca , a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said in a telephone interview with the Los Angeles Times from his office in Upton N.Y. on Long Island.

Thousands of Filipinos were marooned on rooftops Friday, and officials released water from at least one large dam to keep it from collapsing as heavy rain from Tropical Depression Parma pummeled the archipelago. Hundreds of people were reported killed by flooding and landslides, bringing the death toll from two storms in the last 10 days to more than 500, Philippine authorities said. Officials said 60% of Pangasinan province, about 110 miles north of Manila, was submerged. Strong winds and rain hampered rescue efforts, grounding military helicopters and lifeboats.

Wind gusts topping 70 mph were recorded Monday afternoon as Southern California was buffeted by a major Santa Ana wind event. The National Weather Service said the high winds were causing dust storms and had created zero-visibility conditions in some desert areas. In Lancaster, winds were clocked at 70 mph amid a sand storm. In Imperial County, a 73 mph gust was reported. Scattered power outages were also reported. A high-wind advisory is in effect across Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley, where gusts could peak at 45 mph, said weather service meteorologist Andrew Rorke.

Anyone who dismisses television viewing as a passive activity clearly hasn't watched "Game of Thrones. " HBO's crown jewel requires the sort of OCD focus and possibly the same picture-plastered, color-coded white board that Carrie Mathison used to track down Abu Nazir in Showtime's "Homeland. " As with the George R.R. Martin series from whence it sprung, "Game of Thrones" has redefined "sprawling epic. " And as Season 3 opens, the sprawl factor is perilously high, with the multitudinous characters - seven families, people, from seven kingdoms - scattered all over Westeros, their story lines progressing in an ever-climbing wall of overlapping layers, a citadel of narrative.