Nature
ArchiveA view of the changed coastline in New Jersey. Photo: NASA Goddard Instead of gathering a widespread assortment of the week's best articles, videos, and photos, I've included the most thought-provoking and eye-opening articles on Sandy and her aftermath. Some…
What's it like to watch the Storm of the Century hit your home from 2,000 miles away?
After wandering to a bar in Sandy's aftermath, Jason Diamond was reminded of the best parts about living in New York
With Manhattan slowly coming back to life after Hurricane Sandy, Outside’s East Coast editor joins the leader of Long Island Search and Rescue for a tour of places the cops haven't made it to yet, where looters prey on homes in communities that will take years to rebuild
A German Shepherd is found at 13,000 feet, and rescued after surviving seven nights in the cold. How did she get there, and what happened to her owner?
World's youngest ski patroller? Taylor Justice on the job at Aspen. Photo: Taylor Justice There are overachievers, and then there is Taylor Justice. The 12-year-old skier/climber/straight-A student started shredding double-black diamond chutes when she was eight. Three years later, she joined the…
There were no shortage of heroes as Hurricane Sandy made its way from the Caribbean, up along the coast of the southeastern United States, into New Jersey, and then across Pennsylvania. Hospital personnel evacuated patients from at least one facility that lost power. Firemen…
A composite image of Sandy making landfall at night. Photo: NASA/Goddard The death toll from Sandy in the United States has risen to 75, according to the Associated Press.
Here is a view of Sandy's life from above. It was recorded by NASA's GOES-13 Satellite. It begins on October 23, when Tropical Depression 18 morphed into Tropical Storm Sandy. Before that, on October 22, at roughly 11:00 a.m., about 320 miles southwest of Kingston, Jamaica, a hot towering…
After sticking out Hurricane Irene, Maksim Charnyy didn't think Sandy would be any different. Ignoring mandatory evacuation orders, he stayed in his building with 70 or 80 percent of the other residents. And then the water came.
NYC, Avenue C at East 6th Street, Oct. 29, 2012. Photo: David Shankbone/Flickr The loss of life and property damage from Superstorm Sandy is still being tallied, but the catastrophe is pointing a spotlight on the need for cities to adapt…
Outside's East Coast editor visits the town he grew up in, situated on the west side of the Hudson River about 25 miles outside of Manhattan, in the middle of Hurricane Sandy
Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy as seen from space Photo: NOAA GOES-13 When Hurricane Sandy made landfall near Atlantic City, New Jersey, around 8 p.m. last night, it lived up to the deadly reputation forecasters feared, and the death toll from the storm has continued to rise…
A pair of polar bears walks across the ice near Churchill. Photo: FloridaStock/Shutterstock The first European to encounter the polar bears of what is now Churchill, Manitoba, was Jens Munk, a Norwegian explorer who wintered on the southern…
Patagonia National Park, under construction. Photo: Eli Steltenpohl “Buying the land was the easy part,” Kristine Tompkins told a packed house during a presentation at the San Francisco Patagonia retail store last week. She was referring to the 2.2 million acres that she and…
Hurricane Sandy expands, taken Sunday, October 28, at 9:00 a.m. Photo: NOAA GOES-13 Satellite As scientists feared late last week, Hurricane Sandy has morphed into…
Heidi Volpe speaks with Rich Roll about his transformation from addict to ultra-endurance athlete
When it comes to producing climbers, there's one college that stands above all the rest
Jason Diamond looks at how the Hudson Bay's gone from a treasured heirloom blanket to a vintage fashion piece
The Samaria Gorge Trail in Crete is one of the most popular hikes in Europe. But in the summer, when the trail is unbearably hot and overrun with tourists, visit the Imbros, a simple walk in an area full of charm.
If backcountry exploration and filmmaking are two of your passions, then hurry up and send us your video
Katie Heaney learns that rivers really don't care how many times you've kayaked on a lake
For the past three years, we’ve been inundated with answers to a simple question via Facebook: “What are you doing outside this weekend?” Behold: your most, er, innovative itineraries.
Bikini Atoll, a tiny ring of islands halfway between Hawaii and Australia, is a world-class diving destination and home to one of the Pacific's last great fishing grounds. So where are all the tourists? Welcome to heaven on earth, where the vestiges of hell lie just below the surface.
Leaves of three, leave it be. Photo: Shutterstock When I was in seventh grade, my parents took my six siblings and I out of school for a late spring vacation to the East Coast. We camped along the way and eventually…
Looking for which candidate's economic beliefs are best suited to the present day? Wondering who's better suited to take office should the next president become incapacitated? Well, you've come to the wrong place.
Canus lupus. Photo: S.R. Maglione/Shutterstock In children’s literature, wolves pretty much always get a bad rap. Think Little Red Riding Hood, the three poor pigs, and pretty much every cute, furry, unsuspecting critter in Richard Scarry’s entire opus. In our house, we make a point…
Aurora Borealis as seen from Space. Photo: NASA Earth Observatory/Flickr On October 4 and 5, a coronal mass ejection from the sun sent an explosion of particles speeding toward earth. Three days later, those particles hit the earth's magnetic…
Photographer Chase Jarvis was sailing about an hour south of Cape Town, South Africa, when he first saw the fins. They broke the surface of the ocean dozens at a time. The fins belonged to common dolphins, and soon Jarvis noticed hundreds, and then…
Katie Heaney walks into the longest cave in Wisconsin and, despite the bats, the darkness, and the bats, makes it out alive
Ever wondered how to survive a volcanic eruption? Not sure what to do when zombies inevitably take over? Don't worry, we've got you covered.
Gannets. Photo: Winged Planet When filmmaker John Downer was in elementary school, he got down in the dirt of his parents' garden so that he could film the insects, frogs, and toads using a Super 8 camera.
Tips for surviving seven of the world's deadliest adventures
Outside readers love to lend a hand. Here, a longtime subscriber and former energy executive shows us how to take it to another level.
The video doesn't show the spark, the inciting moment that led the impala herd to bolt across the road directly into the path of a leopard crouching in the tall grass. But it does show the climax, the predator exploding from the brush into an esophagus-targeted leap that lands…
We’ve all got that buddy—the one who executes an epic ski or raft mission every year. Reader Keith Pearen is one of those guys. For the past 10 years, the 32-year-old Boulder, Colorado, aerospace engineer has been organizing trips for groups of up to 20 friends. Here’s the formula he applies.
A look at ten of the silver screen's oddest, most entertaining, and occasionally even accurate techniques for living through disaster
On May 30, 2012, at 3:00 P.M. MST, a series of thunderstorms formed over central and south central Kansas. They dropped golf ball-sized hail before lining up into a dark vanguard that barraged the countryside ahead with 70 mile…
Chilean Patagonia is home to some of the wildest and most stunning rivers in the world. The largest, the Rio Baker, is renowned for its clear, turquoise water and Class V rapids and has become a magnet for expedition kayakers from around the world. But perhaps no one knows it…
Great white shark. Photo: David Stephens/Shutterstock On Thursday, the government of Western Australia released a plan that will allow the killing of great white sharks that venture…
In September, when the nights cool and the mosquitoes follow the RVs inland, the salt marshes of Assateague Island National Seashore are perfect for a quick fall paddling escape
Jugita Krilaviciute, left, works the soil during the Vail Resorts Hayman Restoration Project in the Trail Creek drainage on Thursday, June 2, 2011. The Vail Resorts Hayman Restoration Project is in the second of a three year, $750,000 partnership with the U.S. Forest Service and The Rocky…
Russ Ricketts' money shot. Watch more river snorkeling videos here. We all want to capture a money shot, whether that is literally a photograph, or a video, or a perfectly baked apple pie or a novel or a painting. Sometimes everything just comes…
Matt Krause's American friends refused to believe that Turkey was anything like the United States. To prove them wrong, he's walking across the entire country.
A reindeer running in Norway. Photo: Shutterstock Here's something that might not surprise: Scientists have used a model to predict that if a formation of 241 snowkiters were to fly across…
M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy. Photo: The Royal Observatory Photographer of the Year/Martin Pugh Australian Martin Pugh nabbed the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2012 award from…
An Italian chef, a pro snowboarder, and five other Sun Valley, Idaho, locals tell you the best way to play in one of America's most pristine mountain towns
Chimney Rock. Photo: USDA.gov/Flickr On Friday, President Barack Obama signed a proclamation designating 4,726 acres of land in southwestern Colorado as Chimney Rock National Monument.
The record low compared to the average minimum. Photo: NASA/Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio The extreme melt of Arctic sea ice has stopped for the year, but only after setting a record low for area covered, scientists…
Dolphins communicate with each other, but can they communicate with us? Marine biologist Denise Herzing is drawing on decades of research, a vast digital library of whistles and clicks, and new computer wizardry designed to bridge the species gap. Tim Zimmermann goes deep with one of history's grandest experiments.
Filmmaker Chris Tangey recorded the above video of a fire whirl whisking through the Australian Outback near Alice Springs on September 11. Since then, the clip has swerved from news sites to blogs to social media around the world. In its…
For almost a century, the world's hottest temperature was believed to be a 136-degree Fahrenheit measurement recorded in El Azizia, Libya, on September 13, 1922. This month, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) threw that record out. They gave their reasons in…
The gear you need—and the perfect Scotch—for fall fly-fishing season.
A pika in its talus home. Photo: Karunakar Rayker By Mary Ellen Hannibal When Chris Ray got started studying pika, she could not have anticipated that these small rabbit relatives would one day become a poster child…
A former corporate lawyer whose back-of-the-napkin plan to kayak from Minnesota to Florida was so awesomely deranged, we decided to pay his way
After years of sounding the climate-change alarm, writer Bill McKibben realized that gentle persuasion wasn’t cutting it. So he got mad. Then he got busy: tweeting, organizing, protesting, getting arrested, and becoming Big Oil’s biggest threat.
Fall is here, and the temps are dropping—time to pick a fresh new adventure in the American Southwest
EPSON DSC picture Larry Gibson, keeper of Kayford Mountain. Photo: Vivian Stockman The Appalachian Mountains lost a hero on Sunday, September 10. Larry Gibson, the face of the fight against mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, died of a heart attack while…
Yosemite National Park confirmed on Thursday that a ninth person had contracted hantavirus, according to Reuters. The park visitor, from California, has recovered. The notice came a day after the park notified roughly 230,000 people about the outbreak by email, according to the…
In the 16 years since Into Thin Air, Mount Everest has become safer in many ways, with better storm forecasting and amazing high-altitude rescue helicopters. So why did 10 people die in 2012?
Conundrum Hot Springs party people, mid-August. Photo: Will McGough By Will McGough, Wake and Wander Sitting in the nearly 100-degree water, among several naked bathers in the Conundrum Hot Springs near Aspen, Colorado, I looked around at the pine…
The most ambitious environmental documentary since An Inconvenient Truth tries to make the case that we just might win
Noah Davis takes a look at Wade Barrett's transition from professional soccer player to semi-serious ultramarathoner
Photo: Egan Snow/Flickr As summer wanes and garden harvests start to dwindle, this news lands with a thud: a recent study performed at Stanford University indicated that eating organic produce doesn’t necessarily mean eating more nutritious produce. If you figured this would…
It's a lot easier to imagine you're a colonial settler when you're not 25, Katie Heaney learns
The story behind the otter-exclusion zone, a stretch of water on the California coast from Point Conception to the Mexican border where otters are barred by Congress from swimming
Readers voted Richmond, Virginia, the nation's most livable river town. (No joke!) To find out why, Jon Billman paddles, runs, and snorkels for crabs in the former Confederate capital. Plus: the lowdown on nine other great river towns.
Grizzly print, and a notebook. Photo: Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation Rachel Carson earned a master's degree in zoology from John Hopkins University and spent most of her career working as a marine biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife…
Image: DDB Group China Car sales in China are a wee bit flat right now, but it’s still one of the world’s largest car markets. Congestion in cities is so bad that local governments have begun restricting how many people can drive each day. Despite that,…
What does the popularity of a zombie-themed obstacle race say about American society?
As more blazes rage across the West this summer and government policy shifts toward aggressive wildfire suppression, firefighters’ lives are increasingly placed at risk
Fly-by drinking. Photo: Ofer Levy/Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012 With a wing span of up to five feet, the grey-headed flying fox is the largest bat…
Meaghen Brown is in France, reporting from one of the world's most grueling footraces
Delicate Arch, Arches National Park. Photo: Ryan Dearth Last year, as part of his Call to Action plan to revise and improve the way our national parks are managed, National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis asked a committee of…
https://youtube.com/watch?v=F7VghMbLiMA Last week, the West Yellowstone Chamber of Commerce posted a video of a bison charging children on its Facebook page—accompanied by a scolding: “This video is one that makes us angry, expecially at the irresponsible person behind the…
https://youtube.com/watch?v=WEe1bVjORN4 The lines, curves, and whorls made by ocean currents in NASA's Perpetual Ocean video look like they were taken straight out of Vincent van Gogh's A Starry Night. All the pretty strokes came courtesy of the space agency's Scientific Visualization Studio, which…