Weather, Tropical Storm Isaac | featured news

For most of the U.S., Hurricane Isaac has come and gone, and now Southerners and Midwesterners are grappling with the good and bad it left behind. Evacuation orders eased for parts of Louisiana, and many Missouri residents saw the possible end of a long and painful drought when Isaac passed over the state Friday and Saturday, dumping much of its strength before going on to Illinois and Indiana.

As the remnants of Hurricane Isaac pushed their way up the Mississippi valley on Saturday, spinning off severe thunderstorms and at least four tornadoes, some on the Gulf Coast were impatient with the pace of restoring power days after the storm dragged through the region....

Isaac crawled into the nation's midsection early Friday, leaving a soggy mess in Louisiana. Neighborhoods were underwater, and many homes that stayed dry didn't have lights, air conditioning or clean water....

Isaac was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm Wednesday afternoon, even as flooding continued along the Gulf Coast and authorities raced to rescue residents from rising waters.

Hurricane Isaac crashed ashore in southeast Louisiana on Tuesday, bringing high winds and soaking rains that pose the first test for multibillion-dollar flood defenses put in place in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast seven years ago.

Isaac was on the verge of ballooning into a hurricane Tuesday that could flood the coasts of four states with storm surge and heavy rains on its way to New Orleans, where residents hunkered down behind levees fortified after Katrina struck seven years ago this week.

Into the carefully scripted Republican convention has come a complication: a natural disaster that not only distracts attention from Mitt Romney but sets up a collision with a fundamental tenet of today's GOP.

As the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall approaches, New Orleans -- and much of the Gulf Coast -- is preparing to put into practice the lessons learned from that defining storm. Tropical Storm Isaac is following a path eerily similar to Katrina's in 2005.

Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights as Tropical Storm Isaac lashed southeastern Florida Sunday, with service not expected to resume fully until late Monday. The airports in Miami and Fort Lauderdale were hit the hardest, cancelling 589 flights - the vast majority of the 742 U.S. flights grounded overall because of the storm as of Sunday afternoon, according to the flight-tracking service FlightAware.

All the political attention might be focused on Republicans or even Tropical Storm Isaac, but that's not stopping President Obama from asking for more campaign money. In a new fundraising e-mail today geared to the swing state of Iowa, Obama says he's losing "the air war" and needs $5 or more from donors to pay for more campaign commercials.