Remembering Irene: A year ago this week, Hurricane Irene drowned large swaths of the Northeast, killing 46 people in the U.S., knocking out power to more than 7 million homes and businesses, and causing more than $15 billion in damages. Here’s the story of one 700-person town that was nearly wiped off the map by the historic storm (which, need we say it, might be a portent of the kind of thing we can expect more frequently in a warming world). New York

Trouble for Tampa?: Speaking of hurricanes, there’s a potential tropical storm bearing down on Florida, where the Tampa area is about to host a weeklong gathering of one of the nation’s major political parties (the one that starts with an "R"). As a climate scientist points out, the city where they’ll be meeting is threatened by sea level rise, increasing heat waves, urban flooding, and a rash of other problems connected to climate change. Yes, delegates: climate change. Tampa Tribune

Courting pollution: A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that the Environmental Protection Agency went too far with its new rules to prevent smog-forming pollution from power plants -- rules that would have saved an estimated 13,000 to 34,000 lives a year. The only ones breathing easier now: utilities and industry groups that claimed the new regs were too costly. Washington Post

Environmental injustice: Studies show that African-American and Hispanic students and kids from low-income families are more likely to attend schools located near pollution sources, such as oil refineries and power plants. The result: lower test scores and impaired student health, putting the poor at a further disadvantage. One solution would be requiring officials to take environmental issues into account when choosing where to build schools -- something that only half of U.S. states currently do. Metro News Detroit

Pedal progress: In New York City, winning broad agreement on anything is a tough task, so it’s nice to see that -- after several years of lawsuits and neighborhood tension (see “The Bicycle Diaries”) -- most residents are finally coming around on the Bloomberg administration’s push for bike lanes, with two-thirds of New Yorkers telling pollsters they’re a good idea. Now if only more residents would use them. New York Times

Yes, we’re tired of Snooki, too, but we don’t want to get rid of her that way: There’s an encouraging trend of local newspapers examining the impacts of climate change on their communities -- especially in coastal areas where sea level rise is a crucial concern. Here’s the latest example, from the Jersey Shore, where they may like gambling in Atlantic City, but no one is eager to roll the dice on the future of their beaches. Asbury Park Press

Whale wows: Did you know that humpback whales are left- and right-handed? That’s just one of the fascinating things that researchers are learning from closer observation of our favorite cetaceans. Check out the video, which also shows how humpbacks create “bubble nets” to catch fish. New York Times

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Image: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images