In a Big Year for Bad Weather,FEMA Funds May Run Short

Hurricane season may be just beginning, but 2011 has already seen rare levels of destructive weather. Start with record-setting tornadoes in the South, the Midwest, and even the Northeast, and then add almost unprecedented flooding along the Mississippi River, and it’s already a bad year. With conditions ripe for a big crop of tropical storms and hurricanes this fall, officials are concerned that the money Congress has appropriated for emergencies could dry up — not, perhaps, during the hurricane season itself, but during the spring of 2012. USA Today had the story on May 26 (“FEMA could run out of rebuilding