Why rare Auroras are easier to see this week | September 4, 2025

What's up everyone? Happy Friday Eve. Today is Thursday, September 4th. I'm Coy Wire. This is CNN 10 and we've got your 10 minutes to get you some of the top news stories and some interesting ones like a teacher who gets a tattoo of classroom topics. We must learn more. First up, though, the official end of summer is around the corner on the autumnal equinox on September 22nd. And this summer, 2025 is on track to be the hottest on record. For some parts of the United States, it was also the rainiest. There was widespread

flash flooding in the northeast and in Texas. Parts of Iowa received three times more rainfall than what is typical. Flooding caused some major problems for transportation systems in some of the nation's largest cities. Why? Aging subway stations were built during a time with a much milder climate. CNN's Bill Weir explores the problems and some possible solutions that are already in the works. A hundred and twenty years ago,

when New York's subway was new, few could have imagined it would give over a billion rides a year. Despite days like this, when air vents become catchment bases and stairs turn into waterfalls. When the London Underground was new,

chimneys still had sweeps and England was into waterfalls. When the London Underground was new, chimneys still had sweeps, and England was three degrees cooler. So now, when temperatures top 90 for days, 60% of tuned cars have no air conditioning.

When they were first built, they didn't necessarily have sufficient tunnel ventilation to cope with air conditioning. So we've been using other novel methods such as fans and super fans to reduce the heat.

And even this new subway in China shows the perils of under-engineering on an overheating planet. When eight inches of rain fell in an hour, 14 people died in a subway line less than a decade old.

Do climate change, because the warmer and hotter air can hold much more moisture, we're just getting intense rainfall events.

New York's antique system of pumps removes up to 14 million gallons of water on dry days, and many times more during a storm. But while better pumps are part of the MTA's new $700 million improvement plan, keeping water out in the first place means raising hundreds of little sections of the city.

You'd probably miss this if you weren't actually looking out for it, but this is actually about a six inch, five to six inches of an elevation.

So it's not just a step, it's a flood dam.

It's a flood protection mechanism.

In one part of Brooklyn, riders take two steps up before heading down. And elevated air vents are spreading, designed to stop those cascading waterfalls so viral on social media.

This little elevation right here prevents that from happening and still allows for fresh air flow to happen with subway vents just as it would be if they weren't covered. But ultimately a subway

is only as resilient as the city around it. So a hotter climate demands working

with nature to build shadier, spongier cities. Here we have four sections of permeable pavers and the idea is as the water is coming downhill and going towards the combined sewer, we're actually capturing it again on site and holding it in place. So just instead of this being blacktop asphalt, the water seeps in. That's right, between the pavers.

At nearly 500 acres, Greenwood Cemetery is one of New York's biggest green spaces.

With a weather station attached here, it anticipates the amount of rainfall that we're going to get, releases water to the combined sewer before the storm happens, and then shuts off our access plant.

And with the help of the Nature Conservancy on a few upgrades, can now keep 55 million gallons of stormwater out of streets and sewers.

And if you think about how many acres of New York City alone are held within cemeteries, if they're able to make slight changes to the way they operate, how much stormwater could be captured on those sites. It's just a different way of thinking about

private institutions, private green spaces, and trying to say, despite being private, despite having this fence around our perimeter, we are part of this community.

Calling all bookworms, how would you like to have the opportunity to read for 18 straight days? That's exactly what an ambitious squad of bibliophiles in Nigeria did as part of their bid to break a world reading record. When the final word was uttered, the team had already read aloud for more than 431 hours, finishing 79 books by Nigerian authors.

Guinness World Records is currently reviewing the feat to make it official, but the Resolute Reader's novel attempt dwarfed the current record of 365 hours. The team says their goal was to not only celebrate Nigerian literature, but to promote literacy

in Africa's most populous country. An American astronaut is sharing a stunning view from the International Space Station this week, a red aurora. This is video taken by Don Pettit, who says he saw scenes like this two or three times

during his six-month mission to the ISS. An aurora is caused by the interaction of charged particles from the sun when they collide with the Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere. Red auroras, however, are more rare than green auroras because they are associated with intense

solar activity. A powerful solar storm this week has also made a stunning wave of auroras more visible than usual to some of us here on Earth, parts of the lower Midwest and Oregon getting a glimpse of the northern lights. Did you see them? Did you snag any photos or videos?

If so, send them to our at CNN10 Instagram account so we can share. Pop quiz, hot shot. The first issue of National Geographic magazine was mainly filled with what type of content? Photographs, maps and scholarly articles,

travel stories, or wildlife sketches. X marks the spot. Maps and scholarly articles were the publication's only content more than 130 years ago, dedicated to quote, the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge.

You've probably heard of Noah's Ark, the biblical tale of a man loading every animal two by two onto a ship to avoid a flood. Well, this next story borrows that concept for the sake of nature photography. A Nat Geo photographer has spent the last 19 years trying to document 25,000 animal species and, whoa, he's more than halfway there.

Let's take a look at his work.

The goal of the photo arc is to get the public to care about all the species that we share the planet with. We're at more than 17,000 species now. I started with National Geographic more than 30 years ago. Then about 19 years ago I had a chance to reset and restart my career. My wife got sick. She's fine today but she was in treatment for cancer for about a year and we had three little

kids so I stayed at home. And I thought what can I do that would allow us to see all creatures great and small and really look them in the eye, undistracted, give them an equal voice by not having any size comparisons around them and so that's how the photo art got started. Most of the animals on the face of the earth, you could fit in the palm of your hand. And they're never gonna get a full story anywhere. So this is their chance to shine

and really tell their stories. The photo art doesn't just exist to document, but we give lift to the good places that are doing good work. I hope these pictures continue to go to work long after we're all dead and gone. You know, like just to show people what it looked like.

And hopefully the world doesn't look too vastly different. I really hope the legacy is to continue to inspire people to care about nature and all that's in it, but you know, will people be smart enough to realize that our fate and the fate of the natural world are the same. ♪♪

Today's story, Getting a 10 out of 10, is all about an ink-redible professor at the University of Nebraska who wears his love for pharmaceutical science on his sleeve. For medical students in Dr. Corey Hopkins' class

at the Center for Drug Design and Innovation, successfully creating a new chemical compound can earn them more than just an A on their transcript, it can get them a permanent spot on their teacher's arm.

To make a drug, you sometimes have to make five, 6,000 individual chemicals. As we advance this, I think it's a good way

to capture these, at least small milestones along the way.

For more than two years, Hopkins has been tattooing the chemical compounds on his arm to capture his students' achievements. And for the students, the gesture became more meaningful than expected.

Without him, it would have been so difficult for me. I felt really proud and honored, honestly, because with that, it's something that I did in this lab left a mark with him forever.

Well, that's one way to leave your mark in science. All right, superstars, shout out time now. And this one goes to Miss Todd and Miss Indy at the Mark Twain Middle School in Alexandria, Virginia. This stuff's incredible. You took a field trip to the post office

to send us these letters. We thank you very much and from our YouTube channel Mrs. Jamie at the Fox Meadows School of Creative Media in Jonesboro We thank you very much and from our YouTube channel Mrs. Jamie at the Fox Meadows School of Creative Media in Jonesboro Arkansas Raiders rise up have an awesome day everyone I'm Koi Wire and we are