THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

And it has long been studying ways to deal with it as Republicans and other troglodytes continue to deny is exists. Even after a prime example of what will happen destroyed a seaside airbase in Florida, including $5.2 Billion worth of planes left because they were unflyable due to maintenance.

When Hurricane Michael wrecked much of Tyndall Air Force Base near Panama City, Fla., last week, the storm exposed a significant military vulnerability. The base’s F-22 stealth fighter jets may be unmatched in the skies, but they were all but defenseless on the ground, as the powerful storm ripped apart hangars, flooded buildings and scattered debris.

Most of Tyndall’s 55 F-22s were flown away to safety before the storm hit, but 17 of the aircraft had been grounded for maintenance and could not be made airworthy in time. Those jets, worth about $5.8 billion — more than three times what it would cost to rebuild the entire base from scratch — had to be left behind, and many were damaged.

The Air Force played down the harm this week, saying that all the aircraft could be repaired. But the military has more than a dozen air bases right on the coast in storm-prone southern states, where scientists predict that hurricanes will grow more intense and more frequent because of global warming. Michael’s devastation of Tyndall raises question about how well the bases are defended against the elements.

“This threat is not new to the military — they’ve been talking about climate change for decades — and they generally learn from the latest storm,” said Lt. Gen. Arlen D. Jameson, who is retired from the Air Force and was a former deputy commander of the United States Strategic Command. “The problem is, the lessons learned going forward may be almost too painful to wait for the next lesson.”

Several factors conspired to put a tenth of the nation’s F-22 fleet at risk in Hurricane Michael. The sophisticated jets are notoriously temperamental, and at any given time, only about half the them are mission-ready, according to a recent Air Force report. The storm appeared and developed swiftly, giving maintenance crews only a few days’ warning to get as many jets airworthy as they could. And though the 17 F-22s left behind were put in hangars built to weather tropical storms, the buildings were no match for a Category 4 monster whose winds were clocked at 130 miles an hour before they broke the base’s wind gauge.

Hurricanes have been pummeling air bases since the days when the damage was measured in blimps. Hurricane Hugo ripped through Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina in 1989; Hurricane Andrew all but destroyed Homestead Air Force Base near Miami in 1992; and flooding from Hurricane Katrina caused nearly $1 billion in damage at Keesler Air Force Base on the Mississippi coast. Naval air stations and other bases have also suffered extensive flooding and other storm damage.

With more than a dozen Air Force, Navy and Marine airfields dotting the coast from Texas to Virginia, military leaders know that another disaster is only a matter of time, General Jameson said, but they may run into trouble addressing the growing threat by name because of President Trump’s outspoken skepticism about climate change.

With The Orange Humperdoo and his GOP caucus religiously denying climate change, the military has to tread carefully in trying to deal with the actual threat they see coming. And until we can get rid of the GOP, we can only be glad that the base was not home to F-35 Flying Bricks with their YUGE price tags.