MIAMI (AP) — Tropical Storm Isaias formed Wednesday in the warm waters off eastern Mexico and forecasters said it was expected to strengthen into the first hurricane of the Atlantic season before hitting the U.S. Gulf Coast later in the week. The rapidly strengthening storm was on track to tie or break a 121-year-old record as the latest arriving initial hurricane of the Atlantic season. According to the National Weather Service, the record dates to 1905, when the year’s first Atlantic hurricane formed on Oct. 8. The Miami-based National Hurricane Center on Wednesday issued a hurricane watch for the northern Gulf Coast from Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, to Indian Pass on the Florida Panhandle. The watch means hurricane conditions are possible within 48 hours. Isaias was centered about 260 miles (420 kilometers) northwest of Progreso, Mexico, and about 540 miles (870 kilometers) southwest of the Mississippi River’s mouth, according to the National Hurricane Center. It had maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (75 kph) and was moving east-northeast at 8 mph (13 kph). Forecasters predict Isaias will become a hurricane by Thursday as it turns northward toward the U.S. Gulf Coast. Though its path and timing could shift, the storm is expected to make landfall late Friday or early Saturday. The hurricane center said residents of the northern Gulf Coast should prepare for dangerous wind, storm surge and heavy rain that could trigger flash floods. “It’s definitely time to look at your hurricane plan and put whatever you need into…This article was originally published on Mongabay

More than half of the world’s wild tulip species assessed so far are threatened with extinction, reports Mongabay’s Shreya Dasgupta. “For a flower this famous, it may surprise people how rare its wild relatives have become,” Brett Wilson, co-founder of the Wild Tulip Specialist Group at the IUCN, the global nature conservation authority, told Mongabay in an interview. Researchers have so far assessed the conservation status of 62 wild tulip species for the IUCN Red List, Wilson said. Of these, 32 are threatened with extinction. Most of the assessed species, 53, occur in Central Asia; five are critically endangered, seven endangered, 15 vulnerable, and 14 classified as near threatened. These at-risk wild tulips are concentrated in the massive Central Asian mountain systems of Tien Shan and Pamir-Alay, which Wilson calls the single richest region on Earth for tulip diversity. The biggest threats to most wild tulips are livestock overgrazing and climate change. Tulips grow underground as dormant bulbs in cold, harsh conditions, before emerging and flowering in spring. Grazing animals can trample tulip bulbs and eat the flowers before they produce seeds, Wilson said. Meanwhile, “a warming, drying climate is squeezing mountain species upslope with nowhere left to go while more unpredictable weather can lead to landslides and floods,” he added. Other threats including mining, infrastructure development, and overharvesting of bulbs from the wild, which affect specific species. The “classic victims of overcollection,” Wilson said, are the big, showy red-flowered species growing close to settlements. “Tulipa fosteriana in Uzbekistan and…This article was originally published on Mongabay