Green Group discussion
Climate Change
>
Flooding
Looks like California is going to have rain for another week. This current batch of atmospheric river rain started Dec 26.
California gets rain from atmospheric rivers fairly often every year. What is different this time is that the clouds have 2 to 3 times the amount of moisture in them compared to previous atmospheric river storms.
Many locations are several inches or more above their anticipated yearly rainfall totals, and the next heavy period of rain is expected to last through the 18th to the 20th.
Rain in California projected to last through Jan 18th to 20th.
Mod
https://www.rte.ie/news/us/2023/0110/...
"Hundreds of square kilometers of land were scorched in 2017 and 2018, denuding the hillsides of the vegetation that normally keeps soil in place.
Yesterday's evacuation order came five years to the day after heavy rain had sent torrents of mud into the town, killing 23 people.
"Over the last 30 days, Montecito has received 12-20+ inches of rain across the community, exceeding our yearly average of 17 inches," Montecito Fire said on Twitter.
"This cumulative, saturating rain puts the community at greater risk of flooding and debris flow.""
Mod
Elizabeth Forest
"We are finally getting a substantial amount of rain, after years of drought. It's also been very windy. So: flooding, dams breaking, trees falling and killing people, cars crashing, etc. All good El Nino fun. I am glad there are no eucalyptus trees around here. They tend to fall down in high winds, but there are multiple road closures from roads washing out and trees falling. The really amazing thing is that we haven't lost power yet. Maybe our local utility has actually done what they said and hardened the power line infrastructure.
However, the intersection, closed by a sinkhole for a year and a half the last time we had a heavy rain, has no traffic lights again. That storm took out the traffic lights, damaged a storm drain, took down the power line conduits etc. So maybe the repair wasn't completely effective.
I am just enjoying the fact that I still have power and heat, and that work isn't too busy yet."
Mod
During a press conference after visiting some of the waterlogged communities, Mr Hipkins said flash flooding had led to "three fatalities with one person still missing as a result of the weather".
"The level of devastation in some areas is considerable," he added.
Mr Hipkins said Auckland experienced "its wettest day on record" yesterday."
https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2023/01...
Mod
"We went to see Elton John ... but didn't.
Friday January 27th, we went up to Auckland to see Elton John for the very first time live ... on his final tour, ever.
So we made it up to the stadium, bought our souvenirs, and waited for the stage to be occupied at the appropriate time, 7:30pm SHARP.
At 7:20 the stage manager (we think) came onto the stage, and announced that Elton John would not be performing that night.
It was really no surprise - we had first-section seats on the field - brilliant view, we could see the poor guy who drew the short draw's facial expressions as we stood in about 3 inches of water (7cm) on the [floating!] plastic grids they used to protect the grass.
The weather event we were all standing in as so phenomenal that it was no surprise the concert was cancelled - everyone had expected it to be called off (hours earlier, really) due to the weather bomb that lashed Auckland which ended up killing four people, displaced thousands of people, and ended up making hundreds of homes unlivable.
It had taken an extra hour to drive from Hamilton to Auckland along the partly-flooded motorway and the very-flooded streets.
We got great parking - but then, only 11,000 of the 40,000 people who'd bought tickets actually showed up. On the radio, as they cancelled event after event during the day, they cheerily repeated that the Elton John concert (outdoors, in a rugby stadium, in a natural volcanic crater bowl) was still ON.
While we stood out listening to the cancellation just ten minutes before the scheduled start, that was actually during the peak hour of rainfall.
It was more than a deluge. They had more than three MONTHS worth of rain in a single day, 238mm (9.4 inches), with 78mm (3 inches) of that falling in the hour between 7 and 8pm.
The state of emergency still continues today, extended for an additional week.
It took us 4 1/2 hours to get home to Hamilton (instead of 90 minutes) - crawling along through diversion after diversion around (and through) flooded streets and around closed roads, even part of the motorway itself.
The scale of the event was hard to imagine - but we were lucky; safe and dry we arrived home, while Auckland still struggles with the enormity of the flooding and its aftermath. The entire International airport closed for a day and a half as the ground floor of the terminal (and the roads and the tarmac) were under quite a bit of water.
We were lucky, really. And the funny thing was when they finally cancelled the concert, rain pounding down on the stage and all of the wet electrical cables up there, nobody was angry around us. Not a single person swore, or was grumpy, or snippy. Not a one.
There were smiles and laughter all around as we slowly evacuated the flooded volcanic bowl, people helped each other, and the mood was light. It was so supremely ridiculous, the late cancellation when it had been bucketing down and blowing all day, you couldn't do anything but laugh.
We had all shared in something you don't get to have happen very often - but it will never happen again (for Elton John, anyway). No reschedule, just refunded tickets, both Auckland concerts cancelled due to the flooding and aftermath.
So, goodbye yellow brick road, the farewell tour - Elton John will not be performing this way, ever again. Farewell, we missed you, and will miss you evermore.
A sad thing, but oh so minor compared to the suffering and damage the floods caused the people of Auckland.
Side note: The cheap plastic ponchos we brought for the event were absolutely amazing. Our top halves stayed comfy and dry, even as my wife and I were ankle deep and more in flood water."
"Sea levels rose in Iskenderun, Turkey, approximately 656 feet following two earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 and 7.6."From a short article with some video and a lot of ad videos.
This probably means that the shore line came ashore 656 feet. It has put parts of the town under a few feet of water.
Mod
Flooding is a lot more to cope with amid this tragedy.
Interestingly, the name Iskenderun would have been derived from Alexander the Great.
Pakistan’s Plans to Rebuild After the Floods Are Flawed. 82 Year old architect Yasmeeen Lari, who is Pakistan’s first certified female architect, is trying to fix the rebuilding plans. She says that replacing traditional built houses with brick and concrete is not a good idea. But that is what the western aid agencies want to do. The concrete houses absorb a lot of heat, making life inside homes tough during Pakistan’s summers, and it’s hard for poorer villagers to maintain or expand on them once construction crews have departed.
The Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, founded by Lari in 1980, is training villagers in Sindh province to build their own flood-resilient homes from cheap, locally available, low-carbon materials.
https://time.com/6256495/rebuild-paki...
https://www.facebook.com/HeritageFoun...
Mod
https://www.rte.ie/news/2023/0220/135...
"Sao Sebastiao, 200km north of Sao Paulo and where many people from the city spend the pre-Lenten holiday weekend on the beach, was hard hit, as a record 60cm of rain fell in 24 hours, city officials said.
That is more than twice the amount that normally falls in a month.
Carnival events in Sao Sebastiao and elsewhere were cancelled.
"We have not yet gauged the scale of the damage. We are trying to rescue the victims," said Sao Sebastiao Mayor Felipe Augusto, calling the situation in the town "extremely critical".
"We are working at nearly 50 residences that collapsed under the force of the water and there are still people buried," he told Globonews."
Climate models are underestimating the effect of melting ice's impact on changing the shape of the Earth.Antarctic Ice Sheet melting to lift sea level higher than thought, study says
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...
Mod
Flood Waters is in a series called Southern Storms which has titles about hurricanes and wildfires.
Flood Waters
"Just 10 months ago, severe flooding in Pakistan killed over 1,700, displaced 8 million and cost the economy more than $30 billion.Now crop shortages linger, thousands remain homeless and the country is struggling with rebuilding, food supply, health care and debt. Relief aid has largely dried up."
The rain season is starting up again and many people are still living in tents. Farms have not been rebuilt. With no profit to be made the world has lost interest in rebuilding Pakistan. The current rain season will only add to the homelessness and infrastructure problems. The financial industry is only interested in making a profit, and the aid required would make the situation break even at best, more than likely a loss.
Most people have moved back to where they got displaced from though the number of people who don't have permanent housing is not known. Many schools were destroyed by the floods and have not been rebuilt. Roads are still being rebuilt. Only one third of the 20 million people who need disaster relief have received it.
Malaria quickly became a problem right after the flooding but has been effectively reduced to somewhat controllable levels by using old proven methods and new methods. The malaria situation is better than it was but not as good as it was before the flooding.
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/30...
https://apnews.com/article/pakistan-f...
Mod
https://www.thebrooke.org/news/more-6...
July 9th, a thunderstorm in Hudson Valley, NY caused as much damage as a hurricane, as experienced 12 years ago. The roadways were damaged in 250 places, ranging from covered with mud and debris to being completely washed out.
Some areas got almost 10 inches of rain. The terrain normally channels run off into temporary streams that do a little damage, but nothing that really matters. In this event the run offs became raging streams causing instant damaging erosion to land and buildings and the rivers heavily overflowed, causing excessive property damage.
Classified as a thousand year event, which only tells how much damage was done, tens of millions of dollars, but time wise means nothing at all. The same thing could happen all over again tomorrow.
With the new weather this can happen anywhere, anytime, any country. No one is immune. It shows how the current infrastructure practices are currently outdated and are no match for excessive rainfall. The only thing that protects us is the fact that it isn't currently happening to us. Its called chance, and unfortunately rain isn't a rare occurrence.
Insurance companies are finding that there is no profit in providing storm damage repair services. Their solution is to walk away instead figuring out how society as a whole can respond to this situation. That's what happens when profit is confused with public service.
Farther north, in Vermont, 14 county's have been declared disaster areas from the excessive rainfall. In New York, it appears that the water rose fast and disappeared fast, leaving tens of millions worth of damage behind. In Vermont, the waters are still rising and one dam is within a foot of overflowing, which would cause additional flooding to already flooded areas.
The rain has subsided to occasional isolated storms but is expected to become more widespread again over the next few days in the same areas as the next batch of inland storms moves eastward.
https://www.lohud.com/story/news/2023...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...
Mod
Beavers wouldn't help to ward off this kind of flooding, but they do a good job at quickly reconstructing the rivers and ponds afterwards. Its people building in what ended up to be the wrong places. Probably building by the riverside was never a good idea. When you get 10 inches of rain in less than a day even the top of a mountain becomes flooded with too much water to stand up in. If your building was built where the water goes there is not much you can do about it.
We have people living in areas that are not classified as flood plains under the old standards that do not exist anymore. The new test is can the area you live in handle the runoff without flooding if you get over 5 inches of rain in a couple of hours.
When it is 10 inches of rain there is going to be massive destruction. The area affected depends on whether the excessive rainfall run off is distributed out over a very wide area or if it is channeled into makeshift streams and rivers that build up in strength as more and more water gets put into them. The lay of the land has a lot to do with how the runoff forms. In Vermont and New York where the rain fell, the property is anything but flat. Plus people had built right up to the edge of rivers that were main conduits if excessive rainfall happened. River front property can be "exclusive" property. Or it can be cheap.
A lot of the "new" development that has occurred over the last 50 years was in low lying areas that is now at risk. That property was formerly considered undesirable to build on because of possible future flooding. As time went on and the land developers ran out of desirable property to convert into cash, they started developing the low lying areas as prime real estate and people bought the buildings built in what are now high risk areas. Not at a discounted price either but at prime prices.
Building on low lying areas happened all over the globe. It is probably a moot point now as not only the low lying flat land is prone to flooding in the new rain storms but any property that gets 10 inches of rain in a day is going to be near property that gets flooded or itself will get flooded. Not to mention the 50 inch rains that super storms and hurricanes can now generate.
Everyone is now at risk. That is the hallmark of the new world that got created when the average global temperature clicked up a few degrees. No one is exempt. The average global temperature is an integral part of the characteristics of everything in the world at the surface level. Below the surface it has yet to be seen that earthquakes and volcanic action are influenced by the average global temperature, but that is probably coming as the stress in the subsurface structures is changing as the weight of the water, ice, and mud on top of the land changes.
There are probably changes happening in the upper atmosphere that are also having a profound but as yet, unregistered impact. The thunderstorms used to regularly peak at 20,000 feet, so the jets flew above that where there was no weather disturbances. The thunder storms in the US can now easily reach 40,000 feet and the jets are flying at 33,000 to 42,000 feet. 33,000 is the old lower safe limit, while 42,000 feet is the maximum height commercial jets are allowed to fly at.
Mod
Clare wrote: "Maybe installing more beavers would help. Seriously."True
If you can't buy, then you rent. It might turn out that housing could end being huge bunker type buildings where a corporation owns and rents out living space. The building is designed so the weather can't destroy it. That way there would be no insurance issue. Different buildings would be made available based on social status and economic standing.Renting and paying by the second for access to anything is the preferred modern business model for a business's relationship to a consumer. While one could say that this outcome was an inadvertent outcome of unrelated events, it could also be said that the success of everyone's life style is based on making others pay for it and eventually everyone will be made to pay for everything at the time of use as the reckonings of our life styles and entropy puts everyone in the same situation.
Communities that are located within close proximity to any kind of mining or large scale land disruptive natural resource harvesting are paying a high price in terms of health and quality of life every second of their existence. Instead of having to pay, they should be paid by being moved to a better, healthier location, or be richly compensated for living in an industrial quality zone.
The prized cell phones are just one item out of countless numbers of items where a lot of people get all kinds of unpaid for benefits while other pay with their and their communities health and welfare.
Rich people living where it isn't prudent to live are also betting with their lives that nothing is going to happen. Those kinds of odds are rapidly disappearing in the modern world.
As for people living or working in towns or cities alongside a river there is only one way to protect their establishments. Either put everything at the rivers edge on stilts or dig a very deep channel with very high walls for the river to run through.
My home town went with the deep channel high wall approach after a flood that wiped out the city center almost 70 years ago. It works very well except for a few major details.
The protected area of the city, which was the original center of activity and development, fell victim to modern sprawl and actually saw very little big scale high dollar development, and in fact became under developed.
Ironically the development happened before and after the channeled section of the river, and is built right up to and even in the river because the land was cheap.
My country Aotearoa (New Zealand) has also been affected this year by hurricanes and worse flooding than ever before, isolating people for weeks, flooding homes, destroying roads and causing landslides. My own home was without power for most of a week because of hurricane Gabrielle.
Mod
Wow, you have some incredible dolphin footage on your profile page! Thanks for sharing.
Clare wrote: "Wow, you have some incredible dolphin footage on your profile page! Thanks for sharing."Thanks for the feedback. There's nothing I love more than getting out on the water and filming the wildlife.
Mod
https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2023/08...
"Both men said economic hardship, political instability and crime had left them with little option but to abandon their native Nigeria.
Mr Yeye, a pentecostal minister from Lagos state, said his peanut and palm oil farm was destroyed by floods this year, leaving him and his family homeless. He hopes they can now join him in Brazil.
Mr Friday said his journey to Brazil began on 27 June, when a fisherman friend rowed him up to the stern of the Liberian-flagged Ken Wave, docked in Lagos, and left him by the rudder.
To his surprise, he found three men already there, waiting for the ship to depart.
Mr Friday said he was terrified. He had never met his new shipmates and feared they could toss him into the sea at any moment.
Once the ship was moving, Mr Friday said the four men made every effort not to be discovered by the ship's crew, who they also worried might throw them overboard."
As in Chicago, the flood control systems put in place in Northern China were unable to handle the excessive rainfall from Typhoon Doksuri. The amount of rainfall exceeded anything seen in the last 140 years.The conversion of flood plains to developed land is not unusual when effective flood control are put in place. The problem that many flood plain developed areas throughout the world are finding is that the math that was used did not anticipate the rate of rainfall that is currently being seen with the new atmospheric conditions.
The problem seems to be that instead of putting developments in new areas that are best suited for development, people would rather keep building in the same general location because of the name of the area, not because of the physical aspects of the land.
The bulk of the damage is not done by raging floodwaters but by the rise of the water in the entire area and the inability of the water to flow anywhere since it is accumulating in the lowest areas.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/c...
The static atmospheric conditions that is generating the extreme heat the southern US is now being accompanied by static atmospheric conditions farther north that is now creating rainy conditions. Areas where the rain keeps falling, which is called training, are beginning to look like there might be some major flooding.https://www.wunderground.com/article/...
Mod
"Beijing — The remnants of Typhoon Doksuri finally moved out of China's enormous capital city Wednesday, but the storm left 20 people dead in its wake after four days of record rainfall inundated parts of Beijing with floodwater. The Beijing Meteorological Bureau said 29.3 inches of rain had inundated the capital region between Saturday and Wednesday — the most ever recorded since recordkeeping began during the Qing dynasty in 1883.
About 1 million residents were evacuated amid the flooding across Beijing and neighboring parts of northern China, and the storm has left widespread damage.
...
Rescue teams arrived in a town in Hebei province, which borders Beijing, to rescue hundreds of people who were trapped in their buildings when the lower floors of residential apartment blocks were inundated, according to state media. Residents said the water rose as high as 13 feet in some areas."
Mod
Possibly the undersea eruption off Tonga pushed water vapour and heat into the atmosphere to hit a stress point for the typhoon generation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwqvw...
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/tonga-e...
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-envi...
Some of the censoring is of people who tried to express their concerns online when they found out their towns were considered to be expendable buffers that would protect "more important areas." Their towns were described as protective moats.At least one area got a years worth of rain in a week. Another area got 19 inches of rain in 3 days. There is flooding in a major grain production area. Some industrial sites in the area have also experienced serious flooding which could effect their production output.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/floodwater...
Mod
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-c...
"China has battled serious floods throughout its history, and the designers of the Forbidden City would have been well aware of the need to build in proper defences.
The palace published a series of images on Weibo showing heavy flooding in the 600-year-old courtyards, but the drainage system in action removing the water.
State media quoted an unnamed official as saying the combination of cleverly designed sloping courtyards, stepped buildings and underground drains meant water could be carried away in 20 minutes.
The palace's original photos of the floods were later taken down - an official told BBC News that was because they did not know who had taken them.
But the original post and new images have been circulating on local news portals and social media.
The large volume of water in some of the pictures prompted some on popular Chinese micro-blogging site Weibo to question the "ancient engineering efforts".
"A royal drainage system? It still looks very flooded to me," commented one netizen."
The number of people in India who have died in the 2023 June to September monsoon season so far is approximately 2,000. More rain is on the way. The past week had several serious rain events in northern India, with large numbers of people needing rescuing. Since 2013, the number of people who died each year from monsoon activity varied from 1,500 people to around 2,000 people, except in 2019 when 2,754 people died.
The total amount of rainfall is about average, but it has been distributed in a far less than average pattern. The final amount could be less than normal. September is usually drier than July or August, but that could be different this year.
This is one of the driest August months since records have been kept starting in 1901. The dry weather patterns, caused by El Nino, are damaging the crops which supply grains for animal feed. Most of the heavy rain is falling in northern India where it is doing a great deal of damage.
So far 1.24 million acres of crops, and almost 90,000 homes have been flood damaged, and approximately 60,000 animals have also died.
Crop damage has ben mostly grains for animal feed. Other crops for people are at good levels because of surplus crops, which will exceed use for the third year in a row.
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/i...
https://www.thehindu.com/news/nationa...
https://www.reuters.com/article/india...
Monsoon weather could be experiencing a permanent change
https://www.americanscientist.org/art...
Mod
Mod
https://www.rte.ie/news/us/2023/0821/...
"The Mexican army opened 35 shelters providing refuge to 1,725 people affected by the storm.
Some areas in Oregon and Idaho were also expected to see heavy rain and possible flash flooding, the NHC said.
Tornadoes were possible in southeast California, western Arizona, southern Nevada and far southwest Utah, it said.
Nancy Ward, director of the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, said Hilary could be one of the worst storms to hit the state in more than a decade."
The storm is traveling at 30 mph towards Canada. That is very good because it limits the amount of rainfall that any area can get. When a hurricane stalls out, the rain quickly piles up. This has been seen on the east coast several times in the past couple of years.
Mod
This is an article on Medium written about, by and for, survivors of California's Camp Fire and Lahaina fire disasters. Quite a lengthy read, excerpt follows. Several different institutions made sure to get any money going.
There is some strong language, but it seems excusable (except that the writer and partner are educators.)
https://medium.com/@climatesurvivor/t...
"About a month after the Camp Fire, we got a letter from our mortgage holder, a small, not particularly efficient bank based in the San Francisco Bay area. It had come to their attention that the “collateral” on our mortgage had recently undergone a radical devaluation, and they wanted us to pay off our mortgage.
All of it. NOW. A check would be fine, thank you very much.
Lost your home, your job, your town? Sucks to be you. But the system is designed to insure that the banks profit, not to help you “recover” — or even make it possible to “recover”.
But we were “lucky”. We had homeowners insurance. Our house was worth $350,000 — according to them. No problem to rebuild — according to them. Too bad that half of the money you’re going to need to rebuild has to go to pay off that toxic ash pile. C’est la vie!
Oh, and don’t think we were ever even given the opportunity to not pay off that mortgage. Oh no. The check from our insurer was made out to us AND the bank. We had to send it to them before we could get a penny, and they definitely took their full share before sending the remains along to us.
You, the victim? You’re not first in line. That’s the way the system is designed."
Mod
A mass of hot air rose from Africa to Europe, heating the Mediterranean and continually powering the atmosphere. Looking at the satellite images, it looks like a Medicane - a hurricane on the Med, just above the African coast. The two cities worst hit on Libya are on the northern coastline. An entire district of a city has just been swept into the sea.
https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2023/09...
"Ahmed Mismari, the spokesperson for the Libyan National Army (LNA) that controls eastern Libya, said in a televised news conference that the disaster came after dams above Derna had collapsed, "sweeping whole neighbourhoods with their residents into the sea".
...
"After pummelling Greece last week, Storm Daniel swept in over the Mediterranean, swamping roads and destroying buildings in Derna, and hitting other settlements along the coast, including Libya's second-biggest city of Benghazi.
Videos of Derna showed a wide torrent running through the city centre where a far narrower waterway had previously flowed. Ruined buildings stood on either side.
Eastern Libya's Almostkbal TV broadcast footage that showed people stranded on the roofs of their vehicles calling for help and waters washing away cars."
Sky News has video of flooding.
https://news.sky.com/video/libya-thou...
Reports of over 2,000 people dying from the flooding in Libya. Morocco has similar casualty numbers from the earthquake. For 2023 the US is averaging a weather/fire billion dollar disaster every 12 days. Its not been a good year. Globally, the numbers aren't much better.
Mod
https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2023/09...
"An interior ministry spokesperson told Al Jazeera that naval teams were searching for the "many families that were swept into the sea in the city of Derna".
Derna is bisected by a seasonal river that flows from highlands to the south, and normally protected from flooding by dams.
A video posted on social media showed remnants of a collapsed dam 11.5km upstream of the city where two river valleys converged, now surrounded by huge pools of mud-coloured water.
"There used to be a dam," a voice can be heard saying in the video. Reuters confirmed the location based on the images.
In a research paper published last year, a hydrologist at Libya's Omar Al-Mukhtar University said repeated flooding of the seasonal riverbed, or wadi, was a threat to Derna. He cited five floods since 1942, and called for immediate steps to ensure regular maintenance of the dams.
"If a huge flood happens the result will be catastrophic for the people of the wadi and the city," the paper said."
Mod
Quite possibly overgrazing did away with protective vegetation too. The result was catastrophic.
https://www.rte.ie/news/2023/0915/140...
""This disaster was violent and brutal," said Yann Fridez, the head of the Libya delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had a team in Derna when the floodwaters hit.
"A wave seven metres high wiped out buildings and washed infrastructure into the sea. Now family members are missing, dead bodies are washing back up on shore and homes are destroyed.""
The disaster was decades in the making. There were many factors contributing to the situation. Libya received 16 inches of rain in 24 hours, which is on the low side of modern catastrophic rainfalls, but it is entirely possible to get double that amount in a period of anywhere from 12 to 48 hours in any region. This means that the damage seen in Libya can happen in any country. Most people are still willing to believe that something like that it can't happen where they are.
Mod
"The climate crisis is going to expose more of the world to both hotter weather and heavy rainfall. This could create dangerous flood conditions new research has found. A study recently published in Earth’s Future outlines how a lot of the planet is going to face down a combination of heat and floodwaters.
When the combination of wet and hot conditions occurs, it can worsen widespread flooding. A heat wave comes first which dries out soil and vegetation, this reduces the area’s ability to absorb the incoming water. When the region is struck with higher-than-average precipitation, that water does not penetrate the dried-out and hardened soil. It runs along the surface of the soil which contributes to flash flooding and landslides, the study said."
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c...
Mod
"The flash flood that has killed thousands of people in Libya this week followed a "medicane", a rare but destructive weather phenomenon that scientists believe will intensify in a warming world.
The term is an amalgamation of the words Mediterranean and hurricane. Used by scientists and weather forecasters, it is less well known to the wider public.
Medicanes, which tend to form over parts of the Mediterranean Sea near the North African coast, are similar to hurricanes and typhoons although they can develop over cooler waters."
Inundation and Injustice: Flooding Presents a Formidable Threat to the Great Lakes Region"Archaic wastewater systems, crumbling infrastructure and segregated housing in the region create a perfect storm of flood vulnerability amid excessive rain, overflowing rivers and storm surges."
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08...
Mod
Somebody took advantage.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/na...
"A New York City sea lion did not listen to Mayor Eric Adams's guideline to shelter in place during the rain.
The marine mammal managed to swim out of its Central Park Zoo pool thanks to flooding of the plaza caused by torrential rains and flooding in the city, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society. The sea lion remained inside the zoo's outer perimeter."
Mod
"Hi from rainy New York City!
Roy and I arrived on Thursday afternoon, completely ignorant about what was in store for us. After a long day of travel, and a minor hiccup at the ride-share lane (no available wifi, and the roaming signal for our Costa Rica phones wasn't great) we managed to grab a Lyft to our AirBnB in Brooklyn.
Having missed lunch (airplane cookies don't count as food, amirite) we were both starving. So, we grabbed a slice of pizza from the local neighborhood spot (the most NYC thing we could think of to do!)
While in a New York state of mind, I told Roy we ought to head to the closest bodega and pick up some groceries (setting off a hilariously confusing conversation, because "bodega" in Costa Rican Spanish means "storage facility", not "Mom & Pop grocery store").
Although Roy had never heard of this sort of bodega, I quickly convinced him it would be fun.
(Narrator: It was not fun.)
But I didn't know that at the time! Because I had no idea what I was doing, I wandered us into the closest place I could find. It wasn't much bigger than your average living room, with three skinny aisles too narrow to push a cart through.
(No problem, I said. It'll be fine, I said. We'll just grab a couple of things and be on our way.)
The first clue that maybe I was in over my head was the fact that there were no prices posted anywhere. In normal life, I fully admit to occasionally making snap decisions based on which random pack of crackers costs three cents less, so these tall shelves full of price-less packages made my spidey senses tingle.
(Narrator: Spidey senses mean DANGER, RETHINK WHAT YOU ARE DOING. But did you listen??)
No, I did not listen. 😭
We blithely grabbed a loaf of sliced bread, a half-gallon of milk, a pint of yogurt, a dozen eggs, and a quart of apple juice, and pranced up to the register with our little basket, feeling very proud of how Big City we were being.
And then we had a mild heart attack when it came time to pay.
(Narrator: Mild? It was full-on, Oscar-worthy apoplexy.)
Listen, the sliced bread alone was $12!! Maybe a loaf of ordinary white bread is always over $12 USD where you live, but for the two of us goofy rain forest monkeys, we were definitely caught off guard.
Know what else caught us off guard? The torrential rain that started immediately after and kept on coming, culminating in NYC being declared a state of emergency by the following morning.
Subways flooded, cars floated down streets, and Roy and I spent the next two days hunkered down in our AirBnB, nibbling slices of $12 bread. 😂
To pass the time, Roy read me poems from one of his favorite poets (Jorge Debravo), then asked me for poetry suggestions in English so he could try something new."
No one thought that subways would have to be water proof. In New York the water starts at the street level and works its way down through cracks and openings then into service pipes and tunnels and other open underground spaces until it gets down to open areas where the water can reappear. The water is always leaking through from the street but it usually doesn't get very far because it flows by overflowing each level it sits at before going to the next lower level. Too much rainfall and it goes all the way down to the subway tunnels. Apparently there is no way to stop the water from coming through.
The water also comes through the street level entrances which are made to accommodate people traffic so it is all downhill with no raised obstacles to stop the water from flowing in. Even modern subway systems not leaking through the roofs have this problem.
Mod
https://news.sky.com/story/yellow-wea...
"During a visit to Network Rail's control room in Glasgow on Tuesday, Transport Secretary Mairi McAllan said she is "hopeful" the rail network can withstand another downpour.
She added: "The advice from the Met Office is that the rain that's expected today wouldn't normally constitute a yellow weather warning.
"But it has been issued on account of the deluge over the weekend and the fact that the ground is already saturated."
Ms McAllan also praised Network Rail for its response over the weekend.
She said: "I think they responded very well. I think that is seen in how quickly the network recovered."
Famers across Scotland have already reported significant damage to farmland, crops and infrastructure due to the flooding.
NFU Scotland said the full impact won't be known until the floodwaters fully recede.
Martin Kennedy, president of the union, said: "While some losses may be insurable, many will not, and it is likely that farmers will be left with a bill for millions when the mop-up is finally completed.""
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-...
"NFU Scotland said millions of pounds worth of unharvested vegetables have been damaged by flood waters described as unprecedented for the time of year.
The union says tight profit margins mean many will not be able to absorb the significant losses.
The full impact won't be understood until flood waters fully recede.
But some individual farmers have reported losing whole fields of vegetables worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
NFUS president, Martin Kennedy, said: "There's a lot of crops still in the ground that still have water over the top of it so a lot of it will be lost. We're talking about potatoes, broccoli, turnips - very high-value crops that are still to go into supermarkets.""
Mod
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa...
"The devastating floods which killed thousands in eastern Libya a month ago were the result of a destructive force of nature, but BBC Arabic has uncovered evidence that mismanagement by the local authorities led to many deaths that could have been prevented.
There are three main accusations:
Firstly, residents of Derna, the hardest-hit town, say they were told to stay at home rather than being evacuated even though it was known that Storm Daniel was coming.
Secondly, local and regional authorities are accused of failing to address the danger posed by the dams on the Derna riverbed, which runs through the town. Two dams spanning the Derna valley inland from the city burst on 11 September, causing the catastrophic flooding.
Finally, the authorities are accused of hindering the aid effort in the days immediately after the tragedy."
Later...
"Public pronouncements by officials in Derna or the eastern government made no reference to the potential overflow or collapse of the two dams serving the city, focusing instead on the dangers of strong winds and potentially rising water levels.
Dr Abdulwanis Ashour, a hydrologist and lecturer at Omar Al-Mukhtar University, told the BBC he had collected data on the condition of the Derna dams for a study published last year, which showed they were not prepared to withstand a storm like Daniel.
He said he had spent years studying the Derna dams and had discovered the presence of numerous cracks and fissures. In his research, he asserted that they would not be able to handle a large amount of rainfall and were at risk of collapse."
Green Group
Books mentioned in this topic
Cara: Builder of Dun Daen (other topics)The Road To Crescent Head (other topics)
Meet Me At Crescent Head (other topics)
My Heart Belongs In Crescent Head (other topics)
North Korea Undercover: Inside the World's Most Secret State (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Kaitlynn Clarkson (other topics)Erica Ridley (other topics)
J.J. Mathews (other topics)
Elizabeth Forest (other topics)
Tanya Bird (other topics)
More...
https://www.rte.ie/news/2023/0107/134...
"Record-breaking floods have had a "devastating impact" on isolated towns in the Australian outback, the country's prime minister said today.
Helicopters have been winching people to safety as floodwaters rise in the sparsely populated Kimberley region of Western Australia.
While the worst of the rain has eased, some towns could be cut off for the next few days.
Emergency services have called the unfolding disaster "the worst flooding event" the state has seen.
...
Australia has been repeatedly lashed by heavy rain in the past two years, driven by back-to-back La Nina climate cycles."