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Flooding
Georgetown, South Carolina, missed the damage from Hurricane Florence when it made landfall and worked its way inland. Now the town is facing flood waters up to 10 feet deep from two rivers that join together at the town as the water from inland rainfall makes its way back to the coast.Insurance coverage for the storm damage is estimated between 2.8 and 5 billion dollars. The estimated losses from the storm are around 40 billion dollars.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/waterways-...
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Some of these will relate to sources of flooding as they study atmosphere, snow melt, clouds, and a particularly nice image of Wax Lake delta is at the top, a classic birdsfoot delta.
"River deltas and sea level rise -- Marc Simard of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will lead the Delta-X investigation to better understand the natural processes that maintain and build land in major river deltas threatened by rising seas. The project will improve models that predict loss of coastal land from sea level rise by improving estimates of how deltas add land -- a process that involves trapping sediments and creating organic soils as plants grow. Delta-X will focus on the Mississippi River Delta using instruments on three NASA research aircraft."
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.ph...
Floods can bring out insects waiting for wetter times. The bigger the rained out area the more insects hatch.https://abc11.com/florence-floods-bre...
NASA can see dark, polluted Carolina rivers spilling into the ocean from spacehttps://www.newsobserver.com/news/loc...
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Severe flooding from tsunami in Indonesia. There have been several earthquakes in the Pacific region and there were plenty of warnings and none of them resulted in tsunamis. Now it has happened again. The warnings were put out, I can only assume everyone had gotten used to nothing happening. That's how I looked at it initially. This time the initial earthquakes were the warnings. This is the third tsunami for the region in 90 years. 1927, 1968, 2018.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-4...
https://people.com/human-interest/ind...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/strong-qua...
The earthquake was very destructive. It liquified the ground trapping many people. It is going to take months of careful sorting through the dried mud to find all the people who died.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphi...August 2018, a year after Hurricane Harvey flooded the Houston area not all the houses been repaired. People got an average of $4,000 from FEMA to repair houses where walls were knocked down by the floods or lower floors were damaged by mud. At least 197,000 were damaged, most didn't have flood insurance. There is no answer for how many remain damaged, nor all the damaged houses that were never reported because the owners didn't have flood insurance.
Most people didn't have flood insurance because supposedly they didn't need it. Fema wants them to buy flood insurance. They will get more money the next time they get flooded.
It is a national housing disaster that is going unreported. The news services just aren't running the stories. Fema stopped paying for hotel rooms in July. The real estate articles paint a picture of a good real estate market for the sales of good houses and flooded damaged houses sold at reduced prices.
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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/0...The market reports are deceptive. The money is not evenly distributed. For those who have the funds they can easily replace what was ruined, for those who can't it is a different story. The middle class is able to handle the situation but ironically the middle class itself is also literally eroding away.
The pictures of the houses with only stud frames for some of the walls in Houston were the same as the pictures of the houses in North Carolina that had stud walls and piles of 2 x 4s and sheet rock on the floor that had been reflooded by Florence before they could finish the repairs from storm damage from the last two years due to the lack of funds.
80 percent of the houses with reported flood damage in Houston didn't have flood insurance, most weren't in designated flood plains. That's 160,000 houses that probably got an average of 4,000 dollars. That's probably how the studs, sheet rock and other building supplies end up on the floor. That's as far one can get.
People who live in designated flood plains and did not have flood insurance aren't eligible to receive the 4,000 dollars which isn't enough to fix anything anyway.
People with limited funds living in flood plains are not likely able to afford the flood insurance. People with limited incomes are not able to afford the lawyers required to make sure they even get any money to start with. There were 740,000 claims in Houston, nearly half were rejected by FEMA. The rules are so complicated that you need to hire someone to find what applies to you as well as how to apply for it. That is something a person with funds can do, something a person who lacks funds can not do. You have to pay for the legal assistance, another stumbling block for people with limited funds.
The flood insurance encourages people to live in the flood plains because it automatically gives you money to fix the damages, although the amount you can get is limited to 34,000 from Fema or 60,000 from Direct Assistance for Limited Home Repair, that is for houses with over 17,000 in damages.
The storms are generating a steadily growing population of "homeless" people living in their own homes, homeless because their homes are not complete structures, not because they have no home to go to. The press is not following up on these stories, it is only done on an individual basis, one shot deals, or in other manners that require diligent searches to find out about the situation. Ironically Puerto Rico gets daily press about the situation, not that it helps them, but they are not the only ones waiting years for a resolution for a house that isn't a house anymore.
It isn't only the press that is at fault, the entire professional system, ironically those who can afford to replace lost items, who can afford flood insurance, those who can afford the additional costs, are all herding people down a gangplank they themselves are also walking on, to the same fate. This happens because of a little known phenomena discovered in the 1970s, called the Peter principle, where people find themselves in situations where the ridiculously increasing complexity of the situation prevents them from ever understanding how they are no longer simplifying the situation but rather making it even more complex for those they interact with.
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https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/ar...
Instead of flood insurance, I would like to see strict, scientifically based housing regulations and controls. And of course extreme efforts to preserve our environment and planet.
Just take a look at what happened in Houston with a state when libertarian philosophies took over.
The only problem with designating areas as floodplains to prevent construction in them is that the areas prone to flooding are increasing dramatically in size. When a flood prone designation expands to cover an area that previously didn't flood and already has old construction in it, what do you do? If you want the development out of the new flood prone areas the people owning the previously safe property would have to be paid to move. Call it flood damage prevention insurance.The storm front that washed through the northeast October 2 had damaging winds, short bursts of high rates of rain fall, hail, lots of lightning, flooding, street closures, power outages and circular wind patterns. Over several hours there were quite a few circular wind patterns scattered about 3 states. When the circular winds achieve a critical speed they become tornadoes. This appears to becoming a regular feature of thunderstorms along the east coast, at least during the warmer months.
In order to attempt to prevent tidal surge damage to New York City, plans are being formulated for flood gates to be constructed in Long Island Sound and building up shore land property to prevent water damage.Penny wise, pound foolish, head stuck in the sand, maybe even the emperor has no clothes, all seem to be apt descriptions of this plan. The cost would be enormous to construct and maintain the wall. Plus disrupting the entire coastal natural environment. This also does not address what happened in North Carolina where the storm dumped massive quantities of water inland which then ran out to the ocean.
Right now it appears people along the affected shorelines are thinking about losing their access to the shore rather than what happens when attempts are made to channel the water elsewhere.
The people on either side of the floodgates might not be too happy about the prospect of having water funneled in their direction during storms. Water that might be greater than what they would be seeing without the floodgates or built up shore lands in place. The water would have to go somewhere if it doesn't get into the city. The areas on either side of the gates are extremely populated. It is not like it would have minimal impact. It could make the shore lands uninhabitable due to guaranteed massive flooding.
http://www.ctenvironment.org/2018/08/...
https://www.citizenscampaign.org/news...
There is a hurricane sea wall that was built in Massachusetts in the 1960s. Twenty feet tall, 3.5 miles long, at a cost of 18 million dollars. That is 1960s dollars. It is becoming outdated. It cost half a million dollars a year to maintain. The cost of the New York project is estimated at 1 billion dollars. However, the bridge that replaced the Tappan Zee bridge up stream from where one of the barriers would be placed cost 4 billion dollars.
Russia has constructed a massive flood prevention complex that consists of 11 dams spanning 16 miles at a cost of just under 4 billion dollars. It has successfully stopped flooding of Saint Petersburg from the bay, something that happened over 300 times before the dams were finished. It floods by amplifying the size of the waves that are pushed up the narrow Gulf of Finland during storms. It took 20 years of construction time to build.
There are extensive efforts to keep the water clean with 20 water purification plants and continued effort to make sure all the sewage and waste water is treated before being dumped into the Neva Bay. This keeps the water cleaner than it was prior to the dams being built. The bay behind the dams is used as a source of clean drinking water.
The fish and plant populations in and around the Neva Bay are reportedly not doing so well. Some of the low lying shore land is turning into swamps as the trees and bushes stop growing in waterlogged land.
http://www.wbur.org/news/2017/07/26/n...
The storm surge was 14 feet in the NYC area in super storm Sandy. Winds and tidal conditions can add locally to the storm surge. That means the wall would have to be bigger and taller. The plans call for a wall covering 2,100 square miles of harbor along the New York harbor. That number is completely useless for determining how long the entire wall would be. There would have to be multiple gates. The descriptions do not give an overall size probably because people would be able to see how big the structure would actually be. Massive canals and levees would have to be built along with the wall. There is no comparison to the simple wall that was built in New Bedford, Ma., and what will be needed in New York.
The wiki article shows a possible layout and suggests the project could take 20 to 30 years to complete. How many times would the uncompleted work be knocked down before it was completed?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Yor...
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https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.ph...
Sky News sent out reporters and they are walking around the devastated areas. The ground liquefied and houses collapsed, people vanished in the mud. Then the tsunami came and houses were swept a long way from where they had stood, making it harder to identify locations and recover items or bodies.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...
An Army truck arrived and passed out boxes of noodles and sardines. I don't know if they were dry noodles; no water was provided or means of cooking (there is scrap wood but no pots) so they may have been sealed soft noodle packs.
The latest report claims that the earthquake also destroyed a dam, and the reservoir behind it spilled out contributing greatly to the flooding and destruction. However, I can't find that reported elsewhere at present, but a dam did burst in 2009 in the area. For sure a major bridge did collapse on this occasion, making rescue work harder. Tracked vehicles are being used to get around in some of the photos I have seen.
Women are standing with nothing but the clothes they wear. Even sadder, one woman told Sky that it must be a judgement from God. Imagine, you work hard, raise your family as well as you can, try to be a good person, and then something this devastating happens and you think your deity is getting back at you.
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https://gizmodo.com/ancient-mass-grav...
Traces of the ocean flooding dry land may be found if archaeologists look for them.
The number of missing is now listed as 5,000 in Indonesia and thousands more are still missing, an indication that the number of casualties might be much higher than originally reported. The earthquake happened September 28, 11 days ago.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018...
Where it is safe to build is always a difficult question. Many places are deemed safe because the defect in the land is a feature that only gets tripped once in a great while. The term once is awhile is steadily being whittled down by three factors.
The first one, structures unable to avoid destruction by stress, has always been a problem. Building every unit using modern technology so it is "crash proof" is possible but there is no money to provide that kind of construction.
Over time, the continuing population increase only puts more people into more areas, there is nothing that can be done about that. Over populating the same areas or people moving into areas previously unpopulated because in the past those areas were not deemed a good place to construct anything but since nothing has happened it is thought nothing will continue to happen, won't change either.
The third parameter is the re-emergence of water as an untamable force in regards to human activities. We can build all the flood walls we want, but they are absolutely no defense against a 50 inch rainfall. One thing in common with these excessive rainfalls is that they are all powered by storms that come in from the ocean. The flood walls are all built at coastal locations. I wouldn't be surprised that because ordinary storms that happen weekly have become much larger and will continue to grow, those events will be happening far more often than storm surges and tsunamis.
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Had to look up pluvial. Probably a lot of "old" Latin terms aren't old anymore.
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Also spelt Mallorca.
Eight inches of rain fell in four hours.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/201...
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-eur...
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https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-e...
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https://www.rte.ie/news/connacht/2018...
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-can...
Stay safe.
"Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Brock Long said at the White House that he was especially concerned about buildings constructed before 2001, and not able to withstand such high winds."
So winds are getting stronger than expected during the previous century.
With the new weather even the "modern" construction standards are outdated for most buildings when you consider everything a storm can do besides just the wind. Anything on the coast is no longer practical under any circumstances. The cost of building something that will last plus the replacement costs will determine what gets built or rebuilt on the shore.Locations that are the recipients of run off water and not just an originator of run off will have to deal with standing water from the rain coming down which can be up to 50 inches now, plus the run off from other locations. The more runoffs going into an area the less likely it is to not to experience water damage. Areas that only originate run off will only have to deal with the standing water from the rainfall itself. The faster those areas can shed water the worse off the areas around them will be.
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https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-house...
I also found a video embedded on that page about Florida's red tide algae and toxic blue-green algae. Stay out of the water, don't breathe the air off the water, and hold your nose as you pass the rotting fish, turtles and manatees. Sorry, this one is quite distressing.
Another cat 5 storm is coming out of the Pacific and will probably travel a thousand miles over land before it totally runs out of power. It will come close to going over the warm Gulf Of Mexico where it could pick up more moisture as it travels northward if everything goes wrong.
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It is like the opposite of the nail falling out of the horse shoe and the kingdom falls. The storm will hit Mexico, travel to southern states, picking up moisture. Then it will cross over the coast into the Atlantic which is starting to cool off but it will combine with another low coming out of the midwest bringing cold air with it. If everything goes wrong, or we can look at it like the weather is playing Russian roulette with us, the two lows will combine. They could form a powerful storm almost to the day six years ago, when hurricane Sandy struck the northeast.
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I'm hoping this one goes away. In checking that scenario out I found out that Hurricane Sandy got an energy boost by tapping into the jet stream, something that would normally tear a hurricane apart.
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When we think about it, the Dead Sea is the lowest point on Earth, so water is going to drain down there, and the heat means baked earth.
Sadly this caused a tragedy.
https://www.ecowatch.com/flash-flood-...
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The city was built on a salt lagoon and marsh for safety, in the time of warring nation states, hence the canals. This makes it vulnerable to high tides, rising seas, and storm surges.
https://www.thejournal.ie/flooding-ve...
Eleven people were killed recently by sudden surges.
During the past week major weather events hit Italy, southeastern US, the northern tip of Philippines, this is the second time in 6 weeks the Philippines has been struck by a major storm. There is too much water vapor in the atmosphere, it has to come down every week. The weather related damage is not being completely fixed at each location. It is a war of attrition. Because it can't be paid back, the only defense against the spreading of destruction is spending other people's money that comes from big investors instead of small investors, to repair all the damage done every week. Everyone knows where the money is and everyone can see where the damage has been done. The weather is never going to cooperate, and the Poles are nowhere done melting, there is no winning in this situation.
Its strange the way the storms are so violent now. 60 years ago occasionally some one got struck by lightning. Either standing under a tree or swinging a golf club. Seems like no one gets struck by lightning even though houses still get hit by it. Perhaps the landscape is not storm friendly and becomes a trap when it rains.
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This provides less chance for rain to soak into soil or be absorbed by vegetation.
The natural surface area has probably decreased everywhere after 60 years. Can't seem to find an easy search term to find out how much land development has occurred since 1960. If I had to guess I would say that the amount of unnatural surface area prone to runoff amplification has doubled.
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https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2018/10...
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Cyclone kills 33 in India with thousands in relief camps. Quite a lot of damage was sustained from 55 mph winds. Cyclone season in India typically is between April and December, with two peaks, in May and November.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cyclone-ki...
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http://floodlist.com/australia/austra...
"Very Heavy rainfall currently falling, with 40mm falling in 30min at Box Hill"
We can take it that the harbour city with concrete surfaces, dried earth and insufficient vegetation just had almost total runoff. The SUDs effect.
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https://www.independent.ie/world-news...
This is being called a once a century event. I don't like to remind you but Dublin had two once a century pluvial events in eighteen months.
Dam breaks causing hazardous mine waste and mud to travel across two Brazilian states, into a major river and from there into the Atlantic Ocean. The original fine was 265 million, it was later increased to 5 billion.http://webdoc.france24.com/brazil-dam...
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A horrible tragedy relating to two people in the state's care, who drowned during an attempt to evacuate them.
All sorts of facilities will need to be evacuated during disasters, from assisted living homes to prisons. Plans must be made and people informed of their responsibilities well ahead of the time.