Green Group discussion
Climate Change
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Flooding
Mod
Not for the faint of heart.
Storm Rising
This describes the place and problems so well, it's like being there to volunteer.
Flooding in Nebraska, flood levels this high last seen 9 years ago. Flood waters will continue into more states downstream. The rainfall was high but the whole situation was compounded by all the snow they had gotten melting and the ice jams in the rivers made several rivers overflow at the same time.https://www.omaha.com/news/nebraska/c...
Power plants along the rivers not doing so well from the high waters, including a hydro electric plant that lost its dam. Sand bagged nuclear plants would have been shut down if levels had gone above 45 feet, it got to 42 feet.
https://www.omaha.com/news/nebraska/c...
Farmers not faring well, river ice is causing damage, rail lines have been washed away, birthing time for cows occurs around this time of year, which made even more difficult situations for farmers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/us...
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https://www.france24.com/en/20190318-...
Every week some place takes what can only be called a real beating from the weather. It used to be just money and goods that was lost, now it can also include life. It could be called weather related short for weather related violence. No matter what country it happens in all the damage is regularly not repaired anymore.
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https://earther.gizmodo.com/massive-f...
We have run out of the insulation formerly afforded to us by time and space where it used to take decades for the consequences of our decisions to become apparent.https://www.yahoo.com/news/climate-ch...
You can stick your head in a pile of official investigations and hope no one notices but the magnitude of the events keeps increasing on a weekly basis. No matter what the reason a very large number of people are going to need various kinds of assistance immediately and those efforts and the increasing amount of things not fixed afterwards is how the events will be immediately judged, not by a scientific report that takes half a year or longer to report its conclusions.
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https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-us-ha...
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https://earther.gizmodo.com/farmers-i...
Oklahoma, Arkansas facing flood conditions of historic magnitude. The rain is forecast to continue on a lesser scale and frequency as the jet stream moves to a different position but the rivers haven't reached their highest levels yet. Any more rain isn't going to help the situation. Some places are seeing record monthly rainfalls.https://weather.com/safety/floods/new...
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https://www.care2.com/causes/months-o...
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...
The cricket world cup has been unable to play, and trains were unable to run, while tourists were stranded when roads flooded.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-4...
Climate patterns are continually being disrupted. Here in Ireland, it's cold. In the middle of June. Nearly the longest day. And we've had to put the heat on in the house.
Mod
Yeah, here in the Midwest, we're getting unprecedented rainfall. Had another day today of relentless rain (was supposed to just last a few hours in the morning).
Weather pattern impacts from climate change are potentially massive and awfully hard to predict with any confidence. Scary!
May 2019 Was Second-Wettest Month on Record in U.S., NOAA Says
All that weather history we have been relying on to predict the long term weather is going out the window. With the bigger storms you know it's going to rain, you just don't know if you will get caught in a band that can drop a days worth, a weeks worth, or a months worth of rain in one day.
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019...
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" And speaking of swimming, I won't be doing so much of it as I had intended to this summer.
We live on a purely saltwater canal, literally just off the Gulf of Mexico. Like within feet of the Gulf. I mentioned saltwater, right? The water rises and falls with the tides. The saltwater is constantly coming in or going out with the tides. We have dolphins, manatees and even barracudas.
Imagine how stunned my neighbors and I have been by a new visitor. Pictured below is an alligator, just across from my dock (I hope you can see it okay -- it's not the best photo but it was the best I could do). An alligator trapper is on the job, and I think it's gone already. They can only last a couple of days in saltwater (and this one hung around for 5 extremely rainy days - making the saltwater less salty!). Now we're not having much rain, so I imagine this 6 to 8 foot gator has returned to her brackish home! You never know what kind of wildlife we'll see out our backdoor! "
The Washington DC rainstorm dumped 3 to 7 inches depending on location in 2 hours. It was up to a month's worth of rain for some locations. The water levels rose fast quickly trapping traffic. After it receded there were several sinkholes that disrupted local utilities. This is a good example of how unprepared the infrastructure is to receive what amounts to a now ordinary rainfall in 2 hours. It "rained" inside the Metro train station just like it does in the New York train station when the rainfall exceeds a certain point which isn't that much and is becoming more common every month.
The infrastructure below the city streets is a complex web of tunnels, basements, pipes, utilities, passageways and other compartments that can take on water when something underground overflows and who knows how far that water travels before it overflows back out to where it can be seen.
Because everything was built to meet parameters that have all been exceeded on a regular basis everything has to be redesigned, the transportation systems, buildings, where buildings are located, etc, but that isn't going to happen. The concrete towers are not designed for high speed winds for long periods of time, that is the next shoe to drop, the changing wind patterns.
That storm with the circular wind pattern traveling on land is still traveling towards the warm water in the gulf. Once it reaches the gulf it powers up and apparently can only go back to land along the US border, as all the hurricanes travel to the west or east on a northward trajectory, never turning back south, once they hit the gulf. Now it appears the US can make it's own tropical depressions right within it's own borders.
This is the new weather and it isn't sunny skies. And it's already started regardless of what legislation people enact in the mistaken belief that we can pillage nature without regards to the consequences. The damage to the infrastructure is our personal stake and should dispel the myths supported by people who say the climate change is a natural course of events. It doesn't matter how it started but it does now matter how we respond to it. The question is can we slow down the severity of the coming changes.
The weather system with circular winds has made it to the Gulf of Mexico and has a projected path that forecasts it picking up strength as it travels west across the warm water for a few days, posing possible flooding and storm surge problems along the gulf coast.It's called a home brew system but everything I can find refers to systems that started in the gulf waters instead of the Atlantic and headed north, not originating on land, heading south into the water, then back to land.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weathe...
Rain bands from the storm with no name have already dropped 10 inches of rain in 2 hours in the New Orleans area. The area along the path of the storm is projected to get 4 to 24 inches as the storm goes by. If the intensity and frequency of heavy burst rains around the country continues to increase people will have to take time outs during the storms.https://www.accuweather.com/en/weathe...
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weathe...While Barry will only be a category 1 hurricane if it even gets that strong, its flood risk is greater than a category 1 storm. This is becoming common place where even ordinary storms fitting old categories are much more powerful than the storms that came before them, This is happening because of the extra water these storms are processing.
Good old fashioned hydroelectric power needs a second look. Based on relatively calm weather, the building parameters were unbeknownst to us woefully underrated. A lot of dams were built when construction practices regularly practiced overbuilt structures rather than making them within an inch of expected loads which provides a little breathing room. The article is quite specific in saying things need to be fixed now. Finally building walls everyone can appreciate. Many dams were placed where they did an incredible amount of ecological damage and might be better off taken down before they get washed away. Many dams were built in areas where there was nothing downstream but since the average age of a dam in the US is 50 years there are now plenty of residential and commercial developments sitting below lots of the dams. Besides knowing a development is in a flood plain one also needs to know if a development is in a dam inundation zone but after 2001 all that information became classified due to terrorist concerns. https://e360.yale.edu/features/in-an-...
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Mod
https://www.ecowatch.com/monsoon-floo...
Sunny day high tide floods are on the rise along U.S. coasts, the new normalhttps://www.sciencenews.org/article/s...
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https://www.independent.ie/world-news...
If the monsoon fails, or the major rivers fed by glaciers shrink, this will be seen across more of India.
I don't call that a makeshift solution. It's not water in plastic bottles. Handling water for everything from distribution to run off control is going to become a regular daily occurrence. The run offs will be larger, the shortages more crippling. There are plenty of places around the world that could use water brought in by pipelines the same exact way natural gas is distributed over long distances. Collecting water from rain storms and using it later is a very old technology which is still a practical way of handling water. With today's technology we should be able to capture water in one place where there is too much, even if it is only temporary, and transport it to another place that is short on water.
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One of those old rules modern people thought they could throw away. Makes one wonder how many other procedures that solved problems without advanced technology have been thrown away.
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https://www.rte.ie/news/uk/2019/0802/...
https://www.timesandstar.co.uk/news/n...
The new weather is testing all man made structures. All done without legislation, without planned scheduling, without a biased decision to put off testing because it would be inconvenient. Since the testing is done by ordinary storms, it is scheduled for earlier rather than later, and although random in nature, it is effectively processing the entire globe on a weekly basis.
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https://www.independent.ie/world-news...
A local paper tells us more, with more images of the Chinook helicopter. Down at the bottom, look at the concrete before and after the main collapse. See the vegetation growing on the face? Plants can only root in cracks. Cracks allow water inside the surface. Water makes soil swell.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co....
Here is Google maps showing me the satellite photo. I just had to ask for the name of the reservoir, spot the concrete spillway (undamaged as this is from prior to the rain) and zoom in on it. I can see plenty of greenery on the face of the concrete. The shrubs shown in the news photo weren't even the largest. This dam was inspected last November.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tod...
Most of what is happening has been around so long it's in the open.
Mod
State of flow is measured over 10 metres.
Velocity:
Torrential
Over 1m per second.
Fast
0.5m – 1m per second
Moderate
0.25m – 0.5m per second
Slow
Under 0.25m per second.
Mod
The times recorded over ten metres were as follows:
1)
11.78 seconds
2)
13.06 seconds
3)
11.85 seconds
4)
11.72 seconds
5)
13.06 seconds
The trips which took less than twelve seconds were when the orange was near the left bank, looking upstream, or in the centre. The two trips over thirteen seconds were when the orange floated near the right bank. This demonstrated to us that different rates of flow were occurring in different parts of even a small river.
In order to average the times I have added them up and divided by five.
11.78 + 13.06 + 11.85 + 11.72 + 13.06 = 61.47
61.47 divided by five = 12.294 per ten meters per second. This is the surface velocity of the river.
Multiplied by 0.8 = 9.8352 per ten metres per second. This is the velocity of the whole river body.
Divided by ten = 0.98 metres per second.
Berg’s Classification of River Flow:
State of flow
Velocity
Torrential
Over 1m per second.
Fast
0.5m – 1m per second
Moderate
0.25m – 0.5m per second
Slow
Under 0.25m per second.
According to the scale, the Nanekin was ‘Fast’ even during this dry period of winter with a velocity of 0.98m per sec.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-c...
This storm was designated a supertyphoon but downgraded to typhoon just before landfall.
An earthquake shortly beforehand contributed to landslides and a natural dam formed, containing water from more than one river until it burst and flooded the lower lying areas.
The authorities say people living at the urban fringes were worst affected.
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https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.ph...
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https://www.costa-news.com/costa-leva...
Dorian is a new breed of storms. It is hugging the coast but keeping the eye just off shore. It looks good because the top winds are only 30 or 40 miles an hour. But it is actually worse because the storm itself doesn't impale itself on land but just keeps literally churning up the coast heading north, flooding, blowing, wrecking, tornadoes. For watching events like that from the inside in real time makes those new little "satellites" priceless. You have a storm like that once a year along the coast and none of the properties will be covered by insurance anymore.https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.ph...
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Sounds like jet stream ridges and troughs have a major impact on the path and "coastline-hugging" behavior. This is a pretty good, concise discussion of how the jet stream comes into play with Dorian:
Why do hurricanes - even monsters such as Dorian - turn?
A big long front came through very slowly that the storm tracked up against. It steered it far enough off the coast once it got north of North Carolina so that the winds and rain were minimal. It just clipped Canada with winds of 100 mph. It is heading into the North Atlantic. It was originally forecast to bring snow to Greenland, but is now projected to completely miss Greenland. That's the same way Trump got sandboxed by some early forecasts that said Dorian might get into the Gulf Of Mexico. I'm guessing the next stop is Europe. A forecast from the UK 4 days ago said Dorian would miss the UK and could improve the weather. The same forecast was saying that the storm would pass between Greenland and Iceland which looks unlikely now. There is also another tropical storm, Gabriella, that never made it to North America is also heading for Europe. One forecast from 2 days ago projected that Dorian would blend in with Gabriella and hit the UK sometime the middle of next week.
Mod
That big long front, caused by jetstream or whatever, seems to have spared many people a great deal of harm.
Mod
Sounds like jet stream ridges and troughs have a major impact on the path and "coastline-hugging" behavior. This is a pret..."
Really interesting Brian, thanks.
" Whenever the trough arrives, it should “grab” Dorian.
When at its peak, a hurricane might try resisting such approaching energy, but later in its run “it can’t plough through a ridge. It can’t plough through a trough,” Martrich said. "
The problem is when the protective ridge lines up with the coast and keeps the storm just off the land with the eye in the water so it doesn't weaken. While the eye can't get past the ridge, close to the shore the rain and wind bands go right over it and the storm surge goes right under it for instant severe flooding. I don't think building on the coast line is going to continue in the haphazard fashion it has, simply because there will be no money and no insurance to keep replacing the bulk of it. The coasts should be clear of the bulk of human activity that transforms it into a flat expanse of asphalt and concrete. The shorelands are the mouths of the oceans. They feed it what comes off the land, but that food has to be cleaned and processed, and developed shorelines are like toothless and gumless mouths that don't filter out anything. In fact, the artificial shore structuring injects garbage into the oceans that wouldn't get through a couple of miles of natural shoreline.
Interesting book, but I don't think people will pay the book much attention. Moving off the shoreline is the exact opposite goal of 99 percent of the population. The inability to afford the continuing damage from the increasingly bad weather along the shore will move people faster. Maybe fictional disaster stories will make a comeback with all the publicity from the real backdrop to market them against. Instead of moving, concrete bunkers will probably come into style as the the changing climate gets labeled as an adversary and not an informative warning.
Mod
https://www.independent.ie/world-news...
Green Group
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I think it sounds like great fun, but I'm baffled that they didn't seem to know erosion forms waterfalls. I learnt that in geography aged 11 and again in my ecology college course.
https://gizmodo.com/self-forming-wate...