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Historic, Widespread Flooding Will Continue Through May, NOAA Says (cnn.com)
The U.S. is likely to see "historic, widespread flooding" through May, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association's spring outlook. From a report: "This is shaping up to be a potentially unprecedented flood season, with more than 200 million people at risk for flooding in their communities," said Ed Clark, director of NOAA's National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. NOAA's outlook calls for nearly two-thirds of the lower 48 states to face an elevated risk of flooding through May, with the potential for major to moderate flooding in 25 states across the Great Plains, Midwest and down through the Mississippi River valley.
"The flooding this year could be worse than what we have seen in previous years ... even worse than the historic floods we saw in 1993 and 2011," said Mary Erickson, deputy director of the National Weather Service. The warning comes amid record flooding triggered by a sudden warm-up and heavy rains earlier this month brought on by the "bomb cyclone." Combined with rapid snowmelt, the factors in recent weeks have put many places in the Great Plains and Midwest underwater.
"The flooding this year could be worse than what we have seen in previous years ... even worse than the historic floods we saw in 1993 and 2011," said Mary Erickson, deputy director of the National Weather Service. The warning comes amid record flooding triggered by a sudden warm-up and heavy rains earlier this month brought on by the "bomb cyclone." Combined with rapid snowmelt, the factors in recent weeks have put many places in the Great Plains and Midwest underwater.
These events are occurring because global warming and increased human development press on the environment at the same time. Both pressures are at fault, and have a common cause as both are driven by faster development than is supportable in the ecosystem.
So what are you going to do about it? How are you making a difference?
How about better infrastructure policy, for starters? (Policy that would take into account realistic forecasts of climate evolution, in particular.)
The many levee breaches make me think that we are not focussing on raising the right walls, at this point in time.
Every year you put off implementing things to reduce climate change, the costs multiply many fold.
What were once once a century storms and floods are now every 2-3 years.
What were once massive inundations and beetle infestation wildfires are now commonplace.
Even zoning codes have to change, to allow for redesign of buildings to survive such events every year or two, which increases building costs on average 50 percent and requires redesign of existing towns and buildings.
Energy goes in.
It comes out somewhere. It's like putting a bucket of bees inside. We can't tell you where the bees will sting or when, but we know there are going to be a lot of stings and consequences.
Oh, and stop building on flood plains and lowlands and using levees. We're beyond that now. You waited too long.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
No, you had record cold temperatures in February -- you ignore the other days mentioned in your own article:
Similarly
Two days, again according to your own article.
Your February wasn't even in your top 20 coldest Februarys, so it's hard to see what trend carried into March.
Funny how those rare events keep increasing in frequency.
Higher temperatures sooner in the year causing earlier melting.
In Colorado we've had record low temperatures for February.
A trend which carried on in March
It may surprise you to learn that after things get cold in an area that they then get warmer which causes all that snow to melt. The increasingly extreme weather and weather fluctuations are indicative of Climate Change.
It's not a coincidence that all these "rare weather events" are becoming increasingly common because they are part of the larger pattern that is Climate Change.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I lived near the Missouri river in mid Missouri, from birth to 20. When you travel around the capital area of Jefferson City, you see "the river bluffs". The Missouri river, as most rivers, have been SQUEEZED and SQUEEZED over the centuries, to claim the rich soil used to grow crops. When you have a major event, the river wants to go where it was, not where man "thinks" it should be.
The new weather pattern. A warmer pacific ocean is generating a new air flow pattern, with more warmer air rushing up the US West Coast and the Pacific, pushing further North than was the old pattern. This warmer air is picking up a lot of moisture as it is cooling and heating up Alaska and the Arctic accelerating ice melt and picking up that newly available water, it then has to go somewhere, so it would normally go a bit more south east but it is being blocked by a warmer Atlantic and air moving north. So it gets squeezed between the pacific air flow and the Atlantic airflow and now goes much further south pushing cold air and a whole lot of moisture, in the form of snow.
Once that now routine weather pattern is over, warm air comes it to replace that cold air as it is pushed out over the Atlantic, and melts all the snow, really quite fast, well the further south snow, more north not so fast, so lots of flooding further south because the snow melts a whole lot faster than previous regular patterns and flooding occurs.
Suck it up, this is the new norm, and combined with sea level rise it will really be quite bad for the US East Coast, catastrophic is no understatement. Altered water levels really screw up building footings, storm water and sewer system. You can imagine the worth of a coastline full of flooded out collapsing structures and a lot of US military bases on the east coast are on really low lying land. Then you have sea ports and airports, again on low lying land (it was cheaper) also in real trouble.
Too late to do much about the first say 1.5m of sea level rise, maybe keep it down to 750mm but that will take real action now. The safest economic measure, simple irrigate large swathes of Australia west coast desert, pumping desalinated water inland. You obviously pull that water out of the sea, so immediate benefit but in addition, green where it was red, cools the surface of the planet at lot, then of course the new planting would absorb lots of carbon dioxide and plant transpiration cycle also cools the atmosphere and for the cheery on top, the majority of that transpiration would fall as rain on inland Australia which is lower than sea level. The more you do that and the quicker you do it, the more it will reduce the impact of climate change and it in part pays for itself with a massive social benefit, tens of thousands of square kilometres planetary food and fibre bank (trees, hemp etc). Countries could invest in desalination in resources they could directly access, especially worth while for countries with limited land area, access to thousands of sqaure kilometres of land as long as they supply the desalinate irrigation to that land.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
We can see the temperatures ourselves, moron. Two days. Three if you want to pretend that 28 F is some sort of barn-burning cold. Only four days that didn't go above 32.
Own-goal. March 3rd to March 7th is indeed a "few days" from bomb cyclone to average high temperature. Also, not something that supports your point.
You misspelled "temperatures." I'd let it slide, but you have a spelling fetish it seems. How do you have more melting? Something about greater snowpack, which you admit, and daytime temperatures routinely above freezing, which we can see for ourselves. But wait, it gets better, because for some reason you want to only talk about Denver.
You're appearing to confuse Denver with the predicted flooding areas, and then the world.
You can't locate Denver on a map. SAD. The rest of us can. It's in one of those square states full of white.
No, I really didn't.
You can't click on a hyperlink to NWS temperatures? SAD.
You should try clicking on these links. But you won't. SAD.
You think that I have the sole responsibility to provide "real data" that is being published constantly yet you actively ignore? SAD.
You won't. You'll come back and post some nonsense, including that fact that "everyone" (except for every single reply to your post) agrees with your delusional position.