Friday, September 13, 2013

Colorado Flooding Breaking Records And Cutting Off Towns

Addition 9/26/13:

More Than 91 Million In Flood Damage

Article states this doesn't include private property. I would then suspect it also doesn't include damage to crops, loss of cattle and other animals due to fracking spills in flood waters. I would also assume even further this does not cover residual health effects on residents. This is the physical cost of climate change. The emotional toll is also one that is far greater and often overlooked.

Addition 9/15/13:

Colorado Floods Causing Fracking Spills

From Earth First! News

It appears that an unknown number of underwater frack wells are leaking into the flood waters tearing through Colorado. Although local activists have sent emails with photographs documenting toppled industrial tanks, there has been no response from media or authorities.

According to one activist, “There has been no mention of the gas wells on the Denver newscasts either last night or this evening although all stations have had extensive and extended flood coverage. You can see underwater wells in the background of some of the newscast videos, and yet the reporters say absolutely nothing.”

End of excerpt

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My god, as if there wasn't enough catastrophe to hand around now we see a continuation of manmade hell on Earth with toxic fracking chemicals moving throughout the state in flood waters! We need to get this information out to people to alert them. It would appear the fossil fuel bought media will not do its job yet again.

Some energy policy! You will have energy, but it will kill you!



Also:

234 Remain Unaccounted For As Rains Make Return

"Our normal has changed."



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"Biblical" Flooding In Colorado



Colorado Flooding Isolates Rocky Mountain Towns

Torrential rains continued to fall Friday in northern Colorado, where rescuers are struggling to reach dozens of people cut off by flooding in mountain communities. Three deaths have already been confirmed.

At least two people died in flooding in Boulder County. The body of one was found in a collapsed building by emergency crews searching door to door for victims in and around Jamestown. The other drowned elsewhere in the county, Cmdr. Heidi Prentup of the Boulder County Sheriff's Office said.

The body of a third victim, a man, was found by police on flood-watch patrols in Colorado Springs, about 100 miles to the south, officials said.

County Sheriff Joe Pelle said it was possible that more flood-related fatalities could emerge as emergency crews reached areas cut off by high water.

Downpours and scarring from recent wildfires sent walls of water crashing down mountainsides Thursday, forcing thousands to evacuate as rising water toppled buildings and stranded motorists in their cars, officials said.

The towns of Lyons, Jamestown and others in the Rocky Mountain foothills have been isolated by flooding. Residents have no power or telephone service.

Boulder County was hardest hit, with authorities instructing residents to stay off roads.

The Boulder Office of Emergency Management told residents to seek higher ground, boil their drinking water in some areas, and stay away from the water that it called "hazardous" because of its speed and possible contamination with sewage.

"There is water everywhere," said Andrew Barth, the emergency management spokesman in Boulder County. "We've had several structural collapses. There's mud and muck and debris everywhere. Cars are stranded all over the place."

snip

At least 6 inches of rain had fallen on the city of Boulder, northwest of Denver, and up to 8 inches were measured in the foothills west of the city, said Kari Bowen, a Weather Service meteorologist in Boulder.

Colorado Floods-Local Rain Totals

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My heart goes out to the people experiencing this. It is an horrific experience to see water rushing at you with such ferocity because there is nothing you can do to stop it. No water to drink though they flood. No power, sewerage treatment or access to the outside world. You would think you were reading about Sudan or some other area of the world where these events take place. For anyone to now state there isn't something more than natural variability to these events is lying to themselves.

Hail storm in Colorado just this August... Yes, August. This after previous extreme flooding shown here and intense wildfires.



Yet I also just read that the Congress is having a climate hearing next week. With all we see happening globally and the science backing it up we are just now at the hearing stage? A hearing that I am sure will also only serve as another partisan backbiting arena with nothing coming from it. Absolutely embarrassing. Do you think we might just be a bit beyond the "hearing" stage? We need to be preparing communities for these extreme disasters. We aren't nearly ready.

BUT LET'S JUST KEEP BURNING THOSE TAR SANDS.

Colorado's 1-100 Year Flood

Posted by: Dr. Jeff Masters, 3:43 PM GMT on September 13, 2013

Colorado's epic deluge is finally winding down, as a trough of low pressure moves across the state and pushes out the moist, tropical airmass that has brought record-breaking rainfall amounts and flooding. Devastating flash floods swept though numerous canyons along the Front Range of Colorado's Rocky Mountains Wednesday night and Thursday morning, washing out roads, collapsing houses, and killing at least three people. The flood that swept down Boulder Creek into Boulder, Colorado was a 1-in-100 year event, said the U.S. Geological Survey. A flash flood watch continues through noon Friday in Boulder. According to the National Weather Service, Boulder's total 3-day rainfall as of Thursday night was 12.30". The city's record rainfall for any month, going back to 1897, is 5.50", so this week's rainfall event is truly extraordinary. Some other rainfall totals through Thursday night include 14.60" at Eldorado Springs, 11.88" at Aurora, and 9.08" at Colorado Springs. These are the sort of rains one expects on the coast in a tropical storm, not in the interior of North America! The rains were due to a strong,slow-moving upper level low pressure systemto the west of Colorado that got trapped to the south of an unusually strong ridge of high pressure over Western Canada. This is the same sort of odd atmospheric flow pattern that led to the most expensive flood disaster in Canadian history, the $5.3 billion Calgary flood of mid-June this summer. The upper-level low responsible for this week's Colorado flood drove a southeasterly flow of extremely moist tropical air from Mexico that pushed up against the mountains and was lifted over a stationary front draped over the mountains. As the air flowed uphill and over the front, it expanded and cooled, forcing the moisture in it to fall as rain. Balloon soundings from Denver this morning continued to show levels of September moisture among the highest on record for the station, as measured by the total Precipitable Water (PW), which is how much water would fall at the ground if the entire amount of water vapor through the depth of the atmosphere was condensed. Four of the top eight all-time September highs for Precipitable Water since records began in 1948 have been recorded over the past two days:

1.33" 12Z September 12, 2013
1.31" 00Z September 12, 2013
1.24" 12Z September 13, 2013
1.23" 12Z September 10, 1980
1.22" 00Z September 2, 1997
1.21" 00Z September 7, 2002
1.20" 00Z September 13, 2013

End of excerpt

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AGW deniers can now twist current slight rebounding of Arctic "extent" (while once again neglecting to mention it is the volume that counts) to indicate that all is now well because of one cooler season. It changes nothing about the trends already put into motion and the exacerbation of those trends due to continued burning of fossil fuels that create the intense moisture/downpours we are now seeing becoming more extreme in response to Arctic amplification. ~

Monday, September 09, 2013

Scientists:Hurricane Sandy Storm Surge Directly Affected By Climate Change

Scientists Weigh Climate Change Role in 2012 Weather

Willie Drye

for National Geographic

Published September 5, 2013

A sprawling global team of meteorologists who examined the marquee extreme weather events of 2012—including Hurricane Sandy, drought in the U.S. Midwest, and melting arctic ice—found that human-induced climate change was a factor in half of the dozen events they studied.

The scientists, who published their findings Thursday in the Bulletin of the American Meteorology Society, acknowledged that determining how much influence climate change has on particular extreme weather events is an evolving science, and that better tools are needed to measure that influence.

"(W)hile climate models may indicate a human effect is causing increases in the chances of having extremely high precipitation in a region (much like speeding increases the chances of having an accident), natural variability can still be the primary factor in any individual extreme event," the authors said.

Thursday's report was written by 18 teams comprising 78 meteorologists from around the world.

Here are four of the major events analyzed by the meteorologists:

1. The devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. The authors were especially interested in how climate change affected Sandy's storm surge, which caused massive destruction on the coast of New Jersey and flooded parts of New York City. They concluded that the surge—a mound of water formed by a hurricane's winds and forward motion and pushed in front of the storm as it approaches landfall—was worse than it would have been in 1950 because sea level has risen in the past 60 years.

That rise in sea level has been attributed to warming temperatures and melting arctic ice. And that rise means that future storms less powerful than Sandy are likely to cause more damage than they would have decades ago.

2. The melting of arctic sea ice. Some computer simulations have predicted that arctic ice will disappear during the summer by the middle of this century. The report's authors said it is "extremely unlikely that the disappearance of arctic sea ice has been caused by natural climate variability."

3. Extreme heat and drought in the U.S. The authors said climate change had little to do with the drought in the central U.S. last year. But they added that climate change was a factor in the unusually warm weather that accompanied the drought. And climate change makes it much more likely that periods of extreme heat will happen. (Watch related video: Droughts 101.)

4. Unusually high rainfall in parts of Europe and elsewhere during 2012. The scientists reached a split decision about whether climate change was to blame for heavy rainfall in some places. Fluctuations in rainfall are normal, they said. But unusually warm sea water—which produces higher humidity and is linked to heavier rainfall—is likely caused by climate change.

End of Excerpt

Also see:

NOAA: Explaining Extreme Events Of 2012

Risk Of Sandy Level Flood In NYC Has Doubled Since 1950

Ice Melting Faster In Greenland And Antarctica

1 yr

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Sandy Storm Surge





On the evening of October 29, 2012 all power was lost. All I could see were the sparks flying from power lines and transformers. The wind had started out slow but by then was at full force. This was only a part of what hit my town when Hurricane Sandy came. I will never forget the floods...and the wind...and being without any services for almost two weeks... and the reports of people being washed away in the floods ... and the fires... and the washing away of my childhood memories...and now the after effects. I still cry watching videos about it because I have never ever experienced anything like this and I have lived here all of my life. I also had never seen flooding where I live. However, Hurricane Sandy blew the bay into homes in my area five feet deep. After hours of wind and water pummeling us the calm left a shattered heap of trees, garbage and destruction.

A record sea surface temperature that also caused thermal expansion of the waters, record Arctic sea ice loss pushing the effects of Arctic amplification influencing fronts and the jet stream and the effects of two converging fronts caught in it causing Sandy to move slower combined with record melting in Greenland releasing huge amounts of energy into the atmosphere came down like a bomb. It also hit at high tide with a full moon. The Perfect Storm in a place where perfect storms are not supposed to happen.

And yes, the intensity and direction of this storm could have been much different if we were not treating the atmosphere and this crisis as if they do not matter. 65 billion dollars in loss with over 30,000 families still without homes with us being told by scientists that this will be our "new normal."... This isn't about your politics. This is about our lives.



This is not some far flung "theory". This is reality. This is happening now with the effects becoming more severe. It will only intensify as our use of fossil fuels continues. Sea level rise, warmer sea surface temperatures, warmer ocean temperatures, effects of sea ice loss all factor into these events becoming more extreme and that costs lives. It costs memories. It costs future stability for those who live on this planet.

Hurricane Sandy was a wake up call. Time to wake up.





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