Katrina, British style

Oh heavens let's hope not.

At least there's been no hurricane to knock out power and communications first, and the waters (that I saw) were awful, but not

The comments to the above link were interesting. Here's another (link):

--James

Well, it's another case where everybody knew for years that it would storm/rain, and the proper preparations were not made, and the costs will be extreme. Makes you want to re-read The Nine Tailors, where the same situation was remarked on.

The necessary money was spent elsewhere.

I can't read a restaurant review these days without Global Warming being lamented.

"It is tempting to blame the appalling weather on climate change, which is believed to increase the chances of extreme rainfall events. But one wet summer on its own proves very little. In fact, the top ten wettest Julys all happened two or three centuries ago."

John

here is a presentation of the rain,

martin

That's where I live (Tewkesbury) :(

The readers' comments suggest it might be worse--several remark on increased runoff due to extensive urbanization, and siting developments on flood plains. I.e., not just inaction, but actively man-made.

LA Times style, that's paragraph 14. Paragraphs 1 though 13 as much as say that greenhouses gasses converge over the UK to make it rain on London.

What suprised me were the skeptical comments left by readers of both articles. In the USA those people would be shouted down and ridiculed as 'denyers.'

Best, James

I watched that mini ice age thing...

again on the History Channel two nights ago.

Pretty obvious that's what is going to happen again.

But Bush will be blamed... even for the warming on Mars... must be nice to be such an omnipotent being ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Sorry to hear it! One tip: your food will keep a couple days if you

Best of luck to you.

--James

Actually it looks like they managed to save the regional power distribution station, so hopefully we will keep power (500k people were at risk of no power for 2+ weeks). But water supply has now failed unfortunately, the regional water works is at the "epicenter" so was flooded early on.

There are queues for water, helicopter rescues - it did remind me of the Katrina coverage. But no loss of life AFAIK.

We actually had such an event in North Scottsdale in the mid '70's. Tornado roared thru, left my house standing except for fence damage, but several people's roofs in my pool :-(

Then it rained for three days. Left us as an island. They flew water and food, baby diapers, etc., into Cocopah Elementary School (a block away) in helicopters.

...Jim Thompson

I remember that. I was in Tucson in college then. We got wet, but nothing like the Phoenix area...

Probably seems odd, to non-desert rats, that in the middle of the desert you can drown.

I remember camping in the desert way north of Phoenix. Bone dry, blistering sun, not a whiff of a cloud anywhere. A ranger came by and told us to get out of there, and pronto. There would be water roaring through here in a few hours, he said.

In , John Larkin wrote in part:

I have yet to read the links in this thread, but I have a couple comments already:

1. The severe rainstorm was probably caused by a an unusual random variation in weather conditions that occured mainly or entirely for reasons other than global warming. There is some chance that due to "butterfly effect" man-made causes caused such a bad rainstorm to occur when it did as opposed to days or years earlier or later, though such bad rainstorms are expected to occur every several decades even without human interference. Weather history has a big track record of things occaisionally going whacko.
2. Point 1 does not negate the existence of global warming and its few negative consequences that it is actually causing already and the greater negative causes that it will probably cause a few to several decades from now.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

We are clearly heading into the warming phase that proceeds a mini (or worse) ice age.

But it's not man-made, it's normal sun cycles.

...Jim Thompson

How come GW never, never, never has projected positive consequences? All we hear is flooding, drought, disease, famine, species extermination... all gloom.

John

The USA has some significant problems with urban sprawl removing natural means of slowing rainfall runoff (forests and grasslands with tall weeds) and replacing these with pavement, mowed lawns and buildings. This means that a bad short-term heavy rainstorm (typically a heavy thunderstorm formation or a tropical storm, and these are mainly summer to mid-autumn events) will flood floodplains more badly than a similar rainstorm did in the past. This is not a complaint of human activity affecting the weather, but a complaint of human activity degrading ability of some areas to handle weather conditions that have ocurred before and will occur again.

So what was London's rainfall in each of the past 10 years, the 10 before that, and its average over a time period at least 30 years long ending 10-20 years ago? Keep in mind that there is such a thing as weather patterns getting into "ruts" of decade time scale, and I mention some examples:

1. Especially low incidence of hurricanes affecting USA east coast north of Virginia Beach between 1900 and 1945.
2. Hurricanes picking on Florida around 1950 and in the early '50's.

1. Hurricanes picking on the USA east coast farther north from the mid '50's to the early '60's.

2. Decrease in hurricane problems to the USA from the late 1970's to sometime in the 1990's.

1. Northeast USA having a string of bad winters from late 1976 to early

1. Mid-Atlantic USA had a string of bad hot summers from 1991-1995.

2. 1930's extreme heat up and down the USA Great Plains and eastward to Pennsylvania, especially 1932-1936.

Keep in mind that if the weather acts up in some ways for a few or even several years, the cause may be a natural one and probably is.

Not that I think this disproves man-made global warming and the few ill effects that it is actually already causing and the greater ill effects that it will probably cause a few to several decades from now.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

Especially beware of dry riverbeds and any similar low stretches of land. Beware of areas having any evidence of intermittent past water flow and areas that are low enough to be candidates for flooding if the weather goes bonkers.

Be aware of American weather - I say that "normal American weather" is for the weather to be "normal" for sufficient amounts of time to allow one to believe that there is such a thing as "normal weather in America", and the weather sometimes goes screwball - did so before and will do so again.

Also beware of the "Temperate Zone". It appears to me that "temperate" is a word that works like the word "flammable". "Flammable" and "inflammable" mean the same thing, so I think that "temperate" weather is the same as "intemperate" weather. It appears to me that the "Temperate Zone" is where the weather has a temper (worse than elsewhere on this planet).

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

Probably from thunderstorms blowing up near an edge of a mountainous or otherwise elevated area upstream from the area in question.

This is occaisionally an actual problem in some desert areas of the southwest USA, and I suspect also in some nearby areas of Mexico.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

Yep. We've had a couple days straight of evening nasty storms.

Then steady rain last night, which was nice.

Steady light rain this morning, with sudden squalls down to zero visibility... then I discovered that my blue-blocker sun glasses gave good visibility in the worst of it.

We've had half our yearly allotment of rain in the past three days ;-)

...Jim Thompson

What cave do you live in?

Down here in right-wing land we have comprehensive building codes which require retention basins to hold ALL the rainfall that hits your property.

We also have green-belt park lands that are designed as flood-control channels.

Crossing these, when barricaded during a storm, earns you a fine plus any costs of rescuing your dumb-ass... called the "stupid driver law" ;-)

...Jim Thompson