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Katrina, British style

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Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
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 ([email protected])

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
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
[snip]
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.
[snip]

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
 
D

Don Klipstein

Jan 1, 1970
0
How come GW never, never, never has projected positive consequences?
All we hear is flooding, drought, disease, famine, species
extermination... all gloom.

I have heard positive projection of growing season length in a goodly
part of Canada. I suspect some portion of eastern Siberia that is now
not good for farming can also become a somewhat good farming region as a
result of global warming.
Also, some parts of Alaska and Canada have some bad seasonal problems
with bugs that can survive severe cold that their natural enemies cannot,
and some of these bugs are mosquitoes. I suspect that global warming
can eat away at bug-enemy-disfavoring bug-favoring climate in those such
interior inland arctic/subarctic regions of Alaska and Canada.

I would also say positive projection of real estate value on whatever
will become coastal property as soon as adequately reliable forecasts
become available as to where the coasts will move to and stabilize at
should we experience major icecap melting.

Not that this is any evidence against the negative forecasts that are
better at "making the news".

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
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

After riding out Camille and Betsy and some smaller fry in New
Orleans, I arrived in San Francisco in time for the '89 earthquake,
the Pretty Big One. And I had to go back just after Katrina.

John
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Jan 1, 1970
0
John said:
After riding out Camille and Betsy and some smaller fry in New
Orleans, I arrived in San Francisco in time for the '89 earthquake,
the Pretty Big One. And I had to go back just after Katrina.


That was about the time Dalbani Electronics (a supplier of repair
parts) moved from there to Miami, to reopen just in time for a
hurricane.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
 
D

Don Klipstein

Jan 1, 1970
0
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 ;-)

I suspect in much of USA's "Desert Southwest" it's "par for the course"
for once in a while to get a few month's worth of rain in a bad rainy
couple of days in the summer.

There is such a thing as the "monsoon" of USA's Desert Southwest, with
annual average rainfall in summer months upticking, and in a wetter summer
maybe being at "semiarid" level rather than "arid", and a bad July in
some parts of Arizona I suspect could have rainfall approaching
mid-Atlantic East Coast July average, and do so mainly in a bad day or
two.
New Mexico I consider more infamous for bad thunderstorms than Arizona -
beware evem more there!

Heck, for that matter, I consider it close to par for the course for a
July in Philadelphia to get 40% of its rainfall in a 3-6 hour stretch,
with August often being even worse and September being only a minor
improvement over August. In August and September in the mid-Atlantic,
decreasing sunlight disfavors the more-common thunderstorms that peak in
June and July. However, temperature of the North Atlantic Ocean and the
Gulf of Mexico peak in August or so, and the "Greater North Atlantic
Basin" hurricane season usually peaks a little later still in early
September, with peak USA impact from those often as late as mid-September.

So, I consider "par for the course" of rainfall irregularity in such a
"humid" location as Philadelphia to be July to often have near or over 40%
of its rainfall in a 6 hour stretch (at least a few times per decade), and
for August and September to be more irregular still, as in often near or
over half the month's rainfall occurring in a single storm event largely
confined to a single stretch of 4-8 hours.

Also consider that the Philadelphia area is far from immune to drought
restrictions. Philadelphia is in the Temperate Zone, where the weather
has a temper, and all-too-often goes a good 2 months maybe more with
rainfall around half of "normal".

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])
 
D

Don Klipstein

Jan 1, 1970
0
[snip]
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.
[snip]

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.

Philadelphia metropolitan area, where many suburbs have had 2 or 3 "100
year floods" in the past 25 or so years from rainstorms that include ones
falling short of "100 year class" (my words).
We also have green-belt park lands that are designed as flood-control
channels.

Such things are few and far between in Philadelphia metro area, and
known here as "open spaces". Biggest undeveloped parkland in the Philly
metro area is in the city, known as "Fairmount Park", and some of that has
been cleared of trees and those cleared areas in my experience tend to
heavily lack unmowed grass and tall weeds.
Biggest forested parkland in the Philly area is the "Wissahickon"
section of Fairmount Park in Philly's northwest segment, short of maybe
and maybe not Valley Forge National Park and nearby clusters of tree-laden
high-acreage private properties in/near Upper Merion Township.

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])
 
P

Paul Burke

Jan 1, 1970
0
John said:

It's bad, but the Lord be thankit, nowhere near as bad as Katrina, not
even in the same phonebook. Few deaths (sadly a woman lost her premature
twins in childbirth), a lot of inconvenience (especially to the old), a
lot of (much probably uninsured) damage, often to historical properties
in places like Tewkesbury
(http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=58500&in_page_id=34).
And the Worcestershire county cricket team have lost most of their kit.

So thanks for the concern, but remember everything except history
happens on a much smaller scale here.

Paul Burke
 
N

Neil

Jan 1, 1970
0
Paul Burke said:
And the Worcestershire county cricket team have lost most of their kit.
They should have known better !
The only reason that Worcester has a racecourse (Pitchcroft) and a cricket
pitch is because it (used to) flood so regularly that no one dared put
houses on that land. The cathedral and most of old city is up on the higher
ground.
I remember (as a little lad) paddling on the racecourse - kind of spooky at
the time to have a huge puddle to wander about in.
Neil
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
They should have known better !
The only reason that Worcester has a racecourse (Pitchcroft) and a cricket
pitch is because it (used to) flood so regularly that no one dared put
houses on that land. The cathedral and most of old city is up on the higher
ground.
I remember (as a little lad) paddling on the racecourse - kind of spooky at
the time to have a huge puddle to wander about in.
Neil

When I was a kid, the eye of hurricane Betsy passed over our house in
New Orleans. The city was shut down for about 2 weeks, and the Audubon
Park golf course was under three feet of water. It could have been
taken as a warning, but of course it wasn't.

But I just thought of an actual use for the International Space
Station: planetary defense against comets and asteroids. Locate a
bunch of wide-field telescopes up there to track everything that might
intersect earth, and keep a dozen or two interceptor/deflector rockets
on standby, in orbit, ready to boost on short notice.

John
 
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