Floods to the Left of Me, Strong Winds to my right...

[Lord Jim]

And more expected later this week...

[BoSoxGal]

Too bad it's not possible to capture all that rain into reservoirs.

Still, some of it will end up there and that's better than nothing. Hoping for lots of snow in the mountains of California, that's what will really change the drought situation.

[rubato]

We're less than half normal to date in snowpack but its starting to pile up a bit.

http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/snow/PLOT_SWC

Adding reservoirs is controversial, to put it mildly. They built Domenigoni reservoir in S. Calif. which is filled almost entirely by water from elsewhere like the Colorado River Aqueduct. It is the 2nd largest water catchment in the state after Shasta.

At the end of the day more reservoirs only provide a way of smoothing out use between wet and dry years, they don't produce more water.


yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

Days of flash flooding, tornadoes and historic rainfall across central Texas and Oklahoma swept away hundreds of homes and left at least five people dead and a dozen missing, emergency officials said Monday.

Rescuers in helicopters and pontoon boats rushed to save stranded residents across the southern Plains states over the Memorial Day weekend, as severe storms led fast-rising waters to overflow rivers and roads during flooding that the National Weather Service called “catastrophic.”

More than 1,000 people were evacuated and at least five were killed during hours of vicious winds and drenching storms, including a 14-year-old Texan whose body was found Monday in a deluged storm drain, officials said.

A longtime Oklahoma firefighter was swept away and killed Saturday night in Claremore, a small town outside of Tulsa, while helping save trapped families gathered for a girl’s fifth birthday party, TV affiliate FOX 23 reported.

A high school senior in Devine, Tex., died amid violently surging floodwaters while driving home from her prom Saturday night, police said.

An unidentified man’s body was recovered in San Marcos, Tex., along a flooded bank of the Blanco River. A 33-year-old Tulsa woman was also killed in a traffic accident Saturday evening after the car she was driving was rammed by a hydroplaning truck, police said.

In Mexico, a tornado that tore through the border city of Ciudad Acuña on Monday decimated a seven-block swath and killed at least 13 people, including three infants, authorities said. Hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed, and more than 200 people were rushed to hospitals.

Twelve people, including three children younger than 10, were said to be missing Monday after two families took shelter at a house that was destroyed in the small town of Wimberley, Tex., where officials said more than 350 homes have been washed away.

The town, on the bank of the Blanco River between Austin and San Antonio, was one of the hardest hit in the weekend floods. The river swelled more than 30 feet there within three hours Sunday, scattering wet wreckage and overrunning nearby Interstate 35.


Torrential rainfall hurt search efforts, washing away police cars and flooding a fire station in San Marcos. The Oklahoma City Fire Department said it had rescued more than 70 people amid pummeling storms.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Monday added 24 counties — including Hays — to the 13 that were declared states of disaster this month, allowing them to tap extra resources to aid with the crisis.

Officials instituted a curfew Monday for the second night in a row, warning residents to stay away from rubble-strewn areas.

Tornadoes and heavy winds Sunday battered buildings in Texas and along the Mexico border, including at a ravaged Houston apartment complex at which two people were hurt. Emergency officials in Texas estimated the area had suffered millions of dollars in damage.

Dallas faced severe floods from the Trinity River, which joined the Red and Wichita rivers in rising far above its normal level. The city saw more than three inches of rain Sunday, making it the wettest May 24 in more than a century.

The rain has added to the wettest May on record for cities in several southern Plains states. Oklahoma City, which received four inches of rain last year, has recorded more than 27 inches this year.

The rain brought an end to Texas’s extreme droughts, and officials said Monday they were bracing for another round of battering storms and several inches of rain.

“It’s not over,” Hays County Judge Bert Cobb told a news conference Monday. “The rain is still here.”

[rubato]

A lot of rain in Colorado as well. Anything that falls in the Colorado River drainage is a good thing. Lake Meade is already at its historic low and we're not even into June yet.


http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/water ... tinue-fall

"... Top official delivers bleak forecast for Lake Mead

Forecasters predict another down year for Lake Mead
By HENRY BREAN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

The new record low arrived at Lake Mead a little earlier than first thought — and it happened during a rainstorm.

The reservoir east of Las Vegas briefly dropped to a new low water mark between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, when pelting rain couldn’t stop the surface of the lake from falling to 1,080.18 feet above sea level for the first time since it was first being filled in May 1937.

Forecasters initially thought the record would come early Sunday.

After the dip Saturday evening, the water level nudged back up slightly for a few hours before falling again, this time to 1,080.13 — an all-time low that would last all of about 24 hours.

By midnight Monday, Lake Mead had begun to shrink once again, as Hoover Dam continued to release water downstream to farms and cities in California and Arizona: hitting 1,080.12 by 1 a.m.; 1,080.04 by 1 p.m.; 1,080 even by 4 p.m.; and so on, record after record after record.

Analysts for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the dam, expected the lake to close out Monday below the 1,080 mark for the first time in 78 years. That milestone was reached at 5 p.m.

So far this month, the nation’s largest reservoir has been losing a foot or more of water a week. It now sits at about 38 percent of capacity, its surface almost 130 feet lower than it was in April 2000, when the ongoing drought was just settling into the mountains that feed the Colorado River. ... "

yrs,
rubato

[Long Run]

Unfortunately, the Little Colorado River had far too much water and left Austin a mess.

[rubato]

Wow, that must be some flooding. The Little Colorado is mostly in Arizona, on the other side of the continental divide (and 700 miles) from Austin.


yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

[BoSoxGal]

Wow!

[oldr_n_wsr]

What she said.

[Crackpot]

this kind of thing that happens when you deregulate the department of weights and measures....

[Lord Jim]

[rubato]

Extreme weather but only ordinary Republican hypocrisy: "GIMMEE GIMMEE GIMMEE'


http://www.wacotrib.com/blogs/waco_poli ... 9deed.html


Rep. Bill Flores votes 'no’ on Sandy aid bill


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/1 ... 17356.html

Ted Cruz, Bill Flores Asked For Federal Aid After Texas Explosion, But Voted Against Sandy Relief

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/1 ... ive-others

Texas wants federal disaster aid it refused to give others


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

This may have implications for those of us in The Altered State:

Texas Storms May Be Precursor Of Drought-Busting El Nino For California

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — The torrential rains in Texas have ended the drought there, but also have created devastating floods.

Experts say something similar could be coming to California in a few months in the form of El Nino.

“We could actually see significant rain like they’re seeing in Texas, here in California,” CBS13 meteorologist Dave Bender said.

The nonstop rains pummeling Texas and Oklahoma are probably influenced by a building El Nino in the Pacific Ocean. If a full-blown El Nino develops, that could mean drought-busting conditions in California this fall or winter.

“The last time we saw an El Nino set up like this was back in 1997,” Bender said. “If you recall back in ’97, we had some pretty decent amount of rain come in here.”

The storm in 1997 spilled into disaster.

“There was flooding everywhere here. and we had some issues where you had some levee breaches,” Bender said.

National Weather Service senior meteorologist Robert Baruffaldi says he’s not convinced the storms in Texas and Oklahoma are due to El Nino, but he does think there’s a good chance California will experience an El Nino pattern that will bring on the storms.

“We’ve been dry for so long, but perhaps we’re overdue,” he said.

A good indicator will come from Down Under this summer, Baruffaldi said. If Australia experiences droughts and wildfires, then there will likely be a strong El Nino at the end of the year.

http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2015/05/ ... alifornia/

[Gob]

Extreme weather but only ordinary Republican hypocrisy: "GIMMEE GIMMEE GIMMEE'


http://www.wacotrib.com/blogs/waco_poli ... 9deed.html


Rep. Bill Flores votes 'no’ on Sandy aid bill


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/1 ... 17356.html

Ted Cruz, Bill Flores Asked For Federal Aid After Texas Explosion, But Voted Against Sandy Relief

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/1 ... ive-others

Texas wants federal disaster aid it refused to give others


yrs,
rubato

An idée fixe is a preoccupation of mind believed to be firmly resistant to any attempt to modify it, a fixation. The name originates from the French idée, "idea" and fixe, "fixed."

[MajGenl.Meade]

I'm pretty sure it's the vote in Ireland that's to blame!

[rubato]

Extreme weather but only ordinary Republican hypocrisy: "GIMMEE GIMMEE GIMMEE'


http://www.wacotrib.com/blogs/waco_poli ... 9deed.html


Rep. Bill Flores votes 'no’ on Sandy aid bill


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/1 ... 17356.html

Ted Cruz, Bill Flores Asked For Federal Aid After Texas Explosion, But Voted Against Sandy Relief

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/1 ... ive-others

Texas wants federal disaster aid it refused to give others


yrs,
rubato

An idée fixe is a preoccupation of mind believed to be firmly resistant to any attempt to modify it, a fixation. The name originates from the French idée, "idea" and fixe, "fixed."

Ok, I'll explain it to you v e r y s l o w l y. Bill Flores and other Texas Republicans tried to block aid for Hurricane Sandy relief and then turned around and demanded the same sort of Federal aid for their own state.


It's ok, we know it takes longer for you.


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

This may have implications for those of us in The Altered State:

Texas Storms May Be Precursor Of Drought-Busting El Nino For California

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — The torrential rains in Texas have ended the drought there, but also have created devastating floods.

Experts say something similar could be coming to California in a few months in the form of El Nino.

“We could actually see significant rain like they’re seeing in Texas, here in California,” CBS13 meteorologist Dave Bender said.

The nonstop rains pummeling Texas and Oklahoma are probably influenced by a building El Nino in the Pacific Ocean. If a full-blown El Nino develops, that could mean drought-busting conditions in California this fall or winter.

“The last time we saw an El Nino set up like this was back in 1997,” Bender said. “If you recall back in ’97, we had some pretty decent amount of rain come in here.”

The storm in 1997 spilled into disaster.

“There was flooding everywhere here. and we had some issues where you had some levee breaches,” Bender said.

National Weather Service senior meteorologist Robert Baruffaldi says he’s not convinced the storms in Texas and Oklahoma are due to El Nino, but he does think there’s a good chance California will experience an El Nino pattern that will bring on the storms.

“We’ve been dry for so long, but perhaps we’re overdue,” he said.

A good indicator will come from Down Under this summer, Baruffaldi said. If Australia experiences droughts and wildfires, then there will likely be a strong El Nino at the end of the year.

http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2015/05/ ... alifornia/

You have no doubt forgotten it,but at the time of Hurricane Katrina they pointed out that the only place with flood control levees in as poor condition, or worse, was the Calif. Delta and Sacramento area.

I haven't heard anything about a major repair and maintenance project in recent years and the long-running budget problems argue that it wasn't done.

If we really do get flooding akin to 1982 we could be in for it.


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

Been drinking again have we?

[rubato]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/magaz ... .html?_r=0

"... This spring, the nation was riveted by images of blown levees and submerged towns in the Midwest along the Mississippi River. But an even more threatening situation looms in California, especially around the San Francisco Bay Delta. The delta is the link between two-thirds of the state’s fresh-water supply — which originates in the Sierra Nevada and the rivers of the north — and two-thirds of the state’s population, which resides in the south. Starting in the 1870s, farmers began building 1,100 miles of levees around the delta to control floodwaters and create farmland out of tule marshes. Today many of those levees are old, decrepit and leaking. Jeffrey Mount, a geologist at the University of California, Davis, predicts that there is a 64 percent chance of a catastrophic levee failure in the delta in the next 50 years.

Scientists consider Sacramento — which sits at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers and near the delta — the most flood-prone city in the nation. Experts warn that there are two events that could destroy the levees and set off a megaflood. One is an earthquake; the second is a violent Pacific superstorm, like the one called the Pineapple Express, which sweeps water off the ocean around Hawaii and dumps it on the mainland with firehose intensity while battering the coast with high wind and waves. A megaflood would not arrive as gradual seepage; it would be a rapid submerging of hundreds of square miles. Salt water would be sucked from the bay (in what is known as the big gulp) and impelled into the delta, contaminating drinking supplies for 25 million people, destroying some of the nation’s most productive farmland, washing away buildings, highways, gas lines and railroads and causing landslides. A flood in the delta could sink downtown Sacramento under as much as 20 feet of water, as well as cripple California (the eighth-largest economy in the world), hobble the nation and disrupt global trade.

Sacramento has flooded many times, most infamously in 1862, when a 45-day rain turned the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys into vast inland seas. Gov. Leland Stanford attended his inauguration by rowboat, and the state capital was temporarily moved to San Francisco. It was the largest deluge in state history, though geologic records indicate that six other powerful storms swamped the region before then. The chance of a megaflood inundating Sacramento again is not only plausible, predicts the U.S. Geological Survey, but “perhaps inevitable.” ... "

yrs,
rubato