The Weather Where You Live?

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We are at 10 inches of rain so far in the St. Louis region. Everything is underwater out here. The interstates are closed, airport is closed, bridges down, and communities are being evacuated.

Our house is fortunately on high ground. Others not so lucky.

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Wow! That looks horrible.

A bit of information that some might find interesting.

Minnesota signed on with the whole Global Warming/Climate Change concept fairly early on (I do not know when exactly - if there can be such a thing as exactly in this case). It was not a political decision in nature, but more of an engineering matter. MnDOT (Minnesota Department Of Transportation) began planning for future changes in weather based on the best/worst case scenarios that were put forward by the boffins.

One of the examples of this planning is the obvious one of setting goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, hence the wind farms (that started popping up in the 1990s) and encouragement to use solar power, higher-efficiency lighting, etc, that began around the same time.

A far less obvious change was the in the design of rainwater run-off systems - in case the heavier rainfalls expected if the Global Warming/Climate Change effects that were expected actually occurred. The increased water runoff volume built into the road network began around 2000 (I think). Rather than using the same cisterns/gal-per-minute designs of the previous decades, they switched to what I call the next-size-up method. Because of this change we have almost no flooding in the Twin Cities metropolitan area where new-build or re-build/modification of the highways occurred, and almost none (there are a couple in areas that have not been redone yet (mostly due to economic unwillingness of the (ir)responsible city) in the older areas, despite the increased incidence of significantly heavier short-duration rainfall.

For a general feel of what the increase in rainfall has been - in terms of the number of 6"-8" rainfalls within 24 hrs over a large area - the reliable record shows that from 1970-2000 there were 2x the number of these type of rainfalls than occurred in the previous ~100 years, and from 2000 to 2020 there were ~2x as many as from 1970-2000. The 6"-8" rainfall within 24 hrs over a large area is considered almost certain to cause serious flooding in areas with non-man-made water run-off systems.
 
These floods seem to be happening all over the world. Floods, heatwaves, bush fires and drought, the extremes of nature. Its a changing world for sure. :D
 
We sure could use some of that rain right now - NWS is forecasting severe thunderstorms today/tonight with little or no accompanying rain :(

You can gladly have ours. We have been designated an emergency zone, and the next bout of storms are coming through tonight.

My sump pump is fortunately keeping up, but unfortunately for my neighbor his is not.

Some more pics from the area…

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I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of rugged mountain ranges,
Of drought and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

We used to recite this in school - it's part of a poem by Dorothy McKellar and it's her take on how Australia made her feel.

This was written in 1908 - everything changes but at the same time nothing does - especially the droughts and flooding rains.
 

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