Full-page, eye-opening photos of the Vermont flood’s effect on transportation, business, and people’s lives: Link
Communities in Vermont and New York cutoff after 2 full days of rain. Video and story from ABC news: Link
From the Avian Flu Diary blog Link , a review of a 94 page report from the Brookings Institution, Link, Excerpt:
Almost 300 million people were affected by natural disasters in 2010. The large disasters provided
constant headlines throughout the year, beginning with the devastating earthquake in Haiti followed
one month later by the even more severe—but far less deadly—earthquake in Chile.
In the spring, ash spewing from volcano Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland paralyzed flights for weeks in the northern
hemisphere. Early summer witnessed the worst Russian wildfires in history while a few months
later, the steadily rising floodwaters in Pakistan covered 20 percent of the country. In sum, it was a
terrible year in terms of natural disasters causing havoc and destruction around the globe. However,
many of the largest disasters barely made headlines in the Western press.
Most notably, over 130 million Chinese were affected by the worst flooding in recent history—this
is more than five times the number of people affected by the earthquake in Haiti and the Pakistani
floods combined—but the Chinese floods received far less international attention than either Pakistan
or Haiti.
For those who might have missed the news reports, the USGS, FEMA and the California Emergency Management Agency convened a group of experts at U.C. Davis for two days last week to discuss a “Superstorm” that could be brewing. The last was in 1861-2. It continued for 45 days causing a 300 mile stretch of central California to resemble an enormous lake. Central California cities and towns including Sacramento were inundated. Such catastrophic storms occur every 100-200 years. They are called ARkStorms
Rising temperatures of the earth’s atmosphere makes such extreme weather events more likely. Such a storm could drop 10 feet of rain, flood 25% of the homes in California, cause massive landslides, disrupt sewer, water and waste systems, create toxic runoffs from industry, create ecologic damage and cause massive injuries, and loss of life with commensurate economic, social, agricultural and infrastructure damage. See NYT article Link and USGS news release Link, for more information.
Of Note