I covered this earlier in a post here. Atmospheric Rivers can cause this sort of pattern, read more about them here. If the goal of press releases like this one from USC and the ones from USGS is to scare people and businesses out of the state, this combined with the taxation, waste, business hostile environment, and sluggish economy give just about anyone all the reason they need to pick up and leave. The movie below is from USGS, and gives their view.
USC: California superstorm would be costliest US disaster
A hurricane-like superstorm expected to hit California once every 200 years would cause devastation to the state’s businesses unheard of even in the Great Recession, a USC economist warns.
Researchers estimate the total property damage and business interruption costs of the massive rainstorm would be nearly $1 trillion.
USC research professor Adam Rose calculated that the lost production of goods and services alone would be $627 billion of the total over five years. Rose, a professor with the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development, also is the coordinator for economics at the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) at USC.
That number would make the severe storm scenario “the costliest disaster in the history of the United States̶, Rose said, more than six times greater than the 2001 World Trade Center attacks and Hurricane Katrina, which each caused $100 billion in business interruption.
The storm simulation U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists termed “ARkStorm – or “atmospheric river storm” – is patterned after the U.S. West Coast storms that devastated California in 1861-62.
The storms lasted for 45 days, forming lakes in the Mojave Desert and the Los Angeles Basin. California was left bankrupt after the storms wiped out nearly a third of the state’s taxable land, according to the USGS.
But those storms were no freak event, said USGS scientists, who called the ARkStorm model “plausible, perhaps inevitable.”
The ARkStorm areas include Orange County, Los Angeles County, San Diego and the San Francisco Bay area. The megastorm likely would require the evacuation of 1.5 million people.
According to the USGS, the ARkStorm would:
- create hurricane-force winds of up to 125 miles per hour in some areas and flood thousands of square miles of urban and agricultural land to depths of 10 to 20 feet.
- set off hundreds of landslides that would damage roads, highways and homes.
- disrupt lifelines such as power, water and sewers that would take weeks or months to repair.
Rose estimated the ARkStorm would cause the state’s unemployment rate to jump six percentage points in the first year, a further blow to the California economy that currently has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation at 12.4 percent.
Rose called the severe storm scenario “much more imaginable” after Los Angeles was hit with 9.42 inches of rain in December. It was the wettest December in downtown Los Angeles in more than a century.
Climate scientists said global warming is a major factor behind the increasingly destructive power of hurricanes and other storms.
The sea level is rising as oceans warm and glaciers melt, which can create higher storm surges and more disastrous flooding in coastal areas.
“Climate change affects how the whole ecosystem works,” said Mark Bernstein, managing director of The USC Energy Institute.
“Storms form based on how warm the oceans are and how the jet stream changes,” Bernstein said. “The consequence is [the rain] will come in shorter and more intense bursts.”
Businesses and local governments can minimize the long-term impacts of such a disaster, Rose said, by creating emergency plans, increasing inventories of critical materials, backing up information systems, and diversifying supply chains and routes.
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Warn Barbara B. and Nancy P. and have them get the IPCC on to this right away!!!!
And there was I thinking the chief danger to California came from the San Andreas fault causing much of it to fall into the sea. One day.
Mind you that would be nothing if the great crack in Hawaii failed.
Still there you are. Pick your version of the End of Days and then Enjoy. After all the world will go on without you: as will the human race.
Kindest Regards
I’m sorry. Did Rose say climate change was a factor – or did the journalist add in the observations and doodlings of anonymous “climate scientists” into the piece on his own.
Just to be clear.
Oh, good. They even managed to tie in the obligatory global warming scare to make it even worse. I’m sure the global warming in 1862 was a key player as well.
Why are the winds expected to be upwards of 125 mph? Not sure what the mechanism for that would be at this location.
Good background music, though.
If the sky would fall then we will all be wearing a blue hat…
It seems plausible that weather will happen again. We can only protect ourselves to a certain extend. And for the rest we have to stay optimistic and not give in to such doom thinking or we will all go mad…
Wow, didnt know global warming was causing events that happened before to happen again.
A lot of “what if’s” in that cartoon. Sounds to me like a bid for MO MONEY by invoking the Precautionary Principle yet again. Gets tiresome after the first dozen times.
So this event happened in 1861/1862 naturally, and now if it happens in the near future we will blame global warming/climate change for it? They claim that it should happpen once every 200 years or so, but this next time it’s because of climate change? I’m sorry but honestly read what you are saying…your saying that something natuatally should happen in the coming years that will be devestating, but this NATURAL event is because of climate change? no it’s not it’s 100% natural as you pointed out
Scientists warned us that New Orleans could be devastated by a major hurricane years before Katrina hit. We ignored them.
Don’t these people see the obvious contradictions in their article? If global warming is responsible for such destructive storms then what caused the 1861 flooding – buffalo flatulence?
What I find most annoying are terms such as “once every 200 years” weather event. The weather is a chaotic system and such rare events can happen a few years in succession or not for millenia. The forecasting mindset assumes that weather follows a Gaussian distribution whereas it most definitely doesn’t. This isn’t old news as Hurst looked at Nile river flooding and found that extreme events were clustered. He also found that they obey a power law. Mandelbrot investigated numerous time series and came up with the term Hurst exponent (H). For Nile flooding H=0.73 which, coincidentally, is what I’ve found as the H value for many global temperature series. H of more than 0.5 means that there are more extremes as H=0.5 is a simple random walk. OTOH, looking at H for heart rate data over a 24 hour period gives values of 0.1-0.2 which means there isn’t much variation (my own calculations and haven’t gone to the literature to check this yet).
It may be that the warming we’ve experienced was just a coincidental number of warm years and now we’re into a set of cold years which can’t be tied to any one factor. The linear analyses used by climate modelers would be hilarious if it wasn’t for the economic implications of their faulty models.
“… Analysis of Terrorism …”
As if they could prevent a 500-year flood if they wanted to. They have always happened and will continue to happen, that is why 500 year flood planes are defined.
Then by their own term it describes the University of Southern California (USC) perfectly, turned terrorist. Can’t believe such institutions are spewing this meaningless rancor, the only reason being to terrorize citizens. They should analyze themselves instead.
In this case, printed history in the form of newspapers will tell anyone all they ever wanted to know about “Rain Events” in California circa 1861. All who have been through a Pineapple Express El Nino know what they are getting into.
News stories carrying the intent to spread fear and confusion are a big disservice.
It doesn’t rain in California, it pours. Common knowledge and in direct opposition to the meme of impending savage droughts that were broadcast the last few years…and didn’t happen.
After the 76-77 drought, 40 years of scorching drought was predicted…and it didn’t happen.
Global Warming here is a dud, so now the doomsayers want to pick on what is normal and accepted as thier new soapbox.
Do you see them building Arks here?
Robert Wykoff says:
“Wow, didnt know global warming was causing events that happened before to happen again.”
Robert, you need to get up to speed: everything is caused by global warming. And “carbon.”☺
Do you guys realize that according to these “scientists”….
…there’s not one safe place in the entire country
Mike says: (March 7, 2011 at 7:09 pm)
“Scientists warned us that New Orleans could be devastated by a major hurricane years before Katrina hit. We ignored them.”
Can you be the only one who doesn’t know that Katrina didn’t do the damage? It was the stupidity of building below sea level between the Gulf of Mexico and a large lake.
That’s It, that lousy CO2 is to blame!
I’m going to stop drinking anything with CO2 in it. As an ex-pat Brit I’m going to go back to drink flat ,warm bitter ale from the once Great Briton. I’m practicing know with a scowl on my face at the awful prospect. I’ll miss my delicious ice cold micro brewed beers but we all have to sacrifice.
Wait a minute did the alarmist say the the storm of 1861-62, what the hell it obviously had F### All to do with CO2. Are well back to my well stocked beer fridge for a super cold Sleemans Honey brown Ale!
Cheers, here’s to Warmist every where, your all off your rockers but the mini movie was really goooooood..
Wasn’t a storm lasting 40 days and 40 nights mentioned somewhere else… Just who are the religious nuts nowadays anyhow?
Teleconnected thro time ,space and credibility, the marvelous models strike again.This is death spiral stuff ,of the nature, quick our credibility is vanishing, bung out another model, that will save us. Yes global warming causes everything past present and future. All hail global warming and his/hers/its associated lesser gods.
I see this fine piece of the gospel as clear evidence its over.
So let me get this straight. The powers that be seem to think they must inform Californians to be prepared for disasters. Either they think the voting public is really dumb, or they actually are. So here are the basics from my grandmother when on an outing:
Bring enough food for several days, along with hunting chocolate
Bring a sweater and a coat
Bring a rain slicker
Bring matches and a hatchet
Wear clean underwear
Never could understand the thing about clean underwear but it was on the list.
“U.S. West Coast storms that devastated California in 1861-62.”
1850 was the end of the LIA, cold or warm it seems weather happens.
Quote 1:
“The storm simulation U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists termed “ARkStorm – or “atmospheric river storm” – is patterned after the U.S. West Coast storms that devastated California in 1861-62.”
Quote 2:
“Climate scientists said global warming is a major factor behind the increasingly destructive power of hurricanes and other storms.”
This is grand isn’t it – modeled on a pattern from the 1800’s, before AGW was supposedly present, but then turning around & inferring AGW makes this more likely.
Is it any wonder the alarmists have no credibility? Clearly they are banking on the general public being complete morons collectively. Sorry fellas, we aren’t falling for it.
And by the way alarmists, don’t try blaming it on AGW when it happens again – as you have already demonstrated that the last time it happened there was no AGW.
Yet another whacko terror warning ginned up to maintain the “State of Fear.” Your tax dollars in action.
“The ARkStorm areas include Orange County, Los Angeles County, San Diego and the San Francisco Bay area. The megastorm likely would require the evacuation of 1.5 million people.”
Can I have the walled-tent concession in Fresno as 1.5 M folks stream out of the above areas searching for higher ground only to meet in the middle about where they would run out of gas and electrons in their vehicles?
For “clueless” see:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Massive_traffic_jams,_gas_shortages_plug_evacuation_routes_near_Houston
Quotes: “being on the highway is a deathtrap,”
. . . . . . . “Curses and hand signals were exchanged.”
Jeff L says:
March 7, 2011 at 7:37 pm
Fortunately, most folks just smile and nod when they encounter a “true believer”, then once in the solitude of the voting booth, still manage to do the right thing. Most of the time!
Mike says:
March 7, 2011 at 7:09 pm
Did they? Wow, must have taken some skill to predict a hurricane in the Gulf.
Did they predict anything else in the last 30 years that has come to pass or not? Maybe New York under 20 feet of water? maybe permanent drought in Australia? I assume poley berras are extinct by now, I haven’t seen one in ages.
Got any links Mikey?