Walls of water 10ft high in a month-long mega hurricane: California told to prepare for biblical ‘ARkStorm’
By Daniel Bates
Last updated at 4:17 AM on 17th January 2011
Scientists are now warning Californians that the long-awaited ‘big one’ earthquake could be the least of their environmental concerns.
Another more deadly threat awaits the West coast of America – in the form of a biblical ‘ARkStorm’, which could bring death and destruction on a scale never before seen.
Walls of water 10ft high, rain falling in feet instead of inches, and nine million people’s homes flooded during a hurricane-like megastorm that could last more than month.
Just the beginning: A truck and a house are buried waist level in mud after the torrential rains that soaked California in December. Scientists are warning of an even greater storm, the ARkStorm, which they say is long overdue
The every-other-century event last happened in 1861 and left the central valley of California impassable.
The cost was impossible to quantify – but should a similar event happen today the damage could total more than $300billion.
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OK, take a deep breath, and prepare yourself for this:
The attached comments on YouTube says:
In 2008, the USGS Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project (MHDP) brought together over 300 experts to create ShakeOut the most comprehensive earthquake scenario and the largest earthquake drill ever. Over 5 million people participated in the event.
The MHDP is now preparing for its next major public project, “ARkStorm,” a scenario to address massive West Coast storms analogous to those that severely impacted California in 1861/62. Once again, the MHDP is working with DesignMatters at the Art Center College of Design and Theo Alexopolous, Tina Chiang, and Sean Starkweather at SDF-1 to communicate the science behind the effort.
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Here’s some evidence of the magnitude of that flood in 1862:
And the research citing that graph is here
Certainly, this could happen again. Certainly, as we’ve seen with the floods in Australia and Brazil it will be blamed on “global warming”. But, the weather history will show otherwise.
I’m not sure what, if any, mitigation infrastructure or planning would help in an event of this magnitude, but trying to scare the crap out of people with Hollywood style CGI isn’t going to help in my opinion, because it looks just like another sci fi movie.
h/t to WUWT reader Rational Debate and Chris Lydon
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The possibility of an event off the scale is ever present. Our records of natural phenomenon are not long enough to really appreciate these extra large events.
I think the 1:100 year events are probably fairly accurate, but anything above that is a large amount of guess work. Events up to 100 year are approximately logarithmic in scale, but I’m not convinced events above the 100 year events continue on this scale.
Whether it be fire, flood, wind, hail size, cold, wave heights, ECT. I’ve noticed that in any given year there are multiple record events of something or other in new locations. If you think about it carefully, it’s no real surprise. There are so many places where rare events haven’t happened yet.
Hm, I dunno. Mebbe.
Where did Gore buy that beachhouse again?
There’s nothing wrong with preparing for once in 200 year catastrophies. The youtube clip is terrible, drumming up irrational fear but the reasoning behind this program is sound. The real fun will come when they reccomend a flood mitigation plan as we did here in Australia in the 70’s only to see it hijacked and scuttled by the same environmental hypocrites who insist we do something about the climate.