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.
I grew up in L.A. and as a kid, I asked my dad why the drains were always empty.
He said they’re not!
Then:
http://www.lastormwater.org/siteorg/general/sdhistry.htm
Now:
http://www.lastormwater.org/siteorg/general/lastrmdrn.htm
Wow, we do learn.
Oh, now I see Pamela mentioned food for several days.
Actually, everyone should bring along about a 3 month supply of non-perishable food and drinking water (more if you expect to bathe) – because there won’t be either where you end up, and you won’t be going back real soon.
Jeff L writes.
“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.”
I don’t know much about atmospheric-river storms, so I’d listen to those who study them. But there’s no logical contradiction between statements like this:
– X has happened in the past.
– The probability of X is changing.
Looks like an advertisemant for tax dollars.
Priceless.
Global warming may cause a storm just like one from 150 years ago that happened before global warming and was completely natural.
Hogwash. Don’t they know that’s what all the wind turbines are for? To break up the wind? Bet they didn’t include THAT in their models. Ha!
Pamela Gray says:
March 7, 2011 at 7:32 pm
LOL!
“…along with hunting chocolate”
Yes, yes, never go anywhere without chocolate…right Pamela?
storm surges on the west coast? have you checked the slope of the ocean on the west coast? too steep for a storm surge in most areas.
“ARkStorm – or “atmospheric river storm” – is patterned after the U.S. West Coast storms that devastated California in 1861-62.”
So what caused the one in 1861-62? Did we have global warming from too many cars at that time?
I would love to see discussion of infrastructure that could both protect property and store water during the occasional heavy California rains, plus during the projected giant rain. Could $50-100 billion dollars in strategically placed retaining walls and earth dams be paid for by reduced flood insurance premiums plus the value of future irrigation water? Or perhaps that would be the cost of the needed Environmental Impact Statements and building permits…
How much would it cost to drain such rain events into Death Valley and other valleys? Death Valley is 200+ feet below sea level, but how much water could it hold if heavy rains hit? And how much could be channeled there from other areas?
If California doesn’t get enough rain 90 years out of 100, and gets too much 5 years out of 100 (and way, way too much once every 200 years), well, that’s a problem, but construction companies would see it as an opportunity.
There ought to be some nifty tools with Google Earth for heavy bulldozing and concrete retaining walls that could hold back or channel water in key places.
It might be a fun project for kids in California schools
In the same vein as President Bush steering Katrina’s surge close enough to NO to overwhelm the dikes, the unusual weather of 1861-1862 was likely the work of President Lincoln. You see, at that time, Southern California was a hotbed of Confederate sympathizers planning sabotage of military installations, gathering arms and heading east. Loyal Union military units in Northern California headed south to quell the uprising and were unexpectedly aided by severe weather which disrupted the rebels’ plans.
That’s my story and I’m stickin’ with it!
ferd berple says:
March 7, 2011 at 8:37 pm
storm surges on the west coast? have you checked the slope of the ocean on the west coast? too steep for a storm surge in most areas.
Correct!
http://www.lastormwater.org/siteorg/education/compslopes.htm
Did they really? This sentence and the couple that follow it are entirely disjointed and unrelated to the main body of the article. Even if some”climate scientists” said that, (apart from the fact that they would be wrong) how is that related to the possible repeat of a storm that happened in 1863.
Just another lame attempt to spin anything and everything as a result of
ManBearPigGlobal WarmingMike 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.”
Actually, we ignored the sage advice of first Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie and then Led Zeppelin who warned us what happens When The Levee Breaks:
If it keeps on raining levee’s going to break
If it keeps on raining levee’s going to break
When the levee breaks have no place to stay
Since they aren’t warming, we can relax.
Now the alarmists are covered. If it rains too little, the White House advisor who’s been predicting drought was right. If it rains too much, these guys were right. Heads they win, tails we lose.
Let’s tap the brake a bit. The New Orleans flooding was due to homes and businesses being below sea level, poorly planned levees and dikes, poorly built levees and dikes, and poorly maintained levees and dikes. Bad decisions regarding waterways caused subsidence in the 8ft neighborhood leaving even more areas below Lake Pontchartrain’s and the sea’s levels. Katrina was only a class 3 hurricane by the time it hit southeast of New Orleans (notice that it missed N.O.) with winds at about 75mph; not at all a major hurricane. The original part of the city, The French Quarter, was built above sea level and was not flooded. So, let’s not pull that old red herring bulsh.
I confess to not having made up my mind as to whether you’re simply a troll for the fun of it, or are a religious fanatic with all that implies.
cheers,
gary
@ur momisugly Pamela Gray. You need clean underware because you may get knocked down by an omnibus and you would die of shame if you were wearing dirty underware. Ladies like your grandmother did not go commando.
From Spaceweather.com:
Solar Cycle 24 is heating up. No fewer than three sunspots (1164, 1165, and 1166) are crackling with M-class solar flares, and each of them has a delta-class magnetic field capable of producing even more powerful X-flares. Scroll past the space shuttle for information about a CME now heading our way.
I’m more worried about what a Carrington-type event would do to the US, rather than any inclement weather system!
Alarmist Rhetoric Knows no bounds
A few thoughts from the UK
The voiceover says California was bankrupted by the storm. Seems like Arnie and the team found another way to bankrupt Ca and not a hint of AGW.
As Pilke/Landsea will tell you the great Florida blow of 1926 would cause damage in the region of $175 million all on its own if it happened today.
Cheers
Paul
Gregory Rehmke says:
March 7, 2011 at 8:40 pm
It might be a fun project for kids in California schools
===========================================
Gregory, you’ve simply got to get with the program here… there’s no room for “fun”, and we don’t want to be taking the kids’ minds off the need to be absolutely terrified by the big, bad boogie monster.
Next you’ll be wanting to see things as “educational opportunities”…
Any future flooding in the region will cause far more damage than the 1861 floods, because horses can swim and have common sense, while Priuses, Leafs, and Volts just short out. Sadly, most of the area’s residents don’t have the sense to come in out of the rain (OMG, double rainbow!), much less not to drive an electric car into the water, much less raging floodwaters.
USC: “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!”
Me: (yawn)
Good to live in a city with the best drainage in California, but it is time to restock my emergency food and water supply.
Only made California very briefly via LA International where they were going to lock my brother up for some customs reason now long forgotten.
Must be an interesting place what with a bloody big ocean on the western side that can turn very nasty and kill you by various methods if you believe the experts, hemmed in on the eastern side with mountains that you can freeze to death in during winter, monstrous wild fires almost as bad as Australia’s that you can burn to death in, huge floods that wipe out everything in their path and can drown you then droughts that leave everybody gasping for water, short on water most of the time because you use too much of it, on a major global tectonic plate junction where some of the biggest earthquakes known have occurred and will re-occur sometime in the possible near future, farmers over hundreds of thousands of acres are stopped from producing food because a frog is in the way, soon to be running short of electrical energy because a section of the populace say it’s generation is too polluting with a minor atmospheric gas that is essential to all life so bang goes refrigeration, food production, medical systems, transport systems of every type, heating and cooling and etc and business of every type, highest unemployment amongst the states of the USA, that close to bankruptcy it doesn’t matter, vehicle restrictions so that only those built for California can be sold, increasing taxes, decreasing public facilities, a near bankrupt schooling system, more government interference at every turn, less and less government by the people, for the people, more and more bureaucrats and public servants demanding more and more of the public purse for less and less work and worse and worse results, populated by more and more illegals and possibly less and less Americans, a crime rate to be proud of and etc and etc!
And people LIVE there???
There I was thinking that the world’s and California’s population and infrastructure had grown since 1861. Silly me!