All In One Boat

We’ve been watching Fay dodge back and forth over Florida and before that the Carribean islands, leaving flooding and a dozen or so deaths. The people of north eastern India should have it so lucky. Monsoon rains have upped the ante from “just usual flooding,” to a “catastrophe. Over one million are cut off from food supplies and from the other modes and mechanisms of daily life.

“It is not a normal flood, but a catastrophe,” said Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar after making an aerial survey of the ravaged districts.

Kumar said more than 1 million people were cut off from the rest of the country because the floods had washed away roads and made railway lines impassable.

India’s monsoon season, which lasts from June to September, brings rain vital for the country’s farmers but also massive destruction. Floods, mudslides, collapsing houses and lightning strikes kill hundreds of people every year.

This year’s monsoon has killed more than 330 people in India so far. In 2007, monsoon floods killed more than 2,200 people across South Asia and left 31 million others homeless, short of food or with other problems. The United Nations called last year’s floods the worst in living memory.”

Monsoon Flooding

The predictions that global climate change would bring rain in faster, denser fall is being borne out in New Hampshire. The Southwestern quadrant of the state, which was hit hard in 1999 and 2005, and along with the entire state in the spring of 2006, is underwater over large areas today. A reported 11 inches falling in some places. The average rainfall for Keene, New Hampshire, in August, one of the places hit yesterday, is 3.9 inches.

Satellite observation and number crunching have shown that rising temperatures, indeed, lead to more extreme downpours — and fewer light rains. More extreme downpours in turn, lead to flash flooding, property damage and loss of life. The poorer the area is, the worse the problem.

The observed rise in the heaviest tropical rains is about twice that produced by computer simulations used to assess how human-caused global warming could change rainfall, said the researchers. …

But this analysis, using satellite measurements, is the first to find a strong statistical link between warmth and extreme tropical downpours, the researchers said.

Extreme Rain

Like Las Vegas, Nevada yesterday for example

Floods in western Ukraine have killed 22 people, destroyed homes, farmland and roads and prompted the evacuation of 20,000 residents, officials said on Monday.

A senior government official [Ukraine] at the weekend described the flooding as the worst in a century.

Five Days of Rain

New Mexico, for all the images of cactus and dry plains is no stranger to flooding. When the monsoon season hits the dry earth doesn’t soak in the rain and flash flooding is commonplace. The remnants of Hurricane Dolly, however, brought new records to the state.

an estimated 6.6 inches of rain fell in Ruidoso, N.M., over a 48-hour period. The state’s official single-day rainfall record of 2.3 inches was shattered when an estimated 4.6 inches fell there Saturday night and Sunday morning, the newspaper said.

New Mexico: Dolly Flooding

Drought-hit Cyprus to ship water from Greece

NICOSIA, April 21 (Reuters) - Cyprus, facing its worst drought in a decade, will start importing water from Greece within the next two months, Agriculture Minister Michalis Polinikis said on Monday.