Tag: flooding
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Boiling Point: Heat, fires, floods — extreme weather has affected 99% of Americans
A firefighter walks through haze as the Park fire burns near Mineral, Calif., in early August. (Noah Berger / Associated Press) Extreme weather alerts for dangerous heat, wildfires, storms, flooding and other hazards have affected nearly everyone in the United States over the past few months. Tracking data from the National Weather Service, the nonprofit…
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Flood risks: Preparing for urban floods with an eye toward equity
Flood waters from the San Francisquito Creek reached apartment complexes in East Palo Alto, California, during a storm event on Dec. 31, 2022. | Courtesy of the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority Plans for flood mitigation along urban rivers often benefit some neighborhoods more than others. Researchers and collaborators in a densely populated California floodplain developed…
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As climate change amplifies urban flooding, here’s how communities can become ‘sponge cities’
By Franco Montalto, Drexel University “When it rains, it pours” once was a metaphor for bad things happening in clusters. Now it’s becoming a statement of fact about rainfall in a changing climate. Across the continental U.S., intense single-day precipitation events are growing more frequent, fueled by warming air that can hold increasing levels of moisture.…
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Marin public health tool gauges sea-levels ‘vulnerability’
Homes in the Spinnaker Point neighborhood stand alongside wetlands in San Rafael, Calif., on Tuesday, March 19, 2024. Nearly all of the residents in the Canal area live in the flooding zone, according to the county. (Alan Dep/Marin Independent Journal) A new online tool created by Marin County’s public health office aims to chart the…
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Risky reservoirs: States where aging dams pose the greatest threat
Record rainfall pelted parts of Iowa for 12 hours straight in July 2010, sending 10 inches of rainwater draining toward Lake Delhi, Iowa, a popular recreation destination for decades since its construction in the 1920s. Holding back 9 miles of lake water with more precipitation flowing in by the minute was the 80-year-old Lake Delhi…
