Study finds more extreme storms ahead for California | Hacker News Reader

Study finds more extreme storms ahead for California

news.mit.edu

56 pointschmaynard21 comments

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Powder magazine says the predicted snowfall for the upcoming week is largest ever. Extreme is good!

http://www.powder.com/stories/hydrological-hammer-of-the-god...

>record rainfall had set off mudslides, floods, and power outages across the state

Since I've been stuck in my apartment for two days, I'm going to have to disagree with you.

On a related topic, I changing my current policy of having 3 days of food to 5 since this year has been rather stormy.

Bolted the snow tires to the car last weekend. Gonna be some epic storm driving in the mountains this weekend. Forecasting 60" at 8k feet along the crest today through thursday. Then another 70-80" over the upcoming weekend. Probably will come in short of that, but still. epic.

Although not my current career, I come from an engineering background. This does not sound all bad.

What I am hearing is that we simply need to build better dams, which can reduce the impact of the deluge while simultaneously improving the availability of water in the region. Depending on the amount of water, we may even be able to use it to irrigate large portions of land, and allow rivers and creeks to flow year round.

Not all irrigation has to be for farming... perhaps we can water our national parks as well. Large lakes evaporate tremendous amounts of water too, further repairing the water cycle as well as being a force of localized cooling.

One of the strongest detractors against dams is their large ecological footprint. Wouldn't larger reservoirs make this worse in some ways?

From an insurance perspective, storms are very expensive. Especially if they come with more frequent and stronger damaging winds, hail, tornadoes, landslides, and flooding.

It would be interesting to see some analysis of the financial cost compared to the ecological impact/financial benefits in a drought stricken climate.

An interesting read on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARkStorm

Interesting. IIRC, not to deny climate change, but for context: there was a storm c. 1990 with sustained winds over 70 mph in Blossom Valley which nearly blew in windows through their frames and knocked over many fences.

3 inches of rain in an hour isn't all the unprecedented, which is what makes me wonder about the veracity of the sources. In the 80's it would rain so hard (and so much) at times that it would knock people down and break windows and flood streets...mudslide warning still exist along roads in orange county, CA from that time.

Take that, drought!

How much would they bet?

"the state will experience three more extreme precipitation events than the current average, per year"

A better title would be "California predicted to have 3 extreme precipitation events per year by 2100" but that won't get as many clicks.

Not sure why this post was downvoted but I would agree given that the meaning is the same for both statements. Is there something I am missing?

Personally I find the frequent comments complaining that the title should be a dry summary of facts a little dreary. There's a middle ground between clickbait and a mini-summary and this title seems to be perfectly reasonable.

Many scientists said the same thing about hurricanes after Katrina and they were completely wrong.[1] And calling the storms from 2014 the "Storm of the Century" was a joke, another case of media hyperbole.

[1] http://science.time.com/2013/09/09/a-silent-hurricane-season...

Politicians and spokespeople linking the California drought with climate change has damaged the credibility of these reports. I'm inclined to believe MIT researchers' climate models but I think this should have been addressed in this press release.

This story is about extreme storms. The example storm mentioned from 2014 occurred in the worst of the drought, caused all kinds of issues, but it didn't fix anything. Both future droughts and more extreme and frequent pineapple expresses can co-exist because of climate change. MIT et al. shouldn't have to explain that in every press release made involving the climate.

Thanks for this context. I and others in these comments were under the misapprehension that this meant the drought was gone. See what I mean?

I feel you made the case for explaining it to the audience even stronger.

Here is a link to the drought map for the West Coast.

Comparing December 27, 2016 to December 29, 2015.

Drought is significantly improved over that time period, but still quite severe in Southern California.

http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/MapsAndData/WeeklyComparison.a...

How so? There is some scientific evidence to suggest that the cause of the drought is more likely to occur in warmer climates. It isn't universally accepted, but it is convincing enough to look at closely.

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