Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Category Two?
New Jerseyans need to pay close attention to the Gulf Coast right now. I've stood on the levees in Rahway NJ & easily imagined the kind of storm - combination of drenching rain, wind & successive high tides - that would push the city's tidal river over those embankments. Such a storm would innundate sections of Rahway (as smaller storms have in the recent past). But after losing a public library to a freshwater flood, Rahway has cleared & created additional buffer areas. Options are limited given that the greatest threat is caused by storm water runoff from upstream towns. The potential for destruction along the coast, where overdevelopment has placed hundreds of thousands of people, homes & businesses in harm's way, is almost unbelievable.
There are two worst case scenarios. The slow-moving noreaster type occurred most infamously in March 1962, which became a very significant event of my youth when I saw some of the damage in person. The most frightening possibility steers a hurricane's eye up Delaware Bay, placing the entire state in the powerful eastern quadrant of the storm, just where Biloxi was. It wouldn't take a Category Four.
There are two worst case scenarios. The slow-moving noreaster type occurred most infamously in March 1962, which became a very significant event of my youth when I saw some of the damage in person. The most frightening possibility steers a hurricane's eye up Delaware Bay, placing the entire state in the powerful eastern quadrant of the storm, just where Biloxi was. It wouldn't take a Category Four.
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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Let's break this down.
100 YEAR STORM
This is only a concept, a statistical invention required by engineers so they can make reasonable gambles & stay in budget. The Corp of Engineers made its determinations based on what was known in the 1960s, when TV weathermen pushed magnets around on mapboards & couldn't say with certainty if a thunderstorm (or hurricane) was coming. Even so, we're 1/3 of the way into that "100 year" cycle. Or bet, depending on how one looks at it. What kind of bet? Some Gulf Coast buildings constructed to the latest hurricane specs were destroyed. Closer to home, who in Rahway in 1998 expected to be mourning the loss of so many beautiful trees, knocked down by a rapidly dissipating F1 tornado that wasn't even touching the ground? What were the odds of that?
DEVELOPMENT
Rahway River is silting up & is no longer dredged for barges.
Due to heavy development upstream, the volume of water that flows downstream after soaking rains is probably much greater now. The Water Works has records on this.
GLOBAL WARMING
Sea levels are rising.
Hotter summers raise ocean water temperatures, so hurricanes lose less energy at they move north, & we can expect stronger winter storms also, & higher tides. Can we give the Army Corp of Engineers credit for foreseeing any of this accurately back in the Sixties? Global Warming wasn't in the science books. Neither. for that matter, were plate tectonics.
So, while I don't predict a flood, the potentiality for one exists in the present.
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100 YEAR STORM
This is only a concept, a statistical invention required by engineers so they can make reasonable gambles & stay in budget. The Corp of Engineers made its determinations based on what was known in the 1960s, when TV weathermen pushed magnets around on mapboards & couldn't say with certainty if a thunderstorm (or hurricane) was coming. Even so, we're 1/3 of the way into that "100 year" cycle. Or bet, depending on how one looks at it. What kind of bet? Some Gulf Coast buildings constructed to the latest hurricane specs were destroyed. Closer to home, who in Rahway in 1998 expected to be mourning the loss of so many beautiful trees, knocked down by a rapidly dissipating F1 tornado that wasn't even touching the ground? What were the odds of that?
DEVELOPMENT
Rahway River is silting up & is no longer dredged for barges.
Due to heavy development upstream, the volume of water that flows downstream after soaking rains is probably much greater now. The Water Works has records on this.
GLOBAL WARMING
Sea levels are rising.
Hotter summers raise ocean water temperatures, so hurricanes lose less energy at they move north, & we can expect stronger winter storms also, & higher tides. Can we give the Army Corp of Engineers credit for foreseeing any of this accurately back in the Sixties? Global Warming wasn't in the science books. Neither. for that matter, were plate tectonics.
So, while I don't predict a flood, the potentiality for one exists in the present.
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