Month: July 2021
Instant Peril: Flash Floods (and How to Survive Them)
Hi, and welcome to Anthropogenic Climate Change, where the extremes are all the more extreme! In India, severe monsoons have caused flooding that has killed at least 125 people. The American Southwest is in for an entire season of flash flooding. In my old hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona, climate change has baked everything in a decades-long drought and caused horrific fires, which has stripped the cover from the forest, which means that when the monsoon rains are heavy, flash floods and debris flows scream down city streets. This flood careened along a street in a neighborhood I’ve driven through countless times in my life; it’s pretty shocking to see a quiet neighborhood turned into a raging, debris-filled river. We’re used to sudden monsoon downpours, but not this!
Since many regions of the world will be experiencing more extreme flooding than normal, or coping with flash floods that are unusual for the area, I figured it was time to republish this piece, which appeared on the original Scientific American Rosetta Stones blog back in 2016. Stay alive and thrive, my friends!
The July 2021 Atami, Japan Landslide: “A Man-Made Calamity”
“This is hell,” a survivor said after a steep slope failed in the idyllic resort town of Atami, Japan, sending a torrent of mud careening into houses and people. Ten are dead, seventeen still missing as of this writing.
Landslides are a grim fact of life in many areas with steep topography. Gravity works. Things get loose and come down. Travel into the mountains basically anywhere, and you’ll see the evidence: streaks of bare earth where trees have been swept away, cascades of boulders marking areas where rock failed under the influence of weathering and physics. Sometimes earthquakes shake things until they topple. It seems like the most natural thing in the world.
But not this time. Nothing about this tragedy was natural.
A Very Volcanic Fourth of July
Look, human-made fireworks are pretty. And I enjoy them! Sometimes. When the forest isn’t crispy from an overly hot, dry summer and ready to catch on fire from so much as a heated word. And when I don’t have to battle crowds to see them. And when I don’t have to hear all the noise, which is becoming less and less entertaining as I get older.
Okay, so I like them on television, at my home, with the sound off, okay? Then I love them a lot. They’re very pretty!
But as impressive as some human pyrotechnic displays are, they just can’t quite measure up to the show an erupting volcano can put on. So for this July 4th, I’m going to take you on a world tour of volcanic light shows, courtesy of some very talented photographers.