Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

NASA’s soil moisture satellite observes Hurricane Harvey’s wrath

By Mike Carlowicz 31 August 2017(NASA) – Hurricane Harvey has dropped record-breaking amounts of rainfall, particularly around Houston, Texas, since making landfall on 25 August 2017. Yesterday, we showed satellite-based estimates of rainfall, while today’s image shows the storm’s consequences from a different but complementary perspective.The map above depicts soil conditions around south Texas on […]

Hurricane Harvey marks the most extreme rain event in U.S. history

By Jason Samenow 29 August 2017 (The Washington Post) – The rain from Harvey is in a class of its own. The storm has unloaded over 50 inches of rain east of Houston, the greatest amount ever recorded in the Lower 48 states from a single storm. […]John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas state climatologist, said a rain […]

Record heat, lightning, fires, intense rain: California’s extreme weather gets wilder

By Joseph Serna 1 September 2017 (The Los Angeles Times) – The heat wave that has gripped California for a week took a dramatic turn Thursday as lightning storms sparked brush fires, knocked out power to thousands and caused downpours across the region. Forecasters said the extreme weather will continue through the weekend, with some […]

Houston flood danger decades in the making: development, wetlands loss, and global warming to blame – “This is what climate scientists have been telling us would happen. Absolutely, it’s a game changer.”

By Manuel Bojorquez 30 August 2017 HOUSTON (CBS News) – Harvey dumped a year’s worth of rain on Houston in a matter of days, shattering last year’s above-normal rainfall and bringing this year’s total to an unprecedented 73 inches.But according to Jim Blackburn, a professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Rice University, […]

Harvey is a 1,000-year flood event unprecedented in scale – But as the world heats up, “Expect Harvey flood record will be broken in 5, 15, 25 years from now — sooner rather than later”

By Jason Samenow 31 August 2017 (The Washington Post) – As Harvey’s rains unfolded, the intensity and scope of the disaster were so enormous that weather forecasters, first responders, the victims, everyone really, couldn’t believe their eyes. Now the data are bearing out what everyone suspected: This flood event is on an entirely different scale […]

Mumbai building collapse leaves at least 19 dead, 16 injured and 20 trapped under rubble as floods ravage India

31 August 2017 (Associated Press) – A five-story building collapsed in India’s financial capital of Mumbai, killing at least 19 people and injuring 16 others, after torrential rains lashed the country’s west. Another 20 people are feared trapped in the debris. Rescue workers, police and residents helped pull 16 people out of the rubble and […]

Trump supporters on Twitter blame Obama for Hurricane Katrina response

By Dan Van Winkle 30 August 2017 (The Mary Sue) – False news stories, especially about politics, have been circulating online for some time now, with the 2016 election acting as a lightning rod for them. There have also been plenty of hoaxes in the wake of Hurricane Harvey’s disastrous impacts on Texas—notably fooling Fox […]

Risk Management Solutions estimates economic losses from Hurricane Harvey at $70-90 billion

NEWARK, California, 30 August 2017 (RMS) – An analysis by RMS, a global risk modeling and analytics firm, has found that economic losses caused by wind, storm surge, and inland flood from Hurricane Harvey could be as high as U.S. $70-90 billion. The majority of the overall loss is likely to be from inland flooding […]

Chemical fires burn at storm-crippled chemical plant in Texas as Harvey flooding persists

By Alex Horton and Mark Berman 31 August 2017 CROSBY, Texas (The Washington Post) – The remnants of Hurricane Harvey carried its wrath up the Mississippi Delta on Thursday, but not before hammering the Gulf Coast with more punishing cloudbursts and growing threats that included blasts and “black smoke” at a crippled chemical plant and […]

We’re nowhere near prepared for the ecological disaster that Harvey is becoming – “Repeatedly over the past 15 years, the Texas legislature refused to pass any plan to adapt to climate change”

By Charles P. Pierce 30 August 2017 (Esquire) – It is the Christian thing to do in the middle of tragedies like the one currently unfolding along the Texas-Louisiana Gulf coast not to politicize human suffering and, certainly, the stories of people rescuing their fellow citizens from this calamity deserve to be told and they […]

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