Texas Floods

[Rob C]

Spanish tv showed some footage of the terrible weather that’s affected southern Texas, cost may lives and caused much pain. I’d just like to offer condolences to anybody that's been hit by these events.

The Spanish mainland has been having a sustained run of unbelievable freak weather too; not a day goes by without news of more floods and hail like golfballs. The Mediterranean is currently at temperatures normal for August peaks. This warming of the water is a driver for more dampness up there in the sky and, what goes up eventually has to come down. There are fears for future fish stock, too.

Recently, hundreds of people were killed at the same time by floods in the Valencia region, and as seems to have been the case in Texas, very late and even inaccurate emergency warnings are being held largely to blame for the lack of human preparedness in the locations that were hit. The inevitable political wrangling and denials is shocking.

[degrub]

At least in Texas, the warnings went out with plenty of time.The soil is similar to that in Valencia - rocky, scrub vegetation, narrow river flood beds in places.  It was the middle of the night, though. Neighbor had a grandchild involved. When the warning came, they had plenty of time to evacuate dozens of kids and horses to high ground.
Don't know what happened at Camp Mystic though.

Flash floods happen often enough here that people are aware and know what to do. Tourists, maybe not so much. Locals, yes.

[PeterAit]

At least in Texas, the warnings went out with plenty of time.The soil is similar to that in Valencia - rocky, scrub vegetation, narrow river flood beds in places.  It was the middle of the night, though. Neighbor had a grandchild involved. When the warning came, they had plenty of time to evacuate dozens of kids and horses to high ground.
Don't know what happened at Camp Mystic though.

Flash floods happen often enough here that people are aware and know what to do. Tourists, maybe not so much. Locals, yes.

Political comment removed. You all know where politics belongs. Keep it there.

[Rob C]

Yes, the Spanish tv said there was a collapse of the warning system in southern Texas, which was a precise echo of the disaster in Spain where, currently, the governor is being hounded - the locals want his head, or at least his resignation - I doubt they’ll get it. The weather pattern gave birth to a new acronym: DANA, which, if I’m not mistaken, refers to Depreción Aislada en Niveles Altos. It’s a high-altitude weather pattern. When Sanchez, the Prime Minister, turned up (after several days) to “see for himself” he was hounded back to his car and he made an inglorious the hell out of it. When the King and Queen visited, the reception was quite the opposite: the Queen was visibly in tears as she hugged victims’ relatives… it was all very tense, with pressing crowds, and I was quite anxious for the royals, you just never know what a crowd can do next. A brave couple.

[degrub]

Many folks used to have "weather radios" which are tuned to the  weather warning broadcast  frequency used  by the NWS office.  As long as they are powered, they will go off with a loud obnoxious tone and then enunciate the warning message. There may be similar for phones, but i don't know for sure.

[JoeKitchen]

Yes, the Spanish tv said there was a collapse of the warning system in southern Texas, which was a precise echo of the disaster in Spain where, currently, the governor is being hounded - the locals want his head, or at least his resignation - I doubt they’ll get it. The weather pattern gave birth to a new acronym: DANA, which, if I’m not mistaken, refers to Depreción Aislada en Niveles Altos. It’s a high-altitude weather pattern. When Sanchez, the Prime Minister, turned up (after several days) to “see for himself” he was hounded back to his car and he made an inglorious the hell out of it. When the King and Queen visited, the reception was quite the opposite: the Queen was visibly in tears as she hugged victims’ relatives… it was all very tense, with pressing crowds, and I was quite anxious for the royals, you just never know what a crowd can do next. A brave couple.

I read the river rose 34 feet (10.4 meters) in 45 minutes in the middle of the night.  There was no collapse of the warning system; everyone was asleep.  Likewise, I read the area is too rural to expect consistent cell phone service, so that had something to do with it as well. 

[Rob C]

Cellphone coverage: accepting the modern miracle of real communicator devices, à la Star Trek, I’m kinda bemused that the system has not yet, decades later, been able to erect enough towers to supply a consistent, total service.

I remember sitting in a hotel in Nairobi in 1984 with a client’s fixer, being set up for a last-minute location arrangement away in the sticks (Kichwa Tembo) and I wanted to find out something before taking on the location as a positive. I suggested the fixer call them up. He sadly informed me that such connections were not possible… I was truly shocked! How quickly we get spoiled by what we take for granted. I was thinking about normal, traditional telephones at that time.

Here in Mallorca, cellphone connections seem to be fine, unless you venture up into the Tramuntana, the mountain range that runs all along the northern edge of the island. We are not talking more than about sixty miles or so… it used to be a wonderful road trip, up there, but nowadays I’m informed by the newspapers that it’s both an illegal motorbike race track, as well as, during the day, a very long car park.

[JoeKitchen]

Saw this from an YouTuber I follow (warning, it is very technical and dry) about the floods. 

An Engineer's Perspective on the Texas Floods

What I found so interesting is how inaccurate relying on older data and rain collection stations are that most of the current flood maps and historical predictions (such as 100 year storms) are based off of. 

He showed the radar from the storm and explained all of the rain that caused the flooding came from a single storm caught circling in the same place for 4 to 5 hours.  Then he picked four random pixels in the video showing that data from those four spots show significantly less rain fall overall.  Those four random pixels are the equivalent of setting up rain water collection stations and treating them as a good gauge on rain fall, which they clearly are not. 

Making predictions from those four stations would be greatly off, and any predictions on 100 years storms or total expected rain fall would also be off, which is kind of what we have done.  Kind of makes you worry. 

[degrub]

all of the precipitation data is an average over large areas. Forecasts are just the same - 30 % chance some locations in the forecast area will receive "x" amount of precipitation. The forecast area may be many hundreds or even thousand square miles. One reason that radar based preciptation returns can be valuable during an actual storm, even though it is not "accurate" either. Flood risk predictions are all based on the available historical data with all its warts. Experience based common sense had always marked areas like that as higher risk. Common sense says don't sleep close to the creek in flash flood areas as you may not hear the storm 30 miles away. But people still want to do it.

Its risk, no different than driving or flying or dumping a turkey in a constrained vat of hot oil. Perceptions about the risk differ, of course.

[Jeremy Roussak]

I have removed a post by Frans Waterlander which was obviously political and therefore not allowed outside the bear pit thread; and I have removed a reply to it.

Jeremy

[Rob C]

I have removed a post by Frans Waterlander which was obviously political and therefore not allowed outside the bear pit thread; and I have removed a reply to it.

Jeremy

Well done; I’d forgotten about the location - sorry about that.

What’s that old religious musical number - Yield not to Temptation?

Rob

[Frans Waterlander]

I have removed a post by Frans Waterlander which was obviously political and therefore not allowed outside the bear pit thread; and I have removed a reply to it.

Jeremy

I mistakenly thought the Coffee Corner allowed for political opinions. Sorry, won't happen again.