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Worst rain in 1,000 years causes billion$ of damage in Florida. Except it's actually not true . . .



Photo above - alligator swimming alongside a car in Florida during a rainy day. Not this week - some other day

Miami – and Sarasota – both got 6.5 inches of rain on June 11th. The media immediately claimed this was a “once in a 1,000 year event”. Skeptic that I am, I googled this. And of course it turns out to be complete BS. See link below.

Granted, 6 inches in a day is A LOT. Especially in urban areas which have about 90% of their surfaces paved, and are hoping to divert all that water into their puny storm drains. So yes, I'm not shocked to see Miami and Sarasota photos of cars knee deep in water. I saw the same sort of pictures about a decade ago, in NYC, when their drainage pumps failed during a rainy day. Here in Tampa we don't pave every square inch of the land, and a lot of homes and apartments still have actual lawns. So, it was soggy, but we didn't fear for our lives.

Okay, so when WAS the rainiest day ever in Florida? Apparently October 12th, 1947. Yeps - 2 lifetimes ago. Florida got 15 inches. More than double Monday's fake 1,000 year record. Of course Miami wasn't 90% covered in concrete then. 1947 was a disaster, but nothing that could be considered an existential threat. Just an ordinary hurricane.

Rainiest year ever? That would also be 1947, with 70 inches. Florida's average rainfall is 55 inches. 2023 saw 53 inches, below average. As were the preceding 3 years. The driest year on record was 2006, with 41 inches. See where this is headed?

It's likely 2024 could have higher rainfall than average. It's UNLIKELY that both the above and below average measurements are the result of global warming. Or the breakup of the Antarctic ice sheet, etc.

However, global warming IS REAL. The current ice age peaked about 20,000 years ago. Cuomo Sapiens was barely holding on then, having mistimed our migration to Europe. Just 2 million people on planet earth, mostly in Africa sunning themselves comfortably. European Cuomo sapiens had already killed off ALL the Neanderthals thousands of years before that, so it wasn't clan v. clan wargames with spears which hurt out population. It was the glaciers the glaciers everywhere. So our ancestors turn to killing Mammoths. All of them. Chased them over cliffs, where they tumbled to their deaths, to become mammoth burgers.

Since the ice age peak most of the glaciers have retreated. We still have some in Canada, Alaska, Greenland, etc. And we still have ice caps at both the north and south poles. Which doesn't happen unless we're still IN an ice age. Which we are. Slow melt.

And those ice caps are going to keep melting, no matter what kind of car you drive, or how many tax rebates there are on solar panels. That's not to say we shouldn't continue to switch from coal and crude oil to solar. I'm on board with that. Just don't expect it to halt the ice caps from melting. Sea levels will rise as much as 6 feet by the year 2100. And by 195 feet when all the ice caps and glaciers are completely gone. That's when earth's climate will finally be “normal" again. And that sea level rise is going to cost us a LOT of money. Better not spend it all on tax rebates for solar panels, okay? We'll need some for moving vans.

I'm just sayin' . . .

~1,000-Year Deluge: Florida’s Rainfall Shatters Historical Records (scitechdaily.com)~

~1947 Florida–Georgia hurricane - Wikipedia~
SusanInFlorida
31-35, F
31 replies 81 views Jun 14, 2024
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ElwoodBlues · M
@SusanInFlorida says
However, global warming IS REAL
as part of her DENIAL of anthropogenic global climate change; suggesting (based on a few rainy days) that the 800,000 years of temperature and CO2 measurements are somehow wrong or irrelevant. Let's review some of the data.

First, why does increased CO2 raise temperatures? It's because CO2 & methane are transparent to visible light but more opaque to infrared. The solar energy comes pouring in via the visible spectrum, but the heat can't leave so easily via the infrared spectrum due to that opacity. Kids' version:
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/explainer-co2-and-other-greenhouse-gases
idealized quantitative model: https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/coriolis-force/a-simple-mathematical-model-of-the-greenhouse-effect.html

We have 800,000 years of climate data, covering about 7 ice ages. The climate data comes from bubbles in glacial ice, and is corroborated by data from lake & sea floor sediments.
https://icecores.org/about-ice-cores
CO2 & methane & temp data

Here's where the various data sets were collected:

What do climatologists DO with all that climate data? They build detailed mathematical models that run on supercomputers. They use some of the ice ages to train the models and others to test the models. Here's a simple model designed to run on a single workstation in the early 2000s.
http://web.mit.edu/globalchange/www/climate.html

Needless to say present day supercomputer models have far more precision. The most salient thing about the 800,000 years of climate data is the rate of change during those previous 7 ice ages compared to the current rate of change this century.

@SusanInFlorida is not alone in hypothesizing that all the climate change we see is "natural" i.e. independent of human activity. There are many right-wing politicians who agree with her. Her fellow Florida resident and convicted felon famously tweeted


So who is on the other side? Who endorses the notion that climate change is anthropogenic and can be ameliorated?

The 50,000+ members of the American Physical Society STRONGLY support greenhouse gas reduction.
https://www.aps.org/policy/statements/15_3.cfm

The 173,000+ members of the American Chemical Society STRONGLY support greenhouse gas reduction.
https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/policy/publicpolicies/sustainability/globalclimatechange/climate-change.pdf

The 120,000+ members of American Association for the Advancement of Science STRONGLY support greenhouse gas reduction.
https://www.aaas.org/resources/aaas-reaffirms-statement-climate-change

Those three scientific societies are NOT alone. They are joined by the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the The Geological Society of America, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences among others. https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Jun 15, 2024 · Edited: 6 mths ago
SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F
@ElwoodBlues thanks for your bizarre claim that i denied that C02 increases temperatures. I never said that. Of course it does. Temperatures are also affected by . . .

1. Atmospheric water vapor
2. Solar cycles (sunspots)
3. Variations in solar output
4. Dust in the atmosphere

None of your bizarrely long reply explains why we have ice ages, and why they always recede. It's not due to tailpipe emissions over the past 500 million years.
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Jun 17, 2024
ElwoodBlues · M
@SusanInFlorida As I've already said under this question, The global warming / climate change we're seeing in the last 100 or so years is MUCH different from anything measured in the glacial & sea sediment records covering the last 800,000 years. CO2 is rising 100x faster, and temps 10x faster.

These 10x and 100x rates ARE due to CO2 emissions.
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Jun 17, 2024
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windinhishair · 61-69, M
Once again, you fail to understand what you are reading. The event that occurred in Florida was according to the link, a one-in-500 to one -in-1000 year event. That is, as the article indicates, based on a statistical evaluation of rainfall frequency data. Nothing you've presented indicates that claim is wrong, or as you say, BS. The 1947 event is interesting, but has little to do with what happened this week.

When meteorologists say an event is a one-in-1000 year event, what that really means is that it has a 0.1% chance of occurring during a given year. But when you have one, the next year you also have a 0.1% chance of having one. You could have two such events in consecutive years, or go hundreds of years without one. It doesn't mean that if you have one such event, you aren't going to have another one for a long time. So the 1947 rainfall may have been an even greater anomaly, but it doesn't mean that this week's occurrence isn't a one-in-1000 year event.

Having said that, extreme rainfall events are happening more frequently than the old probability tables indicate, due to global climate change. Warm air can hold more water vapor than cold air, so more intense rainfall is an expected consequence of a warming climate. And that is just what we are experiencing here in the US. The rainfall intensity data needs to be frequently updated and used in drainage planning so future rainfall events don't have catastrophic impacts.
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Jun 14, 2024
SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F
@windinhishair you KNOW that the newspaper intended readers to think of this as "1000 years". Not a standard deviation equation which only statistics majors in grad school ever look at.

the reporter certainly didn't.
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Jun 14, 2024
windinhishair · 61-69, M
@SusanInFlorida It is a common misconception. I've done work in this field, and have had people tell me that they had a 100-year flood this year, so they are safe for another 100 years. But it doesn't work that way. The event appeared to be correctly stated, but it is a statistical event that most people don't understand. Still, it puts these events in context. Everyone can understand a 1000-year event is more rare than a 100-year event.
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Jun 14, 2024
ElwoodBlues · M
@SusanInFlorida Speaking of misleading, the "12-15 inches" was over the "weekend" of Oct 11-12; may even have been a three-day rainfall, given that the hurricane impact extended from Oct 10-13.

You are attempting to compare a one-day rainfall with a three-day hurricane rainfall; apples to oranges.

UPDATE
It might be worthwhile to follow the scitechdaily article's link to its source data
https://www.wfla.com/weather/sarasota-rainfall-is-nearly-a-1-in-1000-year-event/

As seen from the NOAA graphic below, the purple bullseye shows the area where the 3-hour rain totals that fell from roughly 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. reached a recurrence interval, or return period, that peaks at the top of the scale: 1-in-200 years. But certain localized areas within the bullseye met the criteria for a 1000 year event.

It was also the all-time record for the most rain in one hour at the Sarasota-Bradenton Airport with 3.93″ falling, as seen below.

It should be noted that these kind of 1-in-100+ year events happen almost every year somewhere in Florida. But the chance that it happens in any one location, in any given year is very small – like the 3 hour rainfall in Sarasota which – in any year – should only have a 1-in-1000 chance of happening.
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Jun 15, 2024 · Edited: 6 mths ago
ElwoodBlues · M
@SusanInFlorida says
We still have some in Canada, Alaska, Greenland, etc. And we still have ice caps at both the north and south poles. Which doesn't happen unless we're still IN an ice age. Which we are. Slow melt.
Susan seems to think ALL the ice melts between ice ages. She couldn't be more wrong!!!

Parts of the Antarctic Continent have had continuous glacier cover for perhaps as long as 20 million years.
... the higher mountains of Alaska have hosted glaciers for as much as the past 4 million years...
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/are-todays-glaciers-leftovers-pleistocene-ice-age

So yeah, Susan, given your dearth of science education, maybe you should check these claims before posting??

Lemme now draw your attention to the "Slow melt" finale of her claim. NO, SUSAN.
NO, IT'S NOT SLOW !!!

The global warming / climate change we're seeing in the last 100 or so years is MUCH different from anything measured in the glacial & sea sediment records covering the last 800,000 years. CO2 is rising 100x faster, and temps 10x faster.

"How is Today’s Warming Different from the Past?" https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GlobalWarming/page3.php "As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming."

How is today's CO2 increase different? https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide "The annual rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred at the end of the last ice age 11,000-17,000 years ago."

Fact is, anthropogenic global warming is accepted by a YUGE segment of the scientific community. Would you accept the consensus opinion of the American Physical Society AND the American Chemical Society? How about the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and at least 15 other national organizations of publishing scientists? See https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

British Antarctic Survey
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Jun 17, 2024
SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F
@ElwoodBlues please explain how dinosaur fossils spanning 200 million years are found on all parts of the globe, including the north pole
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Jun 17, 2024
ElwoodBlues · M
@SusanInFlorida Pangaea plus continental drift.

BTW, the North Pole floats on seawater. I don't think you'll find any dinosaur fossils there!!
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Jun 17, 2024 · Edited: 6 mths ago
SW-User
So you’re implying that climate change is a fiction by misreading a fairly straightforward piece of data.

That says a lot. Doesn’t change the facts though.
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Jun 14, 2024 · Edited: 6 mths ago
RedBaron · M
@SusanInFlorida
you clearly didn’t read ONE WORD of the post.

Considering that you clearly didn’t write ONE WORD of the post, - copy-and-paste doesn’t count - you’re in no position to judge.

Pot, meet Kettle.
+ 4 · Reply · Translate · Jun 14, 2024 · Edited: 6 mths ago
ElwoodBlues · M
@SusanInFlorida I read every word. You mentioned ice age cycles and never mentioned anthropogenic climate change (while erroneously claiming rainfall stats were wrong). Thus, you strongly suggested that anthropogenic climate change can be ignored.

You called out the papers with
you KNOW that the newspaper intended readers to think of this as "1000 years"
Similarly we KNOW that you intended readers to think of climate change as being primarily due to "natural" cycles as opposed to human generated CO2 levels.
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Jun 15, 2024
RedBaron · M
@ElwoodBlues I’m no longer surprised by anything Susan posts.

By copying and pasting these diatribes, she exhibits the typical traits of a Trump person that mirror his persona: Angry about everything under the sun in the absence of any facts or real in-depth knowledge.

To put it more succinctly, bash everything but know nothing.

It’s quite remarkable how transparently simple these people are.
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Jun 15, 2024
ElwoodBlues · M
@SusanInFlorida says
Apparently October 12th, 1947. Yeps - 2 lifetimes ago. Florida got 15 inches.

Actually, you are mis-reporting. Actually, that was not a one-day rainfall.

The 1947 Florida-Georgia hurricane impacted Florida from Oct 10 thru 13. NOT a one-day event.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_Florida%E2%80%93Georgia_hurricane

Yeah, a little googling confirms the weekend of Oct 11-12 got 12-15 inches. And since weekends often begin after work Friday, that rainfall may have spread over three days.
https://journals.flvc.org/browardlegacy/article/download/77084/74605/78719


Oh, and one more thing; I appreciate your efforts to cite sources, but citing full URLs beginning with "https://" eliminates all the ambiguity, doncha know.
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Jun 15, 2024 · Edited: 6 mths ago
SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F
@ElwoodBlues The 15 inch total was JUST for october 12th. there was also rain the day before and afterwards. your poor reading skills and refusal to examine links is again on display for everyone to read.

aren't you ever embarrassed by all this?
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Jun 17, 2024
ElwoodBlues · M
@SusanInFlorida WRONG!!! Your reference is wikipedia. Here's the only mention of 15 inches in that article (found by using the browser to search for the word 'inch'):

The cyclone then turned sharply to the northeast, accelerated, and strengthened to a hurricane, within 30 hours crossing the southern Florida peninsula. Across South Florida, the storm produced widespread rainfall of up to 15 inches (380 mm) and severe flooding, among the worst ever recorded in the area, that led to efforts by the United States Congress to improve drainage in the region.

Those 30 hours certainly spread over two days. And those 30 hours refer to the EYE of the storm transiting Florida. Rain bands can extend hundreds of miles (and many hours) beyond the eye.

Aren't you ever embarrassed by your errors??
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Jun 17, 2024 · Edited: 6 mths ago
SW-User
This is copy and pasted in its entirety from Reddit. Unless, of course, you are this particular Reddit user.
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Jun 15, 2024
windinhishair · 61-69, M
@SW-User I believe she is.
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Jun 15, 2024
daisymay · 51-55, T
There is an easy solution for this. Prince Quilted Charmin, Ruler of All Floridania should decree that there be no mention of floods in the official documents that lay down the rules and regulations governing his vassals and the properties he has so graciously allowed them to mange for him.

Problem solved!
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Jun 14, 2024
BizSuitStacy · M
LOL @ worst rain in 1000 years. They don't miss an opportunity to shovel climate change bs when there's an unusual weather event.
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Jun 14, 2024
RedBaron · M
What’s your point?
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Jun 14, 2024
SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F
@RedBaron i loved your top post yesterday about people bad at parking. keep up the good work. we need to pay more attention to vital problems like this.
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Jun 14, 2024
RedBaron · M
@SusanInFlorida Translation: There is no real point, but I’m a Trump fan girl. As such, it’s my duty to maintain constant anger at the world and the amorphous left for all the horrible things it’s done to my poor, perpetually victimized leader who never loses or does anything wrong.

Everything and everyone is against him, and I am angry about it.
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Jun 17, 2024
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hippyjoe1955 · 61-69, M
[media=https://youtu.be/QCcWzLAcv4o]
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Jun 14, 2024
 
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