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If fire seems a much better image for global warming than flooding it’s only because we lack imagination. Heating oceans and land masses exhale more moisture into the air. What goes up will come down — and not where it did in years before. The air, carrying a heavier load will deposit it where it must, and in downpours unseen in human history.
So this year in the United States alone we have seen unprecedented flooding in Rhode Island and other New England states, in Tennessee and now in Iowa:
Iowa Dam Ruptures Under Torrential Rain
Unrelenting rainfall — 15 inches in the past 48 hours, according to Jeremy Sands of the Delhi Fire Department — caused the early afternoon breaching of the 83-year-old dam. “The dam wasn’t unsafe,” Firefighter Sands said. “It’s just one of those acts of God.”
And act of God, indeed, through his newest device, the warming of the earth….
Outside the U.S. the floods in China, Pakistan, Bangladesh are all unprecedented in lands where horrific flooding is almost a common place. Mudslides, buildings crumpled, households disappear.
Floods sweeping Asia have killed more than 900 people, officials said Saturday, washing away thousands of homes and destroying infrastructure in some of the worst scenes in living memory.
Heavy monsoon rains exacted the heaviest toll in northwest Pakistan, with 800 confirmed dead and the regional capital Peshawar cut off, while the deluge killed another 65 people in mountainous areas across the border in Afghanistan.
Floods devastating northeast China have killed at least 37 people and destroyed 25,000 homes, with the authorities racing to intercept vessels that broke their moorings and retrieve barrels full of explosive chemicals headed for a dam.
The worst floods in living memory destroyed homes and swathes of farmland in northwest Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir, with the main highway to China reportedly cut and the military deployed to help isolated communities.
WeatherUnderground “Over the 3-day period July 28 – 30, torrential rains in excess of 8 inches (203 mm) fell in many regions of northwest Pakistan, resulting in that nation’s worst floods since at least 1929”
For the articles on flooding worldwide posted on this blog go here.
Updates: Pakistan.
The death toll from flooding in north-west Pakistan rose to 1,100 today as rescue workers struggled to save more than 27,000 people still trapped by the water.