Irene has come and gone from Vermont, but we are going to be dealing with her effects for a long time. Homes and businesses are destroyed, roads and bridges washed out, and people displaced and understandably concerned.
Irene was an 'almost-worst-case-scenario' for Vermont, and hopefully we won't see anything like it again in our lifetimes. However, floods are a part of Vermont life and we will certainly face other damaging floods in the years to come. While we can't completely stop them, there are things we can do to decrease their intensity and increase our preparedness when they do occur.
In some ways, reducing flooding in Vermont is harder than in many areas. Unlike Pittsburgh, with highly urbanized, modified watersheds, or California, with its channelized streams and massive habitat loss, Vermont is a mainly rural state with vast, healthy forests and small towns. Still, there is much we can do to reduce risk and impact of floods.
This post includes some ideas I have about how to reduce flooding risk, prepare for floods, and better cope when they do occur. If you think these ideas make sense, please share this with others. If you think they don't make sense, leave a comment and tell me why. The most important thing right now, aside from cleanup and repairs, is looking ahead together as a state to make sure nothing like this happens again.
Below are my ideas, in somewhat random order:
Stories about the ways water moves through natural and human-constructed landscapes... what we can learn from it and how we can use old and new ideas to understand, appreciate, and sustainably use this resource.
Showing posts with label climate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Has the polar jet stream lost track of the North Pole?
The polar jet stream has been acting a bit odd lately.
Usually it rotates around the north pole (thus its name). Ripples and waves bring storms to the 'temperate' regions of the Northern Hemisphere; areas north of the jet stream are cold while areas south of the jet stream tend to be warm. Sometimes it splits into two separate streams, or loops of it pinch off, and create 'cutoff lows' (a type of storm that is very hard to predict). Still, it pretty much always makes its looping way with the North Pole as its center.
The above picture, from Wikipedia, shows the normal jet stream. Right now though, the jet stream is doing something different.
Usually it rotates around the north pole (thus its name). Ripples and waves bring storms to the 'temperate' regions of the Northern Hemisphere; areas north of the jet stream are cold while areas south of the jet stream tend to be warm. Sometimes it splits into two separate streams, or loops of it pinch off, and create 'cutoff lows' (a type of storm that is very hard to predict). Still, it pretty much always makes its looping way with the North Pole as its center.
The above picture, from Wikipedia, shows the normal jet stream. Right now though, the jet stream is doing something different.
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