Death Valley Closed

[Drew Wiley]

As many of you might have noticed on even national news, nearly all of highway-accessible Death Valley NP is closed due to severe flash flooding last week. Given the logistical complications in that kind of heat, many of the road washouts might take a long time to repair. And gosh knows how they are dealing with all the cars buried in mud, the trapped tourists there in summer of all things, and loss of infrastructure at Furnace Creek. It's not a place you want to isolated at if a power line disruption knocks out the air conditioning!

Of course, all kinds of roads were damaged well beyond Death Valley itself, and no telling how many backroads washed out, both in CA and southern NV. The NPS posted the standard appropriate advice : DO NOT trust your navigation device with respect to possible alternate routes.

[domaz]

The NPS posted the standard appropriate advice : DO NOT trust your navigation device with respect to possible alternate routes.

Good advice. I can't even rely on Google Maps to tell me a road in the city is closed for construction most of the time, and let's not bring up the times it tried to tell me to take forest service roads as a "shortcut" halfway across the Olympic Peninsula. Many of those remote roads only exist in theory.

I hope everyone makes it out of the flooded area safely, between this and the Yellowstone flooding, it's been a difficult summer season for the NPS.

[xkaes]

As you mentioned, the problem is not just in Death Valley. It's in CA & NV, as well. But don't forget Arizona -- OMG!!! And Utah & Wyoming. There was also lots of flash flooding here in Colorado yesterday -- just not enough to make the National NEWS. Lots of roads closed from mud flows carrying tons of debris down from the burn scars from last year's forest fires.

And there is a strong tropical depression that is flooding south west Texas right now that is about to add to the monsoon flow flooding the West.

Death Valley "ain't seen nothin' yet".

[h2oman]

As you mentioned, the problem is not just in Death Valley. It's in CA & NV, as well. But don't forget Arizona -- OMG!!! And Utah & Wyoming. There was also lots of flash flooding here in Colorado yesterday -- just not enough to make the National NEWS. Lots of roads closed from mud flows carrying tons of debris down from the burn scars from last year's forest fires.

And there is a strong tropical depression that is flooding south west Texas right now that is about to add to the monsoon flow flooding the West.

Death Valley "ain't seen nothin' yet".

I guess I should appreciate our dreary, cloudless and somewhat hot (but thankfully fairly smoke-free!) days...

[Bernice Loui]

Not just flooding, the heat is going to arrive:
https://firststreet.org/press/press-...-model-launch/

Coupled with "mega flooding"
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq0995


Predictions were discussed in this 1989 issue of Scientific America..





Going back further to 1912..




We are only at the beginning of what begun a long time ago.

Bernice

[Tin Can]

I wonder how far is the influence

I listened today about a long ago North American melt that drained into the North Atlantic stopping 'normal' ocean circulation

and changing weather all over the world

I forget the dates, perhaps 50K years ago

[jnantz]

I wonder how far is the influence

I listened today about a long ago North American melt that drained into the North Atlantic stopping 'normal' ocean circulation

and changing weather all over the world

I forget the dates, perhaps 50K years ago

Northwest passage is open for shipping soon !
where's captain cooke when you needed him ?

[Old_Dick]

https://www.science.org/content/arti...d-happen-again

[Sal Santamaura]

......

One of several publications that ran the story then:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/19...lobal-warming/

[xkaes]

More recently, it's happened several times before, when warming periods have melted enough ice "up north" that resulted in a cut-off of the Gulf Stream -- which is basically what keeps Europe from freezing.

"The circulation could have been interrupted by the introduction of a large amount of fresh water into the North Atlantic and might have been caused by a period of warming before the Little Ice Age that is known as the Medieval Warm Period. There is some concern that a shutdown of thermohaline circulation could happen again as a result of the present warming period."