Please allow me to interject my feelings about Mother Nature

Wind chill predicted to be between ten and twenty degrees here Tuesday morning. Ugh.

 

Got about two inches of rain and some solid wind all day, but nothing was damaging. Mild flooding over some roadways, but I didn't have any reason to get out, so no big deal.
It's supposed to subside by lunch today and be cold Tuesday. By mid week and into the weekend, it's supposed to be typical seasonal weather. That will be nice for the Christmas eve oyster roast.

 

A sign there has been too much rain: N.C. 12 is closed and it didn't even take a tropical storm or hurricane.

MSN

(Also: Another reason why I don't want coastal property, especially on the Outer Banks.)

 

Does the volcano in Iceland count as Mother Nature acting up?

 

The CFS model finally shows we're getting a winter in January. Shows a dip into the low 20s around Jan. 9 that'll be short-lived, and then a huge pocket of Arctic air diving ominously south on Jan. 19 — which is as far out as that model goes right now.

 

I'm all for snowy Januarys and snow days. By mid February, I'm over it. I'm ready for 60+ on Presidents Day weekend.

 

It can snow anytime from Halloween to Opening Day in Eastern Mass., but usually our snowiest month is February. We lose the protection of very cold but super dry arctic air masses for just plain cold air masses full of moisture to fuel nor'easters. Extreme example, 2015, when it had over 100 inches of snow in that month.

 

I had no idea about this problem. It's mind blowing how at risk some of DC's museums and cultural/governmental icons are to flooding, subsidence, and sink holes. I knew about water coming up through manholes during very high tides in Miami, but not during heavy rainstorms in Washington, DC. This is a excellent article and a great use of interactive computer graphics within the article to illustrate the problem as well.

Add that as usual, there are many competing bureaucracies pointing fingers at each other as responsible, and even if the will to do something is there the chains of command (and funding) are so tangled that little is getting done, patchwork fashion.

Homes, businesses, the cherry trees lining the tidal basin, and the entire Federal triangle are in danger because much of D.C. was built on top of marshes and swamp land that was filled. The underground streams were converted to huge drainage tunnels no longer able to keep up with a rising water table and the intense rain storms that are a part of the effect of global warming.

Look at the buildings in the Federal Triangle, among the most endangered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Triangle#/media/File:FederalTriangle_WashingtonDC_2009.jpg

"It is the quintessential story of how Washington works that none of these proposals has reached senior decision-makers. That’s because more than a dozen federal agencies own land and buildings there, each with its own congressional appropriation committee to please.

“There is nobody with the power and authority to rise above the divisions among these entities, so everyone just throws up their hands,” said Judy Feldman, a medieval art historian who chairs the National Mall Coalition and is part of a multiagency flood mitigation group called the Silver Jackets that has studied and debated ways to keep the Federal Triangle safe. “This is the most urgent, existential threat to our museums, our government treasures and the symbolic place that represents who we are.”

Here's the Lincoln Memorial in 1917, before the construction of the Reflecting Pool and the Tidal Basin. Think of subsidence under the Washington Monument causing it to fall.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/clim...flood-risks/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f001

 

DC was never really intended to be fully occupied 12 months out of the year, especially by the elected politicians. It's a swamp. A neighborhood is literally named Foggy Bottom.