More microbursts are coming

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-29/forget-tornadoes-rain-bombs-are-coming-for-your-town

by shawndumas • 10 years ago

149 144 10 years ago

fncndhdhc2• 10 years ago

Bloomberg is trying to invent new, scarier sounding terminology, and honestly it's quite silly. What they're referring to are microbursts.

stormbrew• 10 years ago

Googling it I see a bunch of references going back at least a year, so I don't think bloomberg is to blame for this one.

jrockway2• 10 years ago

New Yorkers are wimps when it comes to anything weather. There's a small thunderstorm? We call it a "doozie". Some snow in the forecast? We shut down the entire regional transportation system.

I'm originally from Chicago so I find it all very amusing. I don't recall the L ever shutting down, nor do I remember any news articles about thunderstorms unless there were tornados inside the city limits.

zzalpha2• 10 years ago

No, it's more that regional climate varies and different areas have invested in and prepared for different types of weather events.

For example, I live in an area that traditionally receives moderate rain and snow during the winter. This past winter, though, we had very little snow while in the past week a major freeway has flooded twice due to heavy rains.

Of course, this is one year and doesn't, on its own, make a trend, but if this continues we'll need to alter how we behave, and possibly how out infrastructure is designed, in order to adjust.

And unfortunately when the climate is changing rapidly, it's suddenly very expensive to alter your coping strategies to adjust to the new normal.

ams61104• 10 years ago

I've noticed this trend to be more and more alarmist about what used to be normal weather.

For example, I've lived in the midwest USA most of my life. Every July and August is hot and humid, with many days in the 90-degree (F) range. This used to just be normal summer weather and unremarkable. Now, anything over 85 degrees is a "heat advisory" and over 90 people are advised to stay indoors and avoid activity. They also publish absurd "feels like" temperature e.g. "today's high 91, feels like 117." I'm sorry, in no real world does 91 "feel like" 117.

kevin_thibedeau• 10 years ago

My girlfriend poked fun at the weathermen going apeshit over 30mph winds earlier in the week. Then she got stuck at Newark on Monday waiting for the storm to pass. Karma.

themartorana5• 10 years ago

To be fair, the picture linked in the article does look a lot like a bomb going off.

http://twitter.com/chopperguyhd/status/755242101835653120/ph...

mdadm• 10 years ago

Woah. That's almost terrifying to see.

jcoffland5• 10 years ago

I recently saw a sunset that looked a lot like a bomb going off due to refraction over the ocean. That didn't make the sunset dangerous.

ourmandave2• 10 years ago

If they report microbursts as rain bombs, will they also collectively sit around and wait to see what terrorist group claims responsibility?

WillPostForFood• 10 years ago

They'll say the terrorists are republicans who deny global warming.

btown• 10 years ago

Well, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis did flood the Nile with tears...

mrestko• 10 years ago

Didn't you hear? "Climate change is weaponizing the atmosphere."

dang3• 10 years ago

Ok, we rewrote the title to be less baity, in accordance with the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

But please don't create many obscure throwaway accounts on HN. This forum is a community. Anonymity is fine, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be an entirely different forum. (This is going in the site guidelines soon.)

fncndhdhc2• 10 years ago

I prefer to be judged on the content of my comments rather than the number of internet points displayed by my name. It allows for much more honesty and sincerity in discussions, and I think those are two qualities that HN could use more of.

Also I don't enjoy being profiled and I'll continue to play this game of whack-a-mole regardless of a change in the rules.

keenerd• 10 years ago

A "showkarma" boolean in the user profile would be nice.

pharrington2• 10 years ago

Bloomberg isn't inventing the term rainbomb. It is evocative, yes. I feel that sort of colorful language is appropriate for describing an extreme weather event that dumps 8+ inches of rain in less than a day. Rainbomb or microburst, they are apparently quite effective at destroying vital infrastructure. Either way, you can't in good faith condemn the exploitation of color language to describe a destructive and lethal event by pointing out that that destructive and lethal event has a benign name.

jessaustin2• 10 years ago

As a farmer/rancher, I'm happy not to live in the "1930s" region of that graph. I've never understood why people in North America complain about rain. The land we have that is vulnerable to flooding is tiny in comparison to that which is vulnerable to desertification.

hogu• 10 years ago

Just curious, are you a father/rancher and a software dev? How did you come across hn?

quirkot• 10 years ago

Haven't you heard about the dust-up about DRM on tractors? Tech is everywhere, even the unglamorous places

eksemplar• 10 years ago

You should see the tech on a modern farm. Self driving farm equipment, drones that scout for deer in the fields and scare them off so they don't get reaped, satellite analysis of fields to analyze the best crop locations and disease/pests. Solar and wind electricity, water filtration and geo cooling/warming.

Honestly a not-poor farm makes most city neighborhoods look like the third world in terms of tech.

nabla9• 10 years ago

That's heavy precipitation chart, not overall precipitation. Heavy precipitation can flatten your crop.

Change in precipitation is not same all in US. Some areas become very dry, some others get more than enough.

http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/83000/8362...

jessaustin2• 10 years ago

The time period isn't indicated on that map, but since I'd like to see the dairy industry leave Arizona and move back to the Midwest where it naturally belongs, I frankly don't see a problem there. The sooner they have to stop irrigating their alfalfa, the better.

No American farmer would need a chart to be thankful not to face 1930s' conditions.

ianai3• 10 years ago

Pretty sure Las Vegas would crumble if it ever got a macro burst. Many streets flood with seemingly any rainfall here. When they do flood, large rocks and debris wash onto the streets.

djKianoosh• 10 years ago

Los Cabos in mexico rarely gets rain and they do get floods whenever they get more than a couple inches of rain. at least thats what the locals told me last time I visited

kijin• 10 years ago

American cities need to learn a thing or two from Tokyo. 10 inches of rain in one day is a common occurrence in Japan during the summer, so they are prepared to handle it.

zzalpha2• 10 years ago

You've just described a necessary consequence of uncontrolled climate change: having to change the way we live to cope with the effects.

And it's incredibly expensive.

And also a luxury of the relative rich west.

maxerickson3• 10 years ago

Yeah, that's sort of the point. This kind of weather hasn't been happening, so infrastructure hasn't been built to handle it.

For infrastructure that will last 50 years, it really doesn't make a lot of sense to build it to withstand events that happen roughly every 500 years. Of course things like nuclear plants and dams have to be built to withstand the most severe events, but not every culvert on a country road.

ourmandave2• 10 years ago

And why Atlanta shuts down when there's an 1/4" of snow.

tedunangst2• 10 years ago

The counter argument is that it's cheaper to do things once than twice. Laying a one foot drainage pipe, then digging it up and replacing with three foot pipe, is way more expensive than just laying three foot pipe to start. Too many public works projects seem to be built right at the edge of confidence.

Spooky23• 10 years ago

Most northeast cities can handle it, although combined sewer systems mean that heavy rain leads to heavy pollution from raw sewage.

jpalomaki• 10 years ago

According to this Tokyo is now prepared to handled 50mm/hour rainfall. There are plans to increase this to 75mm/hour level, but that will take around 20 years. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/09/21/national/tokyo-h...

Handling for example 10 inches (25cm) of rain in half day is quite a challenge on buildup area. Think about a quite small plot of 100m x 100m. From that you get already 1001000.25 = 2500m3 of water and in cities you have square kilometers of paved area where the water needs to be taken somewhere.

In somebody is interested in how they are handling this in Tokyo, here's some information: https://japangasm.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/the-underground-w... and http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/31/world/asia/japan-flood-tun...

jcoffland5• 10 years ago

roughly one in ten record-breaking events would not have occurred without climate change

So 90% of these record breaking events are normal. Then why all the hyperbole? Oh right, saying "rain bomb" instead of "microburst" gets more clicks.

themartorana5• 10 years ago

Because we've moved the climate in one direction or another by 10% already, and we've never polluted so heavily before. That's pretty significant.

That stat is also normalized over the past 30 years. Change is accelerating, so it would be more than 10% over the past 10 years.

jcoffland5• 10 years ago

This does not equate to a 10% change in climate, whatever that even means.

Change is accelerating...

What change specifically is accelerating? Your base assumption that things are unquestionably getting worse is unscientific.

taliesinb5• 10 years ago

Reminds me of this essay I read yesterday, which painted a pretty startling picture of how insane things could get:

http://www.flassbeck-economics.com/how-climate-change-is-rap...

Here's a snippet showing how rapidly predictions are escalating:

* Late 2007: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announces that the planet will see a one degree Celsius temperature increase due to climate change by 2100.

* Late 2008: The Hadley Centre for Meteorological Research predicts a 2C increase by 2100.

* Mid-2009: The U.N. Environment Programme predicts a 3.5C increase by 2100. Such an increase would remove habitat for human beings on this planet, as nearly all the plankton in the oceans would be destroyed, and associated temperature swings would kill off many land plants. Humans have never lived on a planet at 3.5C above baseline.

* October 2009: The Hadley Centre for Meteorological Research releases an updated prediction, suggesting a 4C temperature increase by 2060.

* November 2009: The Global Carbon Project, which monitors the global carbon cycle, and the Copenhagen Diagnosis, a climate science report, predict 6C and 7C temperature increases, respectively, by 2100.

* December 2010: The U.N. Environment Programme predicts up to a 5C increase by 2050.

* 2012: The conservative International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook report for that year states that we are on track to reach a 2C increase by 2017.

* November 2013: The International Energy Agency predicts a 3.5C increase by 2035.

cryoshon4• 10 years ago

humanity in general is in deep shit

and yet, we waste (and make no mistake, it is a complete waste) our best minds and the bulk of our resources on making people click ads or other similar excursions in nihilism

what is needed is a multinational manhattan project for climate change... instead, we move the deck chairs around on the titanic. it's clear we can expect no leadership from governments or corporations on this issue.

meddlepal• 10 years ago

The problem is that it's very hard to get people to give a shit about macro problems like climate change. People generally own care about a narrow set of issues between the age of 20 and the 55/60 years most of us survive after that.

Another problem is that democracies are poorly setup for solving this problem. Democracy responds mostly to the needs of now without concern for the future (different politicians problem, different generation etc, kick the football down the field because someone else can deal with it once I've got mine.)

So yea, we're fucked. This along with the coming robot/AI revolution we are likely to see in the middle or later part of the century creates a pretty bleak future for human beings.

sp527• 10 years ago

I'm a computer scientist and software engineer with experience at some of the largest companies whose businesses are about making people click on ads. I now work as an independent contractor and part time on my own startups. Give me a living wage and tell me how I can help and I'm in. (srs)

I think there are a lot of people who might feel the same way.

analog31• 10 years ago

Let's re-think whether those people are really our best minds.

int_19h4• 10 years ago

Manhattan Project, and similar massive infrastructure/engineering/scientific developments, are possible because there is a single government that can drive them.

To do something like that on a multinational scale, you'll need One World Government. Otherwise you'll just have a bunch of nations bickering over who is paying for what, and who is gaining what in return, without a final arbiter to break up ties and deadlocks and say "okay, you all had a say, now we're doing it this way".

AWildDHHAppears4• 10 years ago

America can reduce its carbon footprint by 5%, save 300,000 lives/year, and save about $400 Billion dollars a year without spending a nickel.

If the 66% of the American population that's obese or overweight would just stop overeating, all of the above could happen overnight.

honkhonkpants2• 10 years ago

Such a great idea. There was also a recent proposal to just breed humans to be smaller: http://www.smatthewliao.com/2012/02/09/human-engineering-and...

d0mine2• 10 years ago

It is a red herring.

It reminds me how soda companies shift blame on their customers: "exercise more, don't blame our sugar water". Actually, what and how much you eat/drink is much more important than the exercise, to fight obesity.

Another (BS) example: "shower less to save water" -- compare the agricultural water consumption (giant) vs. the household needs (negligible by comparison).

If a corporation destroys the planet; its products should include the price today (e.g., via a tax): the problem fixes itself.

trentmb• 10 years ago

I propose we eat 300k fat people each year.

mark_l_watson2• 10 years ago

Agree! Also raising beef uses a huge amount of water and energy compared to supporting a vegetarian diet. Also, cow and pig farts might have an adverse affect.

tzs• 10 years ago

When you lose weight, guess where the "lost" weight goes? Most people guess incorrectly that you lose it via urination, defecation, or sweat.

Where it actually goes is into exhaled CO2.

So your proposal is that to fight global warming, fat Americans should massively release CO2 into the atmosphere? :-)

liviu-• 10 years ago

So the International Energy Agency predicts that by 2035 humans may disappear? What about more recent predictions?

taliesinb5• 10 years ago

The IEA may not sure the view of the author that "such an increase would remove habitat for human beings on this planet".

The current https://www.iea.org/publications/scenariosandprojections/ claims that "business as usual" would yield almost 4C by 2100 and 5.5C long term. Not sure how that squares with claim by author or which scenario they were referring to.

The big question I have with many of the scenarios (I think IPCC ones fall into this camp) is how much worse they will get when methane clathrates release is included. I'm not too familiar with the literature, maybe others know how well clathrate release is understood and what contribution it makes under various scenarios.

learc83• 10 years ago

Picking and choosing predictions in this manner to make it look like they have all been steadily increasing is misleading.

Some of the initial predictions in the late 80s were for up to 6c by 2100.

The last IPCC report I saw predicted an increase of between 0.3C and 0.7C by 2035 with around 0.4C being the most likely. There is little support for numbers anywhere near as high as 3.5C by 2035.

taliesinb5• 10 years ago

Picking and choosing predictions in this manner to make it look like they have all been steadily increasing is misleading.

Those predictions are all sourced in the original article. As you say, though, pointing out a trend in the predictions from a set of scenarios doesn't on its own tell you anything.

The last IPCC report I read predicted an increase of between 0.3C and 0.7C by 2035 with around 0.4C being the most likely. Nowhere near the the 3.5C by 2035. There is very little consensus for numbers that high.

Was that the fifth assessment report?

And where does the consensus 'currently' cluster for 2035? What climate models would be included? Under what emissions scenarios? I'm not too familiar with the state of the current literature.

mirimir4• 10 years ago

I'm not optimistic. As climate becomes less favorable, the rich will focus capital, energy and resources on mitigation. For themselves, I mean. The poor will just starve and die.

ams61104• 10 years ago

Which is no different than how things have worked at any point in the past. And yet civilization advances.

cmarschner3• 10 years ago

No, they will move towards the rich (and cooler) countries. They already do. what we are seeing on the coastd of Europe is only the humble beginning. Wait until the Arab countries become uninhabitable, then 500 million prople will have to look for a new place.

semi-extrinsic3• 10 years ago

How will the climate become less favorable for the rich? The areas most affected are disproportionally third world countries. In the west, food prices might rise some, but the rich won't care. Sea levels will rise, but it will be happening slowly (up to 1000 years for Greenland to melt completely), and governments will be mitigating that, so the rich won't be paying much there either. If you live in London, Paris, Rome, even on Manhattan, the 7 meter sea level rise won't mean anything. It won't do anything. Long Island and Jersey will need significantly mitigation though, as will areas of Palo Alto and Menlo Park, like the Googleplex, but we have hundreds of years to build those dikes, and we will easily be able to predict when and where they are needed.

my_first_acct• 10 years ago

There's something odd about the list of escalating predictions, this one in particular:

"November 2013: The International Energy Agency predicts a 3.5C increase by 2035."

If you follow the link, it points to a Christian Science Monitor article from 2010 (not 2013), which confirms that the IEA did make such a prediction, but in 2010.

Also, this line: "2012: The conservative International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook report for that year states that we are on track to reach a 2C increase by 2017".

Are we still on track?

taliesinb5• 10 years ago

Yup, that is odd. IEA appears to be off the rails here. Making the adjective "conservative" a strange choice.

ryanmarsh• 10 years ago

Flooding in Houston over the past 40 years has had more to do with development and flood control projects than changes in rainfall.

I really hate when people try to use Houston as an example of the effects of climate change, the behavior of economic clusters, or the effects of zoning. Most of what I've read shows people really have no clue about how those things actually work here.

CydeWeys2• 10 years ago

The article questions "when the next one is coming", but it already came, last night in Ellicott City, MD. The whole downtown was wiped out (in an economic sense) by a flash flood caused by six inches of rain falling in three hours.

tigeba• 10 years ago

I experienced what was eventually classified as a microburst and the effects on the ground were largely indistinguishable from a tornado. I'm not sure the article really made this clear, or if there are multiple, potentially different definitions for the term. This is also an area that frequently experiences tornado activity so we have ample experience with those events for comparison. We had winds that were likely in excess of 125mph and there were around 100+ houses damaged, 6-8 were completely destroyed and 30+ sustained severe damage. Flooding was not an issue but we have unique geography that makes that very unlikely.

zackya89• 10 years ago

When last year was the hottest year on record, and this year is on track to be the hottest year on record, globally that is a cause for concern.

cmarschner3• 10 years ago

I highly recommend the book "Collapse" by Jared Diamond on the matter. It is a highly detailed account of what happened in the past when societies collapsed. Most if the time they consumed more resources than what their environment would provide. Many of them then failed, wars and genocides occured that reduced the population to below sustainable levels, or people sinply starved. Others managed to turn around and started to manage resources properly. There's a talk by the author on Youtube that summarizes the book. https://youtu.be/wpkS1xym0HA

Animats2• 10 years ago

Here's what that looks like on the ground. Ellicott City, MD had a flash flood last night. The Patapsco River rose 14 feet in an hour and a half. The area has flooded before, but during hurricanes, for which there's more advance warning.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/severe-flash-flood-stri...

mrfusion• 10 years ago

Was that considered a microburst?

Animats2• 10 years ago

Unclear. One site says yes.[1] This just happened last night, so accurate analysis may be a few days away.

[1] http://metroforensics.blogspot.com/2016/07/microbursts-cause...

mark_l_watson2• 10 years ago

I live in the mountains in Central Arizona. A few summers ago we had a microburst in our neighborhood. For 20 minutes it was like a wall of water coming down. The house down hill from us got 3 feet of mud in the living room, major property damage. It took us about 5 hours to repair our yard but no real damage. Meanwhile, a friend living less that a mile away only had very light rain.

jds375• 10 years ago

The article makes the argument that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, thus a hotter atmosphere, thus the atmosphere can hold more water.

Does that at all explain the increasingly frequent droughts? Could it be due to more water in the water cycle being stuck in the atmosphere instead of on earth's surface?

x86_64Ubuntu• 10 years ago

Weather is a dynamic system. Just because you have more water in the air doesn't mean you have more water everywhere.

cheald• 10 years ago

Heh, the Phoenix picture is impressive but that's every July-September for us - it's monsoon season. We get massive, violent storms that last a very short time, dump a massive amount of water on the city, and then are clear skies before you know what even happened.

If anything, it's been a particularly tame year this year. We've had a few good storms, but we haven't even gotten close to our annual flash floods.

More microbursts are coming

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