Deadly Floods in Vermont

(Time)-In the wake of Tropical Storm Irene heavy flooding inundated Vermont's central and southern villages and took down infrastructures. The state was unprepared, as it had not seen such floods since the 1900s.

As the tropical storm deluged the landlocked villages in Vermont, hundreds of residents evacuated their homes. The storm turned streets into running streams, destroyed more than a dozen bridges including three historic ones, and killed at least two people. The state hospital in Waterbury was also evacuated. Its staff and 51 patients were placed in facilities in nearby towns. Below, watch a bridge over the Ottauquechee River feel Irene's wrath. More

Storm Warnings: Extreme Weather Is a Product of Climate Change

Links to the following news stories match many of the I AM America prophecies of flooding in the midwest, and the widening of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. The prophecies of the I AM America 6-Map Scenario mirror this first article regarding the frequency of violent storms and extreme changes in weather patterns.~ Lori.

by John Carey

In North Dakota the waters kept rising. Swollen by more than a month of record rains in Saskatchewan, the Souris River topped its all time record high, set back in 1881. The floodwaters poured into Minot, North Dakota's fourth-largest city, and spread across thousands of acres of farms and forests. More than 12,000 people were forced to evacuate. Many lost their homes to the floodwaters. Yet the disaster unfolding in North Dakota might be bringing even bigger headlines if such extreme events hadn't suddenly seemed more common. In this year alone massive blizzards have struck the U.S. Northeast, tornadoes have ripped through the nation, mighty rivers like the Mississippi and Missouri have flowed over their banks, and floodwaters have covered huge swaths of Australia as well as displaced more than five million people in China  and devastated Colombia. And this year's natural disasters follow on the heels of a staggering litany of extreme weather in 2010, from record floods in Nashville, Tenn., and Pakistan, to Russia's crippling heat wave...Read More

Extreme Weather and Climate Change: What's the Link? Does global warming increase the risk of extreme weather? Environmentalists and scientists are re-examining that possible link in light of the wild weather the United States has seen so far in 2011, including heat waves, tornadoes, and wildfires. A similar debate was prompted last year by extreme weather throughout the world, including wildfires in Russia and floods in Pakistan...

[And An Update on the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant from CHINA]
U.S. Fort Calhoun nuclear plant flooded
BEIJING, July 5 (Xinhuanet) -- The Fort Calhoun plant north of Omaha in the US state of Nebraska has been surrounded by flood water from the Missouri River for over ten days. As worries mount, US authorities have reassured the public the plant is safe.
Could this be another Fukushima?
Operators of the Fort Calhoun plant say no.
But pictures like this make it hard to believe the official statement that only part of the utilities are flooded.
Rumors have spread that the reactors suffered a complete meltdown and that radioactive tritium is leaking into the river.
But plant operator, Omaha Public Power, says all key buildings in the plant are secure. No flooding, no meltdown, no radioactive leakage.
They say the plant has nine power sources, and two backup generators, making a Fukushima scenario impossible.
They've received some backing from the independent Union of Concerned Scientists. The group says despite some flooding inside, there are no severe safety problems.
Local residents aren't reassured.
"Yeah, we are definitely worried. That's without question. "
"We are always worried, but there's nothing we can do. "
Nebraska has two nuclear plants along the Missouri River. The troubling photos have brought the Fort Calhoun facility into the spotlight.
The plant was switched off in April to add fuel. Since then, there's been a series of incidents. Though officials say the flood is not a major factor, it will certainly make it more difficult to bring the reactor back online, which many speculate will be in August.

Rising water, falling journalism

By Dawn Stover

Every evening, my father climbs the levee along the Missouri River in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and peers down into the black water that swallows the road. The water is rising, and the Army Corps of Engineers says the levee has never faced such a test. Dad, a retired professor, is packing his books and papers. If the levee doesn't hold, his one-story house could be underwater for months.

A little farther up the Missouri, at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Station near Blair, Nebraska, the river is already lapping at the Aqua Dams -- giant plastic tubes filled with water -- that form a stockade around the plant's buildings. The plant has become an island.

In Blair, in Council Bluffs, and in my hometown of Omaha -- which are all less than 20 miles from the Fort Calhoun Station -- some people haven't forgotten that flooding is what caused the power loss at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and the disastrous partial meltdowns that followed. They're wondering what the floodwaters might do if they were to reach Fort Calhoun's electrical systems.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a "yellow finding PDF" (indicating a safety significance somewhere between moderate and high) for the plant last October, after determining that the Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) "did not adequately prescribe steps to mitigate external flood conditions in the auxiliary building and intake structure" in the event of a worst-case Missouri River flood. The auxiliary building -- which surrounds the reactor building like a horseshoe flung around a stake -- is where the plant's spent-fuel pool and emergency generators are located. Read More

Fatal floods hit China forcing over 500,000 to flee

China has raised the disaster alert to the highest level, as flooding spreads across central and southern provinces. Days of torrential rain have forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people in central and southern China. The government has described flooding in some areas as the worst since 1955 and has mobilised troops to evacuate some 555,000 people. More than 100 people are known to have died so far this month. China's disaster alert has been raised to the highest level, four. More heavy rain is expected in the coming days, with little let-up until Sunday. In Jiangxi province in the east, troops helped 122,400 residents move from vulnerable, low-lying areas, the China News Service reported. Read More

Northern Rockies States Brace For Flooding  (NPR Radio) The Northern Rocky Mountain states are bracing for what could be major flooding this month. The snowpack in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Utah is at a record high for this time of year. As temperatures rise, that snow is melting. If it gets too hot too quickly, snow will come off the mountains faster than rivers can handle. Some have already overflowed their banks...

Theories Behind the Snowfall and Flooding: Life on this Earth Just Changed: The North Atlantic Current is Gone (September, 2010): The latest satellite data establishes that the North Atlantic Current (also called the North Atlantic Drift) no longer exists and along with it the Norway Current. These two warm water currents are actually part of the same system that has several names depending on where in the Atlantic Ocean it is. The entire system is a key part of the planet's heat regulatory system; it is what keeps Ireland and the United Kingdom mostly ice free and the Scandinavia countries from being too cold; it is what keeps the entire world from another Ice Age. This Thermohaline Circulation System is now dead in places and dying in others. This 'river' of warm water that moves through the Atlantic Ocean is called, in various places, the South Atlantic Current, the North Brazil Current, the Caribbean Current, the Yucatan Current, the Loop Current, the Florida Current, the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic Current (or North Atlantic Drift) and the Norway Current. It is a university level physics experiment to use a tub of cool water and inject a colored stream of warm water into it. You can see the boundary layers of the warm water stream. If you add oil to the tub it breaks down the boundary layers of the warm water stream and effectively destroys the current vorticity . This is what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Atlantic Ocean. The entire 'river of warm water' that flows from the Caribbean to the edges of Western Europe is dying due to the Corexit that the Obama Administration allowed BP to use to hide the scale of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster. The approximately two million gallons of Corexit, plus several million gallons of other dispersants, have caused the over two hundred million gallons of crude oil, that has gushed for months from the BP wellhead and nearby sites, to mostly sink to the bottom of the ocean. Read More

Two Nebraska Nuclear Plants Partially Submerged by Missouri Floodwaters

FAA issues 'No Fly Zones' due to 'hazards'

Ignored by the Mainstream Media two nuclear power facilities in Nebraska which were designated temporary restricted no fly zones by the FAA in early June due to ‘hazards’. The FAA restrictions, ‘effectively immediately’, ‘until further notice’. The Ft. Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant, currently sandbagged against the floodwaters of the Missouri River, and, the Cooper Nuclear Station, located on the Missouri River. According to the NRC, there’s no need to panic. If so, then why the No Fly Zones due to ‘hazards’ issued by the FAA?

Video news report from local NBC 6 on the Ft. Calhoun Power Plant and the massive amount of farm land flooded by the Missouri River. According to a local farmer worried about the levees, ‘We need the Corps-Army Corps of Engineers–to do more. The Corps needs to tell us what to do and where to go. This is not mother nature, this is manmade.’

On June 6, 2011, the report from Action Three News, Worst Case Scenario Leaves Huge Piece of Omaha Under Water: Omaha, NE – Homes and businesses north of Ames, east of Florence Boulevard and east of South 16th Street are at risk for flooding if the north Omaha levee breaks. The Qwest Center, Gallup Campus, North Omaha Power Plant and all of Eppley Airfield would be affected. That’s about 2,700 people the city would have to evacuate. Even though officials are confident in the levees through Omaha, they still want people to know about the risk and be prepared for the worst case scenario. City leaders say the worst case would put a huge part of northeast Omaha in up to 10 feet of water. This is one of many reasons why officials monitor it so closely. Read More

Midwest Towns, Farmers Brace For Summer Floods

The Coming Floods



By Corey Dade

Just as the Mississippi River settles after washing out swaths of the South, the flooding elsewhere has just begun: A raging Missouri River in the northern Plains now will threaten parts of the Midwest well into the summer. Many communities in the upper Midwest had expected a wet season, but the specter of a more severe and sustained period of flooding surfaced following record rainfall concentrated in Montana. Making matters worse, rising temperatures are expected to melt the snowcaps in the Rocky Mountains following a winter of greater-than-usual snowfall. The conditions have prompted officials to ready evacuation plans and build up flood-wall protections in downriver states next in line for the potential deluge, from the Dakotas to Iowa to Nebraska to Missouri. Taken together with the Mississippi River flooding, government officials and analysts say the potential damage to homes, businesses and crops is likely to be the worst since Hurricane Katrina. Read More

Weather Causes Concern About Wheat The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had predicted a big soft red winter (SRW) crop for 2011/12 with an 80 percent bump in production over 2010/11. More SRW was planted and the crop was in excellent condition coming out of dormancy in March. Since then, however, a pattern of heavy rain in the Mid-South and parts of the Midwest could be stressing SRW production potential. “Ohio is waterlogged,” said John Hoffman, a SRW producer in the south-central part of that state where 890,000 acres of SRW were planted. “I’ve heard there is a lot of wheat standing in water, so I believe we will harvest a lot less wheat in Ohio than we thought we would...

Biggest Floods in History—Does Mississippi Make the List?

Ker Than

for National Geographic News
This story is part of a special National Geographic News series on global water issues.
As the crest of the Mississippi River flood moves through New Orleans and out to sea this week, peak river levels recorded during the month-long deluge threaten to top even the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

The most destructive river flood in U.S. history, the 1927 event moved about 2 million cubic feet (65,000 cubic meters) of water—enough to fill about 26 Olympic-size swimming pools—every second. (See pictures: "Mississippi River at Its Worst.")

"The numbers are still provisional, but [the current flood's peak water discharge] looks to be about the same" as the 1927 flood, said James O'Connor, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Still, the 1927 and 2011 Mississippi River floods remain just drops in the bucket compared to other known freshwater "megafloods" around the world, according to O'Connor.

The scientist co-authored a 2004 USGS report that ranked all freshwater floods known to have occurred during the past two million years. The list, which remains largely unchanged since its release, includes only floods that had peak discharges of 3.5 million cubic feet (100,000 cubic meters) a second or more.

Ice-Age Deluge
As of 2010, the number one flood on the USGS list swept through what are now Oregon and WasState (map) about 25,000 to 15,000 years ago, during the last ice age. Read More

The Mississippi Nightmare Scenario

By Robert Johnson
As the Mississippi River continues to rise and more residents are forced to evacuate, the great flood of 1927 is on a lot of Southern minds and questions of what's next on just as many lips.
According to reports in the Nashville Tennessean, history could be on the verge of repeating itself. To give a little perspective: in the Great Flood, the levees broke in 145 places, flooded 27,000 square miles in up to 30 feet of water over a stretch of land 100 miles long. At some points more than double the volume of Niagara Falls poured through as levees broke, nine states were affected and 246 people died.
Though modifications have been done on the levee system over the years, failures are occurring now just as before, and towns that sit upstream have already blasted their levees to keep the flood waters at bay. In Vicksburg Mississippi, where the Yazoo River empties into the Mississippi River, current predictions put the river cresting the barriers by more than a foot. There is real concern the strain will prove too much for the dirt levees.
The best officials there can do is to put polyethylene sheets over the levees in efforts to preserve their integrity. Read More

Floods 'Worst Disaster In Australian History'

Pete Norman, Sky News Online
Floods that have devastated huge areas of Australia's eastern coastline will be the costliest natural disaster in the country's history, according to a government minister.
Treasurer Wayne Swan has claimed the deluge last week in Queensland and overnight in Victoria, where 46 townships have been affected, will prompt spending cuts.
"It looks like this is possibly going to be, in economic terms, the largest natural disaster in our history," he said.
"This is very big. It's not just something which is going to occupy our time for the next few months - it will be a question of years as we go through the rebuilding." Read More

Philippines raises alert for new super typhoon

MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines placed soldiers and civilian emergency teams on the main island of Luzon on alert on Thursday as a powerful typhoon moved closer, less than a week after an earlier storm killed 277 people in and around Manila.
Parma, a category 4 typhoon, packing winds of 175 kph (108 mph), was 520 km (320 miles) east of the central Philippine island of Samar on Thursday, said chief weather forecaster Nathaniel Cruz.
It was expected to make landfall near northeastern Quirino and Isabela provinces on Luzon by Saturday unless it changed direction.
"It's gathering strength into a category 5 typhoon," Cruz told Reuters, adding it could be the one of the strongest typhoons to hit the country since November 2006 when Typhoon Durian left death and destruction in the central Philippines.
"By Saturday afternoon, Parma could be packing center winds of more than 200 kph and could be weakened once it slams into the Cordillera mountain region in the north."
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New York Flood Risk to Grow as Weaker Currents Raise Sea Level

March 16 (Bloomberg) -- The Big Apple faces a greater flood risk over the next century as weaker Atlantic currents raise sea levels on the U.S. East Coast by more than in London or Tokyo.
Global warming will alter Atlantic Ocean circulation in a way that will move more water to New York by 2100, Florida State University-led scientists said in a study in Nature Geoscience today. Including the expansion of water as it warms, the total gain may be 51 centimeters (20 inches), they said, not counting effects of melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

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Worst Floods in Nearly 50 Years Hit Namibia, Neighboring Countries

Parts of southern and southwestern Africa are seeing the worst flooding in about 50 years. Hundreds of thousands of people have been affected and are in desperate need of emergency supplies.
One of the worst affected countries is Namibia. Matthew Cochrane of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies spoke to VOA from one of the many flooded towns in Namibia.
"I'm in a little town called Schuckmansberg, which is normally on the Namibian side of the Zambezi River in the Caprivi Strip, which is up in the northeast. But now the only way to access this town is to drive across the border in Zambia, drive along the Zambia side of the river and then catch a boat up for about half an hour to reach this island. It's now totally surrounded by water," he says.

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Obama cites North Dakota floods in call for climate change action

President Obama says potentially historic flood levels in North Dakota are a clear example of why steps need to be taken to stop global warming. Heavy rain and blizzards have caused eight rivers in the state to swell to flood levels and emergency management officials are warily watching the Red River, which could surpass record levels late this week.
"If you look at the flooding that's going on right now in North Dakota and you say to yourself, 'If you see an increase of two degrees, what does that do, in terms of the situation there?'" Obama told reporters at the White House Monday. "That indicates the degree to which we have to take this seriously."
Waters in the Red River were 33 feet this morning, according to CNN. That’s 15 feet above flood stage, and close to the record 41.1 feet set in April 1897, according to the network. The river could exceed those levels by Friday or Saturday, officials say.

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Next up: Heavy rain, floods across W. Wash.

By Sandi Doughton
Seattle Times science reporter

Cities across Western Washington are bracing for another slap from a season that has already dealt the region a series of nasty blows.
This time, the pain will come in the form of drenching rain followed by floods and the threat of landslides and avalanches, forecasters warned Tuesday. Some rivers, particularly in Lewis County, could reach record levels, and it's possible Interstate 5 near Centralia could be submerged again — as it was for several days in December 2007.
Major flooding also was forecast on the Skagit River near Concrete, the Snohomish River near Monroe, the Tolt River near Carnation, and the Snoqualmie River near Carnation and Snoqualmie Falls.

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'River of Sorrow' Floods Affecting Millions in India

By Rama Lakshmi
Washington Post Foreign Service

NEW DELHI, Sept. 2 -- Close to 2.5 million Indians remained stranded, homeless and hungry in flood-ravaged villages in the eastern part of the country Tuesday, 17 days after a river burst a dam in neighboring Nepal and changed course.
Heavy rains and the swelling waters of the Kosi, often called the "river of sorrow" and worshipped by local people, caused havoc in almost 1,000 villages in Bihar state. Panic-stricken people fled to higher ground, tree tops and cramped makeshift camps.
About 117 people are reported dead but officials in Bihar said that the death toll may rise dramatically as receding waters reveal more bodies.
Monsoon floods are an annual feature of Indian life, but some officials say that the damage has been catastrophic this year.
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Death toll mounts from Pakistan floods, thousands displaced

The death toll from flash floods that hit parts of north and east Pakistan on Monday has risen to more than 100, according German news agency Deutsche Presse Agentur.
Most of the casualties were in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and neighbouring tribal areas near the Afghan border, where roofs collapsed and the flooding destroyed several hundred mud houses, DPA said, citing the Urdu-language Express newspaper. The Pakistani paper reported that 25 people died when three rescue boats capsized near Peshawar.
The head of the provincial flood warning centre at Izat Khan told Dawn newspaper that overflowing rivers had devastated an area with a radius of 15 to 18 km.

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Floods kill 22 in Ukraine, 4 in Romania

KIEV (Reuters) - Floods in western Ukraine have killed 22 people, destroyed homes, farmland and roads and prompted the evacuation of 20,000 residents, officials said on Monday.
Television footage showed President Viktor Yushchenko wading knee-deep through village streets, visiting devastated homes and discussing action plans with local officials at the weekend.
Ukraine's cabinet was called into emergency session to discuss assistance and repair work. The National Security and Defense Council, chaired by the president, was also due to meet.
A senior government official at the weekend described the flooding as the worst in a century.
Water levels after five days of uninterrupted rain remained dangerously high on the Prut and Dnestr rivers. More than 40,000 homes were flooded.

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Floods may push corn inventories to historical low

USDA to report acreage; analysts warn of $10 corn and possible supply crisis

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Recent Midwest flooding may have damaged millions of acres of corn crops, analysts expect the U.S. Department of Agriculture to say in its crop acreage report slated for release Monday.
The loss of acreage could slash U.S. corn production and push the 2009 season's year-end stocks to the lowest level since just after World War II, analysts said. And the real damage is likely to be even worse than what Monday's 8:30 a.m. EDT report will show, as it's still too early to evaluate the full impact of the flooding.
"The report is already obsolete," said Elaine Kub, a grains analyst at commodities-information provider DTN. Many acres could be abandoned at a later date and the acreage situation will be worse than the report sounds, she said.

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The Unluckiest Town in America

by Steven Gray, Time Magazine

It was early evening in Grand Tower, Ill., and Josh Franklin, 23, was standing outside his aunt's double-wide trailer. He'd like to move away from this community of 585 people to Carbondale, a college town about half an hour's drive to the north. But he can't afford to. Grand Tower isn't much of anyplace anymore. Its last restaurant closed shortly after the great flood of 1993. There isn't a bookstore. Don't even ask about wi-fi access. "If we get a major flood," he says, "it's all over. A lot of small towns, they've just disappeared. We're going to be next." The floods are certainly coming. And who knows when the next big earthquake will hit, since the town sits within the New Madrid Seismic Zone, one of the continent's most violent.

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Levee breaks as Midwest flood damage mounts

By Nick Carey
QUINCY, Illinois (Reuters) - Hundreds of volunteers on the surging Mississippi River piled sandbags atop strained levees on Tuesday as the worst Midwest flooding in 15 years delivered a blow to the U.S. economy and world food prices.
A levee broke in Gulfport, Illinois, sending muddy waters from the most important U.S. waterway cascading into nearby farmland and a few homes. No one was injured but authorities closed the bridge across the river to Burlington, Iowa.
Corn and soybean prices stayed near record levels as millions of acres of cropland have been lost or damaged in the world's largest grain exporter. Meat prices also soared, in line with the costs for feeding cattle, hogs and chickens.

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