Tag: flood

Recent European Flooding “Unexceptional”, According to New Science Findings

Few fearmongering scares cause more deliberate panic than sudden and overwhelming flooding. The ancients were at it in the Bible and the Net Zero fanatics use it to drive modern-day mass climate psychosis. Fake pseudoscience attributions of heavy human involvement are fed to activist journalists who promote the invented idea that there is a ‘climate emergency’.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

Few fearmongering scares cause more deliberate panic than sudden and overwhelming flooding. The ancients were at it in the Bible and the Net Zero fanatics use it to drive modern-day mass climate psychosis. Fake pseudoscience attributions of heavy human involvement are fed to activist journalists who promote the invented idea that there is a ‘climate emergency’. But a recent scientific paper has blown all this Noah-inspired nonsense out of the water. Studying both documentary and geological flooding records, a group of European scientists found that over multi-century and millennial periods across parts of western and southwestern Europe, floods have been of a much higher magnitude than those of the present day. In the UK, flooding in the Severn area during the last 70 years “was not considered exceptional” in the context of the 4,000-year record.

The science team, including Professor Mark Macklin of the University of Lincoln, showed that flood magnitude was “significantly higher” before the 20th century, despite there being a negligible greenhouse gas contribution from humans. In a phrase that strikes down much of the pseudoscientific weather-attribution copy, it is noted that this means “natural variability might be significantly higher than assumed by climate modellers”.

The scientists state clearly that any attempt to attribute anthropogenic causes to extreme events such as droughts and flooding needs a sufficient length of events to enable comparisons to be drawn. Attempts using computer models to attribute recent floods to human causes have been made, the authors note, but such assessments “have failed to correctly analyse the true frequency and magnitude of past floods, when anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing was low”. It becomes clearer by the day why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) pointed out in its latest assessment report that human involvement in almost all extreme weather categories is almost impossible to discern. In fact this inconvenient conclusion has directly led to the major growth of modelled attributions. Activists have become increasingly frustrated by the IPCC and pressed ahead with their pseudoscience due to the the need for lawfare material and ‘trusted media’ scare stories.

The scientists go on to point out that their findings have “profound implications” for flood planning and climate adaptation policy, “as many recent floods cannot be viewed as unprecedented, even in the historical record”. Alas, any changes in public policy over Europe at least will have to wait for the pre-ordained narrative to be re-written, so there might be a bit of a wait.

The scientists looked in detail at the Lower Rhine in Germany, the upper Severn in the UK and the Valencian community rivers in Spain.

The above illustration shows clearly that the largest flooding during the past 8,000 years in the Lower Rhine did not occur in the recent past. Far from it, with at least 12 floods, including massive inundation in 1374, likely to have exceeded the highest modern peak discharges.

Recent floods in the Severn area are frequently used by Net Zero activists to whip up climate fear. The illustration below would appear to show that such stories are little more than the product of those possessed of over-stimulated imaginations. Nothing out of the ordinary is to be found, and it appears we are in a current period of reduced inundation.

Late last year Jonathan Watts of the Guardian said that the recent “apocalyptic” Spanish floods in Valencia showed two undeniable truths – “the climate crisis is getting worse and Big Oil is killing us”. Getting into his hysterical Guardianista stride, Watts continued to amplify his message: “The unnatural disaster in Spain – Europe’s deadliest flash floods in at least half a century – is evidence of two undeniable truths: the human-caused climate crisis is just starting to pick up ferocity and we need to quickly kill the fossil fuel industry before it kills us.” How we laughed first time around – Jim ‘jail the deniers’ Dale come back, all is forgiven – only to be set off again in our mirth by consideration of the actual evidence of floods in the area going back to 1400.

If we consider the Spanish area including Valencia we can see Guardian-style apocalypse floods throughout the record going back to 1400. This was no doubt very useful to promote whatever scares the sandwich board loons were peddling at the time. In fact the largest flows of the 18th and 19th centuries had peaks about 25% higher than those of the present.

Every day is undeniably Apocalypse Day at the Net Zero-crazed Guardian. Or should that be April Fools’ Day.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

North Carolina’s Flood of 1916

North Carolina’s floods last week may have been catastrophic, but they were not unprecedented:

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

North Carolina’s floods last week may have been catastrophic, but they were not unprecedented:

From Our State:

It was Sunday morning, July 16, 1916, just outside of Biltmore Village, and the sun had not yet peeked over the horizon. Kathleen Lipe Carter was just three weeks before her 18th birthday, and she heard her father stirring. He was tying chickens and turkeys to the front porch. Carter’s mother and ailing family members had already left the riverfront home to stay with friends in a second-floor apartment inside the village. But water began to spill over the banks of the nearby Swannanoa River, and it was time for the last of the family to seek higher ground.

With her sister, father, and several boarders who were staying at the home, Carter set out across the Village Green (modern day Biltmore Avenue) and headed toward the Biltmore Estate in search of safety and dry ground. But the farther they walked, the deeper the water became, until the frigid stream enveloped them up to their necks.

“Torrents from broken dams upriver had changed the course of the Swannanoa,” Carter recalled in an account given to the Heritage of Old Buncombe County in July 1986. “We were caught in the middle of a wide, wild river.”

Decades before hurricanes had names, when weather wasn’t forecast so much as it was broadcast, it rained for a solid week over western North Carolina. And then it rained again, harder than it had ever rained before.

In 1916, weathermen couldn’t predict a hurricane’s path with much more precision than the Farmer’s Almanac could predict the hour of winter’s first snowfall. Early meteorologists could, however, measure the speed and strength of falling rain. On Saturday, July 15, 1916, the Blue Ridge region saw more rain than anyone anywhere had ever seen since such records had been kept. One spot in Altapass, near Grandfather Mountain, measured more than 22 inches of rain in 24 hours.

When the rain began in earnest before dawn on Saturday, there was already nowhere left for it to go. Nowhere, except out. Out of the riverbeds. Out of the ground. Out of all the neat places nature makes for water and into places where it had never been before, and in some cases, where it would never go again.

When the sun rose on Sunday, July 16, the rain had waned, but the landscape had just begun its transformation. Flooded streets became raging rivers; lazy streams burst open into torrents of deep, deadly water. More than 80 people died. Hundreds of homes were destroyed. There were millions of dollars’ worth of destruction.

It was the flood to end all floods, and the clouds were just beginning to part.

In the months after July 1916, the U.S. Weather Bureau sent its chief researcher to study this snapshot of weather history. The written account of professor Alfred J. Henry explains that in early July — almost two weeks before the flooding began — a cyclone formed in the Gulf of Mexico and marched up the Mississippi coast, coming to a rest along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The skies cut loose on July 5, 1916, and the rain poured for six days. Only when nearly a full week had passed did the weather begin to clear, but the ground was soaked. The water table was as full as a just-poured glass of water, cubes bobbing precariously above the rim.

The people must have been able to see, feel, and smell the water all around. But if it was insufferably wet, if the soil was as saturated as an un-wrung washcloth, they paid it little mind. Perhaps because flooding was so common in this part of Appalachia. Perhaps because the high-water marks reached in 1908 were still so fresh in the minds of many.

“Nowhere in the United States, so far as known to the writer, are the streams subject to such frequent and marked changes in volume and in the degree to which they are loaded as in those which have their source in the southern Appalachians,” the Weather Bureau’s Henry wrote in his report titled “Rivers and Floods, July 1916.”

The early July rains, however steady, kept their distance at first — staying out of homes and off the streets — so they were likely of little consequence to people well acquainted with flooding.

But even as the rain was tapering, another hurricane was brewing, and no one knew that it, too, was making its way west. This cyclone was forming in the mid-Atlantic, and it would make landfall in Charleston, South Carolina, on Friday night, July 14.

“Torrential rains fell on the lowlands a short distance, northeast of Charleston, attended by high winds,” Henry wrote. “By the morning of the 15th, the center of the storm had reached western North Carolina.”

The glass, still full, began to spill over almost immediately as the rain started up again that Saturday morning. That rain continued for the next 24 hours. It was estimated that up to 90 percent of what fell remained above ground.

Never before had so much rain fallen in a 24-hour period anywhere in the United States, the Weather Bureau reported.

By Sunday, the rain tapered off. All cyclonic activity disappeared and precipitation was “insignificant,” according to the Bureau.

But with the skies just clearing, the full force of the destruction was yet to come. Floodwaters were just gaining their strength in the hours before dawn on Sunday — a delayed reaction as water upstream gathered and pooled and then broke free again, surging and barrelling through the region in violent, debris-laden waves that travelled faster and grew more violent with every mile.

It would take another three days — until Tuesday — for floodwaters to recede.

“Eventually, the railway was reconstructed. Many who lost their homes simply started over again. Farmers replanted crops, and industries rebuilt.

But nearly a century after its destruction, the Flood of 1916 lives in infamy as the flood that changed the definition of disaster.”

All around Asheville that Sunday, people were taken by surprise at the speed and volume of the rising floodwaters. Automobiles and streetcars were abandoned midtrip and left in the middle of roads. The water would reach a height of nine feet at the gate of the Biltmore Estate, although the home was spared. All throughout Asheville, people clung to trees and lumber piles, waiting for lifeguards in flat-bottom boats carrying ropes to deliver them to safety.

For nine long hours, Kathleen Lipe Carter, who was caught in the raging Swannanoa River, clung to a maple tree, awaiting rescue as frigid water swirled around her. She watched floodwater sweep her father away, killing him and several other members of her party that day.

In the next county over, the Marshall community saw 53 homes wash downstream. The Madison County town, which sits tucked between the river and the mountain in a low-lying valley, filled with water. It was also reported that 500 excursionists from Knoxville, Tennessee, were marooned in Madison, with only one railway bridge left standing for the entire county. And just east of Asheville, in McDowell County and northeast in Mitchell, flooding levelled much of the landscape, especially along the Eastern Continental Divide.

“Along the riverfronts in the Swannanoa and French Broad valleys, industrial plants have been submerged and wrecked,” the Asheville Citizen newspaper reported on July 16. “The damage in Asheville is estimated at $1,000,000; in Buncombe County the loss will add close to two million to this sum. … From the outside towns and communities come reports of death and havoc to property.”

Read the full story here.

Ironically Asheville itself did not get much heavy rain – the unbelievably high rainfall fell upstream. The 24-hour total of 22 inches which fell at Altapass was truly astonishing, even considering its higher altitude. It still not only holds the State record for 24-hour rain, but that nation’s as well.

Insurance Industry’s Fake Claims Of Increasing Storm Damage Are Not Supported By Data

Mr Khan is telling lies to you.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Climate change could push up home insurance costs by up to 20pc next year, according to the UK’s biggest accountancy firm.

Mohammad Khan, head of general insurance at PwC UK, said the increase in the number and severity of weather events means that insurers will need to increase the prices charged to consumers in order to cover the rising cost of claims.

“We are having weather events more often and they are more severe. You can call it climate change or not but that is a fact and insurers have to factor that into their pricing. That is why premiums are going up,” Mr Khan said.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/climate-change-push-up-home-insurance-bills-20pc/

Mr Khan is telling lies to you.

It’s strange that his industry did not cut premiums last year, following just two named storms.

But what does the long term data tell us?

The Environment Agency collate figures for the number of properties flooded each year in England in major events.

A couple of years ago they sent me this table:

Since 2011 they have published annual reviews here, though 2016/17 is missing. Annual figures are recorded for the year to March, so the last numbers are for y/e March 2023.

I have tabulated the numbers for each year, along with the original table:

It is plainly untrue that floods have been affecting more properties in recent years. There are some years with high totals and others with low, but no obvious pattern.

The Environment Agency included Wales until 2013, so those early numbers might be slightly overstated. However the EA table only included events where more than 250 properties were flooded, whereas since 2011/12 this restriction does not apply. Last year, for instance, the total was only 160, which would not have been included under the previous  criteria.

In short, the two factors tend to cancel  out.

This year look like being slightly higher than the last few years, maybe around  3000,  but still well within the normal bounds  of variability. The number will certainly be much less  than some of those earlier years.

As with every hyped story, the insurance will double down to use it as an excuse to raise premiums.