New Years Flooding 2016 in 34 pictures

First post of the New Year.

Christmas was very quite.

I fell asleep before midnight on New Years Eve.

Flooding

Pressure_cooker_boxartStory of the moment seems to be the flooding which widespread parts of the world are experiencing.

It’s put down to the weather phenomenon known as ‘el nino’, which translates to ‘little boy’ in English.

I’ve been around for ‘el nino’s’ before. This one seems particularly bad, maybe the worst.

But, having said that, we are turning the planet into a giant pressure cooker, so what do you expect?

Economics

When I was camping in France, it rained for 3 days solid.

I expected there to be floods everywhere. The river on the campsite barely rose 3 inches. Why is this?

Urban run-off chart
Taken from http://water.usgs.gov/edu/watercyclerunoff.html

It’s called ‘run-off’ and the fact that most of the planet is being turned into a giant urban district, in order to make more money, support more people, make the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

The hydrological cycle

I contest climate change and increasingly changeable weather conditions are caused by the unobstructed progress of rainwater, from river to ocean to cloud without ever seeing grass or soil or trees.

Trees slow the flow and break the rain for the vegetation below, which slows it’s flow even further with its foliage. Water dispersed in this way runs off very slowly, contributing to the natural water table.

Water not slowed in this way flows right back into the sea, as fast as it can.

Here are some pictures to back it up.


Taken from IBT

Meteorologists predict a wild, wet winter for much of the world, thanks to this year’s El Niño, which ties with the 1997-1998 season as the strongest recorded. The weather phenomenon happens every few years when the Pacific Ocean warms up around the equator, changing weather worldwide.

This year’s powerful El Niño has already caused severe floods in many South American countries. More than 100,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes in areas bordering Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina after floods due to heavy summer rains.

El Niño flooding 2016
A church is partially submerged in floodwater in Alberdi, Paraguay, on 5 January 2016 (Jorge Adorno/Reuters)
El Niño flooding 2016
A cat sits inside a flooded building in Asuncion, Paraguay, on 28 December 2015 (Jorge Adorno/Reuters)
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