See everything bad about climate change in a swingle Californian town

MONTECITO IS COMING back to life this morning. The 9,000 person town to the east of Santa Barbara has been empty since Tuesday, when mandatory evacuations forced residents out of their homes for the fifth time in four months.

Rain continues to fall on the flood-damaged area in
Montecito, CA where many residents have evacuated.

This week it was a channel of tropical moisture called the Pineapple Express, dumping bands of intense rain and triggering flash floods throughout Southern California. In January it was a once-in-a-200-year storm that dropped half an inch of water in five minutes, unleashing massive mudslides that ripped houses from their foundations and killed 27. In December it was the deadly Thomas Fire that incinerated 280,000 acres—the largest wildfire in California history.

To some, Montecito might just seem like a town hit by a string of superlatively bad luck. But to people crunching the numbers it looks less like an outlier and more like an inevitability of climate change. If you want to see what California looks like in the future, you don’t need a crystal ball. You just need to hop on the 101 and drive until you hit Montecito.

Read Megan Molteni”s Wired story - “See everything bad about climate change in a swingle Californian town.”

Cyclone Debbie: Queensland braces for large scale disaster

Queensland is bracing for a large scale natural disaster ahead of the arrival of Cyclone Debbie, with authorities ordering evacuations, the closure of schools, ports and airports and thousands of military and emergency services personnel on alert.

Locals fill up sandbags in preparation
for Cyclone Debbie in Townsville. 

The Bureau of Meteorology predicts the “very destructive core” of Debbie will hit the mainland near the northern town of Ayr as a category four cyclone early Tuesday.

The bureau said Debbie was the worst cyclone in both “size and extent” to hit Queensland since Yasi in 2011, forecasting wind gusts of up to 260km/h and flash flooding.

Read Joshua Robertson’s story on The Guardian - “Cyclone Debbie: Queensland braces for large scale disaster.”

State battered with worst September deluge in a century

(Is this climate change in action? Well, not really, rather it is an example of what can be expected as humanity further interferes with the world’s climate system resulting in an increase in the frequency and intensity of such events, eroding even more the “Goldilocks-like” conditions that have allowed us to prosper – Robert McLean)

Victoria has copped the worst September deluge in a century triggering landslides along the Great Ocean Road, evacuations and school closures. 

The wild weather affected 12 council areas, with 102 roads shut, seven schools closed and 14 bus routes disrupted on Wednesday. Emergency services conducted 11 rescues in floodwaters.

A 50-kilometre stretch of the Great Ocean Road, between Moggs Creek and Skenes Creek, remains closed due to a series of landslips and fallen trees.

Ballarat has experienced it wettest three days since 1921, while Beaufort received the most rainfall it's had in a 72-hour period since 1911, and Wedderburn since 1916.

Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Victorian floods: State battered with worst September deluge in a century.”