Pirate's Cove

It’s pretty easy to make this prognostication after California has been hit with a few huge rain event storms. It’s funny, though, because not that long ago we got

• Thanks El Niño, But California’s Drought Is Probably Forever
• California, ‘America’s garden,’ is drying out
• Is California entering a megadrought? Water experts weigh in

That last one was from 2022

Climate change will bring megafloods to California

Climate change is making it a matter of time before a megaflood hits the state.

The Santa Barbara police car blocked access to the bridge, lights flashing as the thundering, swollen brown river rampaged below. The water was running so high in this Southern California county that it gushed through the railings of the bridge, and poured out onto the road.

This region is familiar with water scarcity – usually battling extreme heatwaves, wildfires, and drought. Now, Southern California is confronting an overabundance of water, in the form of torrential rain and life-threatening floods. (snip)

And experts say that the frequency and intensity of these kinds of events will only increase. These severe floods in California are a “broadly underappreciated risk”, according to a 2022 paper, co-authored by Daniel Swain and Xingying Huang, scientists at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. (snip)

Climate change is increasing the risk of a California megaflood, Swain’s study warns. This extreme storm scenario would produce runoffs 200-400% greater than anything seen before in the Sierra Nevada, the sprawling 400-mile (650km) mountain range that traverses 24 of the 58 counties in California.

California does, in fact, have a long history of flood years, with a record going back to 1605 (that was during the Little Ice Age), just like with drought years. It’s the nature of where it is located on the Pacific Ocean. There was nothing anthropogenic about that 1605 flooding, right? That had 45 days of flooding in December 1861-January 1862. It’s just nature. You’re making it more dangerous now because of land use. All those buildings and roads.

But, as they start blaming the flooding on you, will it now flip back to drought, which they will also blame on you?

Read: Your Fault: Hotcoldwetdry Will Bring Megafloods To California »

This was pretty much in the realm of fiction previously. I remember reading a disaster book a long time ago about how technology caused the weather to get out of control and hurricanes were merging to become super-hurricanes. It’s still in the realm of fiction

‘Category 5’ was considered the worst hurricane. There’s something scarier, study says.

As fearsome as Category 5 hurricanes can be for people living in harm’s way, a new study reports global warming is supercharging some of the most intense cyclones with winds high enough to merit a hypothetical Category 6.

The world’s most intense hurricanes are growing even more intense, fueled by rising temperatures in the ocean and atmosphere, according to the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And, the authors say, a Category 5 on the traditional wind scale underestimates their dangers.

“As a cautious scientist, you never want to cry wolf,” said Michael Wehner, co-author and climate scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. But after searching for the signature of climate change in the world’s most intense cyclones, Wehner said he and co-author Jim Kossin found “the wolf is here.”

But, they’re crying wolf, because they’ve become cult scientists.

They used a hypothetical Category 6, with a minimum threshold of 192 mph, to study hurricanes that have occurred in the modern satellite era, since around 1980. They found five hurricanes and typhoons that would have met the criteria and all five occurred within the last decade.

To be clear, they aren’t proposing adding that category to the National Hurricane Center’s wind scale, which experts say would require a lengthy process and many partners. But they are hoping to “inform broader discussions about how to better communicate risk in a warming world,” Kossin told USA TODAY.

Except, from what I’ve been able to determine, they’re discussing wind gusts, not continuous wind speed. Tropical systems are categorized by the wind speed over one minute at 10 meters above ground/sea level. Not gusts. And we’ve seen the Warmists equate gusts with storm size, not measuring at the right height or using the 1 minute threshold. It gets better

They found the chances of that potential intensity occurring in such storms have more than doubled since 1979. They say the areas where the growing risks of these storms are of greatest concern are the Gulf of Mexico, the Philippines, parts of Southeast Asia and Australia.

1979. The satellite era. We don’t know about anything previously. Nor do we have specific measurements from during the Little Ice Age. What if they were worse during Holocene cool periods? We don’t know. We have no reference. There is no control sources. Do we know the specifics on, say, the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900? This is all just cult scaremongering.

Read: Climate Cult Desperately Trying To Make Category 6 Hurricanes A Thing »