We now have rolling blackouts because high winds may blow down power lines and start fires. When folks talk about how our infrastructure is not ready for what's here now, much less what's coming, this is but one example.
Complexity theory is all the vogue these days in emergency management/crisis response. I won't go into all the details except to say you have multiple complex human systems (often seeking maximum efficiency at the expense of robustness) interacting with complex natural systems in ways that create a large amount of brittleness across the intersections and interdependencies of all systems, many of which are beyond our view until they fail. For a simple example, natural gas lines condense and freeze in cold weather while some plants that generate electricity depend on natural gas, thus creating a double whammy for both gas and electricity users. Homes go unheated, pipes break, houses are damaged, water is unavailable or must be boiled, food spoils, people are cold, and some die in their garages trying to stay warm. That increasing complex interconnectedness puts us now in a world where the assumptions we make about expertise and experience may no longer hold because the current and future is so far removed from the patterns of the past. Predictability becomes more difficult, less certain. Obviously, the increasing specialization and complexity of human society is a big driver and we're heading straight into the complex system of climate change that influences everything across all systems. Stresses will continue to exceed designed tolerances. When things break, we'll hear "Who could have predicted?" a lot from people who lived in the past until they were forced into the current and future. Even after an enlightening incident, the draw of the past, of what was previously considered common sense, will be great. Common sense will say this was a one-off and something that need not change our way of doing things. No need to plan for this one-off happening again. But of course, it's no longer a one-off.
Really good chance that Lake Powell reaches the dead pool level this year. That means there will not be water that can flow through the turbines, rendering Glen Canyon Dam unable to produce power. For a reservoir designed to store around 25 million acre feet (amount of water needed to cover one acre with one foot of water), the range for this summer will be somewhere between 5 and 2.5 million acre feet. That is not good and could significantly drawdown water flow through the Grand Canyon, leading to a host of ecological problems. (You could also post this under the thread about Vegas dying.) Not only will there be no electricity generated, the dam was not designed for water levels that low and extended low level operation could damage the dam and related infrastructure. The only way to prevent this is to only release what comes into Lake Powell while accounting for evaporation and seepage, which means less water released downstream to Lake Mead, which has diversions for drinking water that go to Phoenix/Tucson and LA as well as the Imperial Valley Irrigation District, which would affect a huge number of crops.
Crazy how they are already starting in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas in February. Hundreds of thousands of acres burned already and still going.
Interesting that these projected wildfire maps are for Texas and the Deep South, and FEMA is purportedly about to get gutted.
One has to click through to watch the video, but it is worth seeing how bad it is. C.C. WATER CRISIS: Where things stand as the city spends hundreds of millions I didn't know that Corpus Christi gets some of its water from the Colorado River (Texas) and Lake Texana (near Edna) which is roughly halfway between Corpus Christi and the Astrodome. Corpus Christi Water Supply Dashboard __________ CCW supplies water for municipal and industrial use in a seven-county service area covering 140 square miles. From the west of Corpus Christi, water is drawn from the Lake Corpus Christi and Choke Canyon Reservoir System, both within the Nueces River Basin, and sent to the O.N. Stevens Water Treatment Plant. To the east of Corpus Christi, water is transferred from the Colorado River via Mary Rhodes Pipeline Phase II and from Lake Texana via the Mary Rhodes Pipeline Phase I and sent to the O.N. Stevens Water Treatment Plant. __________ There is graph with future projection for Demand versus Supply. In Summer 2027, they have a Big Problem.
Don't get me started. Look at where "Data Centers" are being built in Texas. Where the **** does their water come from?
Water availability will be a prime driver of housing prices. Already, there are neighborhoods around Phoenix that must pay enormous sums to have water trucked in and they have no option because nobody will buy their house because it doesn't have any water. https://grist.org/housing/arizona-rio-verde-foothills-water-wildcat-subdivisions/ Just another datapoint (see also the Lake Powell post from a few days ago) that the cities of the desert SW are dead men walking. Most of those folks will need to move somewhere over the next few decades. And then we have data centers, which are going to speed this kind of thing up in many places beyond the desert. TLDR: Be careful about a 30 year mortgage these days, particularly if you are west of the 100th (now 98th and moving east if you are on the southern half) meridian, where average rainfall drops to 20 inches or less. The dotted line is the 98th meridian, which is right at Corpus.
There are some differences between web sites to the right of the decimal place for each city because the sources for the coordinates likely didn't use the same exact place in each city to do the calculations, But these numbers will do for this discussion. Corpus Christi, TX Latitude and longitude coordinates are: 27.800583, -97.396378 San Antonio, TX Latitude and longitude coordinates are: 29.424349, -98.491142 Austin, TX Latitude and longitude coordinates are: 30.266666, -97.733330 Fort Worth, TX Latitude and longitude coordinates are: 32.768799, -97.309341 Dallas, TX Latitude and longitude coordinates are: 32.779167, -96.808891
New flood maps coming out for Houston. Just to be clear, the maps will not raise insurance rates or lower home prices or make development more expensive. It's the flooding that does those things and the maps just document the reality. If the maps go away, the water will still be there. https://www.fox26houston.com/video/fmc-gncl4kwxl29zkwvs
Estimates show new Google data center will need millions of gallons of water each day BOTETOURT COUNTY, Va. (WFXR) – Western Virginia Water Authority serves more than 70,000 customers across the Roanoke Valley, and it will soon serve one more massive customer, Google. After Google and Botetourt County agreed to use the Greenfield site to build a new data center, the county went to the Water Authority for a source to provide evaporative cooling for the center. Recent estimations from the Western Virginia Water Authority stated the data center will need about two million gallons of water from the Carvins Cove reservoir each day, and that will eventually become eight million gallons once the center is fully operational. “Having a new customer that is an order of magnitude bigger than the current largest customer that would expect to use as much as a city like Salem,” Ben Verschoor, a member of the Southwest Virginia Data Center Transparency Alliance, said. “That’s something that is easily understandable, and that concerns everybody.” The Water Authority said the data center’s introduction won’t impact any operations with other customers, and claimed Carvins Cove is not a permanent water source for it, with or without Google. The two sides will work together on finding an additional water source. “We’re currently on the state-mandated long-range water supply plan, which is due in 2029,” Sarah Baumgardner, the public relations director for the Western Virginia Water Authority, said. “We are working with independent engineering consultant firms that we’ve hired specifically looking at what we need in the future to serve Google, and those are plans that are currently being developed.” Baumgardner said the Water Authority did not initially release any information on water usage because of a nondisclosure agreement between the two sides. “In this case, Google felt that the volume of water that they used was proprietary information,” Baumgardner said. “Because another data center developer could look at that and say, ‘We know what Google’s planning on doing, and that will actually help our businesses to know what Google is doing.'” People like Verschoor are concerned that it took a court case brought by the Roanoke Rambler for the Water Authority to finally share that information. “The water authority is serving the public and is a public good,” Verchoor said. “The well-being of a trillion-dollar company should not be something they concern themselves with.” Western Virginia Water Authority invites folks to an Open House at Green Ridge Recreation Center on March 10th from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. to learn more about its operations.
