Extreme Weather

From CMRA: Climate Mapping for Resilience and Adaptation (CMRA) integrates information from across the federal government to help people consider their local exposure to climate-related hazards. People working in community organizations or for local, Tribal, state, or Federal governments can use the site to help them develop equitable climate resilience …

Lake Mead saw a slight uptick in August after hitting a new low again in July. The graph clearly shows that the wet season, if we can call it that, is roughly November through March. Unfortunately a good year doesn’t even get 20 feet dating back to 2012. Lake Mead …

The Bloomberg article The End of Snow Threatens to Upend 76 Million American Lives by Baker et. el. (8/3/2022) has some excellent graphs, such as the one copied here, and overview of the water issues in the west. The West’s mountain snowpacks have shrunk, on average, 23% between 1955 and 2022. By …

Lake Mead water levels continue to drop. At the end of May it was down to 1047.69 feet, which is a 13.8 foot drop since my post on April 25 with the end of March height. The west continues in drought according to the Drought Monitor. What about electricity generation? …

The climate.gov article Can we detect a change in Atlantic hurricanes today due to human-caused climate change? by Chris Landsea and Tom Knutson (5/11/2022) is a great example of the challenges in understanding complex systems. If all you want is the answer: Atlantic hurricanes display distinct busy and quiet periods:  Busy …

Most of the western half of the U.S. continues to have various levels of drought (see U.S. Drought Monitor) and Lake Mead has reached a new low. The graph here is from the data on the Lake Mead at Hoover Dam, End of Month Elevation (feet) page by the Bureau …

The NOAA Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters page keeps track of these events. During 2021, there were 20 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disaster events across the United States. The total cost from these events of 2021 was $145.0 billion and is the third most costly year on record, behind 2017 and 2005. The total costs …

About two months ago I had the post How low is Lake Mead?  The graph in the post was the yearly minimum end of month elevation. In this post we have a closer look at the end of month elevation since 2011. The last month in the data is July …

From the climate.gov article Western Drought 2021 Spotlight: Arizona by Tom Di Liberto (7/29/2021): Looking back even farther by using a drought indicator known as the Standardized Precipitation Index, the current drought in Arizona is also the worst on record back to the late 1800s. Going back even farther than …

The Bureau of Reclamation posts the end of month elevation for Lake Mead dating back to 1935. I created the graph of minimum yearly end of month elevation starting in 1940 since Hoover Dam was only created in 1935. Here is the R code to create the graph including importing …