Floods

Hawaii’s rains will continue as long as the stream of moisture through the atmosphere continues to drag over the islands. Residents have been warned to stay away from “streams, rivers, drainage ditches and culverts.”

After already spending a year learning remotely during the pandemic, students and educators at the middle and high school in New Jersey went back to the same virtual pattern after the town was rocked by the remnants of Ida.

A growing body of research shows that storms are growing stronger faster, a trend that will challenge coastal cities’ ability to safely move residents out of danger zones — and climate change may be a factor.

The National Weather Service issued flood warnings in Whatcom and Skagit counties, as well as the Olympic Peninsula, all areas that recorded as much as 4.5 inches of rainfall between noon Saturday and noon Sunday.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee promised to use state and federal funds — including funds from President Biden's recent infrastructure bill — to ease the effects of climate change.

The proposed budget includes several resilience efforts that, when put together, show an approach where the state will try to help local governments better prepare themselves for future flooding.

County responders are comparing this flood event to the severe flooding of 2009, when both the Skagit and Samish rivers overflowed and caused damage to homes, farms and infrastructure, according to a news release from the county.

Power was out in the border town of Sumas and at scattered locations throughout Whatcom County as breezy winds and torrential rain from a Pineapple Express swept Western Washington on Monday, Nov. 15.

Communities along south Baltimore’s Middle Branch of the Patapsco River have long benefited from the waterfront but are now facing increasing risk of flooding and the negative effects of the warming climate.

The lawmakers say their goal is to ensure the program is sustainable financially, accountable to taxpayers and affordable to policyholders. The bill will place guardrails on FEMA's new Risk Rating 2.0. system.

A new radar system promises to improve weather predictions, providing additional warning time to prevent flooding and more accurate forecasts for heavy rainfall, down to a specific low-lying highway or neighborhood.

That money will pay for a checklist of items, including assessing erosion at the toe of the earthen dam caused by seepage, evaluating gaps in metal sheet piling, installing survey monuments and assessing underwater components.

For decades, taxpayers have been subsidizing flood insurance rates, but new premium calculations by FEMA will adjust rates to better reflect the true risk of flood-prone homes.

As Sunday night’s storm neared Norman, Okla., the Norman Police Department warned residents they’d need to take weather precautions, but that Norman has no public shelters. The storm dropped golf and tennis ball-sized hail on Norman.

The new plan "is correcting long standing inequities in the current pricing scheme ... Policy holders with lower value homes who have been paying more than they should will no longer bear the cost for property owners with higher value homes who have been paying less than they should."

After Hurricane Ike hit in 2008, pushing a 17-foot storm surge over Galveston Island and Bolivar Peninsula, causing $30 billion of damage and killing 43 people, there was a collective epiphany.

Miami is already experiencing such groundwater flooding. The Atlantic Ocean has risen enough that it routinely pushes subterranean water levels so they breach the land's surface in some neighborhoods there on a daily basis.

The National Weather Service in New Orleans says 2-4 inches of rain have fallen. Another 1.25-2.5 inches of rain is expected to fall in an hour in portions of the warned areas.