The Flooding Continues....

From @8NewsNow on Twitter, flooding
on a Nevada Interstate Monday.  

The other day, I wrote about the flood woes in Phoenix on Monday, with its wettest day on record.

Since then, the flash flooding in different parts of the nation has continued on and on,  hitting the Tidewater area of southeastern Virginia and eastern North Carolina, then toward evening in southern Nevada, near Las Vegas.

In Virginia and North Carolina, many areas received 9 to as much as 12 inches of rain in a day. In Nevada, several inches of rain flooded, closed and destroyed parts of Interstate 15.

A post-script on the Phoenix flood. It turned out they got 3.29 inches of rain Monday, beating the calendar day record of 2.91 inches set in 1933. (It hadn't stopped raining when I last reported the Phoneix flood, so I had 2.96 inches.

This wasn't, however, a 24-hour record for Phoenix. That was 4.98" on July 1-2, 1911.

But I'm nitpicking, of course. The flooding, by any measure, in Phoenix and other areas, including Nevada, was breathtaking.

The Southwest might have a repeat next week, as a similar weather pattern, when a forecasted hurricane off Baha California could spread more deep tropical moisture into the Southwest.

Here's the scene on Interstate 15 on Monday between Las Vegas and Mesquite, Nevada. Scary. (Scroll down for more flood news below the video):

 

Overnight, it was the Midwest's turn.

Kirksville, Missouri picked up 8.62 inches of rain in just a few hours early today. Television Station Fox 4 in Kansas City says several motorists had to be rescued from flooded Interstate 29 last night. Some of the people rescued had been clinging to their car roofs for an hour.

It seems weather historian Christopher Burt said it best in his blog yesterday:

"It seems this has been a summer of remarkable extreme precipitation events across the U.S.

Indeed!

Climate Progress weighed in this week about the frequent floods.   They note climate change makes flooding like we've seen in so many different areas of the world more likely. They cite the 2014 National Climate Assessment:

"Warmer air can contain more water vapor than cooler air. Global analyses show that the amount of water vapor in the atmospher has in fact increased due to human caused warming.

This extra moisture is available to storm systems, resulting in heavier rainfalls. Climate change also alters characteristics of the atmosphere that affect weather patterns and storms."

Some climatologists are also looking into the possibility that climate change is causing weather patterns to become "stuck" causing prolonged storminess and downpours in some areas, while other areas experience drought.

As for the near future, flood watches are in effect today across parts of Indiana and Illinois because of the risk of torrential thunderstorms. Flood watches are also up for northern Wisconsin and the Upper Pennisula of Michigan

One last flood video: There was another flash flood, this time in Turkey. In the incredible video below, a woman is washed along in a torrent racing down a city street. Watch what happens: