Cape Town, South Africa Rejoices In Flash Floods; U.S., Not So Much

Reservoirs near Cape Town, South Africa are beginning to refill with
recent heavy rains, meaning a water crisis is at least temporarily averted.

For the third time this month, a major cold front smasing  into the area around Cape Town, South Africa, promising heavy rain and gusty winds.

Sounds miserable, especially after a rather wet and gloomy May, but a lot of people in and around Cape Town are delighted with the stormy weather.

CAPE TOWN RELIEF

When last we left Cape Town in this here blog thingy, the major city in South Africa was about to run out of water.

Sometime this spring, (which is autumn in the southern hemisphere, where Cape Town is) the city of about 3.7 million would run out of water due to a long, punishing drought. The plan was to haul in water from elsewhere, and give everyone a measly 25 liters per person every day at distribution sites, which is logistically very tricky. And 25 liters isn't really much water for a person's needs.

Thank goodness the rains came. Cape Town is by no means out of the woods, but reservoirs have partly refilled with the recent rains. And more precipitation is forecast this week. Again, it won't solve all the problems there, but it's a good start. Disaster has been averted for now.

Some of the storms have been heavy enough to produce some flash flooding in and are Cape Town this month. But given the apocalyptic warnings of no water this year, it seems people there are accepting the local bouts of high water on city streets.

UNITED STATES FLASH FLOODS

As usual back here in the United States, summer storms have created some pretty nasty flash floods in the past couple of days. Ground zero so far seems to be northern Minnesota, parts of Wisconsin and pieces of northwestern Michigan.

Two to 12 inches of rain fell in much of northern Wisconsin since yesterday, and flash flooding was widespread. Major highways in the region are washed out, says Minnesota Public Radio, and flash flood emergencies were in effect this morning.

Highway 23 in Minnesota was washed away by flash flooding last night. 

Thing are still ominous out there today. As of early afternoon, the flash flood region in Minnesota and Wisconsin was under a tornado watch. The storms that could cause those tornadoes will also likely unleash more heavy rain, so more flooding is still a big risk.

VERMONT STORMS?

Monday could be an interesting day in parts of Vermont with the risk of strong storms, and despite the recent very dry conditions, the slight possibility of flash floods exists around here, too.

You might have noticed this Sunday afternoon it's gotten pretty damn hot, with temperatures well into the 80s in many spots in Vermont by 1 p.m. The humidity isn't too bad -- yet.

But the humidity will dramatically increase later today and tonight, and as I mentioned yesterday, water in the atmosphere will be at near record highs across Vermont Monday.

Meanwhile, a cold front is sagging south from Canada. Before it arrives, Monday will become a miserable day, with afternoon temperatures approaching 90. That'll be combined with unbearable humidity levels.

The humidity and the approaching cold front will trigger plenty of afternoon and evening thunderstorms. A few could be severe. The biggest threat is from local microbursts. Individual microbursts rarely affect an area more than a couple miles in circumference, but they are very dangerous. 

They come when strong updrafts in a thunderstorm keep lots and lots of rain and hail suspended in the atmosphere. Then the thunderstorm loses the updraft and all that rain and hail comes crashing down to Earth in a giant gust of wind, blinding rain and hail. Microbursts can cause lots of damage, because the winds are so strong and the incredible amount of rain that can accompany them sometimes create flash floods.

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma currently has all of Vermont in a slight risk zone for severe storms on Monday.

Forecasters also have us in a slight risk zone for flash flooding. As noted, it has been dry, so it would take lots of rain to cause a flash flood. There's no chance that there will be widespread flooding in Vermont with the expected downpours on Monday. There is a big however, however.

If a few torrential storms go over the same area, a couple local towns could get some dangerous flash floods along small streams, creeks, ditches and what not.

As a result, NOAA has northern New England and northern New York, including all of Vermont in a slight risk zone for flash flooding on Monday. 

We'll have updates to this on Monday morning.

Cape Town, South Africa - A Huge City - Is About To Run Out Of Water

Cape Town, South Africa is about to run out of water. It
would be the first major worldwide city to do so.

I'm super worried now about my very close friends Denis and Michael, who live in Cape Town, South Africa.  

That's because the city of roughly 3.7 million people is about to completely run out of water. That's right: They're facing an immediate prospect of  no water for drinking, cooking, bathing, fire protection, you name it.

Right now, "Zero Day" the day the city runs completely dry, is predicted to be April 12 - recently moved up from April 21.

That means no water from faucets, no fire protection to speak of. People will have to go to emergency tanks to get a pittance of water.

According to Business Insider:

"If that happens, the only way Capetonians will be allowed to get water from the city will be through a pre-industrial style network of 200 water distribution points. Thousands of people will line p at those taps around the city to collect their allotted 25 liters of water (per person) each day, then haul it home to shower, clean, flush, and do everything else that requires fresh H2O.

'I personally doubt whether it is possible for the city the size of Cape Town to distribute sufficient water to its residents, using its own resources, one the the undergroud water pipe network has been shut down,' Western Cape Premier Helen Zille wrote Monday in the Daily Maverick."

Consider also the logistics of having people go to these water allocation sits, and how, say, a family of four would need to lug 100 liters of water home. (A hundred liters of water weights 220.46 pounds, plus the weight of the container it's in.)

The Daily Maverick outlines the scenario:

"If every family sends one person to fetch their water allocation, about 5,000 people will congregate at each (water collection station) every day. That creates a logistical nightmare of its own. In addition, it will be impossible for individuals to carry, by hand, 100 liters of water allocated for a family of four every day. So provision will have to be made for transport. The City  has not yet given details of how traffic will be managed."

Several factors - some weather and climate related, some not - has led Cape Town to this crisis. The city with its Mediterranean climate depends upon winter rains, when they normally get three or four inches of rain per month in June, July and August.

The winter rains have failed Cape Town in recent years. On top of that, there's been a long term downward trend in winter rain amounts in this area, likely due to climate change.  Also, the long term trend in Cape Town has been in favor of rising temperatures, also a climate change symptom. Hotter weather increases evaporation and demand for water, which doesn't help Cape Town at all.

As far as I know, this would be the first time a major world city has run out of water. (Sao Paulo, Brazil came close in 2015.)

It's late summer in Cape Town now - the dry season. It won't rain anytime soon. Normally it starts to rain in May or so as South Africa enters winter, but it's anyone's guess whether this winter will be dry or wet.

They're trying to save water in Cape Town, but so far, it's not enough.

Of course, if Day Zero arrives and Cape Town runs out of water, you have to worry about civil unrest. According to Business Insider:

"Premier Zille has asked President Jacob Zuma top declare a national disaster for the city, since Cape Town may need more police and military personnel if Day Zero arrives to 'defend storage facilities' ad deal with disease outbreaks as sanitation worsens. She also said officials hope to store some emergency water at military bases 'for safety'

Cape Town officials say efforts to get people to cut back on their water usage haven't been working. The city has been urging every resident to consume less than 50 liters of municipal water a day, and to collect what they use when showering and han washing and re-use the 'grey water' to flush toilets and water plants."

So Cape Town really is careering toward a disaster.

I can imagine the staggering economic effects this would have on Cape Town, and to a just slightly lesser extent the whole of South Africa.

Cape Town is South Africa's second largest city so imagine how commerce would grind to a halt with no water. Factories can't run. Offices would be crippled. And people would waste so much time standing in line for water that they wouldn't have time to work.

Cape Town is also a premier tourist destination. It's a beautiful coastal city with a wonderful climate. (Except for the obvious fact that the winter rains seems to have stopped.)

The Daily Maverick put the economic effects in this perspective:

"The province's economy is supported by two major water intensive sectors: touristm and agriculture.  Between them, they employ about 600,000 people who (at a conservative estimate of four persons per household) support almost three million people. One of our major priorities has been to keep them employed. The crisis associatd with large-scale job losses and hunger would greatly exacerbate the catastrophe of dry taps."

Weather and climate crises can also create unpredictable civil unrest.  Some studies suggest the devastating Syrian civil war, which pretty much destabilized the whole planet, had some of its roots in climate change. (There were obviously many other factors causing this as well.)

Farmers flocked to cities as unprecedented drought struck Syria, and that helped create unrest, which grew into that civil war.

There's already sign of gloom and panic in and around Cape Town. South Africa's national weather service can't promise the winter rains will come this year either.

Long range forecasts are tricky: Note that in California, few predicted the epic drought breaking rains last winter, and fewer still thought southern California would be so incredibly bone dry so far this winter.  Last year, the South African weather service said the area would have a wet winter during the June to August time frame in 2017. That surely didn't happen. 

Moreover, people who can afford it are already buying up industrial-size water jugs to store when what looks like the deep, inevitable water crisis hits.

Cape Town officials are frantically drilling more wells for groundwater and trying to rapidly build desalinization plants, but not many people think all these will be ready by the time the water runs out.

Also, some winter rains are almost inevitable in the next few months, so the period Cape Town is out of water might be relatively short lived. But if the winter rains are lame again, the water won't last long at all. They'll be in this situation again by late this year unless it really rains.

Of course, nobody knows where all this will lead. But to my good friends Denis and Michael in Cape Town, I hope the weather is "miserable"where you live this winter.  By miserable, of course I mean very, very rainy.

I'm Not The Only One Seeing Cool Clouds: See Cape Town, South Africa

Lenticularis clouds over Cape Town, South Africa last
Sunday. Photo by Liza Vaun Bezuidenhout, via Twitter.  

In a post in this here blog thingy yesterday, I went off on some beautiful clouds I photographed in Alburgh, Vermont.

Of course, beautiful clouds can happen anywhere, so it's always good to look up occasionally to see what's going on overhead.

Case in point: Cape Town, South Africa last Sunday.

Lenticularis clouds formed over the South African city. These clouds are fairly common, and most often form when winds fairly high up in the atmosphere are quite strong.

Clouds often form when air rises over a mountain, and moisture in the rising air condenses into a cloud, the the air drops down over the mountain or other obstruction, limiting the size of the cloud.

Sometimes the air going up and over the mountain continues in waves downstream, much like the waves you see downstream from a submerged rock in a fast moving river.

Another view of the lenticularis clouds over
Cape Town, South Africa. Photo by Kyle Mihof.  

Then you get these smooth, shaped lenticularis clouds. They're relatively common, but sometimes they're quite spectacular, looking at like UFOs or something.

Because these clouds are a visible reflection of a wave in the wind over a mountain, they don't move much. And the wind screaming through this clouds often sculpts them into smooth, rounded, layered shapes.

Lenticularis clouds are not dangerous, and are not a sign that scary, stormy weather is approaching. However, they are a sign for airplane pilots that the air is very turbulent.