53 now confirmed dead in Hawaii......

[a kennedy]

[Marthe48]

1. Horrible news

so sad to hear

[LiberaBlueDem]

19. Winds kicked up after dark

Highest gust was 82mph. That's strong enough to topple trees and when falling will take down hot power lines.

Sparks then happen and the drought had vegetation ready to burn and so that did start fires.

Many people were asleep and had no warning of the many fires beginning. The strong winds made the fires grow very quickly and made the fires spread rapidly.

[LoisB]

2. Such devastation. My heart goes out to these people.

[MaryMagdaline]

3. Oh my God. Horrendous

[chowder66]

4. Absolutely devastating.

[Retrograde]

5. OMG

and I fear the toll will continue to go up.

[a kennedy]

6. Other disasters have been bad as well, but Hawaii's destruction has just killed me......

and I really don’t know why.

[malaise]

7. What a horrible way to die

Horrific

[lpbk2713]

8. Those poor folks went through hell on earth.

Most of the Lahaina survivors have nothing left.

[BigmanPigman]

9. No place is going to escape the damage from Climate Change

"As of May 23, none of Maui was unusually dry; by the following week it was more than half abnormally dry. By June 13 it was two-thirds either abnormally dry or in moderate drought. And this week about 83% of the island is either abnormally dry or in moderate or severe drought, according to the U.S. drought monitor."

"Flash drought, invasive grasses, winds, hurricane and climate change fuel Maui’s devastating fires"

“The problem is at such a large scale, 26% of our state is now invaded by these grasses,” she said Thursday. “The landscape that has been invaded is steep, rocky and challenging to access. It’s a really hard landscape. You can’t just go with a lawn mower.”

"Hawaii went from lush to bone dry and thus more fire-prone in a matter of just a few weeks — a key factor in a dangerous mix of conditions appear to have combined to make the wildfires blazing a path of destruction in Hawaii particularly damaging."

https://apnews.com/article/hawaii-wildfires-climate-change-92c0930be7c28ec9ac71392a83c87582

[onecaliberal]

10. :

[DarthDem]

11. Oh, How Heartbreakingly Awful

I am so sad about this death and suffering.

[wendyb-NC]

12. I have no words for such a loss

[MissB]

13. .

Incredibly sad.

[bronxiteforever]

14. ...

[niyad]

15. Heartbreaking.

[pazzyanne]

16. ...

[tornado34jh]

17. El Nino

When El Nino is around, Hawaii and Australia tend to be quite dry, because it causes a change in the position of the high pressure in the Central Pacific. Conversely, it tends to bring wetter conditions in South America, especially in Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia. It causes changes in the currents, with the worst causing a reversal of the trade winds, so instead of going east to west like it normally does, it reverses and goes from west to east, and that pushes the warm water to South America. But Hawaii has lately been struggling to stay within normal rainfall over the last few years, even during the opposite phase, La Nina. It's not limited to Hawaii. Much of South America and parts of Europe are struggling to deal with that, the former of which is in their winter, but I read somewhere that parts of Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil are getting record high temperatures. Here in Florida, I read some of the ocean temperatures were in the upper 90s to near 100 in the Florida Keys. If a hurricane were to pass that area, it could rapidly intensify. In fact, while traditionally the hurricane season starts in June, lately it has been .starting earlier over the last 10 years. The last time a year did not have either an El Nino or a La Nina for at least part of the year was 2013 Yes, climate change is definitely happening, but the big question is, what is the world going to do about it? Obviously the answer would be to reduce dependence on oil, coal, and gas, but it's not that simple. Not every country has the infrastructure to build renewable sources or people that know how to do it, especially in places like Africa, Middle East, India, etc. So we probably will likely see this sort of thing happen more frequently. Another thing that likely will increase? Tropical diseases. With warmer temperatures, things that cause diseases (e.g. ticks, mosquitoes) will expand their range. I just don't see how we can reverse this because it takes anywhere between 300-1000 years for the atmosphere to remove the excess CO2. To put that into perspective, that would take the equivalent of between 1-4 orbits of Pluto (each taking 248 years) for it to decrease, and that's if we cut emission to zero suddenly. I think humanity is not prepared for what is about to happen.

[Savaspas]

22. Great summary

Thanks.

[tornado34jh]

25. We're feeling the effects here in Florida

Despite what anyone here in Florida thinks about climate change, when I first moved here in 2015, we used to maybe get a Heat Advisory maybe a couple of times per summer. Just in this summer alone, we had many Heat Advisories per month, and yesterday here in Lakeland, we had an Excessive Heat Warning. We had heat indexes of 115. I have not seen that since 2012, and that was I lived in Northern Virginia. The other thing I have noticed is that the rainy season has been struggling to break even and the thunderstorms have been lacking bite. It's not been as rainy as it used to be. Puerto Rico had Excessive Heat Warnings a few months ago. So there is definitely changes going on in the climate.

[Initech]

24. Mother Nature can be quite the cruel mistress.

[Hieronymus Phact]

18. Biden declared it a disaster today

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Approves Hawaii Disaster Declaration

[milestogo]

20. ...

[dlk]

21. An unbearable loss

My heart goes out to everyone there.

[Initech]

23. Holy fuck.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

26. ..

[Behind the Aegis]

27. this is so sad and disturbing