Warming U.S. Could See Extreme Rains Increase Fivefold [View all]
Source: Climate Central
December 5th, 2016
By Andrea Thompson
When the skies open up and deluge an area, the results can be catastrophic, with roads washed out and homes destroyed by the resulting flash floods. Such extreme downpours are already occurring more often across the U.S., but a new study finds that as global temperatures rise, storms could dump considerably more rain and skyrocket in frequency.
A car lies submerged in the Tall Timbers subdivision after flooding near Shreveport, La., on March 9, 2016, caused by torrential rains
The study, detailed Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, suggests that storms that now occur about once a season now could happen five times a season by century’s end, a 400 percent increase.
And when such storms do occur, they could produce up to 70 percent more rain. That means that an intense thunderstorm that would today drop about 2 inches of rain would drop 3.5 inches in the future.
Such massive amounts of rain occurring more often could put significant strain on infrastructure that already struggles to deal with heavy rainfall, as seen across the country this year in places from Louisiana to West Virginia.
Read more: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/us-could-see-increase-in-extreme-rains-20935
And it can't be prayed away.
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