than when the old town center was built and they have paved so much of it that all the extra rain can only run to where much less was already nearly flood stage. The storm drainage systems that were adequate in mid-last century are now overwhelmed by the excess runoff of a what now is an average storm. A truly heavy storm of this magnitude can only result in disastrous stream and river overflow and outright flood torrent at choke points like the lower part of main street.
I live in Hurricane country in north central North Carolina. Our climate is sub-tropical, which means that when it rains it rains a lot. Far too regularly we see now see very nearly the kind of downpour that drowned Ellicot City. Flash flood warnings go out frequently and nearly every time we have thunderstorms.
When I moved here 36 years ago we normally got hurricanes that would create this degree of rain over large areas, but they were seasonal and there was not as much pave-over as now exists. In 1980 NC had roughly 5.8 million people mostly concentrated near the major cities along the interstate. In 2016 it is said that more than 10.2 million live here. The rate of pavement increase where population concentrated in that time is staggering. This is not to discuss the amount of development on the fringes of urban areas which further reduces the available land surface which can absorb rainfall. So up stream and down stream less land can hold the water or slow the flow towards congested down stream and down slope areas. The result is we have more flooding during what is now average rainfall than we did 36 years ago. We also get much more rain than we did then too.
But still there are those who insist that the intensity of the rain and the frequency of heavy storms which initiate the flooding here have nothing to do with climate change. In fact our Governor and state legislature have passed several state laws insisting that climate change cannot be happening, nor be discussed by certain members of government, nor that the tides could rise in the predictable future.
I hear there are certain members of Congress, and a number of prominent GOP politicians, and even a Republican presidential candidate, who insist that Global warming and climate change, the source of this extremely heavy rain and concentrated storm pattern, are a hoax perpetrated by the liberal democrats. They assert this in defiance of over 100 years of weather research and records, not to mention evidence provided by 50 years of orbiting satellites showing temperature increases and atmospheric water vapor increase. It seems in fact that those Republicans cannot do basic science or math since they deny the continuing increases exist and cannot understand what happens when you add heat energy to the atmosphere. Simply put: when you over-fill the tea pot and then over heat it you get more hot water and steam than you planned on. Rather an odd misunderstanding of basic physics by a group self-labeled as the TEA PARTY.
= new reply since forum marked as read