A flash flood enters a newly renovated hospital lobby in Kearney NE; this video was released by the hospital and has been posted to YouTube a bunch of times. The Good Samaritan Hospital Facebook post says:
While our recovery efforts from the flash flooding early Saturday morning continue on a nearly round-the-clock basis, our services for patients have all been been restored. We’re overwhelmingly grateful to each person and entity who has assisted us in this effort.
It’s hard to put into words exactly what Saturday’s conditions were like and just how seriously our facility was impacted. And to say that we’re emotional about the whole situation is a bit of an understatement. This security camera footage is just a glimpse into the series of events that unfolded Saturday. Again, we’re so relieved that no patients, staff or physicians were injured in this incident.
Enormous rain events have been widespread across the quadrant of the US north and east of Nebraska in the subsequent recent few days, including expensive disasters in Detroit, Baltimore and Long Island. This fits the pattern of increased extreme rainfall in the north central and northeastern states and central Canada.
UPDATE: Islip New York has set a single-day site precipitation record for the state of 13.27 inches, comfortably eclipsing the previous record of 11.6 inches set two years ago at Tannersville during TS Irene. Records have to be set sometime, but this is the same system that caused spectacular floods across numerous states, and that has to be unusual.
Morano is in full denial, leading with some crufty old Roger Pielke stuff from 2011.
I think they need to fire their engineering architects.
Lets see, in some places 500 year floods are happening twice a year... time to type out a new checklist, folks.
Here in Seattle, we are putting in a traffic tunnel right next to the waterfront. The underground roadway runs below sea level for just a short distance --- the opening to traffic was set at 2 feet above the high tide mark. After being reminded the tunnel is supposed to last 100 years, the project engineers say they revised the opening to 6 feet above sea level - to be set with concrete barriers.
Perhaps all new structure should have cameras installed.
Wunderground's weather historian Chris Burt provides more detailed information on these flood events (indeed, he's a good archive for the continuing growth in these events).
Extreme precipitation events, bigger and smaller, are definitely on the rise.
By the way, crufty is a nifty word.