#water flood

[reasonsforhope]

As relentless rains pounded LA, the city’s “sponge” infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of water—enough to sustain over 100,000 households for a year.

Earlier this month, the future fell on Los Angeles. A long band of moisture in the sky, known as an atmospheric river, dumped 9 inches of rain on the city over three days—over half of what the city typically gets in a year. It’s the kind of extreme rainfall that’ll get ever more extreme as the planet warms.

The city’s water managers, though, were ready and waiting. Like other urban areas around the world, in recent years LA has been transforming into a “sponge city,” replacing impermeable surfaces, like concrete, with permeable ones, like dirt and plants. It has also built out “spreading grounds,” where water accumulates and soaks into the earth.

With traditional dams and all that newfangled spongy infrastructure, between February 4 and 7 the metropolis captured 8.6 billion gallons of stormwater, enough to provide water to 106,000 households for a year. For the rainy season in total, LA has accumulated 14.7 billion gallons.

Long reliant on snowmelt and river water piped in from afar, LA is on a quest to produce as much water as it can locally. “There's going to be a lot more rain and a lot less snow, which is going to alter the way we capture snowmelt and the aqueduct water,” says Art Castro, manager of watershed management at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “Dams and spreading grounds are the workhorses of local stormwater capture for either flood protection or water supply.”

Centuries of urban-planning dogma dictates using gutters, sewers, and other infrastructure to funnel rainwater out of a metropolis as quickly as possible to prevent flooding. Given the increasingly catastrophic urban flooding seen around the world, though, that clearly isn’t working anymore, so now planners are finding clever ways to capture stormwater, treating it as an asset instead of a liability. “The problem of urban hydrology is caused by a thousand small cuts,” says Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley. “No one driveway or roof in and of itself causes massive alteration of the hydrologic cycle. But combine millions of them in one area and it does. Maybe we can solve that problem with a thousand Band-Aids.”

Or in this case, sponges. The trick to making a city more absorbent is to add more gardens and other green spaces that allow water to percolate into underlying aquifers—porous subterranean materials that can hold water—which a city can then draw from in times of need. Engineers are also greening up medians and roadside areas to soak up the water that’d normally rush off streets, into sewers, and eventually out to sea...

To exploit all that free water falling from the sky, the LADWP has carved out big patches of brown in the concrete jungle. Stormwater is piped into these spreading grounds and accumulates in dirt basins. That allows it to slowly soak into the underlying aquifer, which acts as a sort of natural underground tank that can hold 28 billion gallons of water.

During a storm, the city is also gathering water in dams, some of which it diverts into the spreading grounds. “After the storm comes by, and it's a bright sunny day, you’ll still see water being released into a channel and diverted into the spreading grounds,” says Castro. That way, water moves from a reservoir where it’s exposed to sunlight and evaporation, into an aquifer where it’s banked safely underground.

On a smaller scale, LADWP has been experimenting with turning parks into mini spreading grounds, diverting stormwater there to soak into subterranean cisterns or chambers. It’s also deploying green spaces along roadways, which have the additional benefit of mitigating flooding in a neighborhood: The less concrete and the more dirt and plants, the more the built environment can soak up stormwater like the actual environment naturally does.

As an added benefit, deploying more of these green spaces, along with urban gardens, improves the mental health of residents. Plants here also “sweat,” cooling the area and beating back the urban heat island effect—the tendency for concrete to absorb solar energy and slowly release it at night. By reducing summer temperatures, you improve the physical health of residents. “The more trees, the more shade, the less heat island effect,” says Castro. “Sometimes when it’s 90 degrees in the middle of summer, it could get up to 110 underneath a bus stop.”

LA’s far from alone in going spongy. Pittsburgh is also deploying more rain gardens, and where they absolutely must have a hard surface—sidewalks, parking lots, etc.—they’re using special concrete bricks that allow water to seep through. And a growing number of municipalities are scrutinizing properties and charging owners fees if they have excessive impermeable surfaces like pavement, thus incentivizing the switch to permeable surfaces like plots of native plants or urban gardens for producing more food locally.

So the old way of stormwater management isn’t just increasingly dangerous and ineffective as the planet warms and storms get more intense—it stands in the way of a more beautiful, less sweltering, more sustainable urban landscape. LA, of all places, is showing the world there’s a better way.

-via Wired, February 19, 2024

[voiceuppakistan]

India: More than a dozen people died in two days due to heavy rain

[opendirectories]

[charlietheepicwriter7]

S̶̤̋̉t̸o̶̝̍r̵̛͠m̸̠͌͝

Look, I know I promised a continuation of "Get in the Water," but I had this idea and just had to write it, okay? So this is the non-canon sequel, the canon one is still in progress.

They escaped. Batman dragged Damian's frozen body away from the Lazarus Pit and through the tunnels as Danyal's screams-sobs-wails echoed behind them. Eventually the sound ebbed away and they emerged to the surface.

A debrief was demanded from everyone; even Todd was in the Cave. Damian trembled, his only sign of distress, his mind stuck on Danyal's face, his brother's voice rebounding around his head.

Father's debrief had been rough. Damian could barely explain what happened, why he was drawn to the waters, why Danyal wanted to drown him. He'd only explained the Danyal was someone he'd killed while with the League, and Father was the only one to doubt his explanation.

Damian took the first opportunity to escape to the showers. Stripping down, Damian turned the faucet and the bathroom lit up bright green.

He flinched away, and when he opened his eyes, the water was just water. A stone sunk into his stomach.

The next day, while Father was consulting with Justice League Dark, Grayson and Drake returned to the caves for their own investigation of the Pits. And while they found the cavern--found by tracking the batarang Father threw--it was desert dry. There was no sign of Lazarus Water, nor did it look like it had ever been there.

That night, as Damian was washing his face before bed, he filled the sink basin with water. He turned away for one second, but when he looked back, he almost dipped his face under the green slime oozing out the spout. He bolted, and when he returned with a startled Father, the water had returned to normal.

Grayson insisted on taking him out for lunch the following day, citing that Damian needed a "break." Damian was furious, but allowed it; Justice League Dark was visiting the cave to discuss the... incident, and Damian wanted to interrogate them. He... he needed to know if that was really Danyal or not. If his sweet brother could have been twisted after his murder into that monster, that Siren crooning at him to choose to die.

He'd never contemplated the fate of his brother's immortal soul before. Had he done this to him? Could Damian had avoided this by killing him honorably, instead of cowardly poisoning Danyal so he'd pass away in his sleep?

Damian allowed Grayson order for him. He wasn't hungry. The clouds above swirled ominously as he followed Grayson to a nearby awning with a picnic bench underneath.

Grayson took a bite of his gyro. "So? How have you been coping these past few days?"

"I'm not an invalid, Grayson," Damian hissed, glaring. "I'm fine."

A frozen breath brushed across his ear. "Ĺ̶̥̲̪̀̐ỉ̷̢̜̚a̴̧͖͛r̶̺̫̾͗̃͜,̶͕̐" Danyal whispered in his ear.

Grayson didn't notice or hear Danyal's voice. "You see, I don't believe you. One of your dead League friends is supernaturally gunning for you, Dami; it's normal to feel out of sorts."

Damian scoffed. "Nothing about this situation is normal."

He looked down at his food and sighed. "Yeah, that's for sure. I'm sorry, Damian. I wish this wasn't happening to you."

"And I wish the creature would just attack already," Damian griped. "It's the waiting that will kill me, not that fake."

Like someone had been listening, the sky opened up and it rained green throughout Gotham.

[temeyes]

redrew an [old Ghost sketch] (cuz im wearing the same sweater rn lol!!)

[zegalba]

Aquatic Amanita Muscaria patch that was flooded by heavy rain Photography: Sierra Dawn

[sarathrwizard]

We could use a LifeSaver (Rottmnt comic)

This is a one off comic I made for a challenge! The story theme for the challenge was 'Escaping a Flood'.

So I made this short comic last summer, and just remembered I still had it in my files! 😅

Hope you enjoy/enjoyed this comic with no reasoning to where they are, how they got there, or why any of this is happening.

Action flick, ya know?

[389]

[tomaturtles]

Got inspired by this and had to

[visionsofnightfall]

aftermath of the storm

instagram.

[reasonsforhope]

Legit though, we should start turning ecosystem restoration and work to make our world more tolerant to the effects of climate change into annual holidays and festivals

Like how just about every culture used to have festivals to celebrate the beginning of the harvest or its end, or the beginning of planting, or how whole communities used to host barn raisings and quilting bees - everyone coming together at once to turn the work of months or years into the work of a few days

Humble suggestions for festival types:

Goat festival

Besides controlled burns (which you can't do if there's too much dead brush), the fastest, most effective, and most cost-efficient way to clear brush before fire season - esp really heavy dead brush - is to just. Put a bunch of goats on your land for a few days!

Remember that Shark Tank competitor who wanted to start a goat rental company, and everyone was like wtf? There was even a whole John Oliver bit making fun of the idea? Well THAT JUST PROVES THEY'RE FROM NICE WET PLACES, because goat rental companies are totally a thing, and they're great.

So like. Why don't we have a weekend where everyone with goats just takes those goats to the nearest land that needs a ton of clearing? Public officials could put up maps of where on public lands grazing is needed, and where it definitely shouldn't happen. Farmers and people/groups with a lot of acres that need clearing can post Goat Requests.

Little kids can make goat-themed crafts and give the goats lots of pets or treats at the end of the day for doing such a good job. Volunteers can help wrangle things so goats don't get where they're not supposed to (and everyone fences off land nowadays anyway, mostly). And the goats, of course, would be in fucking banquet paradise.

Planting Festival and Harvest Festival

Why mess with success??? Bring these back where they've disappeared!!! Time to swarm the community gardens and help everyone near you with a farm make sure that all of their seeds are sown and none of the food goes to waste in the fields, decaying and unpicked.

And then set up distribution parts of the festival so all the extra food gets where it needs to be! Boxes of free lemons in front of your house because you have 80 goddamned lemons are great, but you know what else would be great? An organized effort to take that shit to food pantries (which SUPER rarely get fresh produce, because they can't hold anything perishable for long at all) and community/farmer's markets

Rain Capture Festival

The "water year" - how we track annual rainfall and precipitation - is offset from the regular calendar year because, like, that's just when water cycles through the ecosystems (e.g. meltwater). At least in the US, the water year is October 1st through September 30th of the next year, because October 1st is around when all the snowmelt from last year is gone, and a new cycle is starting as rain begins to fall again in earnest.

So why don't we all have a big barn raising equivalent every September to build rain capture infrastructure?

Team up with some neighbors to turn one of those little grass strips on the sidewalk into a rain-garden with fall-planting plants. Go down to your local church and help them install some gutters and rain barrels. Help deculvert rivers so they run through the dirt again, and make sure all the storm drains in your neighborhood are nice and clear.

Even better, all of this - ESPECIALLY the rain gardens - will also help a ton with flood control!

I'm so serious about how cool this could be, yall.

And people who can't or don't want to do physical stuff for any of these festivals could volunteer to watch children or cook food for the festival or whatever else might need to be done!

Parties afterward to celebrate all the good work done! Community building and direct local improvements to help protect ourselves from climate change!

The possibilities are literally endless, so not to sound like an influencer or some shit, but please DO comment or reply or put it in the notes if you have thoughts, esp on other things we could hold festivals like this for.

Canning festivals. "Dig your elderly neighbors out of the snow" festivals. Endangered species nesting count festival. Plant fruit trees on public land and parks festival. All of the things that I don't know anywhere near enough to think of. Especially in more niche or extreme ecosystems, there are so many possibilities that could do a lot of good

[larabar]

exploring!

[worldsewage]

Splatoon Au

[notyoujamie]

You'd go to hell, if she asked. And she would!

[yuesya]

The chains dissolve.

But the bird has no time to dwell upon its sudden freedom from the water-chains that the Lord of the Vortex had bound it and its new master with. Above them, the Lord of the Vortex thrashes and roars. The deafening sound rings in the bird’s ears, rattling its bones and turning its blood into ice.

Even so, the bird does not allow itself to remain still. It does not require a verbalized directive to automatically dive towards its new master, reflexively shielding them from the torrential wave of Hydro that sweeps over them both. The young god’s Anemo energy flickers dangerously as it wanes, and the bird acts to shield its master.

In the next moment, both of them are drenched in the divine serpent’s blood, buried beneath the heavy outpouring of red-violet blood cascading down from the raw, glistening wound on the Lord of the Vortex’s open neck.

… Beheaded.

The new master had just beheaded Osial, the Lord of the Vortex. A feat that no other god had accomplished before her. The young god had cut off one of the divine serpent’s six heads with nothing more than a mundane mortal blade, even, and that was–

Unthinkable, in many ways, for many reasons. And yet it was undeniable; the bird has just witnessed this with its very own eyes, and there is no refuting the current reality.

Around them, Hydro energy rages relentlessly, spurred on by the pain and fury of the Lord of the Vortex.

… The Hydro god’s decapitated head had dissolved the moment it touched the ground. And in the very same instant the bird had felt a foreboding chill–

For the Lord of the Vortex’s head had brought forth upon the surface world the dreadful currents of the deep. 

The results of such a thing are… disastrous, catastrophic. Rolling hills and grassy earth disappear rapidly beneath churning waves that rise ever higher with each passing moment of the Lord of the Vortex’s unbridled wrath, landmarks sinking entirely under the growing flood. 

The bird does not know the fate of the humans who had escaped the catastrophe of battling gods earlier, but… looking at this now, there is no doubt that the living creatures of this land have been pulled down into a watery grave.

… And above them, there is still Hydro-infused rain thundering down from the heavens.

…

The unnatural flood and rain… all of it is being amplified by the Hydro god’s blood, exacerbated by the corrupted divine essence that continuously pours into their surroundings even now.

It is all the bird can do to maintain a pitiful Anemo barrier, desperately shielding its new master behind it. Because even though the master had beheaded one of the Lord of the Vortex’s six heads, they had not raised any barrier to protect themselves from the aftermath –and there is precious little Anemo energy that the bird, a creature of Anemo itself, can sense from the young god.

The master cannot fall here.

The bird does not know why this thought occurs to it, but nonetheless it realizes–

“Are you protecting me?”

It’s less a question and more of an observation that falls from the young god’s lips. But there’s nothing derisive in her words. Rather, if anything, it sounds as if she is almost… perplexed.

The bird doesn’t understand.

“Yes,” it responds to the god anyways.

“… Don’t do that.” A soft sigh. “You’re draining yourself of all your Anemo energy with this barrier, and it’s killing you. Stop it. It’s unnecessary.”

“But–”

“I’m not that easy to kill. And even if I die, then it simply means I wasn’t strong enough,” the god shakes her head. “So stop this already. I don’t need or want anyone to die for me.”

… What?

The bird blinks, uncomprehending and at a complete loss as to what its new master means. When it had been chained in service to the Mistress of Dreams, the god had been very clear that all its thralls only existed to serve and carry out her will. To bleed in her name and lay their corpses upon her altar in faithful reverence at her command, for she was their god–

“… I don’t understand,” the bird whispers. “Master–”

“I’m not your master,” the girl-god tells him.

The bird… doesn’t understand.

“You don’t understand, do you?” the young god tilts her head. “Well. I don’t understand you, either. Why are you even still here?”

The bird is a weapon and a tool that belongs to its master. Where else would it go?

I’m not your master.

But–

“You should run, before it’s too late.” The young god turns her gaze upwards, towards where the howling bestial form of a monstrous serpent can be seen. Above the watery depths that they have been buried under, there is a distorted dark mirage floating above the crushing waves. The Lord of the Vortex. “The fight isn’t over yet. Not until I’ve cut off all five of the sea snake’s remaining heads.”

The bird stares at its god, who speaks these startling words so serenely. As if she is still in any shape to continue fighting, when even the bird can already sense that there is only a fragment of Anemo energy remaining in her body–

But she is still holding her sword.

… A simple, undecorated sword. One of mortal steel, yet somehow has, through an unknown turn of fate, come to be wielded in the hands of a fierce god.

The white-haired god steps forward, head lifted upwards, slashing high–

And following the line of her sword, the churning waves pressing down on them part instantly, forming a path that points directly to the Lord of the Vortex.

“Foolhardy little god. You dare challenge Osial of the Deep, upon the very waters that I command?”

The rising flood and relentless rain threatens to drown out the entire world around them. The bird can feel the way that its heart beats a panicked rhythm inside its chest, but–

“Your little rain means nothing to me,” the girl-god says, leveling her blade and preparing to strike. “Even like this, I am still a God of Storms.”