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There's a lake at the base of Death Valley.

Widespread areas of Los Angeles experienced flooding and heavy rainfall on Sunday as a winter storm moved through the area, breaking a 97-year-old record for rainfall in one day. Though the day started clear and bright, with a golden sunrise illuminating the skies, raindrops began falling by midday — and by nightfall, the drizzle had become a deluge. The Los Angeles Times reported: Damage reports piled up late Sunday as a slow-moving storm system steadily pummeled Southern California, and downtown L.A. broke a 97-year-old rainfall record. In Studio City, a debris flow sent mud and other objects flowing down the...

Forecasters in Los Angeles said Monday that “virtually all” of the city’s daily rainfall records have been broken as the storm Hilary, now a post-tropical cyclone, hit Southern California on Sunday, bringing historic rainfall, flooding and mudslides to the area. The National Weather Service (NWS) of Los Angeles said totals for Hilary have broken “virtually all rainfall daily records,” as of 3 a.m. Monday, according to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. The local NWS said 7.04 inches of rain fell in Lewis Ranch over a two-day period, while Lake Palmdale had 5.98 inches and the University of...

Provisional data from Met Éireann suggests last month was the wettest July on record in Ireland. Paul Moore, a climatologist with Met Éireann, said four times as much rain fell in Ireland in July compared to the same month last year. He said that more unsettled weather was on the way for August. According to a provisional report from the forecaster, Ireland had 217% of its long-term average rainfall in July 2023. The previous wettest July was recorded in 2009 and this was 202% of its long-term average. …

A quick study by two scientists calculates that climate change made Hurricane Ian 10% rainier than it would have been if there were no such thing as global warming. Climate change added at least 10% more rain to Hurricane Ian, a study prepared immediately after the storm shows. Thursday's research, which is not peer-reviewed, compared peak rainfall rates during the real storm to about 20 different computer scenarios of a model with Hurricane Ian's characteristics slamming into the Sunshine State in a world with no human-caused climate change. “The real storm was 10% wetter than the storm that might have...

The National Weather Service confirmed Wednesday that a record 64.58 inches of rain fell during Hurricane Harvey in Nederland near Beaumont during the storm’s five-day onslaught. The city’s record rainfall is the heaviest rainfall ever logged in the U.S. during a tropical storm, breaking Hawaii's 1950 record of 52 inches. The record was captured near Jack Brooks Regional Airport. Nederland is in Jefferson County — a county east of Houston where four people died, more than 74,000 homes were impacted and at least $73 million in damages to public property occurred. Just a little more than a month since Harvey...

The blizzard in Hawaii and high levels of precipitation in California contrast sharply with the low snow levels across much of the rest of the country in 2017. It's been a strange year for weather so far, and a recent series of events has confounded expectations. On Tuesday and Wednesday, a blizzard hit mountaintops on Hawaii's Big Island. Most of the snow fell overnight, blanketing the summit of Mauna Kea with eight inches and making the road to the summit impassable. In California, meanwhile, record levels of rain and snow look set to lift much of the state out of...

Key Largo (United States) (AFP) - Extreme high tides have turned streets into canal-like swamps in the Florida Keys, with armies of mosquitoes and the stench of stagnating water filling the air, and residents worried rising sea levels will put a damper on property values in the island chain.On Key Largo, a tropical isle famous for snorkeling and fishing, the floods began in late September.While people expected high tides due to the season and the influence of a super moon, they were taken by surprise when a handful of streets in the lowest-lying neighborhoods stayed inundated for nearly a month...

all traffic on both sides of the highway was closed. The westbound side of the freeway remained intact, but officers had stopped traffic while they tested its stability. A pair of small nearby highways that could possibly serve as detours were also closed. ... The showers forced the Los Angeles Angels' first rainout in 20 years and the San Diego Padres' first rainout since 2006. Saturday's rainfall broke records in at least 11 locations, including five places that had the most rain ever recorded on any day in July, Sirard said. July is typically the driest month of the year...

Across the edges of the Indian Ocean, the amount of rainfall differs greatly. If it rains particularly hard in the Sumatran rain forest, the already arid region of East Africa is onset with drought. Researchers from the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), the California Institute of Technology, the Univerity of Southern California and the University of Bremen found that this cyclic, bipolar climate phenomenon has likely been around for 10,000 years. The pilot study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), sheds light on the climate system of a region whose rainfall patterns have a...

Becky Oskin May 22, 2014, 12:56 PM The forecast for a drought-busting El Niño this winter has Californians as giddy as kids at Christmas. An El Niño is the warm phase of a natural Pacific Ocean climate cycle driven by sea surface temperatures. The redistribution of hotter versus colder surface water triggers changes in atmospheric circulation that influences rainfall and storm patterns around the world. Warm water is piling up in the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean right now, similar to the pattern that preceded the strong 1997-1998 El Niño, when California was drenched by a series of winter storms. The...

Sunday, Oct. 23, 2011 Science ministry reverses government claims after on-site survey finds high amouts of cesium Kashiwa hot spot linked to Fukushima Kyodo, Staff report CHIBA — The science ministry said Sunday the high radiation detected on city-owned land in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, is emanating from cesium that was probably ejected by the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant, contradicting earlier government claims. When the Kashiwa Municipal Government first received a report about an airborne radiation reading of 57.7 microsieverts per hour at the site, it said the radiation was unlikely to be related to the Fukushima disaster because...

Residents near Fukushima mountains face nuclear recontamination every rainfall As the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Plant drags on, worries are growing particularly among Fukushima Prefecture residents over drawn-out and in some cases apparently futile nuclear decontamination operations. The unease is especially strong in areas in and around mountains that must be repeatedly decontaminated, as every rainfall brings a new batch of radioactive substance-contaminated leaves and soil washing down from the hills. Since some 70 percent of Fukushima Prefecture is mountainous, such instances of regular recontamination could occur over a broad area, while the same effect has also...

Enlarge ImageLinked? Drought patterns across Australia (orange) seem to closely follow solar magnetic cycle activity. Credit: Robert Baker (Geographical Research 46 (4): 396) An Australian researcher has linked the sun's magnetic activity to rainfall patterns in his country over the past century. The connection is solid enough that meteorologists might be able to use it to make better long-term weather predictions. But experts remain cautious about the wider implications of the findings. Scientists have long known that the sun plays a key role in Earth's weather patterns. For example, the number of sunspots on its surface--dark zones of intense...

The sun’s magnetic field may have a significant impact on weather and climatic parameters in Australia and other countries in the northern and southern hemispheres. According to a study in Geographical Research, the droughts are related to the solar magnetic phases and not the greenhouse effect.

Halfway through the rainfall season, much of San Diego County is a bit drier than usual, but that could change by early next week. A series of storms expected to bring heavy rain to Northern California and much-needed snow to the Sierra should begin to hit the southern end of the state late tomorrow. By Monday, San Diego could be above its usual rainfall total for early January. That hasn't happened this late in the season since 2005. The storms, which forecasters say could bring 1 to 2 inches of rain to the county beaches and 4 to 5 inches...

Photo in the News: Texas Goes Green After Record Rainfall A deluge of torrential rains has lashed the Lone Star State for more than a month—making June one of the wettest ever recorded in Texas. Spurring Texas' grassy plains to bloom dense vegetation, as seen in a photograph taken by a NASA satellite between June 11 and June 20. The deep, emerald green indicates regions where plants are growing more quickly or robust than average, and the dark, almost-black color marks where vegetation was most dense. Brown spots point to clouds or water on the ground, which in some cases...

The world record for most precipitation in a 72-hour period was shattered this month when the French island of La Réunion recorded 12.9 feet (3.929 meters) of rain. La Réunion is a small island in the South Indian Ocean east of Madagascar. Despite the island's small size--about 30 miles across--it has two tall volcanoes that rise over 8,500 feet in altitude. These volcanoes can squeeze prodigious amounts of rain out of the moist tropical atmosphere when strong winds force this moist air up their flanks. La Réunion already held the world record for a 3-day precipitation event, the 3.24 meters...

THE FLOODS OF 1916 The lines of Southern Railway Company suffered unprecedented damage from floods during the months of July and August, 1916. On July 5th and 6th a tropical cyclone swept over the Gulf Coast of Alabama, accompanied by high winds, reaching a maximum of 107 miles per hour at Mobile on the fifth, and followed by torrential rains over a large part of the State, with somewhat lighter rains in eastern Tennessee and the Carolinas, greatly damaging Southern Railway waterfront property at Mobile and interrupting traffic on the Company’s lines in Alabama south and west if Birmingham, by...

Bird’s-Eye View of the Amazon Airborne Archaeologist Challenges the Myth of a Pristine Wilderness by Ted Mann In the office of a typical archaeologist, you would expect to find things like stone tools, pottery fragments, and maybe even a few Wooly Mammoth bones. But Clark Erickson is no typical archaeologist. Oversize rolls of aerial photographs are stacked into tubular pyramids on a desk and worktable in his University Museum office. They fill up file cabinets and populate a storage room. At last count, he had about 700 giant aerial and satellite images—almost all of them picturing some region of the...