Tag Archives: Colorado

Colorado Floods Drown Hope

An aerial view of suburban streets flooded in Longmont

All time rainfall records were broken earlier this month. Over the course of almost five whole days, parts of Colorado saw nothing but rain. A record 14.62 inches of precipitation had fallen on the town of Boulder, Colorado. Including an astonishing 9.08 inches of rainfall in a single day. Looking back at the records in the Western Regional Climate Center the recent record was only about half of that. The amount of rainfall in that slotted time was just overwhelming and the flash flood broke out. (Jon Erdman). There was major damage in a dozen towns and reasonable damage over multiple counties. Even though the death toll is floating at seven, thousands are still unaccounted for.

Many people are concerned about their loved ones, neighbors, or even that guy that you can never remember his name. With almost one hundred rescue teams from multiple states on the look out, the question arises that “Could we have seen this coming?” With all this new technology evolving right before our eyes we should have some system to predict if a disaster is just waiting to come. These things are looked past so much, sometimes we don’t even realize how terrible these disasters truly are. We, as a nation, better be taking note of how recent flash floods started and with that in mind have someone working on looking out for possible flood alerts. Looking into the future, not only flash floods, but also other natural catastrophes have to be predicted so we aren’t losing any lives anymore. With some killed and even more missing many across the United States are mourning the losses of the depressed families in Colorado. Almost as disencouraging to think about is knowing people would rather work to develop the next generation of phones, to entertain people, than working on a way to save hundreds maybe thousands of lives.

~Tyler

Wildfires

http://floppingaces.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Colorado-forests-Burning.jpg

Firefighters in Colorado are battling a huge, wind-driven wildfires in rugged canyons.  The fire was most likely made by a lightning strike.  Wildfires in Colorado are occurring a lot earlier than usual.  Why?  There is less rain than there usually is.  So, this leads me to wonder why they don’t come up with alternatives to reduce fires, such as, occasionally watering the land instead of using up tons of water to try to put out the on going fires. They can dump water near the houses.  They can thin out the forest.  You can use the wood to build houses or other necessities.   Are the fires occurring in the same places or are the fires occurring where there hasn’t been fires before?

Authorities said that this was the worst fire seen in about 25 years on Saturday, June 9th, 2012.  The fire moved at a rate as fast as 1 ½  miles an hour.  The rate of spread is directly related to the amount of heat received by the fuels ahead of the flaming zone, winds, and topography.  I think the fire will do a lot of damage and take a lot of water to control and stop it.  I wonder how long it will take.  I believe that the state will have to make some changes regarding fire materials and prevention in order to stop the fires from occurring so frequently.

The state might ban fireworks on the fourth of July because of such dry conditions.  I don’t understand why they are having fireworks in the first place.  If just a lightning strike starts a fire, why wouldn’t it make sense that a spark from a firework work starts a fire as well.  It is just like banning campfires except that campfires are more protected.  Campfires are surrounded by rocks and are more secure than sparks flying everywhere.  Sparks that if they were to hit the ground you wouldn’t be there in time or at all to put the fire out.

~Mackenzie Rossi