RANT - Is your Ark ready?

I had to check that I hadn't fallen into a coma and woken up on April 1st.

The fact that the Geological Survey director responsible for issuing this report is called "McKnutt", and the scientists' model suggests rain could last for a suspiciously Biblical "40 days" (and presumably, 40 nights) also made me pause.

Before you get all agitated, read the penultimate paragraph. I'm waiting for an appropriately alarming, but funnier headline to appear in The Onion.

From today's news "Scientists warn California could be struck by winter ‘superstorm’" ....

A group of more than 100 scientists and experts say in a new report that California faces the risk of a massive "superstorm" that could flood a quarter of the state's homes and cause $300 billion to $400 billion in damage. Researchers point out that the potential scale of destruction in this storm scenario is four or five times the amount of damage that could be wrought by a major earthquake.

The threat of a cataclysmic California storm has been dormant for the past 150 years. Geological Survey director Marcia K. McNutt told the New York Times that a 300-mile stretch of the Central Valley was inundated from 1861-62. The floods were so bad that the state capital had to be moved to San Francisco, and Governor Leland Stanford had to take a rowboat to his own inauguration, the report notes. Even larger storms happened in past centuries, over the dates 212, 440, 603, 1029, 1418, and 1605, according to geological evidence.

The risk is gathering momentum now, scientists say, due to rising temperatures in the atmosphere, which has generally made weather patterns more volatile.

The scientists built a model that showed a storm could last for more than 40 days and dump 10 feet of water on the state. The storm would be goaded on by an "atmospheric river" that would move water "at the same rate as 50 Mississippis discharging water into the Gulf of Mexico," according to the AP. Winds could reach 125 miles per hour, and landslides could compound the damage, the report notes.

Such a superstorm is hypothetical but not improbable, climate researchers warn. "We think this event happens once every 100 or 200 years or so, which puts it in the same category as our big San Andreas earthquakes," Geological Survey scientist Lucy Jones said. [end quote].

Seeing as we live high on Potrero Hill, I'll be selling tickets for camping space on our roof deck.