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Climate Change They Deny Just Washed Out Portions of I-10, the Main East-West U.S. Freeway Artery. [1]
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Date: 2022-08-26
If you live in Phoenix metro, you go I-8 through Yuma to get to San Diego, and I-10 through Palm Desert and into the Inland Empire to get to Los Angeles. Realistically, these are the only options. This year, Arizona has had quite the monsoon season. Now while we needed the rain and still do, it has been historic.
In a sense, it has been bizarre. While San Antonio to the southeast has been parched and dry for what seems like a decade, rapidly descending into a desert status and seeing the Edwards Aquifer drop, we have been bathing, literally, in the liquid discharge from the sky, and as much as we need it, have nowhere to put it.
Yes we live somewhere that needs water desperately, but can’t do more than an inch at a time without catastrophic flooding. An inch at a time? Back where I was born, St. Louis, they had a word for that:
Tuesday.
At any rate, on to the dystopia:
One eastbound lane on Interstate 10 reopened Thursday morning following flash flooding from intense storms from the night before that washed out part of the freeway near the California-Arizona border. The damaged road near Desert Center was a detour lane created because of ongoing construction, said Emily Lenien, a spokesperson for the California Department of Transportation. Images posted on Twitter showed a portion of the road had been washed away. The eastbound lane that opened Thursday morning was one of the regular I-10 lanes that was part of the construction, Lenien said. Commuters were still warned to expect delays.
I-10 runs from Florida to California. It traverses Jacksonville to Santa Monica. As an artery to foster commerce, up to 55,000 big rigs per day traverse it, and close to two million per year. What is particularly concerning for people here is that Arizona gets so much imported from California.
Now one lane is reopened. And that may be all that is opened for a while.
x 🚧 TRAFFIC ALERT: If you're heading to California... I-10, between Los Angeles and Phoenix, is restricted west of Blythe after flooding damaged the highway.
STORY:
https://t.co/IVjrHlSalc pic.twitter.com/qBrJS33lse — ABC15 Arizona (@abc15) August 25, 2022
I am sure I never looked at rain and thought to myself, “Now if enough of that falls, interstates may crumble.”
But now I know. This is just a taste, just a sampling of Chef Mother Nature’s pre-fixe menu of what is to come and why it was so important to make some moves on climate, which we finally did.
Dallas for example, got a free tasting with a 1 in 1,000 year flood, which by the way in one month happened six times nationally.
On July 26, 9 inches of rain fell in 24 hours in St. Louis, shattering an all-time record, with over a foot of rain measured in some suburbs. Two days later, dozens died in eastern Kentucky when more than 10 inches of rain fell, sending rivers rising several feet in hours to well beyond historical record crests and washing away homes near the shores. Just this week, the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex suffered widespread flooding as 3 inches of rain fell in an hour, part of a series of thunderstorms that would drop more than 9 inches at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in 24 hours, with some suburbs in eastern Dallas reporting more than 15 inches of rain.
Going forward we are going to have to reconsider the design of our infrastructure, where we even allow buildings, and create contingencies for shipments in case 1 in 1,000 year events, become once a year events. Oh, and the Atlantic, just woke up.
Remember this piece, if you hear someone in a red hat complaining about the price of oranges and muttering “Let’s Go Brandon.” Tell him Presidents don’t cause inflation.
Ancient infrastructure that can’t hold up to a climate crisis does.
-ROC
If you like my work you can support me at
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-todd-rule-of-claw-rebuild-life
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/26/2118926/-Climate-Change-They-Deny-Just-Washed-Out-Portions-of-I-10-the-Main-East-West-U-S-Freeway-Artery
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