Key Facts Of The Day 4/15

Storms and Flooding

• At least four EF-1 tornadoes touched down Wednesday night in Louisville and around Kentucky.

  • A number of homes in Louisville’s Glenmary subdivision were damaged, with Fern Creek Fire Chief Nathan Mulvey estimating Thursday morning at least 15 families were temporarily displaced.

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued disaster declarations for Bell County and Williamson County in response to severe weather which impacted the communities on Tuesday.

• 5 years after Hurricane Harvey, many residents in Houston are still waiting for help.

  • The federal government budgeted some $9.3 billion so that communities could not only rebuild, but also better prepare for the next storm. But city and regional governments have delivered little of those funds, and a state agency’s “competition” has held back aid that the Department of Housing and Urban Development designated for post-Harvey mitigation.

    • Low-income communities have been left out of much-needed infrastructure improvements.

    • Without their fair share of aid, communities struggling to rebuild will be just as vulnerable when the next storm comes.

  • Many residents remain in dangerous living conditions, stuck in homes with leaking roofs and mold-filled walls.

  • Houston’s requests for $470 million worth of projects, like flood control in the majority-Black neighborhoods Sunnyside and Kashmere Gardens, were rejected. The $200 million watershed improvement plan for the flood-prone Halls Bayou, which is surrounded by some of Houston’s poorest neighborhoods, was also rejected.

  • Funds largely went to smaller, whiter, inland towns.

Wildfires

• As of Friday, there are currently 10 large active wildfires that have burned 27,930 acres across AZ, CO, NM, OK, and TX. As of Friday, 18,769 wildfires have burned 805,660 acres across the country.

• As of Friday, the McBride Fire in New Mexico has burned 6,012 acres and is 0% contained.

  • The fire has claimed two lives and charred more than 200 homes.

  • The fire has forced the evacuation of about 5,000 people in the mountain community of Ruidoso.

  • Thousands of customers in the area remain without power, and Ruidoso schools have been closed until next week.

• Hotter and drier weather coupled with decades of fire suppression have contributed to an increase in the number of acres burned by wildfires. The problem is exacerbated by a more than 20-year Western megadrought that studies link to human-caused climate change.

Extreme Heat

• California’s farms are the largest food producers in the nation, but ongoing drought conditions are wreaking havoc on this $50 billion sector.

  • Crop revenue losses, combined with groundwater over-pumping and upstream supply-chain impacts, may have slashed the state’s agricultural revenue as much as $1.7 billion in 2021.

  • Drought conditions last year also contributed to the loss of 14,600 related jobs.

  • As a result of the drought, surface water deliveries to farms in the state’s central valley and north coast regions dropped by 41% in 2021.

  • Increased groundwater pumping raised farmers’ energy bills by about $184 million, while water shortages led to 395,000 excess acres of land that was left unplanted in 2021.

• A new study found that by midcentury, global warming could put 60% of cactus species at greater risk of extinction.

  • According to the study, the places where the largest numbers of species could become threatened are generally those with the richest diversity of species today, including Florida, central Mexico and large swaths of Brazil.

New Reports And Data

• An April 2022 study found that organic aerosols, such as those released in cooking, may stay in the atmosphere for several days.

• An April 2022 study found that groundwater level threatens to fall in Germany due to climate change.

• An April 2022 study found that factors including extreme winds, topography and vegetation influenced the severity of burns from Oregon’s devastating 2020 megafires.