Key Facts Of The Day 4/21

Storms and Flooding

• Another classic spring storm will bring severe thunderstorms and heavy rain to parts of the Plains, Midwest and South through the weekend.

  • Some of those storms could turn severe, possibly including large hail, damaging winds, isolated tornadoes and flooding rainfall.

  • The greatest potential for a few severe storms is mainly in central and eastern Kansas, as well as adjacent parts of northwest Missouri, north-central Oklahoma and southeast Nebraska.

• Rainfall that began Wednesday night intensified on Thursday morning, bringing a much-needed dousing to the parched Bay Area region in California.

  • The storm has reduced fire danger for the region.

• A winter storm warning is in effect for greater Lake Tahoe from Wednesday afternoon through Friday  morning.

  • Heavy snow is expected at higher elevations, with 2 to 3 feet possible above 7,000 feet.

  • Wind gusts of 50 MPH, and up to 80 MPH across Sierra ridges, will make for difficult travel.

• Hundreds are still without power in the Mohawk Valley, New York Thursday morning following a winter storm Monday and Tuesday, with Herkimer County still the hardest hit area.

Wildfires

• As of Thursday, there are currently 12 large active wildfires that have burned 62,040 acres across AK, AZ, LA, NM, and TX. As of Thursday, 19,774 wildfires have burned 832,844 acres across the country.

• As of Thursday, the Crooks Fire in Arizona has burned 2,000 acres and is 0% contained.

• As of Thursday, the Tunnel Fire in Arizona has burned 20,339 and is 0% contained.

  • A wind-driven Arizona wildfire almost tripled in area on Wednesday after burning dozens of structures and forcing thousands to flee their homes in a drought-hit rural area.

  • At least 25 structures were burned after the fire moved through parts of the Wupatki Trails and Timberline Estates communities.

  • The fire raging near Flagstaff, Arizona, led to the creation of an evacuation area comprising some 2,068 people on Wednesday.

• As of Thursday, the McBride Fire in New Mexico has burned 6,159 acres and is 89% contained.

• After wildfires, scorched trees could disrupt water supplies.

  • Communities often rely on melting snow in the spring to replenish reservoirs during dryer months. If snow melts earlier than normal, that would leave less water flowing in the summer when it’s most needed.

  • Snow in a burned forest disappears up to several weeks sooner than snow in a healthy forest because of the lack of a shade canopy and carbon shedding from trees that intensifies the absorption of sunlight.

Extreme Heat

• As climate change worsens the heat island effect, Pacoima, a lower-income, predominantly Latino neighborhood in north Los Angeles, will host one of the nation’s most ambitious community-scale “cool streets” projects.

  • Over the coming months, officials say road workers will apply a heat-reflective acrylic coating called StreetBond on the equivalent of 16 linear miles of Pacoima streets within a 10-square-block area.

  • The project will transform Pacoima’s drab street grid into a multicolor palette of grays, reds, browns, greens and yellows.

  • White and off-white colors are not alone in their ability to reflect the sun’s energy away from the Earth; the same effect can be achieved with a spectrum of light-hued colors that help break up asphalt landscapes.

  • Pacoima — in the middle of the San Fernando Valley and surrounded by high-volume highways — is particularly susceptible to summer heat and heat-exacerbated pollution like ground-level ozone.

  • The project will deploy advanced sensors to measure surface-level temperatures both before and after the coatings are applied, allowing for a long period of data collection and analysis of how other landscape changes can provide even greater cooling benefits.

• The Oregon Klamath Tribes are opposed to the U.S. government’s plans to release water from a federally operated reservoir to downstream farmers along the Oregon-California border amid a historic drought.

  • Even limited irrigation for the farmers who use Klamath River water on about 300 square miles of crops puts two critically endangered fish species in peril of extinction because the water withdrawals come at the height of spawning season.

    • The Klamath have fought to keep enough water in the reservoir and surrounding rivers for two distinct species of suckerfish to survive and breed, with limited success.

    • The fish are important to the tribes’ cultural and religious practices and were once a dietary staple. The Klamath stopped fishing for the suckerfish in the 1980s as numbers dwindled.

  • It’s the third year in a row that extreme drought has affected the farmers, fish and tribes that rely on the 257-mile-long Klamath River in a region where, even in a good year, there’s not enough water to satisfy competing demands.

  • The Klamath Tribes believe this year’s plan violates a biological opinion under the Endangered Species Act, which says that the bureau must maintain the reservoir, which is called Upper Klamath Lake, at a minimum depth for the suckerfish.

• Habitat loss from big agriculture and climate change are combining to threaten the world’s insects, and insects are essential for growing food.

New Reports And Data

• An April 2022 study found that people of color were 61% more likely than white people to live in a county with a failing grade for at least one pollutant, and 3.6 times as likely to live in a county with a failing grade for all three pollutants covered in the report.

• An April 2022 study found that people of color and low-income communities experience heightened pesticide exposure relative to other U.S. populations. For Black and Mexican Americans, that exposure can be five times greater than average.

• An April 2022 study found that low-producing oil wells cause 50% of methane emissions.

• An April 2022 study found that the combined influence of climate change and expanding agriculture are causing insect populations to plummet in some parts of the world.