Key Facts Of The Day 1/19

Storms and Flooding

• More than 24 million Americans were under a winter weather advisory Thursday as a snowstorm that hammered Denver slowly pushed eastward.
  • As of Thursday morning, snow fell from Iowa to Michigan, with the heaviest in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
• On Wednesday, as storms moved across the southern Plains, gusty winds and tornadoes brought down trees and power lines, and several homes were damaged.
  • As snow fell from the Rockies to the Plains, over 4 feet was measured in some areas.
• On Wednesday, a winter storm dumped several inches of snow across Colorado and caused multiple crashes that led to a massive pileup near Strasburg, Colorado.
  • Two truck drivers were taken to the hospital for minor injuries.
  • The Colorado Department of Transportation shut down a more than 150-mile stretch from Denver to the Kansas state line on I-70.
• California sees extensive storm damage after nine atmospheric rivers since late December caused power outages, flooding, levee breaks, washouts, and landslides nearly statewide.
  • According to a spokesperson from the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, the number of houses and other structures that will be red-tagged as uninhabitable could be in the low thousands.
  • The damage is spread across 41 of California’s 58 counties.
  • There were more than 500 mudslides reported across California.
  • In unincorporated Santa Barbara County, after more than 60 inspections at properties that sustained damage from mudslides and downed trees, four homes were red-tagged, and 32 were yellow-tagged as needing extensive repairs.
  • There is no estimated reopening date for State Route 154, a key north-south artery in the county that is inundated with mud and rocks.
  • In Berkeley, eight homes were red-tagged after a sodden hillside collapse Monday, sending mud onto properties.

Wildfire

• As of January 13, there is currently 1 large active wildfire that has burned 475 acres across FL. As of January 17, 543 wildfires have burned 4,578 acres across the country.

• In Florida, 1 fire has burned 475 acres as of January 13.

Extreme Heat

• Rio Verde Foothills residents filed a lawsuit after Scottsdale, Arizona, turned off its long-standing water supply to the community on Jan. 1, calling the cutoff permanent.
  • Scottsdale said it had no legal obligation to continue the arrangement.
  • Rio Verde Foothills residents now expect to pay much higher prices for water haulers to fetch their water from jurisdictions farther away.
• According to NASA, Earth’s average surface temperature in 2022 tied with 2015 as the fifth warmest on record.
• According to a new study, more than 40% of land vertebrates will be threatened by extreme heat by the end of the century under a high emissions scenario, with freak temperatures once regarded as rare likely to become the norm.

New Reports and Data

• A January 2023 study found that more than 40% of land vertebrates will be threatened by extreme heat by the end of the century under a high emissions scenario.
• A January 2023 study found that more extreme thunderstorms from climate change will likely cause a greater number of large windthrow events in the Amazon, which could impact the rainforest’s ability to serve as a carbon sink.