Key Facts Of The Day 11/1

Hurricanes

• As of Tuesday morning, Tropical Storm Lisa was located about 220 miles south of Grand Cayman Island and 480 miles east of Belize City.
  • Lisa’s maximum sustained winds were 45 MPH, and the system was moving to the west at a speed of 14 MPH.
  • Lisa is forecast to become a hurricane prior to its expected landfall in Central America on Wednesday.
• The first winter storm of the season is to arrive in central California Tuesday morning.
  • By the mid-morning to the lunch hour, the rain will come into the valley from the west. Some of the rain will be locally heavy, and then become snow up in the higher elevations of the Sierra.
• A UC Irvine study found that a 1-in-100-year flood event would disproportionately hit Black and low-income communities in the Los Angeles Basin the hardest and cause greater damage than federal emergency officials have forecast.
  •  In the Los Angeles Basin, researchers found that Black, Latino, and Asian residents were 79%, 17%, and 11% more likely than white residents to be exposed to waist-high flooding.
  •  A 100-year flood could rapidly overwhelm the area’s principal waterways — the Los Angeles River, the Dominguez Channel, Compton Creek, and the San Gabriel River — as well as storm drainage systems that were originally built seven decades ago to make the region habitable.
  • The researchers found that about 874,000 people and up to $108 billion in property stretching from the Santa Monica Mountains south to Long Beach face flood risk.

Wildfires

• As of Thursday, there are currently 25 large active wildfires that have burned 256,629 across ID, IN, KY, MT, OK, OR, and WA. As of Thursday, 59,441 wildfires have burned 7,210,454 acres across the country.
• In Oregon, 2 fires have burned 128,183 acres as of Thursday.
  • The Cedar Creek Fire has burned 127,283 acres and is 60% contained as of Thursday.
• In Washington, 10 fires have burned 40,857 acres as of Thursday.

Extreme Heat

• The Department of the Interior announced last Friday that it would look into changing the rules for how it operates Lake Powell and Lake Mead after the seven basin states,  California, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Nevada, and Arizona failed to reduce their water use between 2 and 4 million acre-feet.
  • California agreed last month to cut water withdrawals by about 400,000 acre-feet.
  • Arizona has reduced its Colorado usage over the past two years in compliance with pre-existing drought restrictions from the feds.
  • Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming have not announced any concrete steps to cut their water usage.
  • Lake Powell and Lake Mead now sit three-quarters empty, and the most recent federal projections show that they could each decline below a critical threshold in the next two years.
  • The government’s review won’t conclude until next summer, but new rules could take effect immediately, which means painful new cuts may arrive in the Southwest as the region’s farmers are preparing for peak growing season.
• The Mississippi River is now 11 feet below its historical average and has exposed a sunken riverboat.
• Amid the ongoing drought, the winter wheat crop is in poor shape with only 28% in good or excellent condition.
  • This is one of the worst starts for the crop in years
  • Three-quarters of winter wheat land is in drought, including nine of every 10 acres in Kansas, the top wheat-producing state.
• Extreme heat and ongoing drought are impeding milk production and withering the crops that cattle eat which could contribute to shortages or price increases in the global dairy supply.
  • In the U.S. alone, some scientists estimate climate change will cost the dairy industry $2.2 billion dollars per year by the end of the century.

New Reports and Data

• An October 2022 study found that a 1-in-100-year flood event would disproportionately hit Black and low-income communities in the Los Angeles Basin the hardest and cause greater damage than federal emergency officials have forecast.
• An October 2022 study found that Antarctic summer thawing occurs nearly a month earlier, and stays thawed for a full two months longer than previously believed.
• An October 2022 study found that El Niño increases seedling mortality even in drought-tolerant forests.