On Saturday morning at the local shop by W-wa Jeziorki station, I learnt of several houses with flooded basements and garages on ul. Kurantów and Achillesa. Pan Tomek told me that Jeziorki lies on a bed of impermiable clay just 1.5m (4ft) beneath the surface. The earth can no longer cope with any more meltwater or rain.
Driving home I saw a fire engine outside no. 24, pumping water out of basements into adjoining fields; it will only flow down again. The only solution (which I saw this evening on ul. Buszycka) is to pump the water into cistern trucks and drive the stuff away. It rained heavily on Saturday morning. By the afternoon, parts of ul. Kórnicka were under water. Below: Flooded land by W-wa Jeziorki station; the make-shift park-and-ride is under water too.
Thanks to Student SGH for tipping me off that TVN Warszawa has covered this story about flooding a few doors down from us on ul. Trombity. This is the second time that our street has hit the local media because of flooding in just six months.
Above: that potato field at the end of ul. Trombity again; it's been under water for much of last year. It won't get any drier unless a new drainage ditch is cut.Looking back at posts from previous years, at no time in mid-January was the water level as high as this. Although the weather forecasts to the end of the week predict no return too winter and snow, it will surely come. Snow can fall (and heavily) and settle right up to the late March. Then come the spring rains. And a deluge like the one that hit Jeziorki on Corpus Christ last year will take water levels up to where they can endanger all but the highest-situated houses around here.
And people deny climate change.
This time last year:
Science in a nutshell
This time two years ago:
Flashback to communist times
This time three years ago:
Pre-dawn Ursynów
I think in a way, people are trying to deny 'global warming' because as a phrase, it's easy to see extremely cold winters in the British Isles for the last two years, and say "The Earth is not warming up... what are you talking about?!?"
ReplyDeleteHowever, when you talk about climate change, I think that is more relevant, as the pictures show. The extra cold weather in the British Isles has probably meant extra warm weather elsewhere, while the floods on Jeziorki probably coincide with an extended drought on the edges of the Sahara.
Interesting article about a "flooded world" at the Spectator Coffee House blog:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6624393/a-flooded-world.thtml
Paddy
Interesting behavior of the Jet Stream this year, splitting into two streams, one dipping South dragging moisture and cold air from the (relatively) very warm and rapidly melting Arctic Circle. This makes it cold and snowy in the (mid) N. America and N. Eurasia, but still allowing for near record (tied with 2005 for recorded "all time") global warmth.
ReplyDeleteHere in New Mexico, just South of all that moisture, we await the forest fires of Summer 2011. If Los Alamos (Atomic City) burns again, you'll read about us in the news.
Meanwhile, you in N.W. Europe just wait 'till the Gulf of Mexico-born stream of warm water gets disrupted...
yesterday morning I awoke to temps of -23 (windchill) and snow. This morning it was +3 and raining.
ReplyDeleteStupid weather.
Well, you do live in a place called Jeziorki, "little lakes". I wonder how it got its name?
ReplyDeleteNo, seriously. It would be interesting to go back to early records and especially maps to see how waterlogged (or not) your region has been over the past few centuries.
@ Sigismundo:
ReplyDeleteCompare this map of Jeziorki from before 1989 to this Google Earth satellite image from 2007. This shows just how much the area had been dried out by drainage ditches.