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They did warn about coastal flooding
By adamg on Sat, 01/13/2024 - 1:11pm
This morning, Lisa Green walked from the North End to Rowes Wharf, where Boston Harbor was a lot closer than it usually is, like at the Aquarium, where the harbor consumed the harborwalk.
Kevin Whitely forwarded a friend's video of flooding on Commercial Wharf in the North End:
The water reached Atlantic Avenue, Peter Cheung reports:
King Tide @universalhub pic.twitter.com/Z6lt5Au0Tp
— Peter Cheung (@bostonaruban) January 13, 2024
Lisa Green also snapped flooded Christopher Columbus Park, Long Wharf and Harbor Towers:
Lee Toma waded out to the Neponset overflowing its banks along Granite Avenue between Boston and Milton this morning:
Further upstream, where the Neponset meets Dorchester Bay, Port Norfolk turned into Lake Norfolk, Maria Lyons discovered:
Morrissey Boulevard was ordered closed, of course.
In Charlestown, Charles River Avenue where it meets Warren Avenue lived up to its name, Freak Show Barker reports:
The National Weather Service reports more possible precipitation on the way, but this time maybe in the form of snow, later Sunday and again, maybe, on Tuesday and Friday.
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Comments
Long Wharf has become
Short Wharf!
https://www.universalhub.com
https://www.universalhub.com/2016/shorter-wharf
Nobody said the city is
Nobody said the city is weatherproof
Let's hope ...
Milan Lucic doesn't assault his wife because of water in the lobby
I missed that somehow
Arrested a month ago? Jeez.
What a trash-ass loser franchise the Bruins are.
I guess I went to the dark place
Really quickly on this one ...
Normal and expected
Not really weather related. Standard issue King tide. We will have another one next month. Read a tidal chart. This is normal now. Global warming is real.
No, there was weather-related flooding
There was some minor flooding today along the Charles, where you don't have tidal issues, where Boston, Dedham and Needham meet. Fortunately, the Army Corps of Engineers strategy of buying up thousands of acres of riverside land and just letting it sit there worked - the excess water flowed into that.
Of course, the fact we're getting heavy rains on a January day with the temps reaching nearly 60 might have something to do with climate change.
Ditto for the downtown flooding - it was worse than a typical king tide - Atlantic Avenue doesn't normally flood, so blame the heavy rain - but you could argue that has to do with climate change as well.
Nope. Tidal. Not rain related.
Downtown was tidal. Period. Expected. We’ll get tides like this again in a month.
https://www.tide-forecast.com/tide/Boston-Massachusetts/tide-times
Sorry, but not along the Charles
King Tides are not an issue along the Charles upstream from Watertown.
Not directly
Extreme high tides can limit the amount of water than gets from the Charles and the Mystic into the harbor. There are pumps to help with that, but fresh water can still back up trying to get through/over the dams.
The tide was quite a bit
The tide was quite a bit higher (maybe 2 feet) than the tide tables said, so the flooding was not just from the rain.
um, nope
Got a nice storm surge on top of it. King tides make it up to the Chart House or maybe a little further. They are 12 to 13 feet. This went up to the now eponymous Atlantic Ave. - tide plus surge on top of ~14 feet.
I have a pretty good idea about how far up a "normal" king tide goes. I was one of the early adopters of reading the tide charts and putting the king tides in my calendar so I could go out and take pictures of long wharf getting short. Thanks to Adam posting those, other media picked up the practice and it became a thing. Then it got in our faces when we got noreasters plus king tides in early 2018.
Part of me would love to live on the seacoast, but most of me wants to be able to make it through retirement without evacuations.
Thank You!
The images of Long Wharf under water are quite powerful. I hadn't realized that the media picked up the practice of covering the king tide events from you. I am sure many others weren't aware of your important role either. Thank you for your foresight and that of the other early adopters. It is critically important people see these real impacts of a changing climate.
I give credit to Adam
Also to the NGOs in the area who started making a circus of it.
Those two king tides on very warm October days at office people lunch time were a huge boost, too.
Acqua Alta
In Venice they call this the Acqua Alta. It just means high water, but it has a nice ring. I will bet good money that within the next four years there will be a bar in the Seaport or the North End called Acqua Alta.
Remember the restaurant planned for Long Wharf?
Perfect name for it, had that folly gone through.
King tides
have been occurring since Jesus wore slippers. It’s just now with the proliferation of cell phone cameras and social media, every Boston Globe wannabe makes it out to be something bigger than it actually is.
Yes, they have
The problem is: The severity of such "nuisance" floods, even flooding on bright sunny days, is increasing - along with fewer, but heavier torrential downpours.
Winter hurricane?
Flooding wound up being a problem in several east coast cities. Perhaps it is time to redefine the term hurricane to include the winter storms that are causing comparable damage?
Words have power. That is a cliche. But one that can be a tool. The word hurricane is pretty solidly established as meaning unfathomable amounts of rain, terrible winds, floods that tear roads apart, force people to evacuate towns, etc. The word carries gravitas of meaning that no one quibbles with. Perhaps the winter storms that are causing comparable effects should now be called hurricanes due to the extent of damage caused by massive flooding that is up and down the coast?
This makes me wonder whether current popular language is enough to push, if possible just shut down, the propagandists who keep pushing the lie that everything is fine climate wise. Just as examples I'm thinking of the managers of Exxon, the ruler of Koch Industries, the rules of nations that depend on exporting oil to maintain their control of the population. They spend billions to persuade both voters in democracies, and I imagine in dictatorships, to maintain the illusion that whatever climatic disasters befall the individual and their community, that the incidents are just "acts of God" where the victims of the acts of God just have to shut up and deal with it.
Electoral democracy at the ballot booth, and profit democracy - the daily votes cast by spending money and creating profit for someone, somewhere - all depend on language that can be used by both politicians and corporate rulers to influence, manipulate and sometimes control their constituents. But language is the property of everyone. So nothing stops anyone from calling these winter storms winter hurricanes, thereby adding to the energy (pun intended) of forcing the same politicians, corporate managers and owners and nation-state rulers who are maintaining the environmental destruction, to themselves just shut up and deal with the devastation that they are causing.
Words are most useful when they can mean things
and we can agree on what they mean. Hurricanes have a specific shape and pattern of behavior, and I don't see why we should expand the term to include other things.
EDIT: I already see "severe storm" being used for this sort of thing, and it seems like a good year 'round inclusive term.
NWS Definitions
You might find these definitions helpful.