Thursday, January 23, 2014

Side Story on 2013 Flooding in China

Jeff Masters (wunderground.com/blog/) notes that there were 41 weather events this year that cost at least one billion dollars to those impacted. The 41 events surpasses the previous record of 40; however, 2013 was not a record year for total weather related costs. One image from the a parade of bad events took a bit to register as being the second awful event in a relatively short period of time.

It took a bit to recognize that there is something terribly wrong with the buildings behind this muddy flow flood water. This area was severely damaged with nearly 70,000 killed by an earthquake. The building are severely out of kilter.

Throw in a huge rain storm onto vast areas of earthquake destabilized slopes in this very mountainous region of China and river valleys filled with landslide debris from earthquake induces landslides and the flooding and debris flows are further enhanced.

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