By Joe Bolkcom —- What are we going to tell the kids? As we commemorate the fifth anniversary of the historic 2008 floods and look back on the amazing amount of recovery work that has taken place in communities across Iowa, our recent extreme rains tell us more work lies ahead. After the [...]
continue »The Gazette Editorial Board —- So Eastern Iowa dodged the really big wet one over the weekend. Flooding, once predicted to reach the fourth-highest level in history on the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids, eased to a crest of 18.23 feet early Sunday, a tie for 10th on the all-time list. In Johnson County, [...]
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This wasn’t the anniversary we had in mind. Five years after the historic 2008 floods in Eastern Iowa, we wanted to take a step back and remember. Reflect. Celebrate our progress and rededicate ourselves to the work left outstanding. Instead, this week found us sandbagging, nail biting, evacuating, helping our neighbors and holding our [...]
continue »By The Gazette Editorial Board —- The title of professor Susan Cutter’s speech is “Disaster resilience: a local and national imperative.” The University of South Carolina’s national expert in hazards vulnerability and other researchers, in a recent National Academies report, describe a nation at higher risk. They called for a “new national approach to [...]
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By Ralph Rosenberg —- To control floods, much of the nation’s efforts have focused on building higher and stronger levees, dams, and flood walls. These non-sustainable decisions cause rivers to rise higher and faster, impacting downstream communities and the entire river basin and leading to patterns where we are constantly trying to catch up [...]
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By Jason Johnson —- From drought to flood conditions, it seems there is no longer a “normal” growing season for Iowa farmers. A year of drought in 2012 was followed by a cool, wet spring so far this year. These types of weather extremes can be very damaging to Iowa’s soils, but conservationists are finding [...]
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The earth’s climate is changing. That isn’t a theory. It’s not controversial. It’s a fact. “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found as far back as 2007. We also know that human activity very likely has been driving that undeniable increase in global [...]
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Why do we journalists do such a crummy job of covering climate change? It’s complicated and technical, a sweeping, slow-moving issue. Not the stuff of sound bytes or short paragraphs, it can be hard to explain. It’s not a head turner, like a fire or a scandal. It’s not local, except that it’s happening [...]
continue »Parts of Iowa, especially in northwest counties, are facing drought conditions that could force conservation measures if dry weather persists and demand for water exceeds the supply, state experts told lawmakers Thursday. Tim Hall of the state Department of Natural Resources said statewide precipitation in 2012 lagged by about 9 inches below the average of [...]
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By Fred Hubler —- Given that Eastern Iowa was affected by both last summer’s heat wave and the heat wave of the 1930s that accompanied the Dust Bowl, now is a good time to compare our region’s temperatures during the 1930s with recent temperatures. The data used were obtained at www.crh.noaa.gov/dvn/?n= climatelocal#note. The data [...]
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