Alberta's Manhattan Moment - 3X All-Time Record Rainfall Makes For An Inland Sandy

[hatrack]

EDIT

The speed and scale of the event "stunned" Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a climate change skeptic, and it mortified Premier Alison Redford, whose deficit plagued government hasn't budgeted for disasters, let alone the future. (One 2011 report catalogued Alberta's reticence on the issue this way: "Leadership on climate change adaptation from senior levels in all departments is weak.&quot

The Great Flood, which punched a giant hole in the TransCanada Highway in Canmore, swelled rivers and undermined infrastructure built for, well, a more stable and reliable climate. The flood also exposed some market-driven deceptions about geography and basic hydrology.

It seems that flood plains will fill with water in oil-rich Alberta, a truth most might find evident but one the province's one-party government has tried to conceal from the public for years. A 2006 Provincial Flood Mitigation Report even recommended that the province forbid the selling of flood plains to developers. But the one-party state deep sixed the report for five years and not make it public until 2012.

The freak storm, partly the product of the energy of spend carbon emissions, washed away landmarks, towns, homes, memories, roads, pipelines, wells and bridges. It broke precipitation and stream flow records.

EDIT

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2013/06/24/Calgary-Floods-Climate-Change/

[Nihil]

1. Shame that it didn't drown the tar sand pits ...

... and damage the equipment there beyond repair.

Now *that* would have been poetic justice ...