Flood Zone Exemptions for Camp Mystic

Last week’s devastating floods in central Texas killed more than two dozen people, many of them at Camp Mystic, a children’s camp for girls. The camp asked FEMA to change their flood maps after a 2011 revision placed much of the camp in a floodplain. FEMA responded by removing more than a dozen buildings from their flood zones in 2013 and then again in 2019 and 2020. Buildings outside of the 100 year flood zone (areas that tend to flood much more frequently than every 100 years) are exempt from needing flood insurance. They are also exempt from more stringent requirements such as elevating the buildings or shoring up their foundations. 

Here is a screen shot from FEMA’s map showing the “floodway” (the zone where water moves quickly during a flood) in the hatched colors and the 100 year flood zone in blue. This is where many of the girls were swept away by moving water. Some of the cabins were in the orange or unshaded areas which are not considered part of the flood zone.

 Another section further up Cypress Creek shows more clearly that many cabins are outside of the blue 100 year floodplain.

First Street, a climate risk modeling agency drew their own maps showing an increased risk of flooding for many of the cabins exempted from FEMA’s maps.

map from First Street, via KUT Austin

An excellent article from NPR's KUT affiliate in Austin shows these maps and provides links to letters of map amendment asking for exemptions of certain buildings.

The Salt Front

The salt front is the point where a river becomes too salty to be safe for drinking water. The front moves upstream from the river’s mouth as less freshwater flows downstream to dilute it. I’d never heard of a salt front until I read about it in a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The region’s severe drought in November caused this front to move significantly further upstream than the median monthly location.

On the map above, via the Delaware River Basin Commission (cropped for ease of reading), the pink area is the median salt front location and the pink arrow shows the normal location of this front in November, near Wilmington, Delaware. The blue arrow shows the location as of November 18, 2024. 

The DRBC monitors freshwater flows to keep the salt front from migrating too far upstream. This protects drinking water and industrial water intakes. There are major drinking water intakes for both Philadelphia and New Jersey at the blue box on the map. One way to keep freshwater flowing is to release water from various upstream dams.

The worst droughts were in the mid 1960’s-this shot from one of their videos shows the most upstream movement of the front on November 20, 1964,

and here is a still map showing more specifically the salt front’s furthest upstream location during the “drought of record”

 

Finally, here is a screen shot from the hydrologic conditions dashboard, showing conditions on November 23, 2024.

 

Icelandic Glacier Web Portal

This web portal is a collaborative effort by Icelandic institutes, agencies, companies, societies and private persons to display an overview of glaciological research and variations of Icelandic glaciers. The portal provides access to measurements, observations and photographs over an interactive map.

Zoom in for more details. Photographs can be seen by clicking the camera icons.

A click on the snowflake icons will bring up a description of each glacier including dimensions, measurements and a description of what rivers or other water bodies emerge from the glacier. There is also a measurement tab where you can see how much the area of each glacier has (in most cases) decreased over time.

You can also turn on the historical outlines of each glacier to see how they have shrunk over time from circa 1890 (yellow lines) to 2019 (red lines).

There is much more to explore including graphs, links and photos here.

Artwork of Mary Edna Fraser

Those who have read this blog over the years know that I love the intersection of art and cartography. One of my recent discoveries is artist Mary Edna Fraser. Her textile work (from silks to rugs) and paintings range from the continental scale,

East Coast, US-batik on silk

to the local scale.  

Edisto (South Carolina) -Batik on Silk

She has done some stunning works depicting hurricanes such as this one

Hurricane Season-batik on silk

Her rugs are also very nice.

Ashley River

She helped organize a civic art and event-based discussion on rising sea levels that included this banner hung on the Joseph Floyd Manor in Charleston, South Carolina showing NOAA predicted flooding in the area.

Her work has been commissioned by government agencies, non-profit organizations, universities, hospitals and other companies around the world. Her main artist page is here where you can get lost in the wealth of examples.

Drought Conditions

Many years ago I did a quickie blog post showing NOAA's Drought Monitor. The maps have not changed much (except being a bit easier to read) but the conditions lately have been bad enough to warrant a look at the latest map. 

The dark brown shows areas of "exceptional" drought, a step above "extreme" drought. S and L are for short and long term effects, many areas show both letters.

This NOAA map shows how much rainfall is needed to make up for the drought. In many areas it is well over a foot.

While parts of the Dallas area got over a foot of rain in the last few days, that kind of heavy rainfall tends to drain quickly and not help the situation very much. Comparing last week's map there is only a small decrease in the size of the exceptional drought area. 

Natural Disasters of 2020

In addition to all the other problems of 2020, it was also a record setting year for natural disasters in the United States and worldwide. In the U.S. there were 22 weather and climate disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion. The previous record for this scale of loss was 16 in 2011 and 2017. These disasters also caused 262 deaths. Here's a map from NOAA.

Climate Central has maps showing number of disasters by state (this is all billion dollar events since 1980),

and more interestingly by type, though they should have picked a more clearly distinct color for TROPICS.

Finally, here's a map from Reddit showing disaster type by county. 

Like most things on Reddit there are many caveats. Unlike most things on Reddit the author was good enough to include them here.

Sea Level Rise-Coming to a City Near You

Conspiracy of Cartographers has a series of maps showing what will be underwater in various cities after 215 feet (66 meters) of sea level rise. Keep in mind that this is "end point" sea level rise and not anything we would see in our lifetimes. A recent page highlights new maps of Philadelphia,

and Washington, DC.

Both maps show similar patterns with the central cities completely flooded and the land being mostly peninsulas in the hilly north and western suburbs. There are also some nice puns.

In Philadelphia, Hunting Park becomes Fishing Park, University City becomes Irreversibly Pity, Wayne Junction, Drain Junction, and Northern Liberties is now Northern Fisheries.

Other maps have been done for cities in the U.S., Australia and England as well as a few larger regions. Here are Cascadia,

 The Palm Springs-Coachella area of California,

an almost completely waterlogged Brisbane,

and Los Angeles, featuring one of my favorite puns- the Ex-LAX airport.

Sinking Miami

I recently watched the PBS documentary Sinking Cities: Miami. One thing that jumped out at me was this map. I could not find this version (from about 1835) online but here is a screen shot from about 20:45 in.

Basically the entire Miami area, except for a few spots along the coast, and the rest of soutrhern Florida was part of the Everglades swamp. Here is an 1856 version of the same map - via the Florida Center for Instructional Technology.

The map can be browsed at the Newberry Library. Here is the Miami area (Fort Dallas) - a few uplands (listed as the Koontee and Hunting Grounds) surrounded by swamp.

By draining large parts of the Everglades, the city's developers have been able to create vast tracts of habitable and desirable land in these former swamps. However, sea level rise is starting to create problems from nuisance flooding (even on sunny days high tides can push up the ground water and cause flooding) to large scale storm destruction. This map, from National Geographic via Catalyst Miami shows areas that would be under water at high tide with a 5 foot sea level rise* and flood prone urban areas (in darker blue).

Here is a more readable close up of the Miami area.

One result of the recent increase in flooding has been climate gentrification. People are buying houses in formerly poor areas such as Little Haiti, away from the water that are on higher ground. The wealthiest can afford to engineer adaptations to rising sea levels but others are at a high risk of their homes becoming uninhabitable. These people can't as readily move and even if they could there are few affordable options for them.

This map via The New Tropic shows the Little Haiti area annotated with elevations above sea level. The heart of Little Haiti is between NE 2nd Ave and NW 2nd Ave. The author tries to determine how much gentrification is climate related but with many other factors involved ultimately is not able to draw a conclusion. However, the map does show why these areas would be desirable to those moving from further east (or even west where elevations are also lower).

* predictions for sea level rise range from about 1 to 3 feet by 2100 - more here.

Earth Animations

Earth is a project from Cameron Beccario showing a wide range of climatic conditions that can be animated. Here are the winds animated from Hurricane Florence as it made landfall on September 14th.

At the same time an even more intense Typhoon Mangkhut battering the Philippines.

You can choose to look at air or ocean currents, waves, water and air temperatures (at different heights)  and various other factors. You can even switch map projections. Here are ocean waves using the Waterman Butterfly projection,

and ocean currents in the North Atlantic, looking very Van Gogh-like.

Data are from various global sensors, the geographic data comes from Natural Earth. The visualizations are created in the browser using javascript programming. The color schemes are intuitive enough that no legend is required. Here is the three hour precipitation accumulation over North Carolina from the hurricane.

Another option is the probability of seeing an aurora.

Explore more here

The Meltropolis

There have been many excellent map books lately that I have not had a chance to properly look at. One recent addition is a new Katharine Harmon "You Are Here" volume NYC : Mapping the Soul of the City. One of the best maps is by illustrator Rick Meyerowitz (also see his New Yorkistan map) - "The Meltropolis 2108" - image via Atlas Obscura

The map shows New York as not just the victim of global warming, but also of mass consumerism. The map is full of watery puns such as Central Puddle, the Met Aquarium (the flooded museum), Lagoona Airport, ChelSEA, Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue changed to Atlantic Ocean Avenue and the former site of New Jersey. Wall Street has become the Outer Banks separated from the rest of the island by the Financial Straits.

Sociopolitical humor is found in place names such as the Snipesland Tax Free Zone, the Condo District, Times Square renamed Murdoch Square, Staten Island re-branded as Mega Store Island and Ivankaville. Other nice touches include the a large spud known as the Freedom Tuber and the Monument to the Last Liberal.

To see more details click the map above, see the Atlas Obscura article or buy the book.

Cracks in the Antarctic Ice

We all know global warming is a hoax because of fossil fuel industry funded science. However, if it was real one thing we might see are growing cracks in the Antarctic ice shelves. One such crack is forcing the British Antarctic Survey to move their research station inland. The survey's site has a nice map showing the extent of the crack and the new site.

 

The station was designed in modular units so they can be towed across the ice. The work is proceeding now in advance of the upcoming Antarctic winter.  You can click the image above for more detail but here is a zoomed in view of the chasm that threatens the current location. This crack in the ice was dormant until a few years ago.

A second crack 17 km north of the station recently appeared. These cracks could cause a large iceberg to calve. The station is being moved 23 km inland which should put it out of the danger zone for a while. For more info see the British Antarctic Survey's web site.

Inversia

Sometimes a poorly colored map makes it difficult to distinguish land and water. What if they were reversed?  "Swap dirt and water" and you get Inversia.

Of course, it's not that simple. Creator Chris Wayan lays down a series of ground rules. For example, the most shallow ocean areas would become depressions that would fill up with rain water. This results in a series of lakes and seas in the middle of the oceans. These are important to the ecosystem of Inversia because the oceans have become large deserts due to coastal mountains blocking rainfall. The lakes provide much needed water sources for life here.

There are still Andes Mountains and a trench along the west coast of South America but reversed. The Great Lakes have become the Great Isles. Hawaii and the Azores are Seas and the Mariana Trench is now the world's highest mountain range. The web page is full of well thought out descriptions of the life, climate and ecology of Inversia. Enjoying exploring!

Draining California

National Geographic has an article about the California drought in the October issue called When the Snows Fail. The magazine comes with a fantastic pull-out map showing the natural and manipulated ways that water flows out of the Sierra Nevada into the Central Valley, the heartland of US agriculture.

The printed map sprawls across several flaps and shows a broad view of the entire regional water system in a way that can't possibly (or legally) be shown here. The image above gives an idea of much of what is shown on the map including aqueducts  (light blue lines), agricultural areas in green, dams, reservoirs (with information about  percentage above or below capacity) and various other bits of textual information.

Their web site has an interactive graphic that captures some of the map's information. Click on the second tab for the graphic, the first one is the article. The graphics do a nice job of showing the flow of water from the headwaters of the Rubicon River, near Lake Tahoe, into reservoirs, lakes, the American and then Sacramento Rivers. Three years of drought have left dry shorelines, lower volumes of surface water and increased use of wells causing subsidence of the land. 

The interactive web graphics are very well done, but also are a good illustration of how computer images still cannot provide the awe inspired by a large paper map. I highly recommend getting a hold of the magazine and taking a look at the full "centerfold."

Canada Day

In honor of Canada Day, here are some maps from Macleans magazine's Mapping Canada series. Not all of these maps are useful but this one showing cities paired with other cities on the same latitude is interesting.

EarthTools was used to find the latitude pairs. Interesting how different the climate is between Edmonton and Dublin, also for several other latitude pairs.

Job growth and shrinkage - mostly growth except for a few scattered cities in Ontario and Quebec.

Finally, the familiar cliche map. Whereas these kind of maps are often full of nastiness, this one is mostly polite in an appropriately Canadian way.

The entire series can be seen here.