 A mindblowing set of images of what the flood in #Valencia looks like from space - images of the same region from 8 and 30 October (I've been to the area, this is scary): ▶️ https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2024/10/Valencia_flood_disaster image credit: USGS, processed by #ESA   24 comments
 @vicgrinberg additional information about what you see in this picture: the blue line on top that flows into the sea is river Turia. It used to go through the centre of Valencia and its course was diverted after the deadly flood of 1957. This time round, it broke its banks but the damage was limited to the motorway and the fields alongside it: the diversion did its job and probably saved 1000s of lives. 1/? @vicgrinberg if you zoom on the last bends in river Turia, you will see small patches of blue just south of it. This is where most of the casualties and damage happened: those are smaller rivers that go through built up areas and have nowhere to go but the streets when they break their banks. 2/2 @brunogirin @vicgrinberg Wasn't Albufera recovering from nasty pollution from the nearby car plant in Almussafes? Last time I was there (May 2024) we did a guided boat tour through Albufera and we were advised not to touch the water. @jeremy @vicgrinberg I don't know. Last time I went to the Albufera was 2 years ago so your info is more recent than mine. That said, considering the amount of water that just went into the lagoon, whatever chemical composition it had last week it's probably very different now.  It's awful! Knowing that area (Albufera) is a nature reserve, I can't help but wonder how much wildlife has suffered.  And I am afraid because land use has been a long ignored leg of climate change, that the actual consequences of the ecological disaster extreme weather is inflicting go unnoticed. Our regional biomes play an intimate role in our regional climate. They are natural air conditioners and sprinkler systems, which capture rainfall, stored it in soil and then release that water back into the atmosphere, cooling the region and re-introducing water in a very measured way. 🧵 Land use is climate change. This fact has been ignored since the 70s. And it is not included in the climate models very much outside of the Amazon.  @vicgrinberg It should be noted that this is a satellite image in false colors. That blue of the lagoon is most probably brown in true colors  Street view: A city street jammed with cars after the intense rain and flooding. Photograph: Alberto Saiz/AP Cars were swept away by the torrents of muddy flood water that surged through cities Photograph: Alberto Saiz/AP  @vicgrinberg What's the pre-flood nature of the now-flooded landscape? Urbanization, farmland, etc? @royal National park/preserved flood plain: https://mastodon.me.uk/@brunogirin/113401941716440053 @vicgrinberg The teal parts of the water are actually brown. Very muddy waters that I've experienced first hand. @vicgrinberg may the god inside of you who covers you around save you and your family be brave with hope .   The hardest reality to bear in all this is this is the future. What we see today is only waypoint in a constantly shifting world. Each community must confront their local conditions, all of us are in the situation, but it is acutely difficult to see Europe savaged like this over and over, as it is to watch communities all over the world suffer in the same way.  #ClimateCrisis #ExzeemeWeatherEvents Hollywood sh*t! The precipitation of a year in a day created a huge lake: @vicgrinberg I was chatting with a good friend who lives in Catalonia about this earlier today, and he mentioned that the river there was diverted south some years back, and then the former course / floodplain extensively developed (roads, houses etc.). He said even at that time there were people saying it was a mistake, and that while this recent rainfall in the mountains was unprecedented, it was probably just a matter of time before something like this was going to happen.  Of all the things to over-engineer and over-build, seawalls should be first in the list. |
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@vicgrinberg wow! I was there on the 8th!
The big flooded area is the Albufera national park around the lagoon which is not built up and acts exactly as it should as a flood plain. It could have been a lot worse if that area hadn't been a protected nature reserve!