Worst Floods For 80 Years Sweep Kazakhstan
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
Naturally the lazy journalist blames it on global warming!
The heaviest snow melt in decades has burst rivers across Siberia and north Kazakhstan, flooding cities and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee.
At least eight people have died and hundreds of livestock have drowned in an area the size of western Europe.
A state of emergency has been declared in 10 of Kazakhstan’s 17 regions and Russian officials have evacuated the city of Orsk after a dam burst.
In a video addressing the nation on Saturday evening, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the Kazakh president, described the floods as the worst in 80 years.
“A natural disaster occurred, the likes of which had not been seen for many years,” he said.
Rising temperatures linked to global warming have melted snow more quickly than usual in mountainous areas and on the steppe, sending tonnes of water downstream.
Several towns in north Kazakhstan first raised the alarm last week as swollen rivers burst and dams failed. This week, the city of Aktobe, near Russia, flooded.
Scientists have warned that global warming is melting snow in frozen regions faster than rivers can cope and that shorter winter seasons mean that there is more rain.
The winter seasons in the Tien Shan Mountains on the Kazakhstan-China border are now estimated to be two or three weeks shorter than a few years ago.
I note that the Telegraph has banned comments on this article, no doubt knowing the drubbing they would get! They might ask what caused those floods 80 years ago.
The dopey reporter has not worked out that a shorter winter season would mean less snow. Regardless when it actually melts, and this always happens suddenly in spring, a lot of snow equates to a lot of floodwater.
Meanwhile back in the real world, winter snow extent in Eurasia has been steady or growing since the 1960s, and this winter it was close to average. Too much snow is the problem, not too much melting.
https://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=eurasia&ui_season=4
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
8 people die in an area equivalent to Western Europe.
Tragic.
But probably as about as life-threatening as MonkeyPox, then.
How many square Tokyo’s is ‘Western Europe?’
O/T but gave up on the expense of travelling to the US for the total eclipse. Are you going anywhere for a look?
Front yard. We had about 75% coverage here. Not quite as good as a few years ago.
Here’s a satellite view:
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G16§or=sp&band=EXTENT3&length=24
Note all the clouds in Texas. You lucked out on not going.
I am still hiding in the house to avoid monkey pox. It has obviously worked as I haven’t caught it yet.
Good man!
That’s the spirit!
The BBC covers the story without directly referencing Climate Change.
When covering the situation in neighbouring Russia the said this
During a visit to Orsk on Sunday, Russian Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov, warned that “a critical situation” had developed after a dam was breached on Friday.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68756041
Kazakhstan has amazing climatic range. Typically +40 C in summer and – 40C in winter. However, to serious matters, according to the “i” today, climate change is going to destroy British beer. After immediate panic, I read the article and it is actually sensible (climate madness excluded), as the planet warms the best hops will vary. According to the Hop expert the changes will match the changes in taste in the UK anyway. Sad that they had to have a pure propaganda headline for an article that was not really about the climate!
Jack they run these BS “Beer threatened by climate change” articles quite regularly. Here is the most recent BBC drivel.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68636451
It is actually just free advertising for the breweries (notice how Shepherd Neame and the Ramsgate brewery got their free “plugs”) and of course assists someone’s grant funding credentials.
My home in Kent used to be surrounded by hop fields ( hops grow like weeds in my back garden) but now I am surrounded by hectares of vineyards. More money in wine and most hops are now imported anyway. Ethiopia for example is now a major grower and wages are a damn site lower there.
If it gets hotter – grow hops in Essex, Kent, Oxfordshire.
If it gets colder, grow hops in yorkshire, lancashire, Scotland. (Ethiopia!!)
Total non-story misinformation. The I, BBC and the rest specialise in mis and dis informing.
Off topic, but did any of you experience any problems with storm Kathleen? I live about 20 miles from Manchester Airport which was apparently closed due to this storm. Here in West Cheshire it was a bit windy.
My son had a trip to Livingston and back to Derby on Saturday to pick up a car for a warranty job. He managed to include a football match, a dire 0-0. Apart from the motorway being pretty quiet he didn’t think it was out of the ordinary as far as the wind was concerned either driving or at the match.
Pl
The wind played havoc with my Croquet game.
Fewer planes than usual flew over Bowdon.
OT
“A natural disaster occurred, the likes of which had not been seen for many years,” he said.
No trend then.
A major Russian refinery on the border of Kazakhstan was also forced to shut down over the weekend due to heavy flooding.
. . .
Authorities have reported floods all along the length of the Ural, which flows across southwestern Russia and Kazakhstan and drains into the Caspian Sea.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Spring-Floods-Shut-Down-Oil-Refinery-in-Russia.html
There are over 160 countries worldwide. As such, for each XXX on average 2 countries each year have the “worst XXX for 80 years”.
There are numerous XXXs. Flood, drought, hot, cold, winds, plagues, etc.
On average there should be one such headline each month. If we then account for all the other ways to manipulate the data, including worst in a century, or worst month, worst week of … , worst day of … worst April 1st in XXX years. We basically have a headline every day of the year …
AND NOTHING HAS CHANGED.
Exactly. I note the dear old Met Office resorted to 18 months for its latest “record”.
That trend line is bogus. Its caused by 2 very high years and then a run of your to five high years. There’s no way you can claim the last ten years show an “increase”.
The trend line is over the entire period since 1967.
Hence it has to account for the low snow extent 1973-2003.
Statistics can be a bugger when it exposes your belief.
Temperature variation this century spanning the Tianshan mountains situated on the China - Kazakhstan border are inconsistent so a global warming signal is surely indeterminate :
” In general from 2001 to 2019 the western and eastern mountains of Tianshan showed a warming trend and the central mountainous areas of Tianshan mainly showed a cooling trend [ ”The Spatiotemporal patterns and interrelationships of snow cover and climate change in Tianshan mountains “ Heng ; Yang et al , Water 2021 : 13 [4] , 404 ]
Snow cover percentage [SCP ] across the Tianshan range only decreased by about a percentage point or thereabouts whereas snow depth [ SD ] despite fluctuations, diminished marginally from 2001 to 2019 .
It would be interesting to scrutinize the SST’s and respective oceanic current oscillations of the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean as they influence precipitation and snowfall patterns in the Russian Federation - namely the Urals and Tianshan mountains