Letter to the Editor: Area Residents Drop Flood Insurance at Worst Possible Time

Posted

Nancy (my precious wife of 63 years today) and I are saddened reading in your article that people in the floodplain are dropping their flood insurance and I will tell the folks exactly why.

While working on the Dec. 3, 2007 Chehalis River storm and flood, I noticed that 14 of the 16 record Chehalis floods in the last 100-plus  years occurred during sunspot minimums.  This was true of the December 2007 flood.  The sun spots did not immediately recover but stayed low throughout 2009 and we experienced the 2009 flood as well.  It turns out that there is more climate instability when the sunspots are low or non-existent which leads to record storms and floods.  Sunspots run in cycles of 11 years and that makes 2018, this year, as the logical next time we should expect another record storm and flood.  There is a complicating factor; the sun is experiencing a reduction in its heat output as measured by the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) (heat in the total spectrum of Sun emissions).  The TSI varies in cycles of some 200 years. Now 1990 AD was the year that TSI reached a maximum in this TSI cycle.  Regardless the machinations of NOAA and NASA (involving annual averages of global temperature at the direction of former President Obama), as the TSI decreases so does the Earth Annual Average Temperature (as well as Mars and other planets).  Since our oceans have a 20-year period that they feed heat back to the atmosphere, we did not notice much cooling for that 20 years.  That period was over in 2010 and now we read about many places in the USA and world that are having record cold and snow.

Suffice to say, for these reasons the possible storms and floods on the Chehalis River this year could be perhaps 10 percent to 25 percent worse in volume and duration than the storm and flood of 2007.  So, rather than cost Washington state some $800 million in damages it could cost over $1 billion this year.

Rather than 2 years without Sunspots and 2007, 2009 storms, the Sun Spots may well stay near zero now for 3 or more years.  In or about 2043AD, Habibullo Abdussamatov, Astro-Physics PhD, (DrHA) expects Sun Spots to disappear for several 11 year cycles (with bad implications).

Free advice:  For those affected, either get flood insurance or sell out in the next few months for whatever you can get.  For those that stay on the flood plain, have an 18-plus foot boat with engine ready to transport you that cannot be swamped by rain and keep it ready within easy reach, but secure. Make provisions now for the safety of your animals and possessions this fall and winter.



Sincerely, 

 

John F. Cramer

Onalaska