U.S. to Pakistan: We're really, really upset with you this time so we'll have to give you more money

WASHINGTON AT DEFCON1

"The new pressure from the Obama administration is a departure from its more usual courteous encouragement to tackle Islamic militants. The ease with which [Times Square bomber] Faisal Shahzad was able to move between the US and Pakistan, often carrying tens of thousands of dollars, has increased fears in the White House that another attempt at a terror attack could succeed."-- Times Online, May 9

Whereupon the U.S. departments of defense and state try out the Good Cop Bad Cop Routine on General Kayani

May 7 (Reuters) - The United States has warned of "severe consequences" if a successful extremist attack in America were traced back to Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday in an interview with CBS "60
Minutes" [to air Sunday] ...

"We've made it very clear that if -- heaven-forbid -- an attack like this that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences," she said, without elaborating. ... "We've gotten more cooperation. It's been a real sea change in the commitment we have seen from the Pakistani government. We want more, we expect more," Clinton said ...

May 7 (Reuters) The United States is prepared to provide more assistance to Pakistan, if it wants it, in the wake of last week's attempted car bombing in New York, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday. ... But Gates, far from publicly calling on Pakistan to do more, renewed praise for Islamabad's efforts against insurgents and acknowledged Pakistan's armed forces were already stretched.

[Approximately 650,000 personnel are on active duty in the Pakistan military which is the world's 6th largest armed force as of 2010. Combined with the 302,000 strong Paramilitary forces and 528,000 in reserve, the Military of Pakistan has a total size of over 1,000,000 personnel.]

Rule #1 for a happy relationship with Pakistan's military: Never ever try to monitor where your development aid money goes in Pakistan

May 8 (New York Times) ... The Obama administration was planning to use the failed terrorist attack [in Times Square] to impress on the Pakistanis the urgency of getting American development aid in place in the tribal areas where militancy thrives, and into Karachi, the biggest city, where radical religious schools, known as madrasas, are popular.

“Last week’s incident makes it more urgent and more true” of the need to bring stability and security to these areas where the militants have multiplied, an American official said.

About $150 million was appropriated by Congress for assistance to the tribal areas in the coming period for reconstruction and other projects. But a host of problems, including American insistence on being able to monitor the money being spent, has made it a slow process. ....

As a last resort threaten General Kayani with a policy debate

May 9 (Washington Post) Washington -- After more than a year of doling out carrots to Pakistan, the Obama administration has reminded its strategic partner on the Afghanistan border that the U.S. mood could quickly sour if FBI investigators confirm ties between the Times Square bombing suspect and Pakistani insurgent groups.

The warnings so far have been nonspecific and publicly couched in confidence that the Pakistanis will do whatever is required. But the administration has indicated that anything less than full cooperation on the May 1 bombing attempt could make the continued flow of billions of U.S. economic and security dollars "problematic," officials from both countries said. ...

An ever-closer relationship with Pakistan is at the core of Obama's war strategy in Afghanistan and against al-Qaeda. The nature and outcome of the threatened consequences for noncooperation are subjects the administration has barely begun to contemplate.

"There's going to be enough here to trigger a policy debate," predicted one senior official with access to U.S. intelligence on Pakistan and involvement in White House discussions about the bombing attempt. ...

What U.S. intelligence on Pakistan?

Cut to the sound of chirping crickets.

It's baaaaack: volcanic ash visits great uncertainty on parts of Europe

May 7,(U.K.) Times Online:

Ash-free Spain could become an emergency flight hub
Spain has been spared falls of ash from Iceland’s volcanoes for much of the past 40,000 years, according to research that suggests the country could serve Europe as an emergency flight hub in the event of another eruption. ...

May 8, 5:30 AM EDT, AFP:

Iceland ash clouds halts air travel in Spain, Portugal
MADRID — An ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano caused new disruption to air travel in Europe on Saturday with Spain shutting down 15 airports and Portugal cancelling 104 flights, authorities said. ...

Well, perhaps the wind pattern that took Iceland's volcanic ash cloud over Spain is a fluke. And the cloud is not expected to hang over Spain and Portugal for long.

According to a Wall Street Journal report filed at 8:35 AM EDT today, Spain's airport authority, Aena, announced that the flight restrictions will remain in place until by 6:00 PM local time. The WSJ also reported:

Eurocontrol, the pan-European air traffic control agency, said trans-Atlantic flights faced "substantial delays" as controllers sought to reroute traffic around a thin line of ash stretching south from Iceland to Portugal, with the potential to drift as far east as Barcelona and Marseilles, France. ...

Airlines reported that overnight trans-Atlantic flights saw delays of up to three hours as aircraft were rerouted north and south of buffer zones established around the plume under new rules drawn up after last month's six-day shutdown of much of northern Europe's airspace.

Westbound trans-Atlantic flights Saturday -— including to and from major hubs such as London Heathrow -- also faced delays as air-traffic controllers dealt with the reduction in available airspace.

A spokeswoman for British Airways PLC, one of the airlines most affected by the volcanic eruption, said the carrier was running its full schedule, although with delays.

"The schedule is going ahead as planned, but we are experiencing some delays, particularly over the North Atlantic," she said. She said some flights were being rerouted around the cloud, which leads to longer flight times. Where possible given safety constraints, flights may also be routed above the cloud, she said.

The delays are a substantial improvement over the blanket closure of airspace to all instrument-navigated flights that occurred last month. On May 4 a hastily arranged summit of transport ministers from the EU's 27 countries began hashing out plans to unify Europe's divided air-traffic-control networks, in the effort to prevent a repeat of last month's chaos.

Ironically, the summit occurred on a day that saw flights from Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic, and Scotland disrupted as a shift in the winds again brought ash from Eyjafjallajokull over northern Europe. Noel Dempsey, Republic of Ireland’s Transport Minister, was unable to attend the summit because of grounded Irish flights.

However, the summit made headway. The ministers committed to researching new ways of identifying and measuring radar-invisible ash clouds and legally defining safety standards for specific makes of jet engines and the airline industry as a whole.

As to how things stand now with the volcano, according to Canada's CBC:

Iceland's Institute of Earth Sciences said the volcano's plume has risen [last] week to nearly 5.5 kilometres following several large explosions. It said tremours emanating from the volcano have intensified since Sunday night [May 2] and the eruption that began April 14 shows no signs of ending.

Dymphna at Gates of Vienna left a comment this morning at my post about this year's Atlantic hurricane season, which meteorologists expect to be severe. She wrote in part:

Given that Iceland is so very far from the prevailing winds which form our weather disasters, I wonder if the current conditions (and the new eruptions expected) will eventually drift high enough to be carried far enough south to affect the coast of Africa, etc.

IIRC, ash has a cooling effect.

My answer to both comments is "wild card." The winds that have sent the ash cloud away from Iceland have been part of an unusual weather pattern -- the same one that caused the unusual frigid temperatures in Britain in early January. Of Iceland's eight volcanic eruptions in the past 40 years, only the present one at Eyjafjallajokull was followed by winds blowing southeast toward northern Europe.

And it was the unusual wind pattern, combined with a high pressure system or what meteorologists also call a "blocking high," that kept the ash cloud pretty much stationary for about six days over much of Britain.

So, who knows at this point how the winds are going to be blowing a month from now? All that's known is that as long as the volcano's magma finds ice to fuel its ash eruptions the airlines, air passengers, governments, and businesses that use air cargo have to plan to be very flexible.

Once the magma burns through all the ice, then it doesn't matter how the wind blows; the ash cloud will disappear even if the volcano keeps erupting.

As to the cooling effect of volcanic ash on the weather, the extent of depends on more than one factor. In my April 15 post I featured an article on volcanic ash published by The New York Times, dated April 15 and written by Henry Fountain. Here I'll excerpt just the sentences that pertain to the cooling issue. ("Dr Burton" refers to Bill Burton, associate director of the
United States Geological Survey’s volcano hazards program). Emphasis throughout mine:

"While an on-again, off-again eruption probably would not have much effect on air travel over the long term, it could affect the weather in Northern Europe, said Richard Wunderman, a volcanologist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The volcanic plume contains a lot of sulfur, he said, “that can become an aerosol up there that hangs around a long time reflecting sunlight.”

“It’s not enough that it’s probably going to be cooling the whole climate,” he added. But on a regional basis it could create what is called volcano weather, with smoglike conditions.

Unlike huge volcanic blasts like that at Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, the eruption in southern Iceland began slowly about a month ago, with a series of fissures on the side of the volcano and what volcanologists call fire fountaining, the spewing of hot magma through vents. Dr. Burton said that it was only when the magma found a new route through the volcano earlier this week — shifting to the summit, directly under the glacial ice — that the ash-rich eruption began.
[...]
Dr. Burton said the eruption was low on a measure of power called the volcanic explosivity index — certainly nowhere near Pinatubo, which rated a 6 on the 1 to 8 scale, or the 1980 explosive eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington State, which rated a 5.

Pinatubo spewed so much ash, dust and aerosol particles into the atmosphere that it lowered average air temperatures worldwide for several years, as the particles blocked some sunlight from reaching the Earth. So far the Icelandic eruption has spewed far less material, and its location, in the high latitudes, also reduces its global impact. “The closer to the poles, the less effect it is likely to have,” Dr. Burton said.

Of course the situation couldn't be coming at a worse time in Europe given the convergence of the recession, Greece's debt crisis, and the summer tourist season. A number of European countries, notably Greece, are depending greatly on tourist money this year.

If tourists see that there could be long delays in flights, or that they could be stranded in airports by ash cloud alerts, they'll plan to spend their summer vacation closer to home.

The situation is literally up in the air and people don't like that much uncertainty when planning their vacations. The volcanic ash is also generating tremendous uncertainty for many companies around the world, although they don't have a choice but to try to find workarounds. The ash cloud crisis has hit the air cargo industry very hard.

And even if flight diversions to Spain's airports are used at some point to get around an ash cloud over the U.K., the boon to Spain's economy will take business away from the U.K. -- away from Heathrow and other U.K. airports and from hotels, restaurants, taxi, etc. that service those airports.

U.S. mainstream media ignored what could be the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history -- the Tennessee floods

CNN's extensive update on the flooding, filed at 1:47 PM EDT today, gives hope that the worst is behind Nashville, although as search teams get into remote flooded areas the death toll might continue to rise. The flood waters are receding and the weather has turned better, yet improved conditions only underscore the devastation left by the storms and floods.

The Nashville flood also leaves in its wake a controversy about the lack of national TV coverage of the disaster. Nashville is a U.S. capital, so there's no excuse. Today, in an attempt to address the issue, Newsweek's Andrew Romano wrote an editorial, which I feature below.

I could write several pages in reply to Mr Romano's mea culpa and I am sure many Americans could do the same. I note that the American blogs CMT and Uppity Woman have already made very pointed comments about the issue.

Although I began posting on May 2 on the breaking news about floods in three southeastern U.S. states, including Tennessee, I've been so busy this past week I've been unable to follow TV news. So it was not until the wee hours of this morning, when I caught a re-run of Anderson Cooper's Wednesday night show, that I realized there had been paltry national TV coverage of the floods, and that there was a public outcry about this.

I mentioned in my earlier post today that Anderson apologized on Wednesday about CNN's poor coverage of the floods. But I didn't realize until this afternoon that Anderson had been receiving Tweets from his viewers yesterday to protest the lack of coverage. That throws more light on his apology and assurance that he was traveling to Nashville this morning to do live coverage of the disaster.

All this said I appreciate Mr Romano's apology and consider his explanations a mostly sincere try, and thoughtful enough to merit highlighting on my blog. (I think complete sincerity would not have singled out MSNBC and Fox cable as examples of partisan news outlets. I know of no U.S. mainstream news outlet, including the notoriously partisan Newsweek, that has not turned strongly partisan.)

However, I find it disingenuous that Mr Romano, or at least the news industry, seems to expect public interest in a story to drive the media's coverage of it.

How, pray tell, can members of the public become interested in a story if they don't know its scope? That's what we depend on our mass media for: to alert us to important news and bring us its scope.

That Mr Romano starts his editorial with the words, "As you may have heard ..." underscores how poorly the mainstream media did in reporting on the scope of the Nashville disaster. Lucky that Anderson Cooper reads the Tweets he receives, or large numbers of Americans might still not have heard about the disaster in Nashville.

With that off my chest, I'll sit on the rest of my reply and give Mr Romano his say.

Why the Media Ignored the Nashville Flood
by Andrew Romano

As you may have heard, torrential downpours in the southeast flooded the Tennessee capital of Nashville over the weekend, lifting the Cumberland River 13 feet above flood stage, causing an estimated $1 billion in damage and killing more than 30 people. It could wind up being one of the most expensive natural disasters in U.S. history.

Or, on second thought, maybe you didn't hear. With two other "disasters" dominating the headlines -— the Times Square bombing attempt and the Gulf oil spill -— the national media seems to largely to have ignored the plight of Music City since the flood waters began inundating its streets on Sunday.

A cursory Google News search shows 8,390 hits for "Times Square bomb" and 13,800 for "BP oil spill." "Nashville flood," on the other hand, returns only 2,430 results—many of them local. As Betsy Phillips of the Nashville Scene writes, "it was mind-boggling to flip by CNN, MSNBC, and FOX on Sunday afternoon and see not one station even occasionally bringing their viewers footage of the flood, news of our people dying."

So why the cold shoulder?

I see two main reasons. First, the modern media may be more multifarious than ever, but they're also remarkably monomaniacal. In a climate where chatter is constant and ubiquitous, newsworthiness now seems to be determined less by what's most important than by what all those other media outlets are talking about the most. Sheer volume of coverage has become its own qualification for continued coverage. (Witness the Sandra Bullock-Jesse James saga.) In that sense, it's easy to see why the press can't seem to focus on more than one or two disasters at the same time. Everyone is talking about BP and Faisal Shahzad 24/7, the "thinking" goes. So there must not be anything else that's as important to talk about. It's a horrible feedback loop.

Of course, the media is also notorious for its ADD; no story goes on forever. Which brings us to the second reason the Nashville floods never gained much of a foothold in the national conversation: the "narrative" simply wasn't as strong.

Because it continually needs to fill the airwaves and the Internet with new content, 1,440 minutes a day, the media can only trade on a story's novelty for a few hours, tops. It is new angles, new characters, and new chapters that keep a story alive for longer. The problem for Nashville was that both the gulf oil spill and the Times Square terror attempt are like the Russian novels of this 24/7 media culture, with all the plot twists and larger themes (energy, environment, terrorism, etc.) required to fuel the blogs and cable shows for weeks on end.

What's more, both stories have political hooks -- which provide our increasingly politicized press MSNBC, FOX News, blogs) with grist for the kind of arguments (Did Obama respond too slowly? Should we Mirandize terrorists?) that further extend a story's lifespan. The Nashville narrative wasn't compelling enough to break the cycle, so the MSM just continued to blather on about BP and Shahzad.

If I sound like I'm condoning the media's inattention here, I'm not. My explanation is meant as a criticism. Given audience demands -- especially at a time when traditional media companies aren't doing so well -- it's impossible to avoid the stories with the most buzz and the strongest narratives. Nor should we. But that doesn't mean urgency shouldn't factor into the equation as well.

In this case, the most urgent aspects of the oil spill and the Times Square attack had already been covered to death; the culprit was already caught, the containment was already underway. And yet we still kept rehashing each of those stories -- and fighting about politics -- while thousands of homes and business were destroyed and dozens of people died. That matters.

Media silence means public ignorance, and public ignorance means fewer charitable donations, slower aid, and less political pressure. If that's not reason enough to cover the flood, I don't know what is.

Nashville's WSMV-TV station website has frequent updates on the flood situation. Country music stars Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban, Vince Gill and a host of others will take part in Nashville WSMV-TV Channel 4's "Working 4 You: Flood Relief with Vince Gill and Friends" telethon tonight from 7 to 10 p.m. CDT. All proceeds will benefit The Salvation Army, Red Cross, and Second Harvest Food Bank. Read about other local benefit efforts HERE

Tennessee flood updates; Anderson Cooper sorry for poor CNN coverage; Army Corps of Engineers sorry for releasing dam waters into flooded Nashville

UPDATE May 8
"Pundita, the link you were unable to find to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Nashville District is:
http://www.lrn.usace.army.mil/
Alan Dooley
Chief, Public Affairs
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis District"
****************************
5:15 EDT UPDATE
See also my post this afternoon, U.S. mainstream media ignored what could be the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history -- the Tennessee floods
************************
"Corps officials said they weren't anticipating the amount of water now standing behind the dams. They thought they would get 7 inches of rain; instead, they got 13." - Nashville WSMV-TV

Pundita PSAs

* The first quarter of 2010 might be titled, "Officials said they weren't anticipating." This quarter has seen an astounding run of extreme weather and seismic events. Yet in country after country, region after region, the story attached to complications arising from the events has been the same: officials, communities, and various industries taken completely by surprise. Better reshuffle priorities and learn to better anticipate because it doesn't look to me as if Nature is in the best of moods this year.

* Nashville's mayor will give a presser update on the flood damage at 11:00 AM CDT.

* Country music stars Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban, Vince Gill and a host of others will take part in Nashville WSMV-TV Channel 4's "Working 4 You: Flood Relief with Vince Gill & Friends" telethon on Thursday from 7 to 10 p.m. (All proceeds will benefit The Salvation Army, The Red Cross, and The Second Harvest Food Bank.) Read about other local benefit efforts HERE.

* WSMV is chock full of reports on the floods and is a good source for breaking news on the situation.
************************
"According to the Army Corps of Engineers, the flood that hit Nashville was a 1,000-year flood -- an event that could be expected to happen once in every 1,000 years on average. ... 'The Corps of Engineers is doing everything in our power to minimize flood damages, but the extreme and flash nature of this event makes some damages unavoidable,' Lt. Col. Anthony Mitchell, commander of the Nashville District, said ... "
-- Knoxville News Sentinel

"Wednesday afternoon Mayor Karl Dean said losses from the devastating floods would be over $1 billion in Nashville. 'I think it’s safe to say that the damage we’re looking at will easily exceed $1 billion.' This is the first time a public official has put any dollar figure on the cost of flood damage."
-- The Tennessean

"I don't live in Nashville, so my knowledge of the flood damage isn't exactly where I want it to be. Why is that, with so many television channels devoted to the news, that all I hear up here in Chicago is an occasional "and Nashville, Tennessee is getting hit hard by flash floods"? The lack of information is almost as tragic as the flood itself. So much so, one woman even started a Facebook page called 'Hey National Media -- WHERE ARE YOU while Nashville is flooding???' And it already has more than 11,000 members. I joined because, like the others, I am pissed off that the devastation is not receiving the attention it needs. Attention that would ultimately lead to more relief. ..."
-- Alison Bonaguro, CMT Blog

Last night on his 360 show for CNN, Anderson Cooper said that Tennesseans were angry about what they perceived as the slow response in Washington to catastrophic flooding in the state, and major media giving it little coverage.

Anderson apologized for CNN, saying that it was true the cable station hadn't given the disaster the attention it merited. He added that while it wasn't an excuse, last week the news media had been taken up with the BP oil spill and the Times Square bomb stories. He also said that he was heading for Nashville this morning to report live from there on the flooding.

Anderson spoke with Nashville's mayor, who said that the entire city had been flooded; the footage that 360 showed brought home just how bad the flooding is. As of yesterday, reportedly much of Nashville was still under an evacuation watch.

Anderson's interview with Country Music star Kenny Chesney featured Kenny's video shots of his home, which is underwater; this also helped bring home the scope of the disaster. Kenny said he'd see these kinds of situations happening in other countries but never thought it would happen in Nashville.

I'd guess the reason for Washington's slow response is that FEMA has to do on-site inspection for every region that requests federal disaster assistance. That can be a laborious process. In this case, on Monday Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen requested a federal disaster declaration be extended to all 52 counties in the state.

'Freedom Fairy' told me the other night that very little has been heard from Craig Fugate, "the best FEMA director since James Lee Witt," since President Obama appointed him to the post. Fugate's experience in managing disaster responses for Florida makes him one of the best such managers in the USA. So let's hope he's given his head in dealing with the disaster in Tennessee, and is able to cut through the worst of the red tape.

There is a particular urgency for FEMA to move as fast as possible. As I noted in an earlier post many people in the flooded regions in Tennessee don't have flood insurance because the regions aren't in official flood zones. Those people have no choice but to wait for FEMA assistance.

And given that the unemployment office in Nashville is flooded, those who've lost their homes in the floods and are depending on unemployment checks for emergency funds might have to wait several days before they see even that assistance. Last night at 11:55 PM CDT The Tennessean update from The Tennesseean:

President Barack Obama has authorized a major disaster declaration for four more counties in Tennessee.

On Wednesday McNairy, Perry, Shelby and Tipton became the latest counties to have federal funding made available to individuals as a result of severe storms last weekend. The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency says federal officials authorized declarations for Montgomery and Dyer Counties earlier in the day.

Declarations for Cheatham, Davidson, Hickman and Williamson counties were authorized on Tuesday.

More declarations for additional Tennessee counties are expected.

As to the Corps of Engineers story, below I'll provide the entire report from Nashville's WSMV-TV. For readers who are wondering whether the Tennessee Valley Authority is also involved in the situation, see the Knoxville Sentinel report I linked to above for details but in short:

TVA is playing a secondary role in controlling the flooding in Nashville and Middle Tennessee. There are several dams on the Cumberland River, but none of them belong to TVA. They are operated by the Army Corps of Engineers, which has been providing updates on the flood through the website for its Nashville District.

Frankly, I don't see where those updates are on the Corps website or how to access the Nashville section. But moving right along here's a report from WSMV-TV about the Corps and Nashville's floods.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Flood victims are wondering why the Army Corps of Engineers decided to release water through a dam during the worst of the flooding.

"I would just like to know what went on," said Tim Garrett, who lives where the Stones River meets the Cumberland River.

He said after the rain ended early Sunday night, he hadn't experienced flooding.

"We basically thought we were out of the woods, so to speak," said Garrett.

But then the waters at his apartment started rising.

The Army Corps of Engineers believes water released from the Old Hickory Dam just up the Cumberland River caused Garrett's apartment to flood.

"We had to make some tough calls," said Lt. Col. Anthony Mitchell.

Sunday night, with the water reaching 7 inches from flooding Old Hickory Dam, the Corps decided to start releasing water, knowing it would head downstream toward Nashville.

"We empathize with anyone who has lost anything by any means, but I want to reassure that the Corps is doing everything it can to try and mitigate to prevent those things," said Mitchell.

Corps officials said they weren't anticipating the amount of water now standing behind the dams. They thought they would get 7 inches of rain; instead, they got 13.

The Corps said the loss of Old Hickory Dam would have resulted in an additional 4 feet of water in downtown Nashville.

Garrett said he understands.

"No. 1 is public safety, and if we got flooded some, so be it," he said.

The Cheatham Dam is under water now, and the Army Corps of Engineers said it will be damaged.

But they said it's designed to be under water if need be and that the dam's true purpose is not flood control but rather help in the navigation of boats.

**************\
Comradess Uppity has crossposted this entry at her Uppity Woman blog and added pix and wonderfully biting commentary

2010 hurricane season may rival some of the worst in history for USA

"While El Niño fades, hot spots in the Atlantic set a monthly record in March, breaking a mark set in 1969, and tied the high set in June 2005 ... Hurricanes draw on warm water to form and gain strength."

The looming threat of this hurricane season needs to be seen against severe flood and tornado damage during the past week across three southern U.S. states, the historic disaster bearing down on coastal states affected by the Gulf oil spill, and the vulnerability of U.S. gas and oil facilities perched in coastal Gulf regions:

May 4 (Bloomberg) -- The 2010 Atlantic hurricane season may rival some of the worst in history as meteorological conditions mirror 2005, the record-breaking year that spawned [Rita and] New Orleans - wrecking Katrina, forecasters say.

The El Niño warming in the Pacific is fading and rain is keeping dust down in Africa, cutting off two phenomena that help retard Atlantic hurricane formation.

Perhaps most significantly, sea temperatures from the Cape Verde Islands to the Caribbean, where the storms usually develop, are above normal and reaching records in some areas.

“We have only seen that in three previous seasons, 2005, 1958 and 1969, and all three of those years had five major hurricanes,” said Jeff Masters, [chief meteorologist and] co-founder of Weather Underground Inc. "I am definitely thinking that this is going to be a severe hurricane season."

With less than a month to go before the official June 1 start of the season, predictions are for 14 to 18 named storms. In an average year, there are 11 named storms with winds of at least 39 mph (62 kph), six of them reaching the 74-mph threshold for hurricanes and two growing into major storms with winds of 111 mph or more, the National Hurricane Center says. [...] As the number of hurricanes rises, so do the chances of one striking the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico or Florida’s agricultural areas.

Gulf Threat

The Gulf is home to about 27 percent of U.S. oil and 15 percent of U.S. natural gas production, the U.S. Department of Energy says. It also has seven of the 10 busiest U.S. ports, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. Florida is the second- largest producer of oranges after Brazil.

Energy disruptions could occur if 2010 produces a repeat of 2008, when hurricanes Gustav and Ike slammed into the Gulf Coast about a week apart, said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, a Houston-based consulting company.

“The good news going into hurricane season is that we have significant amounts of inventories of gasoline and distillate fuels,” he said.
[...]

For readers who've been wondering, as I have, whether the oil slick from the BP spill might be a blessing in disguise, this Q&A today from the Market Blog puts a damper on that wild hope:

There is new time pressure on the oil clean-up: Hurricane season is around the corner. Nancy Marshall Genzer has more:

NMG: Hurricane season starts June 1. Hurricanes tend to wait until July or August, but there's no guarantee the blown-out oil well a mile under the Gulf will be shut off by then. So what happens when oil and hurricane force winds mix?

Jeff Masters: It's like when you shake up a bottle of vinegar and oil. I mean the oil will mix down in the water for a while, and might be carried inland as well at a reduced concentration because it's going to be well-mixed.

... Masters is trying to be optimistic. He sees our glass of oil and water as half full. There's a theory that water coated with oil could actually help slow down hurricanes. Oily water evaporates slowly. Hurricanes are powered by evaporation.

Kerry Emanuel teaches atmospheric science at MIT. He says the theory holds if the ocean is calm, with low winds.

Kerry Emanuel: But at high wind speeds, whatever you put on the surface tends to get disbursed, and that's why we don't really believe that an oil slick would have much effect on a hurricane.

Plus, huge waves churned up by the hurricane would push the oily water farther inland around the Gulf. But can we at least try to minimize the impact of oil and hurricane force winds? Jeff Masters says no.

JM: All you can do really is sit back and watch it happen. I don't think you can really plan for it.

To return to the Bloomberg report:

[...] Joe Bastardi, chief hurricane forecaster at AccuWeather in State College, Pennsylvania, said he doesn’t think the Atlantic can produce 28 storms this year, as it did in 2005, the most active year on record.

“I have 2005 in the mix” of years to compare to 2010, Bastardi said. “But if I had to choose, I would choose 1998 over 2005.”

In 1998, 14 named storms formed, 11 of which turned into hurricanes, according to Weather Underground’s website. There were 15 hurricanes in 2005.

AccuWeather’s Call

AccuWeather currently calls for 16 to 18 storms to form. Bastardi predicts the current El Niño will change into a La Niño, cooling the Pacific in time to influence the hurricane season, which runs through Nov. 30.

While El Niño fades, hot spots in the Atlantic set a monthly record in March, breaking a mark set in 1969, and tied the high set in June 2005, Masters said. Hurricanes draw on warm water to form and gain strength.

Colorado State University researchers William Gray and Phil Klotzbach chose 1958, 1966, 1969, 1998 and 2005 as the years that shared the most similarities with 2010.

In 1958, 10 storms, including five major hurricanes, formed after an El Niño faded.

In 1969, Hurricane Camille crashed into the U.S. Gulf Coast with winds in excess of 200 miles per hour. The exact strength is unknown because the storm destroyed all the wind measurement devices. It killed 256 people and caused $1.4 billion in damage.

East at Risk

The U.S. coast from North Carolina to Maine has a raised risk of being hit by a hurricane this year, said Todd Crawford, chief meteorologist for Andover, Massachusetts-based WSI Inc.

The Northeast usually has about a 25 percent chance of a hurricane strike, Crawford said. This year, it has a 48 percent chance, close to the 50 percent chance the Gulf of Mexico and Florida have every year, he said.

“We’re not too bullish on the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast,” said Jim Rouiller, a senior energy meteorologist at Planalytics Inc. in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. “We’re liking the track threatening Florida and the eastern Gulf, followed by the entire Gulf and the third emphasis would be on the Carolinas.”

Rouiller said he believes a trough will develop along the U.S. East Coast from the mid-Atlantic states through New England, shielding the region. That may mean more risk for the Canadian Maritime provinces, which have some oil platforms and refineries.

The U.S. Climate Prediction Center will issue its forecast on May 20.

Get Ready
[...]

Editors: Charlotte Porter, Dan Stets
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net

Flooding from Millington to Nashville devastates Tennessee; social media play key role in reporting

See May 6 Pundita post for updates on the flooding
***************
"The levee on Big Creek was designed to contain a 100-year storm event. The rainfall that we received in Millington in the 24-hour period was much greater than a 100-year storm event."

Deaths from floods and economic toll rising; Tennessee governor sets in motion request for federal disaster aid; flooding at Navy base in Millington (north of Memphis) puts Navy promotions on hold worldwide.

News reports I quote from below were all filed today; emphasis throughout mine. Starting with some good news:

Collaboration between social media and local TV producers was a great public service and created extraordinary coverage of Tennessee floods during the early hours of the flooding.

I saw the power of cable TV news coverage greatly boosted by social media during the Iranian protests, in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, and at local TV stations here in Washington during Snowmageddon. However, the Nashville flood situation might have topped everything so far. This is a fascinating article (actually, a press release) at Earth Times about the collaboration.

Such collaborations are nothing less than a revolution in news coverage; they're transforming even small local TV stations into 'big-time' news producers. It used to be that you had to wait for the big national news organizations to fly into a disaster region with all their equipment before you could start getting comprehensive reports. The TV stations' increasingly skillful use of contributions from social media has changed the picture; that's very evident from the Earth Times article. Increasingly, local stations are learning how to maximize social media contributions.

The need for timely reporting in disaster areas, which can be hard for professional reporters to access in the early hours of a disaster, is also rocketing citizen journalism to new heights.

The technical aspects of the collaboration in the Nashville region (see the article) have tremendous global implications. Yesterday was World Press Freedom Day; social media will have an increasingly large impact on the quest to bring democracy to the world's rural peoples, not to mention bringing them better communication during natural disasters.

Now to the bad news.

Miami Herald

The death toll is at 28 across three states, but hope is slim that number with stand Tuesday as recovery begins in earnest following record rains that pushed the river's muddy waters into Music City's historic downtown [Nashville]. Residents and authorities know they'll find widespread property damage in inundated areas, but dread even more devastating discoveries.

"Those in houses that have been flooded and some of those more remote areas, do we suspect we will find more people? Probably so," Nashville Fire Chief Kim Lawson said. "We certainly hope that it's not a large number."

Thousands of people fled rising water and hundreds were rescued, but bodies were recovered Monday from homes, a yard, even a wooded area outside a Nashville supermarket. By Monday night, the rapidly rising waters were blamed in the deaths of 17 people in Tennessee alone, including 10 in Nashville.

The weekend storms also killed six people in Mississippi and four in Kentucky, including one man whose truck ran off the road and into a flooded creek. One person was killed by a tornado in western Tennessee.

In Nashville, the Cumberland [River] also deluged some of the city's most important revenue sources: the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center, whose 1,500 guests were whisked to a shelter; the adjacent Opry Mills Mall; even the Grand Ole Opry House, considered by many to be the heart of country music.

Many in flooded areas of Tennessee not insured for floods; typically a quarter of flooded businesses never reopen

By Naomi Snyder • THE TENNESSEAN

Hundreds of homeowners and businesses impacted by the floods in the Nashville area are calling their insurance companies and finding they are not covered. Although mortgage companies typically require homeowners buy flood insurance in high-risk flood zones, many people outside those areas are finding out they've been flooded, too.
[...]
A few inches of water in the home can cost tens of thousands of dollars, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Businesses are equally at risk — because they have to pay for flood insurance separately from their standard policies as well.

A typical flood policy for a homeowner can cost anywhere from $200 to more than $1,000 per year on top of the costs for a regular homeowner policy.

FEMA says that one-quarter of businesses that close because of a flood never reopen, with an average flood damage cost of more than $33,000 per business.[...]

The Commercial Appeal

Flooding hit from Millington to Nashville

By Kevin McKenzie

After a helicopter tour of Jackson and Nashville on Monday, Governor Phil Bredesen landed at the Tennessee National Guard headquarters in the state capital and delivered letters requesting a federal disaster declaration for the state.

Weekend storms and record rainfall that triggered flooding raked the state from Memphis to Nashville in what Shelby County Office of Preparedness Director Bob Nations called "a very unusual event."

A declaration would trigger a wide array of federal assistance, including possible help for uninsured homeowners, said Craig Fugate, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who visited Nashville on Monday.

In Shelby County, recovery efforts focused on Millington [...]

On Saturday, 3.5 inches of rain fell at Memphis International Airport, breaking the record of 2.11 inches set in 1876, said Marlene Nickelson, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Memphis.

Far more rain fell elsewhere as thunderstorms pummeled the area, with 6.56 inches recorded from Friday to Sunday at the weather service office at Agricenter International and estimates of 10 inches or more in Millington.

Swollen rivers, including the Loosahatchie, threatened roads and bridges, prompting closures countywide -- more than a dozen remained closed Monday -- and causing Tipton County Schools to close Monday with plans to reopen today.

Shelby County Engineer Michael Oakes said bridge supports are being inspected after the stress.

Even in sunshine on Monday, Shelby County authorities were looking at the rising Wolf River, which prompted Germantown officials to close a greenway. That river is forecast to crest at 5 feet above flood stage.

"We're not really expecting it to get in any homes or businesses" or flood Germantown Road, said Germantown Fire Chief Dennis Wolf. "It's crested at 28 feet (before), and it's supposed to crest at 25.5. It's not going to be as high as it has before."

The worst flooding in Millington since a storm struck on Christmas Eve 1987 was not caused by a "breach" in or failure of the Big Creek levee in Millington, said Steven Barry, emergency manager for the Memphis District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Instead, Barry said the heavy rainfall inundated the canals and other tributaries running north and south through the city that drain into Big Creek, causing the flooding. Measures taken to control flooding after the 1987 event, which caused $11 million in property damage, were not at issue, he said.

A drainage ditch on the east side of the Naval Support Activity Mid-South base spilled over and caused flooding on the base, he said.

"The Navy base was in essence acting as a big retention pond," Barry said. "It actually was helping (Millington) avoid water."

Nearer U.S. 51, where the Indian Meadows subdivision and Shady Oaks mobile home park were flooded, the Big Creek levee did not overflow into the city -- the city overflowed into it, according to Barry.

While Millington City Engineer Darek Baskin agreed that levees were not breached, he said that Big Creek overflowed or "overtopped" and flooded the Navy base.

"The levee on Big Creek was designed to contain a 100-year storm event," Baskin said. "The rainfall that we received in Millington in the 24-hour period was much greater than a 100-year storm event."

Getting Help

Millington residents can call City Hall at 872-2211 during business hours or the nonemergency number for police, 872-3333, after 5 p.m.

The U-Haul Co. of Memphis is offering 30 days of free self-storage to West Tennessee flood victims, including the Millington store.

Giving help

Donations can be sent to the American Red Cross Mid-South Chapter and the Salvation Army by calling 726-1690 or online at midsouthredcross.org or salvationarmymemphis.org.

Staff reporters Richard Locker, Daniel Connolly, Sherri Drake Silence and Lela Garlington contributed to this report.

The Associated Press via the Daily Times:

Millington flooding puts Navy promotions worldwide on hold

The Associated Press
Originally published: May 04. 2010 3:01AM
Last modified: May 04. 2010 1:20AM

MILLINGTON — Navy promotions around the world are on hold until a base in Millington, north of Memphis, can reopen after weekend flooding.

David Crenshaw, spokesman for the Naval Support Activity Mid-South base, said Monday that officials were still evaluating the extent of the flooding damage and it wasn’t clear when operations would resume.

The facility manages the Navy’s recruiting efforts and personnel actions, including promotions for senior enlisted and all officer ranks.

The Millington facility has a review center called “The Tank,” that gives members of the promotion board instant electronic access to personnel records and other information.

Crenshaw said it would be “unbelievably cumbersome” to try to shift the promotion board meeting elsewhere.

Massive storm flooding spreads across southern U.S. states; levee breach adds to flooding in Nashville

See May 6 Pundita post for updates on the flooding.
*************
See May 5 post for updates.
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Although I quote extensively from an AP report on Nasville's flooding, I'm posting just a few paragraphs from news reports about disasters in other southern states; check the websites I link to for more extensive information.

Tennessee

Associated Press, approx. 6:00 PM, EDT:

Nashville braces for more flooding as river swells
By CHRIS TALBOTT and SHEILA BURKE

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Nashville braced for more deaths Monday as the flooded Cumberland River continued to swell, sending muddy water rushing through neighborhoods and into parts of the historic heart of Music City after a destructive line of weekend storms killed 22 people in Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky.

The flash floods caught the city off-guard, and thousands of residents and tourists were forced to flee homes and hotels as the river rapidly spilled over its banks. Using motor boats, jet skis and canoes, authorities and volunteers rescued residents trapped in flooded homes on Monday, some which looked like islands surround by dark brown river water. Eleven of the 12 people killed in Tennessee drowned, including six in Nashville.

Country music's landmark, The Grand Ole Opry House, was flooded with several feet of water, forcing managers to seek alternate space for upcoming shows. It wasn't clear how much water was in the concert hall, which is part of the large Gaylord Opryland Hotel complex along the river northeast of downtown, but at least 10 feet of water flooded the nearby hotel.

The downtown — home of a historic warehouse district that dates back to the 1800s and is now occupied by bars and restaurants — was nearly deserted after authorities evacuated the area. Floodwater spilled into some streets near the riverfront, and restaurants and bars in the warehouse district were closed.

Water seeped into a mechanical room in the basement of the Country Music Hall of Fame, though it was not immediately clear if there was any damage. Two blocks away, the historic Ryman Auditorium, longtime former home of the Grand Ole Opry, was in no immediate danger nor were many of the country music recording studios, located about a mile west of downtown.

On the east side of the river at LP Field, where the Tennessee Titans play, water covered the field and surrounding parking lot.

"It's shocking to see it this way, but it was an incredible storm," Mayor Karl Dean said as he surveyed the downtown flooding. The Cumberland River was expected to crest Monday afternoon at more than 11 feet above flood stage, and officials worried they may find more bodies in the rising floodwaters.
[...]
Floodwaters swallowed up hundreds of homes including 45-year-old Lisa Blackmon's in the suburb of Bellevue on the west side of Nashville. Water was up to her knees inside her house when a neighbor rushed her out Sunday. Blackmon said she feared she had nothing left in her home. She said she had no flood insurance and lost her job at a trucking company last December.

"I know God doesn't give us more than we can take," she said. "But I'm at my breaking point."

The Cumberland flooded quickly after the weekend's storms dumped more than 13 inches of rain in Nashville over two days. That nearly doubled the previous record of 6.68 inches of rain that fell in the wake of Hurricane Fredrick in 1979.

The storms, which also spawned deadly tornadoes, killed at least 12 people in Tennessee — including one person killed by a tornado in the western part of the state — six in Mississippi and four in Kentucky.

Three of the people killed in Mississippi died when high winds believed to be tornados hit their homes; the other three were killed in weather-related traffic accidents. Four weather-related deaths were also reported in Kentucky, including one man whose truck ran off the road and into a flooded creek.

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen got a bird's eye view of the flooding damage during a helicopter tour of the area on Monday. As he crossed the Tennessee River and neared the hard-hit area of Madison County, flood waters were so deep that the tops of trees made the land looked like islands.

The Cumberland River already reached record levels since an early 1960s flood control project was put in place. With so much water inundating its tributaries, it was difficult to gauge whether the river would stop at 50 feet deep, or 11 feet above flood stage.

Much of the damage from flooding was done in outlying areas of Nashville and across the middle and western parts of Tennessee. Rescues turned dramatic over the weekend with homeowners plucked off roofs and pregnant women airlifted off a waterlogged interstate.

The rain ended Monday but there will likely be weeks of cleanup. Though there was no official estimate, it was clear thousands of homes had been damaged or destroyed by flooding and tornados. Emily Petro, with the Red Cross in Nashville, said the agency was sheltering about 2,000 people across Tennessee — more than half in Nashville.[...]

New York Times, May 3 (no time stamp)

[...] Officials in Tennessee were bracing for more [flooding] as the Cumberland continued to rise, reaching 50 feet, a level not seen since the 1960s, before a system of flood-control dams was built.
[...]
Nashville authorities were particularly concerned about a leaking levee that allowed floodwater to spill onto some streets in north Nashville. Flooding also closed First Avenue near the riverfront, and officials feared that it could reach a commuter railroad depot [...]

Arkansas

There was so much going on that I missed the news about tornadoes and flash floods that hit Arkansas on April 30, but I present it here as part of the news about the rain and tornado devastation that hit a wide swath of the southland since the end of last week.

The Daily Inquirer, May 1:

Central Arkansas was hit by tornadoes late Friday. At least three people got killed and twenty-five others were injured, according to authorities. KARK, an affiliate of NBC, reported warnings of flash floods across the state, as the rainfall rates in the area increase to about more than four inches an hour.[...]

Kentucky

Examiner, 12:28 PM:

Deadly storms and massive flooding in the mid-south section of the country, from Arkansas, across Tennessee, and into Kentucky are taking their toll on everyone. From closed roads to swift water rescues to death by electrocution, this round of spring weather is some of the worse on record. Nashville, Tennessee has already recorded a month of May record rain fall in just two days.

Kentucky State Parks are also affected with the hardest hit park in the system being Fort Boonesborough State Park in Madison County near Richmond. [...]

Georgia

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 3:08 PM

Rain causes flooding in and around Atlanta

Metro Atlanta apparently will be spared a repeat of Monday's messy morning rush hour as most of the heavy rains have moved out of the area prior to this afternoon's commute.

Earlier in the day, rain across metro Atlanta flooded buildings, caused delays at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and generally made a mess of the morning traffic.

At 3 p.m., most of metro Atlanta was free of rain, with the exception being suburban counties to the south and east.

The northern half of Georgia, including all of metro Atlanta, remains under a flash flood watch by the National Weather Service until early Tuesday, with forecasters predicting 2 to 4 inches of rain. Rainfall totals across much of metro Atlanta had already topped 2 inches by 8 a.m.
[...]
Flash flood warnings were also posted before daybreak for Cobb, Douglas and Carroll counties, where the Weather Service said flood waters were "developing rapidly" on Sweetwater and Nickajack creeks. Both creeks had reached flood stage of 10 feet at 8 a.m., and were expected to rise another foot before receding Monday afternoon.

The heavy rain that began moving in from the west around 3 a.m. was punctuated by vivid lightning as strong thunderstorms began "training," or following one another from the southwest to the northeast. [...]

Update on floods Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia; water main break in Greater Boston; good and bad news relating to Gulf oil spill

Update 12:15 PM EDT
The flooding has moved into downtown Nashville, and heavy rains and flooding have moved to Atlanta, Georgia. From a CNN blog:

[Updated at 10:26 a.m] Parts of downtown Nashville are beginning to flood as the Cumberland River continues to rise, which has overwhelmed the sewer systems, CNN affiliate WKRN reported.

The Cumberland River has reached 50-feet above flood stage and water is beginning to flood from the sewer system onto First Avenue, WKRN reported, noting the sewer overflow is threatening downtown businesses, closest to Broadway Avenue.

"Right now we're watching the river real closely," Metro Police Chief Ronal Serpas told News 2. "We're going to continue to keep our fingers crossed that this is going to be as bad as it's going to get, but it's too early to tell. We've got all the right people paying attention and watching. ...

[Updated at 10:14 a.m.] A rain gauge at a CNN employee's home in Atlanta registered 4.5 inches of rain between 6 p.m. Sunday and 8 a.m. Monday.
[...]
[Updated at 9:21 a.m.] Thunderstorms and heavy rain were forecast to continue in north Georgia through the morning, with rainfall of up to one inch an hour possible, the National Weather Service said.
[...]

*****************************
(For background see my May 2 post On same day massive flood rains hit Nashville catastrophic water main break shuts off clean water to Boston)

I awakened at 6:30 this morning to pouring rain in Washington, DC. This was not the happy or hopeful kind of rain accompanied by breezes that sweep the air clean. No, this was the stuff that fell straight down like bullets from heaven. The rain tapered off to a depressing drizzle then to sullen silence but the sky is a leaden color, threatening storms later in the day, and adds to my sense of gloom and foreboding as I survey news from around the USA.

The news this weekend from Tennessee, Mississippi, Massachusetts and the Gulf region is so bad that I don't want to start the week on such a grim note. So I will begin with good news:

* Admiral Thad Allen, the Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard has been put in charge of the federal government's response to the Gulf oil spill disaster. He was schedule to retire this month but he's been named the National Incident Commander for the federal government's continued response to the disaster, "providing additional authority and oversight in leveraging every available resource to respond to the spill and minimize the associated environmental risks," according to the Marine Log website. See the website for Allen's presser on May 1.

Adm. Allen needs no introduction to those who followed the federal government's response to the 2005 Katrina and Rita hurricanes. He saved the day when he was brought into FEMA to oversee relief efforts in the wake of Katrina, at a time when FEMA head Michael Brown and Homeland Security were stumbling around. And under his command the USCG did a great job in their part of the U.S. response to the earthquake in Haiti.

* The people who worked all night to repair the broken water main in Greater Boston pulled a rabbit out of a hat; they figured how to mend the break days ahead of expectations. The Washington Post reports:

BOSTON -- Government officials threw an "open-for-business" sign on Boston for residents returning to work Monday, as a broken pipe was repaired overnight in the first step toward restoring clean water to 2 million people in eastern Massachusetts.

Officials would not speculate on when the water would be safe to drink again. The pipe in suburban Weston ruptured over the weekend, interrupting the clean water supply.

The next step is a series of tests to ensure the integrity of 10-foot-wide pipe, Massachusetts Water Resources Authority Executive Director Fred Laskey said Monday.

If those tests are successful, the water flow will be turned on and a series of environmental tests will be conducted to determine whether the water is safe to drink.

Laskey won't say when he expects the water supply to be back to normal because he doesn't want to "jinx" the situation.
[...]
Laskey didn't shy from stating the magnitude of the problem created when the pipe burst at a seam Saturday morning. Over the next eight hours, an estimated 65 million gallons spilled into the Charles River and forced officials to tap a reservoir filled with untreated water, potentially contaminating the supply to 750,000 households.

"For the people in the water industry, it is everyone's worst nightmare: to lose your main transmission line coming into a metropolitan area," Laskey said.

The same Washington Post report provids interesting background on the water main break and its implications:

Boston's water runs from the Quabbin Reservoir, in the central part of the state, to the Wachusett Reservoir before being treated at a plant in Marlborough. It travels through an 18-foot-wide pipe to suburban Weston, where it branches off into the 10-foot-wide pipe that broke.

When the breach occurred, the MWRA rerouted the clean water supply through an aqueduct that hadn't been used in decades. It also briefly tapped a reservoir to maintain pressure and meet expected demand across the system. While the water in the aqueduct was clean, the water from the reservoir - which is in open air next to Boston College - is not, prompting the warning to boil water for one minute.

"It's difficult to determine where that line (between clean and dirty water) is so, under the rules, you make the whole district a boil-only condition, even though we know and suspect that there are substantial portions that are getting purely treated water," said Laskey.

The repair was initially expected to perhaps take weeks, but officials diverted a spare coupling from a nearby project and welders modified the parts in a matter of hours.

Officials remained puzzled by the cause because the break was in a stretch of pipe just seven years old. They said they would be checking the blueprints for other similar connections, to assess the risk of another breach.

"It could have been a design flaw, it could have been a construction flaw, it could have been that the product was faulty, it could have been something in our system," said Laskey. "There's just so many different variables that come into play here when you're dealing with that much strength."

Concerned about such a vulnerability in the system, the MWRA has been repairing the original line that supplied Boston, which runs parallel to the new one. That $700 million project started nine months ago and is still three to four years from completion.

"We were working hard to have a solution in place for just this type of problem. Unfortunately, it came up before we were finished," said MWRA spokeswoman Ria Convery.

All right; so that's the good news -- and note the water main break turned up potential problems that it seems were not fully anticipated by those working on the new pipeline system. So on one level the water main break was literally a lucky break, despite its costliness and the threat to public health. Now to the bad news, first from the Associated Press around 2 this morning Eastern Time. For readers who took an interest in my two Convergence posts, kindly take special note of the mentions of the extraordinary and even unprecedented aspect of the rains, and how they converged with the earlier tornado disaster in Mississippi:

Weekend Storms Claim 15 Lives in Tennessee, Mississippi

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (May 2) -- Devastating thunderstorms slammed Tennessee and northern Mississippi over the weekend, killing at least 15 people, five in Nashville, closing scores of highways, and leaving weeks of cleanup for thousands of residents whose homes were damaged.

Thousands were evacuated and hundreds of others were rescued from their homes - some plucked from rooftops - as flood waters from swollen rivers and creeks inundated neighborhoods across the region. Hospitals, schools and state buildings also were flooded.
[...]
State officials in Tennessee said Sunday the flooding is as bad as they've seen since the mid-1970s. Tornadoes or high winds killed at least four people, unexpected flash floods swept some unsuspecting residents to their deaths and an untold number of homes were flooded as urban drainage systems and watersheds struggled to remove the deluge.

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen called it an "unprecedented rain event," but that failed to capture the magnitude. More than 13 inches of rain fell in Nashville over two days, nearly doubling the previous record of 6.68 inches that fell in the wake of Hurricane Fredrick in 1979.

"That is an astonishing amount of rain in a 24- or 36-hour period," Bredesen said Sunday.

At least 11 were dead in Tennessee and four in northern Mississippi. Tennessee Emergency Management Agency officials say there is likely a 12th victim, but a body has not been recovered. The death toll from storms in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee since April 24 has risen to at least 26 with several people missing. Three people in Mississippi were killed when tornadoes hit their homes and a fourth died after he drove into flood waters.
[...]
High winds or a tornado also contributed to the death of Phyllis Ann Sabbatini, 45, in nearby Abbeville, Miss., and a confirmed tornado killed 64-year-old Mary Buxton in the community of Pocahantas, Tenn., about 70 miles east of Memphis. Officials said the other deaths in Tennessee were all due to flooding.

The weekend deaths came on the heels of a tornado in Arkansas that killed a woman and injured about two dozen people Friday. And just a week ago 10 people were killed by a tornado from a separate storm in western Mississippi.

Flooding and damage was so widespread in Tennessee that Bredesen asked the state's Army National Guard to help and dozens of vehicles and personnel were put to work rescuing stranded residents. Nashville Mayor Karl Dean reported more than 600 water rescues in the city alone.
[...]
More than 20 shelters were open around the state, some filled to capacity. Jeff Fargis, with the American Red Cross at the Lipscomb shelter, said officials began turning people away Sunday afternoon, directing them to another shelter. But soon people began returning with news that flooding was so bad around that shelter no one could get there.

Most schools in middle Tennessee have closed for Monday.

The state, an important corridor for commerce, had multiple interstates closed over the weekend including sections of I-40 and I-24. Bredesen said in middle Tennessee alone more than 150 roads were closed.

Gary Kilgore, a truck driver from Peoria, Ill., parked his Crete Carrier truck just off the Natchez Trace Parkway south of Nashville, unable to go any further because of flooding.

"We are trapped like rats in a maze," he said.

A last line of storms was expected to sweep the region Sunday evening. Attention will then turn to damage assessment and clean up.

Bredesen expected a lot of private property damage reports and said there appeared to be widespread damage to roads, bridges and other public infrastructure, including at the state's own emergency operations center where up to a foot of water caused electrical problems and forced officials to relocate to an auxiliary command center.

Bredesen said it will be at least several days until the damage can be thoroughly assessed.
[...]
Longtime state officials say middle and western Tennessee haven't experienced such devastating flooding since 1975 when flood waters inundated the Opryland amusement park east of downtown Nashville.

"I've never seen it this high," said emergency official Donnie Smith, who's lived in Nashville 45 years. "I'm sure that it's rained this hard at one time, but never for this much of an extended period."

An April 29 report says that the American Red Cross mobile feeding units that activated in Mississippi in the wake of the earlier tornadoes was being decommissioned on May 2 but I assume that in light of the present disaster the feedings and other relief efforts in Mississippi will continue. Here is the link to the report, which lists several charitable agencies involved in relief work in the state, and the Red Cross toll free hotline.

As if Mississippi didn't have enough woes, the state's beaches and wildlife are under threat from the Gulf oil spill, as are of course other U.S. states. Here is more bad news on that front from environmental reporter Geoff Mohan writing for the Los Angeles Times:

Gulf oil spill: Alabama governor calls in National Guard

May 2, 2010, 4:04 pm PST

CNN reports that the Alabama Gov. Robert Riley has called in the National Guard to begin preparing barriers against the oil slick drifting toward his state, as well as shoreline areas of Mississippi and Louisiana.

Riley said 80% of the thousands of feet of boom laid down off the gulf coast had broken down because of rough seas and bad weather.

Alabama is home to one of the region's biggest oil ports, Mobile. The state produces about $2.5 billion of oil and natural gas annually, according to state data.

Below I quote extensively from a report on a financial website that provides several details on the widening costs of the oil spill. I don't include the discussion of how the spill is affecting plans for offshore oil drilling in the USA and I don't provide links used in the report. So I urge you to go the Money Morning website and read the rest of the report and other reports related to the spill:

May 3, 2010

Full Cost of Gulf Oil Spill Just Beginning to Surface
By Don Miller, Associate Editor, Money Morning

As oil soiled the shores of Louisiana over the weekend, the costs of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are just beginning to surface.

The effects of the spill, which may prove to be bigger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, are proving to be widespread--and costly.

The oil threatens one of the world's richest fisheries, and could decimate entire species of wildlife and their habitat, while convincing the millions of tourists they attract to take their vacation dollars elsewhere.

It has already injured the prospects and fortunes of the companies directly involved in the spill and may eventually crimp global oil supplies and curtail the efforts of other companies involved in oil exploration and production.

And it could have a chilling effect on President Barack Obama's recently announced plan to increase offshore oil production.

No End in Sight

The monumental battle to staunch the leaking oil goes on but has shown little progress to date.

BP PLC's (NYSE ADR: BP) initial efforts to cap the leak with a submersible proved fruitless, and a plan to burn the oil off with controlled fires was scuttled by rough seas.

Despite a huge effort - described as the largest in the industry's history - to stop the oil from reaching the shore, oil began tainting the Louisiana shoreline Friday. U.S. authorities estimated the oil from the Gulf spill could push "tar balls" into the Mississippi river, and pollute the shoreline from west of New Orleans all the way to the beaches of Florida.

"It is of grave concern," Davis Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told the Associated Press. "I am frightened. This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling."

Meanwhile, the well is said to be gushing out 200,000 gallons of oil per day, rather than the previous estimate of 40,000 gallons per day.

At that rate, the spill could surpass the worst oil spill in U.S history - the 11 million gallons leaked from the Exxon Valdez, which ran aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989 - by the third week of June.

Eventually, the spill could grow much larger than the Alaska spill because Gulf of Mexico wells contain much more oil than a single tanker.
It now appears the only solution is to drill another well alongside it-a process that could take more than three months.

Extensive Environmental Damage to Hurt Fishing & Tourism IndustriesThe oil slick could become the biggest environmental catastrophe in decades, threatening hundreds of species of fish, birds and other marine life and their habitats.

"This has a danger of becoming an utter ecological disaster," Ken Medlock, a fellow in energy and resource economics at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston told Bloomberg News. "This is going to result in remediation costs and is going to be burdensome, to say the least."

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal on Thursday declared a state of emergency to begin preparing for the oil. He also requested a federal disaster declaration to aid commercial fisherman, providing funds and potentially suspending loan repayments to the government.

Jindal also requested federal funding for as many as 6,000 National Guard troops and demanded extra oil barriers from BP and the U.S. Coast Guard to protect wildlife reserves. He said at least 10 wildlife preserves in Louisiana and Mississippi are in danger and billions of dollars invested in coastal restoration projects may be at risk.

The wildlife preserves nurture Louisiana's $1.8 billion seafood industry, the richest in the U.S. behind only Alaska.

Oil from the leaking well is lighter than the Alaskan crude spilled by the Exxon Valdez, Dagmar Schmidt Etkin, a Cortland, New York-based oil spill consultant told Bloomberg.

"There are going to be more toxic impacts than the heavy black oil you saw with the Exxon Valdez," he said.

Shrimp boats were dispatched to fishing grounds east of the Mississippi River to harvest as much as possible after the state declared an early open to the season to beat the deluge.

"Maybe before it hits inshore, there can be a week or two of harvest and we'll get something out," Mike Volsin who owns Motivatit Seafood told The AP.
The Gulf of Mexico is also home to widespread and lucrative oyster beds and is the only spawning ground for bluefin tuna, which is at the peak of spawning season.

Shrimpers and fishermen on April 28 filed suit in federal court against BP and Transocean Ltd., (NYSE: RIG), the owner of the sunken rig. The lawsuits say Louisiana supplies 25% of the seafood for the continental United States, Bloomberg reported.

The Gulf also generates billions of dollars in revenue from outdoor recreation, sport fishing, and beach tourism, which could be decimated as the crude oil washes ashore.

Oil Companies Hit Hard

The spill could be devastating for the three oil companies most directly involved in drilling at the site 40 miles off the coast.

BP and Anadarko Petroleum Corp (NYSE: APC) partnered in developing the Macondo field where the rig was drilling, joined in the project by junior partner Mitsui & Co. (Nasdaq ADR: MITSY). The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig was owned and operated by Transocean.

The spill represents a huge blow to BP. BP is the biggest oil producer in the Gulf, with output of more than 400,000 barrels a day. It has been a driving force behind exploration in the deepwater part of the Gulf and has made several huge oil finds there in recent years.

BP's costs are now $6 million a day and will rise as it adds people and equipment. It estimates the cost to drill the containment well will top $100 million. The government will also bill the company for any assistance it provides.

BP, Anadarko and Mitsui may have to pay as much as $12.5 billion before tax to control and clean up the oil spill, Sanford Bernstein & Co. analyst Neil McMahon said in a note to investors obtained by Bloomberg.

"The cost for BP will be heavily influenced by how much oil reaches the Gulf coast and where this occurs," McMahon wrote.

BP confirmed Friday that it is self-insured for any costs related to the spill, so the company will have to absorb those charges. BP stock has lost 10% since the rig exploded April 20.

Transocean will announce first quarter results on May 6, but has also lost 11% of its value in the aftermath of the spill.

The estimated costs do not include penalties that may be assessed in potential legal actions that are already pending.

Besides the lawsuit filed by the Louisiana fisherman, the families of some of the 11 workers killed when the rig exploded and sank also have filed suit.

"It is too early to quantify other potential costs and liabilities associated with the incident," BP said in a statement.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the doomed rig lacked a remote-control shutoff device commonly used in other major offshore oil-producing nations, which may serve to increase legal costs.

Times Square bomb-South Park Muhammad cartoon connection explored; bomb type mirrors three 2007 U.K. bombs; Pak Taliban get into the act

Update 7:50 PM EDT
Phooey! I should have checked at Long War Journal before I posted the Reuters report (below) that NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said New York police have "no evidence" to support a claim of responsibility by the Pakistani Taliban.

They may have no evidence but it's too soon to cross the Pak Taliban off the list of suspects. Bill Roggio reported for LWJ at 10:24 AM EDT today:

A top Pakistani Taliban commander took credit for yesterday's failed car bomb attack in New York City.

Qari Hussain Mehsud, the top bomb maker for the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, said he takes "fully responsibility for the recent attack in the USA." Qari Hussain made the claim on an audiotape accompanied by images that was released on a YouTube website that calls itself the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel.

The tape has yet to be verified, but US intelligence officials contacted by The Long War Journal believe it is legitimate. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel on YouTube was created on April 30. Officials believe it was created to announce the Times Square attack, and Qari Hussain’s statement was pre-recorded.

All indications are the tape is legitimate. YouTube has pulled the video and shut down the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel since this article was published.

"This attack is a revenge for the great & valuable martyred leaders of mujahideen," Qari Hussain said. He listed Baitullah Mehsud, the former leader of the Pakistani Taliban who was killed in a Predator strike in August 2009, and Abu Omar al Baghdadi, the former leader of al Qaeda Islamic State of Iraq who was killed by Iraqi forces in mid-April. And although he was not mentioned, an image of Abu Ayyub al Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, was also displayed in the images accompanying the audiotape.

Qari Hussain also said the failed attack was "revenge for the Global American interference & terrorism in Muslim countries, especially in Pakistan for Lal Masjid operation," a reference to the July 2008 Pakistani military assault on Islamists holed up in the Red Mosque in Islamabad, as well as Predator strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas and the arrest and detention of Pakistani scientist Aifa Siddique.

Qari Hussain warned NATO that it must denounce the US and apologize for "the massacres in Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Pakistani tribal areas otherwise be prepared for the worst destruction and devastation in their regions."

At the opening of the tape, the failed car bomb was described as a "jaw-breaking blow to Satan USA," however Mayor Michael Bloomberg described the device, which failed to detonate, as “amateurish.”

As I've mentioned before that the TTP hold the Pakistani military responsible for the Lal Masjid massacre of children even though they surely see the USA as complicit because we support the Pak military. In any event the LWJ report underscores that it's too soon to cross any suspects off the list.

The LWJ report also verifies that the Telegraph article below was in error, as I suspected, when they reported that U.S. forces had been responsible for killing Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri in Iraq; it was the Iraqi military.

One more correction, or at least amplification. The Telegraph article mentions that the author of the post warning South Park's creators is a "a US-born Muslim convert called Abu Talhah al Amrikee." Maybe so, but the webmaster, the person who authors the website is a U.S. born Muslim convert named Younus Abdullah Muhammad. This is the person Aaron Klein interviewed today and last Sunday. (See below and this WND report by Aaron from April 20.

So, I don't know where the Telegraph got the other name from and I don't want to spend any more time beating the bushes. As I noted earlier today the Time Square bombing incident is in the fog-of-war phase. So in my view it's best handled by blogs and reporters that specialize in intelligence on terrorist issues.
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Note: This 'fog-of-war' story is so fast-moving that this is the last post I'll be doing on it.
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The anonymous T-shirt seller who raised the alarm declined to give his name when he was approached by reporters, but asked what he had to say to New Yorkers, he said: "See something, say something."

Car with bomb was parked yards from offices of Viacom, which broadcasts South Park cartoon

Last Sunday Aaron Klein (of Aaron Klein Investigative Radio and lead author of The Manchurian President), interviewed the webmaster for US-based Revolution Muslim website. (Podcast) The website had warned on April 14 that South Park's creators would face violent reprisals for featuring the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit. Aaron interviewed him again today live on his show for a half hour. (Podcast available tomorrow) Aaron will provide a report on John Batchelor's news show tonight at 9:20 PM EDT. Listen Online or get podcast on Monday.

Bomb type the same used in 2007 London and Glasgow International Airport attempted car bombings by Muslim terrorists

Pakistan Taliban claim responsibility for bombing; call it revenge for killing of two al Qaeda commanders in Iraq. According to Reuters report at 4:07 PM EDT today, on Sunday NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said New York police have "no evidence" to support a claim of responsibility by the Pakistani Taliban.

Reportedly New York City police have ruled out the Pakistan Taliban as suspects but it's too soon to rule out any suspects.

FBI investigating 911 emergency call made by anonymous caller at 4 AM EDT from payphone a few blocks away from Times Square car bomb; he said Times Square incident was a diversion and would be followed by a “massive explosion” at an unspecified location.

Counterterrorism expert B. Raman immediately picked up on the similarity of the Times Square bomb construction and delivery method to the attempted bombings in 2007 in the U.K.

Reuters reported at 1:49 PM EDT on the Taliban claim:

The Pakistani Taliban announced its responsibility for the New York attack in revenge for the two leaders al-Baghdadi and al-Mahajer and Muslim martyrs," said a statement on a website commonly used by Islamists.

The (U.K.) Telegraph reported on the possible South Park connection:

Police in New York are investigating whether a car bomb in Times Square was targeted on the makers of the TV series South Park because of a controversial depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.

By Gordon Rayner and Alex Spillius in New York
Published: 8:00PM BST 02 May 2010

The device, which failed to detonate, was left near the offices of Viacom, which broadcasts the provocative cartoon series on its Comedy Central network.

Last month a posting on an Islamic website warned South Park’s creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, that they could face violent reprisals after an episode shown on April 14th featured Muhammad in a bear suit.

The posting on the US-based Revolution Muslim website said Stone and Parker would “probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh”, the Dutch film-maker who was murdered in 2004 by a Muslim angered by his film about Muslim women.

David Paterson, the Governor of New York, described the Times Square incident as an "act of terrorism."

He said: “Luckily, no one is hurt, and now the full attention of city, state and federal law enforcement will be turned to bringing the guilty party to justice.”

Detectives are also understood to be investigating striking similarities between the New York bomb and two car bombs planted by Islamic terrorists outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in London in 2007. [And the Glasgow car bomb; see Wikipedia links above on all three bombings.]

In both cases, the devices comprised cylinders of propane gas and cans full of petrol intended to be ignited by electronic detonators.

A further potential link to the London attack emerged when the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the Times Square bomb in a posting on an Islamist website.

It said the New York bomb had been intended to avenge the deaths of two "Muslim martyrs" named as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as al-Mahajer, who were killed by US forces in Tikrit 12 days ago. [I thought those two were killed by Iraqi forces but I'll double check.]

The two al-Qaeda operatives are thought to have inspired the Tiger Tiger bombings and to have met Bilal Abdulla, the NHS doctor convicted of the London attack, who wrote a dedication to the two men on his laptop computer.

However, the Pakistani Taliban have in the past falsely claimed responsibility for attacks, and US security analysts said it was too early to say whether the claim was genuine. The White House said investigators were keeping an open mind on whether the motive was rooted abroad or linked to a domestic cause in the US.

The Times Square bomb was found inside a dark green Nissan Pathfinder, left with its engine running and hazard lights flashing near the junction of 45th Street and Broadway, yards from the Viacom building.

The author of the Revolution Muslim posting had published the address of Comedy Central in New York – a separate building from Viacom - encouraging Muslims to “protest” outside.

It also included audio clips of the al-Qaeda suspect Anwar al-Awlaki calling for the murder of anyone who has “defamed” Muhammad. Yemen-based al-Awlaki reportedly helped plan the failed Detroit airline bombing last Christmas and is said to have been “spiritual adviser” to two of the 9/11 hijackers.

The author of the post, a US-born Muslim convert called Abu Talhah al Amrikee, said it had been intended as “not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them”.

The warning was taken so seriously that Comedy Central heavily censored the following episode of South Park, which had originally contained further references to Muhammad.

Images of the Prophet are widely regarded as forbidden in Islam, and in 2006 Comedy Central banned Stone and Parker from depicting Muhammad in an episode which followed worldwide protests over a caricature of the Prophet by a Danish cartoonist.

Saturday night’s incident began at 6.34 pm local time (11.34 BST) when a T-shirt vendor, who was a Vietnam veteran, alerted police when he noticed smoke coming out of the car.

Wayne Rhatigan, the mounted policeman who was first on the scene, said: “I did a lap around the vehicle. The inside was smoking. I smelled gunpowder and knew it might blow. I thought it might blow any second.”

Witnesses reported hearing a "popping" noise coming from inside the vehicle. New York police spokesman Paul Browne said: "It appeared that it was in the process of detonating, but malfunctioned."

The anonymous T-shirt seller who raised the alarm declined to give his name when he was approached by reporters, but asked what he had to say to New Yorkers, he said: "See something, say something."
[...]
The car contained three propane tanks, fireworks, two five gallon gasoline containers, two clocks with batteries, electrical wires and a 4ft by 2ft metal box.

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said: "I think the intent was to cause a significant ball of fire."

Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York, returned immediately to the city from a White House dinner.

Speaking at the scene, he said: "We are very lucky. Thanks to alert New Yorkers and professional police officers, we avoided what could have been a very deadly event.

"The bomb squad confirmed that the suspicious vehicle did contain an explosive device. We have no idea who did this or why."

Mr Bloomberg said the wiring of the bomb "looked amateurish" and it had used "consumer grade fireworks" that were easily obtainable.

He added that it was too early to speculate on the motives of the bomber. He said: "There's no evidence it was tied to... Viacom or anything else."

Sal Cassano, New York’s fire commissioner, said the device had the explosive potential to “take down the front of a building”.

He said: "This wasn't make believe. This wasn't a false alarm. This was the real deal - to hurt people.”

Police have also established that the car's number plates, which were from Connecticut, were not the ones registered to it. They have already spoken to the owner of the plates who said he had taken them to a scrapyard.

Mr Bloomberg said police had no reports of anyone being seen running away from the vehicle after abandoning it, though the vehicle was caught on CCTV driving down 45th Street six minutes before the alarm was raised.

President Barack Obama praised the quick response by the New York Police Department and said the federal government was prepared to provide support.

The FBI is also investigating a 911 emergency call made from a payphone a few blocks away from the car bomb at 4am on Sunday local time, in which the anonymous caller said the Times Square incident was merely a diversion and would be followed by a “massive explosion” at an unspecified location.