It's not just us in the United States that has been experiencing bouts of extreme weather lately. Parts of Europe is being nailed, too.
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| Extreme damage from Storm Alex in France. Photo from AFP via BBC. |
Storm Alex, as it's called, slammed into France a couple days bringing near hurricane force winds and especially nearly unprecedented rains.
In some areas near the southern Alps, up to 17.7 inches of rain fell with the storm, an amount that would normally fall over the course of four months.
The result was historic flooding and landslides. At least four people died, and others are missing. Villages in the southern Alps are cut off. Images on social media show buildings falling into raging rivers and entire hillsides collapsing in landslides.
On the coast near Brittany, winds gusted to 112 mph.
Similar destruction slammed northwestern Italy, with more bridge collapses and towns cut off from the outside world.
Alex was not a tropical storm or hurricane. It was a regular mid-latitude storm, but weather patterns allowed it to rapidly grow into an incredibly intense storm. Strong ridges of high pressure, one over northern Europe and the other over the North Atlantic Ocean, created an opportunity for a strong upper level storm to form between the two ridges.
This in turn, allowed Alex to become an intense storm.
There's no way I can accurately pin Storm Alex on climate change. However, scientists do say that a warming overall climate can lead to stronger, more intense storms, so Alex as consistent with that idea. Here are some videos:
The first half of this video in particular is especially harrowing:
Some of the destruction in France, via The Telegraph:
One of many houses in France being destroyed by the flooding from Alex in this video:
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