Extreme Rains In Italy, Oman Break Records, Again In Climate Change World

Destruction in Italy after extreme rains fell in Quillano, Italy.
Photo by Taro Pecorano/LaPress/AP

 The weather remains very quiet here in Vermont and will stay that way for probably a week. No news to report here, which is a nice break from any risk of extremes.  

The only thing we need to confront is above normal temperatures through probably at least the third week of October.

This year of weather extremes rolls on elsewhere in the world, of course. As CNN and the Washington Post highlight,  the latest victims were northwestern Italy and Oman. 

The Italian rainfall is almost too wild to believe.

The town of Rossiglione, in Italy's Genoa province, had 29.2 inches of rain in just 12 hours, the most ever recorded in Europe.  For comparison's sake, Rossiglione usually gets about 50 inches of rain per year, so they got more than half that in 12 hours.

For those of us in Vermont who want to compare, it normally takes about 10 months for 29 inches of rain to fall on the Green Mountain State.

There are more impressive rain totals from this Italian storm. In just six hours, 19.5 inches of rain fell on Cairo Monenotte in Genoa Province. And 7.1 inches fell in one hour at  Vicomorasso, about 16 miles east of Rossiglione.

Not surprisingly, the extreme downpours created a massive flood with serious damage. Remarkably and thankfully,  there have so far no reports of casualties from this terrible storm. 

In Oman, a rare cyclone-- we call them hurricanes here in the U.S., hit the nation's northern coast. This area is normally a desert with almost no rain ever. 

In Al Khaburah, Oman, 14 inches of rain fell in six hours.  It normally takes three years for that much rain to fall in that part of Oman.  Huge flooding naturally resulted from this mess. At least 14 people died in the storm. .

The Italian and Oman extreme rains follow other unprecedented floods this year in China, central Europe and New York and New Jersey from former Hurricane Ida. 

Extreme flooding in Oman. Via CNN

A warmer climate means more extreme rain events, so the kind of post you're reading now is going to seem a bit like a broken record.   There will be more and more of these kinds of floods.

It does make me paranoid about us here in Vermont. As we well know, the hilly and steep landscape and all those small brooks and streams easily go wild in heavy rains.  We still shudder when we remember the Tropical Storm Irene floods in 2011.

I don't know if we're primed to get eventually get something worse than Irene in an atmosphere now stoked by climate change.  It might happen next month, ten years from now or never. 

Italy and Oman are far, far away from Vermont. But the recent extreme rains in those two nations still feel too close to home.