Tehran, Iran Latest Big City On Verge Of Running Out Of Water In Drought

Iran is enduring a severe drought and some areas
including Tehran, population nearly 10 million
could run out of water. 

 Millions of people in Iran, including the capitol Tehran, are faced with the prospect of running out of water soon due to an extreme drought.  

According to the BBC

"Iran - especially its capital, Tehran - is facing an unprecedented drought this autumn, with rainfall at record lows and reservoirs nearly empty. Officials are pleading with citizens to conserve water as the crisis deepens."

President Masoud Pezeshkian has warned that if there is not enough rainfall soon, Tehran's water supply could be rationed. But he said that even rationing might not be enough to prevent a disaster."

BBC again:

"Iran's energy minister, Abbas Ali Abed, has warned the situation could soon force authorities to cut water supplies. 'Some nights we might decrease the water flow to zero,' he said."

Of course, the logistics of evacuating Tehran is a bit much. The city has about 9.8 million people. So where would they go?

Here's how bad it is:

Latian Dam, one of Tehran's main water sources, is down to 10 percent of its capacity. Another reservoir, Karaj Dam, which sends water to both Tehran and Alborz provinces is just as bad. 

The Karaj Dam at last report was holding just eight percent of capacity, and that is "dead water" meaning it can't be used for public consumption. 

Some residents say on many days they find their taps dry already.   NBC News describes one man,, Irfan Ensani, 39, returning home from work at one of his two jobs to find no water in the house. 

"We didn't have water for three days. The pressure was so low that nothing came out," he said.

Iran has been in drought for six years. Climate change is probably exacerbating the dry conditions. Especially since summers recently have brought record high temperatures, which accelerates evaporation. 

Temperatures rose to as high as 122 degrees in Iran last summer. The heat led to power outages even as reservoirs were going dry.  Rain is supposed to pick up in the autumn in Iran, but this fall there has been the driest in 50 years. 

Iran's tall mountains aren't helping, either. There's practically no snow up there. Intellinews.com reports: 

"According to the newly released statistics, the volume of snow recorded across the country is 98.6% lower than the same period in 2024 and 99.8% below the 120-year average -figures the experts describe as 'unprecedented decline.'" 

The so-called rainy season began earlier this month, and there was very little rain until the last couple of days. Despite the drought,  rain was heavy enough Monday to cause flooding in some western parts of Iran. It's too soon to tell whether that heavy rain will help ease the drought crisis. 

The Iranian government also resorted to cloud seeding in recent days in an effort to coax rain from any cloud that appeared in the skies.  

Climate change might have had a hand in this drought, but the government of Iran is very much to blame, as NBC and other news outlets point out. 

As NBC reports:

"The prolonged drought along with  years of overconsumption, an inefficient agricultural sector and mismanagement - including decades building mega-dams of questionable utility - have led to the problem, analysts say."

Ali Nazemi, an associate professor at Concordia University in Montreal was among a group of researchers who in 2021 warned Iran about its water use.

The warning was in a 2021 peer-reviewed study in the journal Scientific Reports.  The research was said Iran was overdrawing groundwater in four-fifths of Iran. This was causing Iran's land to sink, and its soil was getting more salty, and its salt lakes were disappearing. 

The paper said that the brewing crisis had the potential for "irreversible impacts on land and environment, threatening country's water, food, social-economic security." 

The study used publicly available data for Iran's Ministry of Energy to assess the nation's groundwater situation. "After the paper was published, they took the data sets out of public access, "Nazemi said.

The drought should not have come as a surprise to the Iranian government, either. Iranian media reported in 2021 that the World Meteorological Organization was predicting much drier and hotter conditions in Iran for the following five years.  

So, the government is just burying its head in the sand. At least there's plenty of sand to do the with Iran, I suppose.

Unrest has also contributed to the water shortage. Unrest is probably also going to be a result of Iran's dry taps. 

Ali Abadi also blamed part of the water crisis on Iran's 12-day war with Israel. Videos after an Israeli strike on a northern Tehran neighborhood showed flooding, suggesting water infrastructure could have been damaged enough to drain reservoirs more, the BBC reported.

Tempers are rising among Iran's citizens, too, raising fears of civil unrest. Students at Tehran's Al-Zahra University have already protested against the water shortages. And there was some violence over water in Iran's Khuzestan province. 

If things continue to get worse, the unrest could spiral way out of control. 

Tehran is the latest big city to almost completely run out of water. 

Cape Town, South Africa nearly ran out of water in 2018. Sao Paulo, Brazil almost went completely dry in 2014. 

Climate change is likely increasing the severity of droughts. I imagine we'll see more cities run out of water in the coming years. If such crises are mismanaged like Iran's has been, these dry taps could lead to many, many deaths. Either through lack of water or violence caused by that lack of water. 

 

U.S. Sat Out Major UN Climate Conference, But Lobbyists Swarmed It

The United States is AWOL from the UN climate
talks in Brazil, while fossil fuel lobbyists
are there big time. 

The United States embarrassingly sat out this year's 30th annual UN Climate Change Conference - known as COP30 -  which surprised nobody, given Donald Trump's horror at anyone who even thinks climate change is a thing.  

But that fact is to our detriment, since the United States had no say in the kinds of climate change fighting prescriptions that might emerge from the conference.

Beside the U.S., the only other nations not at COP30 are Afghanistan, Myanmar and San Marino, notes Carbon Brief. 

The absence of the United States is striking because the nation is also the world's largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases. 

Overall, a total of 56,000 people from 193 countries attended the conference, which is the second largest crowd at any of any past conference. 

Unsurprisingly, this year's largest delegation comes from Brazil, since that's the nation hosting the whole thing.  The next largest delegations, in order of size are China (again no surprise) and of all countries, Nigeria, Indonesia and Democratic Republic of Congo. 

The annual COP meetings have become this huge thing, attended by at least 50,000 in each of the past four years. Most rounds of this conference drew few than 20,000 annual, except the 2015 iteration in Copenhagen and the 2021 gathering in Paris. 

The Paris COP was the year the world decided to try and limit planetary warming to 1,5 degrees of the 20th century average.  

This year, the United States backed out of the international agreement to try and limit the warming to 1.5 degrees. 

Of course, we'll probably blow past the 1.5 degree goal  anyway, as emissions continue to rise. 

At last report, delegates at COP30 were still struggling to come up with an agreement to set a global path away from the use of fossil fuels. But a draft deal doesn't mention coal, oil and gas, which are almost the entire reason we have a climate change problem. 

Which might be related to this tidbit from The Guardian, which reports that more than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access to COP30. That's more than every single country's delegation aside from the host Brazil. 

The group Kick Big Polluters Out says one in every 25 participants at this big meeting is a fossil fuel lobbyist. 

Within the next couple of days, we'll see how well all those fossil fuel lobbyists did. Stay tuned!  

Holding Our Breath Until Winter REALLY Hits In Vermont

Snow is finally almost melted away in my yard in St.
Albans, Vermont after the storm 12 days ago. For the
next few days, we'll be in a never never land that
is past autumn but not quite winter. 

We're getting a semi-break from winter between now, as we brace for a possible, uncertain first Arctic blast of the season sometimes in the opening week of December.

Maybe. 

It looks increasingly likely that somebody in the Lower 48 in the United States is going to suffer through subzero Arctic cold and brutal wind chills once we get into the final month of the year. 

Whether any of that nonsense will affect us here in Vermont is still very open to debate.

Before we get there, we will be stuck in a sort of no man's land that's not really late autumn, and not really winter, either. During that time, the forces of winter will be adjusting themselves, getting ready for their first frigid act of the season.

For us, that means variable weather.  Since the mountains got all that snow, some Vermont ski resorts opened a week earlier than they anticipated. Lifts are going this weekend at places like Jay Peak Resort, Stowe Mountain Resort,  Sugarbush and Okemo.

And of course Killington opened earlier this month. 

In our holding our breath period as Thanksgiving approaches, the weather outlook is mixed for those ski resorts. And the rest of us for that matter. 

Today will be a typical late November day. That means quite a few clouds, some periods of sun, with daytime temperatures near 40. 

The approaching winter will throw down a few snowflakes tomorrow afternoon and night. Some valleys could see a dusting to an inch of snow. Maybe the ski areas will get a couple inches.

The weather pattern is active, so the next storm in the pipeline should arrive Wednesday. It looks like it'll bring along a squirt of warm weather for a change. Temperatures should get up to 50 degrees or so in many valley spots. The mountains, unfortunately, should get some rain. Not a huge amount, but rain and thawing.

Here's where the change to winter starts. It's going to be a slow, uneven process. The first of the cold fronts should come through at the end of the week. 

That means some light snows starting on Thanksgiving and into the weekend. It'll be cold, too, with highs near the freezing mark. Chilly, but not that unusual for the end of November.

EXTENDED OUTLOOK

Once you get beyond a week or so, it's hard to make an accurate forecast. You can only do a broad brush kind of prediction. 

It looks like the increasingly strong cold outbreaks might want to enter the United States in the northwestern Plains, places like Montana and North Dakota. Then the cold air sweeps east. 

By the time that type of cold air gets here, it will have modified some. Also, storms will form on the leading edge of these cold outbreaks. At this point, it's impossible at this point to know exactly where these storms will go, and how strong they might be.

Their tracks could mean the difference between skier delight snow dumps or disappointing schmutz. But at least we'll keep getting some type of precipitation to keep eating away at the lingering vestiges of drought. 

A lot of factors seem to be coming together to bring a cold December to much of the United States. We in Vermont will need to stay tuned to see how much we share in that likely chilly regime. 

Acting FEMA Director Who Didn't Know We Had Hurricane Season Leaves To Celebrate Hurricane Season End

David Richardson, the hands-off acting head
of FEMA is leaving the position at the end
of this month. But FEMA is still in 
crisis big time, thanks to the 
Trump administration. 

FEMA's acting director David Richardson, who alleged didn't know the U.S. has a hurricane season, has decided to resign at the end of hurricane season, which hits on November 30. 

Per Washington Post

"Richardson, who spent about six months as the acting head of the nation's response agency, has kept a low profile and is known for often being inaccessible, including during the early hours of the flood disaster in Texas over the Fourth of July weekend. 

In recent months, five current agency employees said Richardson spent little time in daily operations meetings and shrank away from the role - one that typically demands the administrator be easily reachable. The staffers, like others interviewed of this story and previous coverage, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation."

Other reports also give a damning view of Richardson's alleged leadership style.

Per CNN:

"Some officials describe his leadership as brash and unpredictable, with a penchant for shouting and swearing. On one occasion, he asked staff whether disaster funds cold be steered to Republican areas but not Democratic ones, a FEMA official who heard the comments firsthand said.

At times, Richardson prohibited staff from bringing cell phones and computers into meetings. He often kept his own phone out of sight and rarely used email, leaving senior FEMA leaders struggling to reach him and making even basic communication a constant challenge."

NEXT FOR FEMA

Richardson reflected the Trump administration's disdain for FEMA. As noted, he was pretty much AWOL for at least part of this summer's huge Texas flood disaster. 

Early in his tenure, he also appeared to state that he did not know the United States has a hurricane season. The fact he decided to call it quits at the end of hurricane season is rich. 

FEMA is obviously critical when it comes to disaster response in the United States, deploying responders in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophe to feed, house and literally save survivors. The agency also is supposed to help with long term recovery aid. 

The agency is getting more crucial as weather extremes and disasters increase in the face of climate change. 

Meanwhile, FEMA has long needed an overhaul, as individual victims, municipalities and states often report walls of bureaucracy when attempting to receive aid for rebuilding and adaptation after the immediate crisis is over. 

That might not be the focus, though. Trump during the beginning of his later term at first thought just getting rid of FEMA entirely was a boffo idea. That sort of morphed into keeping FEMA, but slashing staff and resources. And making states responsible for a much greater share of disaster response and recover. 

The trouble with that is most states don't have the money or resources to handle big disasters. So people whose homes are destroyed in a hurricane, flood or wildfire would more likely be out of luck and on their own. 

As it stands now, everybody is now waiting on a review council to come up with recommendations for FEMA. The council, commissioned by Trump and headed by Department of Homeland Security Kristi "ICE Barbie" Noem.

With Noem in charge, what could go wrong?  We'll let you know when the report by the review council is released. 

There's already signs of discord with this review panel. Most of the panel has reportedly concluded FEMA should become more powerful and autonomous, making FEMA a cabinet level agency,

But Noem wants to keep FEMA under the control of her Department of Homeland Security. She also wants to remove FEMA from its direct role in disaster relief, and turning it into more of a grant-making department, according to the Washington Post. 

 Already, FEMA is a mess. FEMA has lost a quarter of its employees. In August, a whole bunch of employees wrote a public letter warning their leadership was substandard and harming FEMA's mission to manage emergencies. 

Also, Noem still has a rule in which she must sign off on each expense over $100,000. Which slows down responses to emergencies.

Meanwhile, FEMA's current chief of staff, Karen Evans will step into Richardson's role. 

In a statement, the department said they appreciated Richardson for his "dedicated service and wish continued success in his return to the private sector." 

Or something like that.   

Meanwhile, as U.S. citizens try to recover from disasters that have hit this year, and brace for the inevitable new calamities, we all know the U.S. government no longer has our backs. 

 

Hurricane Melissa Had World Record Wind Speed, Could Be Part Of Terrifying Trend

A dramatic view from inside the eye of Hurricane 
Melissa near Jamaica. Photo was taken for a hurricane
hunter plane. One of those planes dropped an 
instrument that detected a 252 mph wind gust
within the storm. That gust was just verified
as the strongest on record detected in a hurricane.

 It looks like Hurricane Melissa achieved at least one world record for hurricanes. 

A weather measuring instrument called a dropsonde was tossed into the hurricane from a NOAA Hurricane Hunter airplane shortly before storm made landfall in Jamaica back on October 28. 

The dropsonde recorded a wind gust of 252 mph on its way down through the storm. 

The 252 mph gust was measured about 820 feet above the ocean. 

This beats the old record for highest wind recorded by a dropsonde in a tropical system. 

That previous world record for the highest gust was 248 mph from a dropsonde that descended through Typhoon Mega in the western Pacific Ocean back in 2010. 

CONFIRMING THE DATA

A dropsonde, is a device NOAA Hurricane Hunter airplane personnel drop into the maw of hurricanes. Dropsondes have a small parachute attached and they take  somewhere between two and four readings per second before splashing into the ocean. They usually throw a bunch of dropsondes into a hurricane pretty much all at once to get a holistic look under the hood of the storm. , 

While on its way down, dropsondes grab information on air pressure, temperatures, and wind, and relay that back to the hurricane hunter plane.

The hurricane hunters knew right away that the dropsonde recorded that 252 mph gusts. But NOAA and other scientists, as they always do, wanted to double check the data to make sure there wasn't something wrong with the dropsonde. 

According to a press release from U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) it took until this week to verify the information because NCAR scientists needed to verify the data to make sure there was no glitch with the dropsonde. 

As CBS reported, researchers went through the numbers using quality control software. They also confirmed the 252 mph gust was physically possible, given Hurricane Melissa's strength and structure.

The careful review was necessary because errors can happen with dropsonde data.  A dropsonde that fell through Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A dropsonde measurement in that storm when it was in the Gulf of Mexico recorded a gust higher than that seen in Melissa.

However, researchers found a lot of problems with that Katrina measurement so it was discarded. 

RECORD BIG MELISSA

At the time the 252 mph gust was measured while Hurricane Melissa was officially a storm with sustained winds of 185 mph.  It made landfall in Jamaica at that strength. Damage in Jamaica where winds were strongest looked like they were caused by an EF-4 tornado. 

The gusts might indicate that Hurricane Melissa might have been even a little stronger than that 185 mph at landfall. 

After each hurricane, meteorologists examine the data from the storms and publish a full, detailed analysis. Those analyses often update the strength of hurricanes that differ from original reports.  

Before this 252 mph gusts was verified, Hurricane Melissa was already a record breaker. When Melissa made landfall those 185 mph (as it stands now, anyway) sustained winds ties the record for strongest winds for an Atlantic Ocean hurricane making landfall.

Only two storms the Labor Day Hurricane in Florida back in 1935 and Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas in 2019. 

The central air pressure in Hurricane Melissa reached 892 millibars. That's another way of measuring the strength of a hurricane. With that pressure, Melissa tied the record for the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane since that 1935 hurricane in Florida. 

 As the Washington Post tells us, Hurricane Melissa also set an informal record for the most eyewall lightning observed by satellites. Before landfall, the satellites detected 700 flashes per minute, or 11 per second. 

Most hurricanes don't generate much lightning. When there is lightning in a hurricane, it's a sign of an extremely intense hurricane, or one that is strengthening.  

SCARY STORM, SCARY TREND

Josh Morgerman, very likely the most prolific and expert hurricane chaser in the world, has been in the middle of 84 hurricanes and typhoons so far. He was in Jamaica for Melissa. 

He wrote: "Melissa's winds were absolutely ferocious - the most intense I've witnessed in 84 hurricanes. And the resultant damage was spectacular. This was a truly rare specimen."

Morgerman continued in his technical report on the hurricane, where he monitored the storm in a struck hotel building:

"At the height of the storm, the whiteout was 100% and the screaming sound was so hard that others in the hotel kitchen were putting their hands over their ears. This aside the explosive gustiness of the winds blasted the building, caused one's ear drums to pull painfully, so that the author was often holding or rubbing his own ears"

Morgerman said many trees that were somehow left standing were completely defoliated. In some cases the bark was ripped off.  Wood frame homes were completely flattened, concrete buildings partly collapsed and paint was blasted off some buildings and cars.

Gawd, that had to be absolutely terrifying. 

Just a reminder, though the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean doesn't seem to be increasing, the number of super powerful ones are increasing. And those top end storms seem to be getting stronger than ever. 

There's even talk of creating a Category 6 for hurricanes. Right now, the strength chart for hurricanes go from Category 1 to 5.

Climate change might well be making horrible experiences like what Jamaica went through ever more likely.  And inevitably, some of these will crash into the United States.

The records being set by Hurricane Melissa are for sure a cautionary tale.  

Vermont Drought Eased At Faster Pace Last Week; Northeast Overall Improved

Latest U.S. Drought Monitor map for Vermont, 
issued yesterday. Definitely some improvement.
Extreme drought now down to less intense
severe drought in Northeast Kingdom
Much of Vermont is out of drought,
mostly just "abnormally dry" --yellow
color. Much of the central and northern 
Champlain Valley is no longer in drought at all,

 Drought conditions improved quite a bit in Vermont over the past week, according to the latest weekly U.S. Drought Report, which was released Thursday. 

For the most part, the intensity of the drought took one step down for almost the entire state. 

The area of extreme drought that covered about 25 percent of the state in the Northeast Kingdom improved to severe drought. It's the first time since September 9 that no regions in the Green Mountain State were in extreme drought. 

Severe drought in central Vermont eased to just moderate drought.

 Most of western and far southern Vermont went from moderate drought to just "abnormally dry" which means it's still a little bit parched but  a full blown drought has disappeared. 

And, for the first time since August 12, at least a small part of Vermont is no longer even abnormally dry. 

Most of the central and northern Champlain Valley was abnormally dry last week, but this week, that same region is hunky-dory. Adequate ground water, normal stream flows.  Nothing to worry about in terms of dryness. 

The bottom line is we're still not out of the woods in Vermont, but we are in much better shape than we were a month ago. Keep those rain dances going, though. 

The drought in Vermont seems to have peaked in mid-October and has been improving ever since.  About 41 percent of the state was still in drought with this week's report. That's the lowest percentage since August 19. 

The improvement can easily be seen on Lake Champlain. On October 19, the lake reached its lowest level of the drought at 92.81 feet. People could walk to places like Law and Mosquito islands and keep their feet dry. 

The lake has risen to 94.5 feet as of Wednesday. That's just an inch or two below normal for the date. 

NORTHEAST IMPROVEMENT

Elsewhere in the Northeast, the drought generally improved. Especially across northern New England, and western and northern parts of New York.

New Hampshire this week had no areas in severe drought for the first time since September 2.  About 78 percent of the Granite State is still in drought this week, but that's the lowest percentage since August 12.  

Extreme drought in Maine is greatly reduced, but it's still lingering along a small area of the sea coast near Portland. 

Of all the states in the North Country, New York is doing the best. Only a third of the Empire State remains in drought. 

OUTLOOK

The improvement in Vermont drought condition will probably slow or even briefly stall over the next week as little rain or snow is expected. 

A cold front that had been expected to give us a shot at moderate rain or a mix today is now likely to only deposit very light amounts. Some of us won't see any rain at all.

But starting nest week, it appears the weather pattern might start getting active again.  Moderate rain looks like it might accompany a brief warmup next week. Even so, only a quarter to a half inch of rain is in the forecast for the next seven days. 

After that, things have a colder look heading into December. But that colder pattern looks active with frequent chances of precipitation.  Since it will be colder, a decent share of the precipitation might come down as snow.

Snow won't immediately help with the continued dryness. It would have to melt first, to put my Captain Obvious hat on for a moment.     

Winter sports enthusiasts don't want rain. But I think we're at the point where it's OK to bank the snow now, and let the spring sunshine months from now melt the snow and finish replenishing our water. 

 

Antarctic Glacier Yields Body Of Long-Missing Meteorologist

Dennis Bell, right, celebrating Christmas, 1958 in
Antarctica. The next month, he died when he
fell into a glacier crevasse. His body was not
recovered  until earlier this year. 

 Climate change might have had a had in bringing a closure to an Antarctic tragedy that occurred more than six decades ago.  

In 1959, Dennis Bell, a 25 year old meteorologist, fell to his death into a glacial crevasse in Antarctica. Early this year, a Polish team found Bell's remains at the end of a melting, receding glacier. 

Bell was part of a group that climbed onto Ecology Glacier on King George Island, Antarctica to do some field research. 

Gizmodo picks up the story:

"The group split into pairs, and Bell and surveyor Jeff Stokes set off before the others. During the ascent, Bell moved ahead of the sledge without his skis to encourage the tiring dogs and disappeared into a crevasse. Bell survived the fall, however, and Stokes threw a rope down to him to pull him back up. 

Bell, however, had tied the rope around his belt rather than around himself. When his body reached the top of the crevice, he got stuck, the belt broke, and this time he fell to his death."

Bell's body was to found until this January, when a Polish team found bones near their base. Eventually, more than 200 personal effects were found nearby, including radio equipment, a torch, ski pols, an inscribed Erguel wristwatch, a Swedish Mora knife and an ebonite pipe stem, The Guardian reported. 

The remains were eventually taken to London, where DNA tests confirmed the remains belonged to Bell. 

The following will seem a little crass, since this involves a tragic death. But, I'll say it anyway. I'm not sure if the discovery of Bell's remains last January was the result of climate change melting the glacier enough to expose the the remains, or whether it was just the natural progression of the glacier that allowed humans to discover it all. 

As a memorial, Bell Point on King George Island was named in the honor of that meteorologist who died in 1959.