Board of Building Appeals. Ditch Piping Program. Design Completion. Plat Review Committee. Environmental Services. Automated Garbage Trucks. Garbage Collection. Mattress Recycling. Street Sweeping. Reference Files. Staff Directory. Street Repaving PDF. Fleet Management. Bicyclists ride through high tide flooding at the intersection of Hagood Avenue and Line Street on Sept. Credit Andrew J. Charleston is the largest city in the state of South Carolina and one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United States.
Population growth in the region is among the highest in the U. The Charleston peninsula is surrounded by water on three sides and is subject to flooding from the Atlantic Ocean as well as inland flooding from rivers and associated tributaries. The area is also subject to storm surge, flooding from heavy rains and high tides e. The study adds to a growing body of evidence that accelerating sea level rise is going to exponentially increase the number of flood days for Charleston, corroborating evidence published by NOAA scientists in see graph.
The research team constructed statistical models to predict 1 future mean monthly sea level, 2 the number of annual flood events, and 3 flood duration and spatial extent on the peninsula. Death Valley hit degrees. Scorching heat melted one record after another across the region. At least cities had among the warmest summers on record. At least 55 cities had their hottest one ever. The heat waves set the stage for the cataclysmic wildfires across the West.
A town in Siberia that has been dubbed the coldest places in the northern hemisphere hit degrees, possibly the hottest temperature ever recorded above the Arctic Circle. Two glaciers in Antarctica are teetering on collapse, and, like giant ice cubes thrown into the cup, that could raise global sea levels in feet instead of inches.
So far the ocean has absorbed much of the heat human beings produce — heat injected equivalent to four atomic bombs going off every second. But now ocean temperatures are rising. Water naturally expands when it gets hotter — and spills onto more land than it would otherwise. Warmer oceans also fuel more intense and frequent storms.
And has been one for the record books. We blew through an alphabet of 23 named storms and are now going through the Greek alphabet. Our public service and investigative reporting is among the most important work we do. It's also the most expensive reporting we do. We can't do it without your support. Outside, the sky was blue and clear, but high tide was approaching. Part of the parking lot that serves the seafood business and several restaurants already had turned into a lake.
Fitch uses hers to plan trips to the Charleston peninsula, where she attends church at St. Standing behind the seafood counter, with a face mask on to protect against coronavirus, Fitch said sunny-day flooding has been getting more frequent. Global warming has had an unexpected effect on a powerful river in the ocean 60 miles offshore: the mighty Gulf Stream.
It flows with so much force that it pulls water away from the coast, lowering our sea level by as much as 3 feet. But a growing body of evidence suggests that climate change has gummed up that current.
A slower current means high sea levels along the East Coast. Researchers at Old Dominion University recently published a new study that analyzed sea level trends since They found an unprecedented slowdown in the Gulf Stream since — one that couldn't be explained by seasonal variations, said Tal Ezer, a professor of ocean sciences at Old Dominion University who led the study.
Ezer's previous work had shown that hurricanes, including Hurricane Matthew in , could temporarily put a kink in the Gulf Stream, a kink that led to higher tides from the Carolinas to Virginia. He had an inkling that Hurricane Dorian had done so in ; the storm followed a similar track as Matthew's and was among the most powerful on record, clipping Charleston. Ezar discovered that the Gulf Stream slowed for more than a month and a half after Hurricane Dorian had passed, raising sea levels along the East Coast.
By p. Half a mile inland, water pooled by Cannon Park as sunbathers stretched out on a blanket. The water crested at 8. It's about inundation from the sea.
By the Low Battery wall, brown, murky water sloshed in waves against its ramparts, coming perilously close to the top as the sea spilled onto the roadway from drains around the corner. Tourists stood around snapping pictures of cars passing through, throwing up high sprays, as Charleston police officers waded in to set up barriers at the intersection of East and South Battery. James Gathers cradled a fishing pole in his hands as he tried to explain this odd phenomenon to a pair of out-of-town visitors.
Gathers grew up in Awendaw and has spent his 62 years around the Charleston area. He contends city officials should have seen this moment coming years ago and done something to help fix it rather than shovel money into various other projects to appeal to tourists.
At the City Market, tourists maneuvered strollers and wheelchairs around the flooding. The guide of a horse carriage tour urged her guests to look at how the bottom few bricks of the market buildings are darker, a sign of how often the water rises around them. Margaret Smith has worked in a T-shirt stand in the City Market for 24 years. She was one of the vendors separated from her customers by a moat that grew around some souvenir stalls.
She knows the routine by now: smile and be friendly, but encourage pedestrians to come back in an hour or so, when water welling up long after the high tide might have receded. A newly installed drain was evacuating some of the ponding, but in other places, puddles were still spreading and merging together.
Further up the peninsula, Shawn Parks shook his head as he watched the floodwaters pool beneath his Jeep and circle his home on North Hanover Street.
He'd already lost a low-riding Honda to tidal floods that chewed up its chassis and rotted out the joints with their salty brine. And each year it seems to get worse. Parks has lived in the spot for 20 years. It's quiet and close to his job at the port. But the construction of a high-rise condo and office complex next door on Cool Blow Street paved over land that used to absord some of the rising tides and runoff from heavy downpours.
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