With a band of tropical moisture expected to dump up to 14 inches of rain across the Pacific Northwest, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a bulletin Tuesday formally asking the storm to keep its volume down after 9 p.m.
With a band of tropical moisture expected to dump up to 14 inches of rain across the Pacific Northwest, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a bulletin Tuesday formally asking the atmospheric river to keep its volume down after 9 p.m. The agency noted that while catastrophic flooding is now entirely baked into regional climate models, residents still need to get a full night of sleep before commuting through the wreckage in the morning.
According to a memo published alongside NOAA's latest water vapor transport forecast, federal regulators have accepted that the extreme weather event will severely inundate several coastal counties and displace thousands. However, they cited existing local noise codes in requesting the incoming low-pressure system limit its torrential howling to a respectful hum during the evening.
We realize that offloading a trillion gallons of Pacific moisture onto a densely populated grid is loud work, but we are simply asking the jet stream to wrap up the most deafening structural collapses before midnight.
The request marks the third time this quarter that federal officials have attempted to mitigate the impacts of a warming planet through polite neighborhood ordinances. At last year's COP28 summit in Dubai, delegates spent three days drafting a non-binding resolution that formally requested rising sea levels stop lapping so aggressively against coastal seawalls during the winter holidays.
The agency confirmed that if the storm fails to comply with the noise restrictions, it will be issued a written warning, followed by a $250 administrative fine to be paid into a rapidly depleting federal disaster relief fund.