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30 Dec 21, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Serious wind driven brush fire in wildland-urban within/just south of Boulder, CO city limits. Along Marshall road. Estimating downslope wind gusts near 90 mph. #COwx @NWSBoulder @mitchellbyars
#COwx
Multiple structures burning/extreme rate of spread from my vantage point.
Appears to have jumped Hwy 36 and is burning on both sides.

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Daniel Swain Profile picture
31 Dec 21
Some photos, footage, and commentary from yesterday's devastating #MarshallFire in Boulder County. All photos and videos taken at various points along South Boulder Road (north side of the fire, looking south, on 12/30/21). Winds were gusting around 90mph at the time. #COwx (1/4) ImageImage
Fire behavior was as you'd expect in grass/brush amid extreme wind & drought conditions: rapid rates of spread, continuous spotting and periodic sheeting fire. Fire jumped 6-lane Hwy 36 like it was nothing, and there was a 2+ mile long active fireline. #MarshallFire #COwx (2/4) Image
Behavior and dynamics of the fire plume were fascinating...and scary. A nearly horizontal plume, tilted by extreme westerly downslope winds, transitioned into a shallow pyroCu plume at the top of a hydraulic jump within a pronounced mountain wave. #MarshallFire #COwx (3/4) ImageImageImage
Read 5 tweets
Daniel Swain Profile picture
30 Dec 21
Conditions along South Boulder Road right now. #marshallfire #COwx
Unfortunately can confirm that numerous structures are now burning, many of them homes. This is an extreme/dangerous wildland-urban interface fire. Mainly Superior/Louisville. Gusts in excess of 80mph continue.
Read 4 tweets
Daniel Swain Profile picture
29 Dec 21
As a climate scientist, one aspect of #DontLookUp that resonates strongly is notion that an otherwise solvable planetary crisis will go away if we just ignore it--or that a silver bullet solution will magically present itself. Spoiler alert: it won't. @davidsirota @GhostPanther
Also highly relatable was the impassioned and exasperated rant by @LeoDiCaprio's character. There's a reason why much of the climate science community has responded to this film in a similar way--variations on a theme of "yep, that's all uncomfortably familiar."
It can become exhausting to constantly be the bearer of bad news when many folks simply don't want to hear it. "Why are you always so negative? You always focus on the harm from climate change, not the economic opportunities! Scientists are such pessimists."
Read 5 tweets
Daniel Swain Profile picture
17 Nov 21
Being a climate scientist sometimes feels like being an astrophysicist in one of those 90s asteroid impact disaster movies...
except instead of coming to together to save humanity, the people in power shrug & point out how sending rockets might increase inflation. #ClimateChange
I was once, coincidentally, seated on a flight next to a @NASAJPL scientist who described his job as "taming near-Earth asteroids" from a planetary protection perspective. This is a person who would actually be called to the White House in scenarios portrayed in Hollywood films.
The JPL near-Earth object specialist made it clear that he was more concerned about #ClimateChange than an asteroid impact--not because latter wouldn't be devastating, but because the odds were low in our lifetime & "we would actually do something about it, if it ever came."
Read 4 tweets
Daniel Swain Profile picture
13 Oct 21
California, on statewide basis, is now experiencing its worst drought in observational record going back to late 1800s--narrowly beating out peak of last drought in 2014-15 (as measured by PDSI, a metric that takes into account both precip & temperature). #CAwx #CAfire #CAwater
There is a clear trend toward increasing aridity in California--and yet little trend in mean precipitation. How can this be? A very strong warming trend due to #ClimateChange means same the amount of water falling from sky just doesn't go as far as it used to. #CAwx #CAwater
We explored this phenomena in research published in 2015 (finding that rising temps are the main factor behind increasing CA drought severity):
pnas.org/content/112/13…

and 2018 (increasing "precip whiplash" despite little change in mean):
nature.com/articles/s4155…
#CAwater #CAwx
Read 5 tweets
Daniel Swain Profile picture
26 Aug 21
1/New work aimed at resolving the "extreme precipitation-#flood paradox" in warming #climate, led by @ManuelaIBrunner (@UniFreiburg) & including co-authors @Weather_West (@UCLAIoES), @Climate_Done (@C3WE_NCAR), is now out in @CommsEarth (open access!). nature.com/articles/s4324…
2/The "extreme precipitation-flood paradox" arises from fact that despite abundant evidence for increasing rainfall extremes due to #ClimateChange, there is not (yet) a correspondingly clear & systematic increase in flood magnitude. nature.com/articles/s4324…
3/To address this conundrum, we use a high-resolution regional hydrologic model coupled to a high-resolution (single model) regional climate large ensemble (collectively, a "hydroSMILE") centered on hydrologic Bavaria (including parts of Germany, Austria, & Switzerland). Image
Read 18 tweets

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