Hurricane, earthquakes and drought strain distant shores
Lala passed south of Hawaii as two Indonesian earthquakes left deaths and damage; Dutch limits on canal locks during drought bring together very different forms of water risk.
Science··Evening
Lala pressed Hawaii without coming ashore
Lala strengthened from a tropical storm into a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph, and its eye passed the southern tip of Hawaii’s Big Island without coming ashore. According to ABC7 News, tropical storm warnings stayed in effect for Maui, Molokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe, Oahu, Kauai and Niihau. Forecasters put 8 to 12 inches of rain across Maui and the lower elevations of the Big Island, 4 to 6 inches across the rest of the chain, and as much as 25 inches on the Big Island’s high ground, with the strongest gusts expected over higher terrain. The Big Island’s last direct hurricane hit was a Category 3 in 1871, and Hawaii’s most recent landfall was Hurricane Iniki on Kauai in 1992, which killed six people and caused 3 billion dollars in damage. The eye staying offshore does not cancel the warnings or the rain-and-wind forecasts still in force across the island chain. On a distant Pacific shore, the passage documents how system strength and landfall still have to be tracked as separate facts.[1]
Two separate quakes in Indonesia the same day
Rescue official Fathur Rahman put the death toll from the magnitude 7.7 earthquake north of Flores at at least 40, with 50 injured, by Saturday evening. The quake struck at a depth of about 10 km and was felt across regencies in East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara and South Sulawesi. The disaster agency BNPB counted 2,000 people who left their homes on their own in Nagekeo Regency. Indonesia’s meteorology, climatology and geophysics agency BMKG lifted its tsunami warning after finding no significant sea level rise along the coasts; deputy director Nelly Florida Riama said aftershocks were still occurring and urged people to stay alert. The same day, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck about 7 km north-northwest of Pematangsiantar in North Sumatra at 10:54 GMT, according to the US Geological Survey. The hypocentre lay about 183.2 km below the surface, and that depth is the usual reason a quake of this size passes without heavy damage: the shaking spreads out and weakens before it reaches the ground. There were no immediate reports of casualties or significant damage. The epicentre sits roughly 2,800 km from the Flores quake earlier the same morning, in a separate part of the archipelago’s subduction system.[2], [3]
In drought, locks hold salt water back
Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch water agency, has restricted irrigation and cut how often locks are opened, because every opening lets fresh water out and draws salt water further inland. The agency has classified conditions as an actual water shortage since mid-July, and the report describes the Rhine at the lowest level ever measured. The AFP account carried by Phys.org lists what a long dry summer costs beyond the fields: seawater pushing inland through the river network, peat foundations drying out and cracking the buildings above them, and inland shipping cut back. Micha Werner, a professor of water management quoted in the report, argues that the country now has to hold water inside its hydraulic systems instead of draining it, which is what the whole network was built to do. One business owner quoted expects to be without water for at least another two months. Rain and wind warnings in Hawaii, different tolls from shallow and deep Indonesian quakes, and Dutch lock limits that keep salt water back show how distant shores can be strained at once by surge, shaking and scarcity. The shared thread is shore and river systems pressing human settlements in different ways.[4], [1], [2], [3]
