Amazing Roll Cloud Tumbles Over DC Area / Colorado fracking flood zone
A rare tube-shaped cloud created a spectacle in northern Virginia yesterday (Sept. 16) as it crept across the sky.
The U.S. National Weather Service’s Baltimore/Washington office in Sterling, Va., snapped a panoramic photo of the ominous-looking roll cloud as it moved over the area.
“An outflow boundary from the showers associated with the cold front produced a very well defined roll cloud that passed over our forecast office this morning just before 7:30 am,” the NWS office said in a Facebook post.
Roll clouds belong to a family of low-forming clouds known as arcus clouds. They are related to the more common, wedge-shaped shelf cloud.
Shelf clouds often form on the leading edges of thunderstorms (or sometimes a cold front) as rain-cooled air ploughs under the warm, moist air that’s closer to the ground. This warm, moist air is forced upwards and its water vapor condenses into the scary-looking cloud formation.
Roll clouds are sometimes born out of a thunderstorm’s gust front, too, and they are “rolled” into shape by storm winds. But unlike shelf clouds, rolls clouds are not attached to the rest of a storm or any other cloud formation.
Though they may look like horizontal tornados, roll clouds aren’t dangerous in themselves. Sometimes, they are even born out of rather innocuous weather. Coastal roll clouds can form as a result of winds coming from the sea in relatively calm conditions, like the so-called Morning Glory roll cloud, which forms regularly in fall months off the shores of Queensland, Australia.
The cloud that stunned the suburbs of the capital was a harbinger of rather mild weather; only showers followed its passage, according to the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang blog.
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Shocking photos and an update from the Colorado fracking flood zone
Please see my previous post: Is there a media blackout on the fracking flood disaster in Colorado? Note comments.
Let’s get something straight: This is a blog that focuses solely on oil and gas issues. I don’t blog about sewage or machine shop chemicals. I blog about the oil & gas mafia and have done so for many years. I realize there is a tremendous human tragedy happening in Colorado right now and that is horrible and heartbreaking. This is a part of that tragedy. If you want to start a blog and write about sewage and helicopter rescues or any other issue you can get a free blog at blogger.com. To industry and their apologists: Feel free to continue making an ass of yourself in the comments.
Below is an email from a a resident of Boulder County, another major flood area in Colorado. Boulder County abuts Weld County. I remind you that Trish Schuller was the master of ceremony at the industry Psyops Conference I attended. Also let me remind you that Earthworks did a year long analysis of regulation in six states. Colorado is failing miserably.
The Denver Post finally got its head out of its ass and published an article today.
It’s taken 5 days. Tisha Schuller, quoted in the article saying there are “thousands” of flooded wells, is the president of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association (COGA), the industry’s lobbying group here in Colorado. If you read the article, she’s asking that activist photo takers (who stood on broken highways and in flood waters where you can’t tell where the heck you are in all the flood waters) tell her the locations of the damaged wells! I’m dumbfounded. The drillers and lobbyists don’t know where their flooded wells are? Anadarko and Encana can’t hire a plane and fly over their own damn wells to assess the damage? They have no data transmissions indicating problems with a well?
More on COGA
There are 5 Colorado front-range communities that got fracking bans or moratoriums on their November ballots, 4 of them after extensive petition drives. (The local amendments and ordinances specify bans or moratoriums within each community’s city limits.) COGA has hired and paid for attorneys to harass several of the communities by filing protests to their petitions—our community, Lafayette, was one targeted (unsuccessfully) by COGA’s army of retained law firms. Loveland is in a court battle financed by COGA so its moratorium is stalled. COGA also sued Longmont, a community north of us that was damaged by the flood, when Longmont passed a fracking ban last year after a successful petition drive. Longmont has also been sued by the state of Colorado—the damn taxpayers! It’s hard to believe. And Longmont also banned fracking within its city limits! COGA has plenty of money for attorneys to harass local Colorado communities; take some of that money and hire a plane—look at the damage yourself!The Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission headed by Matt Lepore, also mentioned in the article, is the state agency that has a dual purpose in regard to oil and gas extraction; ostensibly protect the public and environment AND encourage oil and gas drilling in Colorado. Guess which wins. COGCC has 17 inspectors dealing with 50,000 wells in the state of Colorado.
This can only get worse and worse.
Please send donations to EBCU.
Aerial Photos
Weld Air and Water organization
Pagosa Daily Post: The Unreported Flood Disaster
East Boulder County United Facebook Page
Daily Camera
Denver Post
Gasline rupture in near Greely.
Photos from Greely/Evans. There are 697 wells in Greeley and over 20,000 in Weld county to date and growing.
The water is receding which should allow well owners to get into impacted wells. This is important because wells under water have combustors (the devices used to burn off waste gases) that are under water and thus “out” thus allowing un-combusted waste gases to escape into the atmosphere as raw natural gas. Raw natural gas is poisonous, odorless, colorless and seeks out low areas, in this case it will follow the course of the river.
The combustor is the big black pipe in the left of the picture.
The other problem is escape of oil products. Below is a picture of a condensate tank that should be hooked by a pipe to the wellhead above which captures produced toxic fluids.
It is no longer connected and can leak into the Platte river where it’s floating right now. Oh and here we see also how close these wells are to residential areas, those are homes behind the tank, thankfully evacuated.
The third major problem is storing [fracking] chemicals in flood zones and residential areas.
Notice the water level line on the [Baker Hughes] building. The far side of the building (still in water) is where the dock doors (loading and unloading) are located. Right behind this building is where the well and tank in the previous pictures are located. These pictures were taken on Saturday in Evans in the 4600 block of Brantner Rd. And you can use any of them you wish.
Here is a shot of the wells across the street (11th Ave.) from Island Grove park, it’s right next to the Poudre river. The problem here is the water from the river has flooded the secondary containment berm.
This was last night 9/15/2013 The building in back is the Swift JBS Beef processing plant on 11th Ave and the Cache de Poudre river
The number of people unaccounted for in flood-ravaged Colorado rose Sunday to about 1,000 as flooding spread to 15 counties and rain continued to fall.
Many of those unaccounted for were reported unreachable on the phone by family members.
“We don’t expect to find 1,000 fatalities,” said Micki Trost, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Four fatalities – three in Boulder County and one in El Paso County – have been reported.
About 14,500 people have evacuated from flooded areas in 15 counties, and 1,329 stayed overnight Saturday in 28 emergency shelters, Trost said.
Many displaced residents are staying with family or friends or in hotels, she said.
Rain fell intermittently Saturday, and 4 inches of rain were expected Sunday.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said Sunday he expects the weather to clear Monday morning or afternoon.
The state has “a lot of broken roads and broken bridges, but we don’t have broken spirits,” he said.
Hickenlooper said helicopters rescued more than 2,000 people in need of evacuation in flooded areas.
The size of the flood-affected area is growing.
Flooding has impacted the foothills on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains from Fort Collins in northern Colorado to Canon City, about 180 miles away in southern Colorado.
The hardest-hit counties are Boulder and Larimer in the north and El Paso in the south. The state’s two largest public universities are in the two northern counties – the University of Colorado in Boulder and Colorado State University in Larimer’s most populous city, Fort Collins.
In El Paso County, which includes Colorado Springs, the Manitou Springs area has been most affected by the flooding, Trost said.
Floodwaters have now spread east to the Great Plains in eastern Colorado. An emergency shelter has been set up in Sterling, about 102 miles east of Fort Collins and the Rocky Mountain foothills.
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