Climate Physical Risk

A week after last week's floods, a new storm is forecast to drop 1 to 3 inches of rain on southwest Colorado, and the National Weather Service in Grand Junction now expects the San Juan River at Pagosa Springs to reach 21.84 feet by late Sunday, against the 17.8-foot crest of the 1911 flood that destroyed much of the town and about 15 feet last week. The river stood near 10.5 feet, just above flood stage, on Sunday afternoon. Archuleta County told residents along the San Juan, Rio Blanco, Navajo and Piedra rivers to leave immediately, with evacuation orders also in Rio Grande and Conejos counties; Pagosa Springs closed to incoming traffic and La Plata County shut all its roads. The sheriff warned that helicopters would be grounded and response capacity extremely limited at the storm's peak, the Colorado Sun reports.

Why it matters: A forecast crest this far outside the historical record, arriving before the first flood's damage is repaired, is the compounding-event pattern the trend points to; the crest itself was not yet observed at publication.

The Northern Territory's Country Liberal government has a bill before parliament that would remove the requirement that water allocation plans set water aside for rivers, springs and wetlands, and drop the rule keeping total industry use below each plan's limit, the Guardian reports. The change comes as the government plans a large expansion of fracking, data centres and irrigated agriculture. The Wilderness Society urged the federal government to withhold Commonwealth water funding if it passes, and the Central Land Council said native title holders could no longer challenge licences like the Singleton Station grant the High Court quashed in August. Environment minister Joshua Burgoyne said the core framework of the territory's environment laws remains.