Yesterday (Wednesday May 21, 2014), my son and his girl friend were returning by air after visiting her brother and family in Salt Lake City, Utah. Their flight had a scheduled stop in Denver and plane change there. They should have been in Rapid City around Noon yesterday. But, weather and/or climate change got in the way.
Their flight was diverted to Colorado Springs, Colo. apparently while Denver International Airport was cleaning up the accumulated hail. They sat in an airplane for two hours at Colorado Springs. Finally they got to Denver about an hour later. Then they were in the airport until 10PM MDT last night before finding out they had gotten tickets to fly to Rapid City that night after all. The Airline had initially said they would not be able to fly out of Denver until Saturday. About 10 minutes after 11PM Rapid City time, they were back. The day for them had started around 5AM that morning. See CNN story and images on Tornadoes, Large Hail Hit Denver.
Now, a bit about catastropic weather events and air transportation. When I tried to get any information from airports on re-routing, delays, etc. it mostly was not available. A polite helpful woman in administration at Rapid City Airport provided some information, but mostly it appeared to me that communications in the airline industry break down nearly completely when a weather problem delays flights, etc. The airline also told my son, they had no liability for delayed flights, etc. because of weather events.
If as seems likely that fossil fuel use is altering our climate and consequent global warming is generating more and more serious history-making weather events, it is a bit of karma that airlines get hit since they dump a lot of the detritis from burning jet fuel into the atmosphere. But, there must have been nearly zero communication from weather services and airlines and airports prior to the storm.
Federal officials and Congress should be investigating the apparent lack of planning and communication regarding severe weather events, delays, plane damage, diverted flights, etc. It is likely that severe weather events are going to be more and more common and more and more devastating to air travel. In fact, it may be time to do away with domestic commercial air travel and start building a high speed light rail transportation system similar to the interstate highway system.
High speed light rail systems run by power from wind power and solar panels should be rapidly replacing the airline systems for all domestic travel likely to become an ever greater problem as serious weather events become more common and terrorism by lunatic fanatics remain a problem for airlines and air travelers.
The USA has multiple reasons for converting to Solar, Wind, and hydro-electric power that include the ecological and climate reasons, but also the need for the US to lead the rest of the world in technology related to alternate energy systems. This would be a win-win-win for the United States.
But, don't hold your precious breath waiting for the dinosaurs in Congress counting their "contributions" from the fossil fuel industries. It really is time to raise hell with these retrograde boneheads.
*** Stay tuned, and watch the weather on multiple sources. SD TV weather seldom shows anything beyond their advertisers reach--- Doug Wiken
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