{"id":2865,"date":"2012-07-27T09:32:37","date_gmt":"2012-07-27T15:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/?p=2865"},"modified":"2012-07-27T09:32:37","modified_gmt":"2012-07-27T15:32:37","slug":"weather-extremes-leave-parts-of-u-s-grid-buckling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/?p=2865","title":{"rendered":"Weather Extremes Leave Parts of U.S. Grid Buckling"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 27, 2012-by Matthew Wald and John Schwartz in the New York Times<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>WASHINGTON \u2014 From highways in Texas to nuclear power plants in Illinois, the concrete, steel and sophisticated engineering that undergird the nation\u2019s infrastructure are being taxed to worrisome degrees by heat, drought and vicious storms.<\/p>\n

\n

On a single day this month here, a US Airways regional jet became stuck in asphalt that had softened in 100-degree temperatures, and a subway train derailed after the heat stretched the track so far that it kinked \u2014 inserting a sharp angle into a stretch that was supposed to be straight. In East Texas, heat and drought have had a startling effect on the clay-rich soils under highways, which \u201cjust shrink like crazy,\u201d leading to \u201chorrendous cracking,\u201d said Tom Scullion, senior research engineer with the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. In Northeastern and Midwestern states, he said, unusually high heat is causing highway sections to expand beyond their design limits, press against each other and \u201cpop up,\u201d creating jarring and even hazardous speed bumps.<\/p>\n

Excessive warmth and dryness are threatening other parts of the grid as well. In the Chicago area, a twin-unit nuclear plant had to get special permission to keep operating this month because the pond it uses for cooling water rose to 102 degrees; its license to operate allows it to go only to 100. \"\"<\/a>According to the Midwest Independent System Operator, the grid operator for the region, a different power plant had had to shut because the body of water from which it draws its cooling water had dropped so low that the intake pipe became high and dry; another had to cut back generation\u00a0because cooling water was too warm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The frequency of extreme weather is up over the past few years, and people who deal with infrastructure expect that to continue. Leading climate models suggest that weather-sensitive parts of the infrastructure will be seeing many more extreme episodes, along with shifts in weather patterns and\u00a0rising maximum (and minimum) temperatures<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got the \u2018storm of the century\u2019 every year now,\u201d said Bill Gausman, a senior vice president and a 38-year veteran at the Potomac Electric Power Company…Read more in the Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July 27, 2012-by Matthew Wald and John Schwartz in the New York Times WASHINGTON \u2014 From highways in Texas to nuclear power plants in Illinois, the concrete, steel and sophisticated engineering that undergird the nation\u2019s infrastructure are being taxed to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2865"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2869,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2865\/revisions\/2869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}