What Fueled Louisiana’s Deadly Flood?

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/how-an-inland-brown-ocean-and-climate-change-may-have-fueled-louisianas-deadly-flood/?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FWeather&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=7&pgtype=collection&_r=0

"But nothing has come close to the deadly off-the-chart deluges and flooding in southern Louisiana, which the Red Cross says have produced the country’s worst natural disaster since Hurricane Sandy."

"But it’s worth going into more depth on what created the monstrous and deadly dump of rain over Louisiana — with more than 30 inches in some spots in a stretch from August 11, when federal forecasters realized something truly scary was unfolding, until today, with 11 deaths attributed to the storm so far, thousands displaced and tens of thousands of homes and businesses swamped."

"The Times has published an article by Jonah Engel Bromwich assessing the storm’s consistency with climate change projections, but also noting that the South was not among the areas identified in the 2014 National Climate Assessment as most at risk from more downpours."

"I also contacted several meteorologists and climate analysts who’ve published studies on factors that shape what happens to Gulf of Mexico storm systems once they push in over land. In this case, it appears that the heat contained in warm, wet swampy terrain of Louisiana south of Baton Rouge may well have offered a last-minute power boost to the storm system."

"[I]n regions such as southern Louisiana and the Everglades, shallow warm water permits heating to still occur as air moves towards the low pressure center. This mimicking of aspects of the ocean conditions, including the evaporation of water vapor into the system, permits tropical systems to persist longer than they otherwise would. This is what occurred in this Louisiana deluge. "