Another damaging and frightening extreme weather event we can chalk up to global warming, this time in Colorado:
Three days of unusually heavy rains along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains turned many Colorado creeks into fast-rising rivers on Thursday, making many roads impassable and causing at least three deaths.
Walloping Boulder County, the storm dropped 6 inches of rain Wednesday night—some of it at a rate of an inch an hour, according to the National Weather Service. That was in addition to 2 inches that had fallen previously. Another 2 to 3 inches of rain was expected, along with more flooding conditions, through Sunday, the weather service said.
"This event is not over. It's far from over. It's continuing to build," Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said during a news conference Wednesday. He advised residents to stay off the streets.
Two bodies were discovered in Boulder County, one in a structure that had collapsed in the small town of Jamestown, north of Boulder, according to the Boulder County Sheriff's Department. Jamestown's roads were washed out and its 200 residents were evacuated overnight. Another body was found in North Boulder.
To the south, in Colorado Springs, a police officer on flood patrol found a male body this morning in Fountain Creek, an area prone to flooding, according to a police department spokeswoman.
The large wildfires that wiped out swaths of forest land in the central area of the state during the past two years have exacerbated flooding conditions and sent debris-filled water careening down from the mountains, according to the National Weather Service.
