B2 · Upper Intermediate
12 min
climatenatural disastersenvironmentsociety
Warm Water, Thin Walls
El golfo no perdona
Tropical Storm Edouard just made landfall on the Gulf Coast, and Fletcher has been watching it from Austin with more than casual interest. Today, Fletcher and Octavio go beyond the forecast: why the Gulf of Mexico has become a storm factory, and what that means for the millions of people living on that narrow strip of land.
La tormenta tropical Edouard acaba de tocar tierra en la costa del Golfo de México, y Fletcher lo ha seguido desde Austin con cierta inquietud personal. Hoy, Fletcher y Octavio van más allá del parte meteorológico: hablan de por qué el Golfo se ha convertido en una fábrica de tormentas, y de lo que eso significa para millones de personas que viven en esa franja de tierra.
8 essential B2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| intensificación rápida | rapid intensification | La intensificación rápida de la tormenta sorprendió a los meteorólogos. |
| infraestructura | infrastructure | Los diques y sistemas de drenaje son parte de la infraestructura que protege las ciudades costeras. |
| punto de inflexión | turning point | El huracán Katrina fue un punto de inflexión en la política de gestión de desastres en Estados Unidos. |
| el clima | climate (long-term weather patterns) | El clima del Golfo de México está cambiando debido al calentamiento global. |
| el tiempo | weather (current conditions) / time | ¿Qué tiempo hace hoy en Austin? Dicen que hay riesgo de lluvias fuertes. |
| insostenible | unsustainable | Con las inundaciones repetidas, la vida en esa zona se ha vuelto insostenible. |
| evacuación | evacuation | Las autoridades ordenaron la evacuación de las zonas costeras antes de que llegara la tormenta. |
| alerta temprana | early warning | Los sistemas de alerta temprana han mejorado mucho desde el huracán Katrina. |
Edouard came ashore yesterday, and I was watching the radar from my kitchen in Austin at two in the morning like some kind of amateur meteorologist who should really be asleep.
Sí, yo lo vi en las noticias desde Madrid.
Yes, I saw it on the news from Madrid.
Y lo primero que pensé fue: ya estamos otra vez.
And the first thing I thought was: here we go again.
Otra tormenta en el Golfo.
Another storm in the Gulf.
Otra temporada que empieza con fuerza.
Another season that starts with force.
The fifth named storm of the season, and we're barely into September.
Which, historically, is actually right on schedule for when things get serious.
Claro.
Right.
Septiembre y octubre son los meses más peligrosos.
September and October are the most dangerous months.
El agua del Golfo todavía tiene el calor acumulado de todo el verano, y eso es básicamente combustible para los huracanes.
The Gulf water still holds all the heat accumulated through summer, and that's basically fuel for hurricanes.
Which brings me to the thing I keep turning over.
Edouard was a tropical storm when it hit, not a hurricane.
But the speed at which it intensified in the forty-eight hours before landfall was genuinely alarming.
Eso es lo que los meteorólogos llaman intensificación rápida.
That's what meteorologists call rapid intensification.
En pocas horas, una tormenta puede pasar de ser algo manejable a ser una amenaza catastrófica.
In just a few hours, a storm can go from something manageable to a catastrophic threat.
Y está pasando con más frecuencia que antes.
And it's happening more often than before.
More often than before.
Let's dig into that, because I think that phrase does a lot of quiet work and most people just let it slide past.
A ver.
Let's see.
La temperatura superficial del Golfo de México ha subido entre uno y dos grados centígrados en las últimas décadas.
The surface temperature of the Gulf of Mexico has risen between one and two degrees Celsius in recent decades.
Puede parecer poco, pero para una tormenta tropical, esa diferencia es enorme.
It might seem like little, but for a tropical storm, that difference is enormous.
Because a hurricane is, at its core, a heat engine.
Warm water is the thing it feeds on.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Más calor en el agua significa más energía disponible.
More heat in the water means more available energy.
Y eso significa vientos más fuertes, lluvias más intensas, y una capacidad mayor de destruir todo lo que encuentra a su paso.
And that means stronger winds, more intense rainfall, and a greater capacity to destroy everything in its path.
I want to give people a sense of the coast we're talking about.
The Gulf Coast runs from the southern tip of Texas up through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, into Florida's panhandle.
It's flat, it's low, and a lot of it is barely above sea level.
Y es una región con muchísima industria petrolera, con refinerías, con infraestructura crítica.
And it's a region with a huge amount of oil industry, with refineries, with critical infrastructure.
No es solo un problema ambiental.
It's not just an environmental problem.
Es un problema económico y de seguridad nacional.
It's an economic and national security problem.
It's also home to something like fifteen million people.
New Orleans.
Houston.
Corpus Christi.
Galveston.
These are not small towns.
Y muchas de esas personas no tienen la capacidad económica de evacuar cuando llega una tormenta.
And many of those people don't have the economic capacity to evacuate when a storm arrives.
Comprar gasolina, pagar un hotel, perder días de trabajo...
Buying gas, paying for a hotel, losing days of work...
para mucha gente eso no es una opción.
for a lot of people that's not an option.
That's the thing that gets me.
We talk about climate risk in the abstract, but it lands hardest on the people who did the least to create the problem.
Eso es cierto a nivel global también.
That's true at the global level too.
Los países que menos han contaminado son los que más están sufriendo las consecuencias.
The countries that have polluted the least are the ones suffering the most consequences.
Hay una injusticia fundamental en todo esto.
There's a fundamental injustice in all of this.
Let me throw a name at you: Harvey.
2017.
I was actually in Houston two weeks after it hit, working on a piece, and I remember driving through neighborhoods where the waterline was still marked on the walls of houses.
Head height.
Sometimes higher.
Harvey fue un caso extraordinario.
Harvey was an extraordinary case.
No fue la fuerza del viento lo que causó tanto daño.
It wasn't the wind strength that caused so much damage.
Fue la lluvia.
It was the rain.
La tormenta se quedó quieta sobre Houston durante días, descargando agua sin parar.
The storm stalled over Houston for days, dumping water nonstop.
Más de un metro y medio de lluvia en algunas zonas.
More than a meter and a half of rain in some areas.
And that stalling behavior, storms that slow down and just sit there, that's also becoming more common.
There's research suggesting that tropical storms are moving more slowly now than they did fifty years ago.
Sí, porque los patrones de viento que normalmente empujan las tormentas hacia el norte también están cambiando.
Yes, because the wind patterns that normally push storms northward are also changing.
Todo el sistema está siendo alterado.
The whole system is being altered.
No es solo que los huracanes sean más intensos.
It's not just that hurricanes are more intense.
Es que se comportan de manera diferente.
It's that they behave differently.
So let's go back further.
The Gulf Coast has always had hurricanes.
This isn't a new relationship.
Galveston, 1900, eight thousand people dead.
The deadliest natural disaster in American history and most people couldn't name it.
Conocía el número pero no sabía que era el más grave de la historia de Estados Unidos.
I knew the number but didn't realize it was the worst in American history.
Eso es devastador.
That's devastating.
It essentially erased the city.
And Galveston at the time was one of the wealthiest cities in the country, the major port of the American South.
After 1900 it never fully recovered that position.
Houston became the dominant city instead.
Lo que me parece fascinante es que, a pesar de todo eso, la gente siguió viviendo allí.
What I find fascinating is that, despite all of that, people kept living there.
Siguieron construyendo.
They kept building.
La costa del Golfo tiene una densidad de población que ha aumentado décadas después de cada catástrofe.
The Gulf Coast has a population density that has increased in the decades after each catastrophe.
Which makes a certain kind of sense.
The land is cheap, the weather is warm most of the year, there's economic opportunity in the energy sector.
People don't move away from risk, they manage it.
Or they think they do.
Pero el problema es que la ecuación está cambiando.
But the problem is that the equation is changing.
Los seguros se están volviendo impagables en muchas zonas de Florida y de la costa del Golfo.
Insurance is becoming unaffordable in many areas of Florida and the Gulf Coast.
Las compañías aseguradoras están abandonando esos mercados porque el riesgo ya no es calculable de la misma manera.
Insurance companies are abandoning those markets because the risk can no longer be calculated in the same way.
That's a remarkable signal when you think about it.
The insurance industry exists to price risk.
When they decide they can't price it anymore and just leave, that tells you something.
Te dice que el riesgo ha superado todos los modelos que tenían.
It tells you the risk has surpassed all their models.
Y cuando el mercado privado se rinde, el coste acaba recayendo sobre el Estado, es decir, sobre todos los contribuyentes.
And when the private market gives up, the cost ends up falling on the state, meaning on all taxpayers.
And that's where this stops being a Texas problem or a Louisiana problem and becomes a national fiscal problem.
FEMA, the federal disaster agency, is essentially perpetually overwhelmed.
It spends years paying out claims from one disaster while the next one is already forming.
Hay un debate muy serio en Estados Unidos, y que debería existir en muchos otros países, sobre si tiene sentido seguir reconstruyendo en los mismos lugares después de cada desastre.
There's a very serious debate in the United States, one that should exist in many other countries too, about whether it makes sense to keep rebuilding in the same places after each disaster.
O si en algún momento hay que decir: aquí no se puede vivir.
Or whether at some point you have to say: people cannot live here.
Managed retreat, they call it.
And politically it's almost impossible to discuss, because you're essentially telling someone their home has no future.
Claro.
Of course.
Nadie vota a favor de que le digan que tiene que abandonar su comunidad.
Nobody votes for being told they have to abandon their community.
Pero si no se toman esas decisiones difíciles ahora, las consecuencias dentro de veinte o treinta años van a ser muchísimo peores.
But if those difficult decisions aren't made now, the consequences in twenty or thirty years are going to be much, much worse.
There's a phrase I've been sitting with: climate migration.
We talk about it in relation to Bangladesh, to Pacific island nations, to sub-Saharan Africa.
We rarely talk about it in relation to the Texas coast.
Pero es la misma realidad.
But it's the same reality.
Ya hay personas que están dejando esas zonas, no porque quieran, sino porque no pueden permitirse quedarse.
There are already people leaving those areas, not because they want to, but because they cannot afford to stay.
Los precios del seguro suben, las inundaciones se repiten, y en algún momento la vida cotidiana se vuelve insostenible.
Insurance prices rise, floods repeat, and at some point daily life becomes unsustainable.
And the people who leave first, who can afford to leave, are never the most vulnerable.
The ones who stay are often the ones with the fewest options.
Eso se vio con el huracán Katrina en 2005.
That was seen with Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Las personas que pudieron salir de Nueva Orleans antes de que llegara la tormenta eran las que tenían coche, dinero, familia en otro estado.
The people who could leave New Orleans before the storm arrived were those with a car, money, family in another state.
Los que se quedaron atrapados fueron los más pobres.
Those who were trapped were the poorest.
I covered the aftermath of Katrina.
Not from the beginning, I came in about three weeks after.
And the thing that stayed with me wasn't the physical destruction, as staggering as that was.
It was the Superdome.
It was what happened when a government decided that certain people could simply wait.
Katrina fue un punto de inflexión.
Katrina was a turning point.
Demostró que los desastres naturales nunca son solo naturales.
It showed that natural disasters are never only natural.
La forma en que una sociedad responde, a quién ayuda primero y a quién deja atrás, revela algo muy profundo sobre sus valores.
The way a society responds, who it helps first and who it leaves behind, reveals something very deep about its values.
And now, twenty-one years later, Edouard makes landfall and we're having essentially the same conversation.
Same coast.
Same communities.
Different storm name.
Aunque no es exactamente igual.
Although it's not exactly the same.
Los sistemas de alerta temprana han mejorado mucho.
Early warning systems have improved a lot.
La capacidad de predecir dónde va a tocar tierra una tormenta es mucho mejor que en 2005.
The ability to predict where a storm will make landfall is much better than in 2005.
Eso salva vidas.
That saves lives.
Pero la infraestructura, los diques, los sistemas de drenaje...
But the infrastructure, the levees, the drainage systems...
siguen siendo insuficientes en muchos sitios.
remain insufficient in many places.
Better forecasting tells you the punch is coming.
It doesn't do much about the fact that your jaw is still in the way.
Buena metáfora.
Good metaphor.
Aunque lo que me preocupa más a largo plazo es el nivel del mar.
Although what worries me more in the long term is sea level.
El Golfo de México está subiendo.
The Gulf of Mexico is rising.
Y cuando el nivel del mar sube, cada tormenta, incluso una pequeña, provoca una inundación mayor que antes.
And when sea level rises, every storm, even a small one, causes a greater flood than before.
Parts of the Louisiana coast are losing land at a rate that's genuinely hard to process.
Not losing it to storms, just losing it.
Sinking and eroding.
There are communities that existed on maps a generation ago that are simply underwater now.
Es que la palabra "clima" a veces hace que la gente piense en algo lejano, en el futuro, en los polos.
The word 'climate' sometimes makes people think of something distant, of the future, of the poles.
Pero esto es ahora.
But this is now.
Es esta semana.
It's this week.
Es Edouard tocando tierra ayer.
It's Edouard making landfall yesterday.
Actually, you just did something there that I want to ask you about.
You said "clima" for climate, but earlier you said "tiempo" when you were talking about the weather in a more immediate sense.
Are those actually different words doing different things in Spanish?
Exacto, son dos palabras completamente distintas.
Exactly, they're two completely different words.
"El tiempo" es lo que hace hoy: llueve, hace sol, hay viento.
"El tiempo" is what the weather is doing today: it's raining, it's sunny, there's wind.
"El clima" es el patrón a lo largo de muchos años.
"El clima" is the pattern over many years.
La diferencia es casi la misma que en inglés entre "weather" y "climate".
The difference is almost the same as in English between 'weather' and 'climate'.
Right, but "tiempo" also means time in general, doesn't it?
Like, the same word covers both weather and time, which in English are completely unrelated.
Sí, y a veces eso confunde a los estudiantes de español.
Yes, and that sometimes confuses Spanish learners.
"No tengo tiempo" significa que no tienes tiempo en el sentido cronológico.
"No tengo tiempo" means you don't have time in the chronological sense.
"¿Qué tiempo hace?" es una pregunta sobre el clima del día.
"¿Qué tiempo hace?" is a question about today's weather.
El contexto siempre lo aclara, pero requiere práctica.
Context always clarifies it, but it takes practice.
So if I wanted to complain about the hurricane weather in Austin, I'd say something with "tiempo", but if I wanted to discuss how the Gulf Coast's long-term climate is shifting, I'd say "clima".
Perfecto.
Perfect.
Y fíjate que en este episodio lo has hecho bien de manera intuitiva, Fletcher.
And notice that in this episode you used them correctly intuitively, Fletcher.
No has confundido las dos.
You didn't confuse the two.
A lo mejor no necesitas tanta ayuda como crees.
Maybe you don't need as much help as you think.
Don't get comfortable with that.
I once told a meteorologist in Buenos Aires that I found the weather "muy embarazante", which apparently does not mean what I thought it meant.
Y así volvemos al principio.
And so we come full circle.
Nunca cambia nada, Fletcher.
Nothing ever changes, Fletcher.
Nunca cambia nada.
Nothing ever changes.