Climate Change

A “1000-year” storm hit the state of Louisiana, dropping nearly 7 trillion gallons (26 trillion liters) of water the week of August 8, 2016. That is, three times the amount of water that accompanied Hurricane Katrina.

To put this number into perspective, let’s look at how much water an individual uses per year. According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the average person uses 2500 cubic meters of water per year.

If the water from this storm was all collected (and purified), how many people could it support for one week?