Masters:  “Irene is capable of inundating portions of the coast under 10 – 15 feet of water, to the highest storm surge depths ever recorded. I strongly recommend that all residents of the mid-Atlantic and New England coast familiarize themselves with their storm surge risk.”

This morning meteorologist and former hurricane hunter Dr. Jeff Masters posted this figure, “The height above ground that a mid-strength Category 2 hurricane with 100 mph winds would push a storm surge in a worst-case scenario in New York City”:

My brother lost his Pass Christian, Mississippi home in Katrina’s “worst-case scenario” storm surge 6 years ago this week –  so as Masters wrote this afternoon, “Take this storm seriously!”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s quote — “From a Flooding Perspective, This Could Be a 100-Year Event”– was from tonight’s NBC Evening News.  As Craig Fugate, who heads the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, said last December, “The term ’100-year event’ really lost its meaning this year.”

Masters writes that in addition to the storm surge, we have the deluge:

Irene likely to bring destructive fresh water flooding
In this morning’s post, I highlighted the threat from storm surge flooding, but flash flooding and river flooding from Irene’s torrential rains are also a huge threat. The hurricane is expected to bring rains in excess of 12″ to 100-mile swath from Eastern North Carolina northwards along the coast, through New York City. The danger of fresh water flooding is greatest in northern New Jersey, Southeast Pennsylvania, and Southeast New York, where the soils are saturated from heavy August rains that were among the heaviest on record.  At Philadelphia, rainfall so far this August has been 13 inches, not far from the record for rainiest month of all-time, the 15.82″ that fell in August 1867. This record will almost certainly be broken when Irene’s rains arrive. In general, the heaviest rains will fall along the west side of the hurricane’s track, and the greatest wind damage will occur on the east side

Here is the rainfall map:

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By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Public Lands Project, Center for American Progress.

The Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity is bringing its “Running on Empty” tour to Colorado this week, to discuss the “perils of the government regulating the oil industry.”  In addition to its pro-polluter message, another of Koch Industries’ front groups has been at the helm of attacking Medicare.  So, at yesterday’s rallies across the state, concerned Coloradans pushed back using a moving billboard to ask, “Big Oil Gets Tax Breaks, Grandma Gets Medicare Cuts?”

Against the backdrop of that billboard, Dan Gould, Chair of the Boulder County Democratic Party, summed up the message of the protestors, saying “it is not the case” that ordinary Americans want what Americans for Prosperity is advocating:

It’s amazing to me that they have been able to dupe enough Americans into believing that the oil companies somehow need to have even more subsidies than they do now at the expense of at the expense of ordinary citizens, at the expense of “Grandma” as this sign says.  Grandma gets Medicare cuts, while oil gets tax cuts.  That doesn’t make sense to me.  And the thing that’s important is, these rallies are really just an extension of the Koch brothers’ lobbying efforts in Washington.  They’re trying to make it look like ordinary Americans want to have high profits for oil companies at the expense of the rest of the American public.  And that is not the case, it is clearly the case that the American people want to have fair taxation and not tax breaks for large corporations and for oil companies.

Watch it:

Protestors also called on the conservatives to help end the $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies that oil companies will get just this year, even though the Big 5 oil companies have already made $67 billion in 2011.  Jeff Crank, head of the Colorado chapter of Americans for Prosperity, responded by telling the crowd that he too “couldn’t be more against subsidies to Big Oil companies.”  He was not the only one from Americans for Prosperity to voice this opinion:  Tracy Henke, the group’s national executive vice president, told the Longmont Times-Call that Americans for Prosperity does not support these corporate subsidies.  But as the debt “super committee” begins its search for new forms of revenue, AFP has ignored this wasteful spending in its events this summer and instead completely focused on blaming the Obama Administration, calling for more places to be open to drilling and decrying regulation of any kind.

The Colorado activists speaking out against handouts to Big Oil at these and other Americans for Prosperity events across the country are part of a growing trend of citizens demanding that the group pay attention to subsidies and budget cuts, rather than focusing on the “absurd and deceptive message” about how more drilling will decrease gas prices, as one ProgressNow activist put it.

A poll sponsored by the Checks and Balances project released this week found that 79% of Coloradans favor reduced speculation and manipulation of markets in order to lower gas prices.  Coloradans overwhelmingly support this crackdown, and 77% believe that fuel efficiency and reduced oil consumption will lower prices.

Relatedly, the number of rigs in Colorado has been steadily climbing since 2009, even though the industry is producing on only 32% of the federal acres that it has leased there.