Sea level low in Venice

Sea level in the Venice Lagoon is the lowest it's been in 14 years. I was having a man-bites-dog moment for a while, but a little research shows that Venice alternates regularly between floods and dry spells. Reuters has the story. But it's a reminder that I often make to skeptics, and I need to remember it myself -- a single moment doesn't define an entire trend. Even so, it's a heartening moment, even if it means that the city has issues a low-water-level alert so that water ambulances can choose passable routes to the hospitals.

Meanwhile, an adroit programmer has used Google Maps to create a rough-and-ready flood projection tool for Venice and plenty of other cities here.

Venice from space, NASA, Wikimedia Commons