Ice-melt deluge to inundate Madison Park

Only parts of Washington Park expected to remain

Madison Park will definitely be underwater, for the most part, if global warming takes the ultimate toll on this fragile earth, causing all of the world's ice sheets to melt. That, at least, is one of the interesting conclusions of UW Planner Jeffrey Linn, who has created an intriguing map of Seattle showing the effects of a 240-foot rise in the level of the world's oceans. By expert consensus, apparently, the additional volume of liquid H20 created by the ultimate ice melt would have that mega-impact. We are indebted to our friends at the neighboring Capitol Hill Seattle blog for pointing us to this eye-opening conclusion. They, of course, presented their story in more of a celebratory manner than we can muster, since Capitol Hill will survive the flood while most of us in Madison Park will be like the polar bears, swimming about futilely.

The denizens of the upper portions of Washington Park, some of whom may already feel themselves among the elect, will simply be reinforced in this opinion by Linn's conclusion that much of Washington Park is simply too exalted to be wiped out by the grand deluge.  More than 240-feet above the current sea level and you become an island.  Below that, you are simply part of a great new inland waterway (Lake Washington itself having been subsumed).

Linn, who disclaims on his website that his efforts have anything to do with his role as a planner at the University, reports that he got the idea of looking at what the ice melt would do to Seattle by reading the blog of someone in San Francisco who had performed the same exercise for that city.  Most of the folks down there, we suspect, have something more immediate to brood about than what might happen to them when the waters rise.

Anyway, in case you are wondering about whether to sell up and move to Capitol Hill in anticipation of The Ultimate Flood (or are perhaps just worried about the impact on your house's value due to unwarranted public disclosure of its future underwater prospects), rest easy. Linn says that his on-line research suggests that we've still got about 5,000 years. Plenty of time for us to damn up the Ship Canal.

[Check out the complete Seattle deluge map here.]