Word: torrent
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...Levitt’s most famous papers—on the link between legalized abortion and crime reduction—generated a torrent of indignant criticism that perhaps Summers would be familiar with. In the early 1980s, crime rates reached an all time high—and then dramatically dropped. One explanation for the drop, argues Levitt, is that the legalization of abortion in the 1970s kept a whole generation of unwanted babies from being born—babies who could have grown into a generation of street criminals 15 to 20 years later. Sounds like a pretty edgy hypothesis...
...Hawaii's Kilauea. Instead, the superheated magma within Nevado del Ruiz began to melt the thick blanket of snow and ice that caps the top 2,000 ft. of the peak. Filthy water started to flow down the sides of the mountain. The trickle swiftly turned into a torrent of viscous mud, stones, ashes and debris with a crest of 15 ft. to 50 ft. The liquid avalanche, known as a lahar, was soon hurtling down the steep slopes at speeds of up to 30 m.p.h. With irresistible force, it roared down the flanks of Nevado del Ruiz...
...according to Colombian Historian Rafael Gómez Picón, "subterranean sounds emanated from the upper part of the ... river on the slopes of the snowcapped volcano . . . accompanied by a series of slight quakes. Suddenly, out of the canyon wherein the Lagunilla River flows, an enormous and strange torrent of thick mud became dislodged at tremendous velocity. It dragged with it great blocks of snow, debris, trees and sand." According to Gómez's chronicle, the mudslide destroyed the town of Ambalema some 20 miles southeast of Armero, killing 1,000 people. The 1845 eruption also deposited some 250 million tons...
Some along the mountainside survived as the water surged by just below them in the valley. Farmer Valentino Tretter saw the cloud of white dust raised by the torrent and climbed above the valley road to investigate. "Soon after, the mud came across my garden and my barn," he recalled, "I shouted toward the house of the Vinante family, which is a little underneath mine, but in a few moments it was wiped away. Adriano, his wife Pauola and their three children--all are dead...
...rain. But when wet weather finally arrived this month, it proved to be yet another kind of curse. A heavy deluge produced flash floods that raced through long-dry riverbeds and rushed over brick-hard earth, turning airstrips into quagmires and rendering roads and rail lines impassable. The torrent washed out a vital railroad bridge that linked the region to Port Sudan, cutting off hundreds of thousands of famine victims from emergency food supplies...