On Wed, 04 Sep 2019 14:15:34 -0400, micky
wrote:

My brother lives on a barrier island** and 3 or 4 times a year, there is
a king tide that floods not only the beach but the main north/south
street. In many parts of the island, there are no parallel streets with
which to bypass the flooded one (and come to think, all of them would be
flooded too.)

One time years ago he tried to drive through and his recollection is
that the car stalled right away and wouldn't start, and the shop said he
needed a new alternator, and after they replaced that things worked.

Shouldn't the battery have been enough to power the car for a day or so?

Or is it possible with salt-water to short the alternator so that the
battery won't run the car at all?

Salt water tends to short out the whole electrical system and it would
kill a battery pretty fast. My guess is that he also shorted out some
other stuff that stopped the car tho. Everything is electrical these
days.


**Hollywood, Florida. My brother is no liberal, probably a
conservative, but he says that he's seen global warming first hand. I
don't think the street flooded at all the first years they lived there,
certainly not as often.

I tend to call bull****.
Any actual increase in sea level would be millimeters in 2 years and
certainly not enough to flood streets. That area has always had
flooding problems along with Miami and a lot of other older
communities in the SE part of the state. It is not so much that the
sea level rose, the land is subsiding. That is what happens when you
build on swamp land. New Orleans has the same issue. They also have a
lot of new development that disrupts the water flow. Since the water
table is only down a few feet, not much will soak in anyway.