Green Group discussion
Climate Change
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Flooding
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400 homes were under an evacuation order yesterday ahead of: "The Scottish environment agency has warned rivers could rise by five metres."
Updating page on Scotland.
https://news.sky.com/story/storm-babe...
South of Ireland.
https://www.rte.ie/news/weather/2023/...
5 meters is a lot. I wonder if a months worth of rain in a day will become the new standard instead saying its a 100 year or 500 year event.
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Some homes and towns near rivers have installed flood barriers, but at least one location in Scotland was prepared for the river to overtop the barriers.
Hurricane Otis went from Cat 1 to Cat 5 in just 12 hours. That was 110 miles per hour in 24 hours, far surpassing the standard definition of rapid intensification, which is when a storm grows by 35 m.p.h. This resulted in very high winds and heavy rains which caused local flooding while the storm was passing through. Communications, power and roads are out of service.
The super rapid intensification of storms coming in from the water has reached new levels which makes it extremely difficult to know what kind of storm is coming. The safest approach is to shut everything down, but this would interrupt everything from business to social activities. How the situation will be handled from here on out is anybody's guess.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate...
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Absolutely there is more happening now. We have new rules for everything, including the weather, economics, and health. It is very hard to be prepared for what is happening because there is no past history of the way things are going to use as a guideline. A lot of people, including people making decisions, are not properly schooled in how to handle things on the fly, instead they use methods that did reliably work in the past but no longer yield beneficial results.
One thing those obnoxious data centers are good for is spotting trends. They should be used to figure out where things are going before it becomes obvious to see because it has become common place.
One thing that has emerged from the vast pool of data is that if a child is predisposed to breathing problems and they live in a house with a gas stove, they are 20 percent more likely to develop asthma. It's taken 30 years to get reliable data to show this because that's how long it has taken to get everything hooked up in the same place. But now that we're here, things like this need to be known immediately, and can be.
Right now people with any sort of typographical data should be putting it all together so we can know where rivers will materialize out of nowhere when the ability of the land to spread out the runoff from an excessive rain event is exceeded and the land starts to channel the water into rivers and ponds. The data centers can do these kinds of calculations and need to do them for free as part of their responsibility for being in existence.
Otherwise they can launch them into space where they can't use up valuable resources.
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Here, a heritage park and a racecourse have been flooded.
https://www.rte.ie/news/regional/2023...
"Chairman of the trust company that runs the park Adrian Doyle said that some of the measures they took to alleviate flooding, during the renovation project, worked well and saved a lot of their stock and fixtures in the reception building, but the park itself has been deluged.
"I'm not sure when that will subside. This is the worst flooding we've had at the height of the flooding.
The previous flooding was more devastating because we weren't ready at the centre, we were this time at least, but as you can see and from walking around yourself, it's very very substantial."
The indoor section of the National Heritage Park will re-open, all going well, on Monday but it will take longer for the outdoor park sections to re-open as they will have to wait for the waters to subside.
It is a blow in a week when mid-term would normally lead to many schoolchildren and their parents paying a visit, as well as people frequenting the nearby Wexford Festival Opera.
Meanwhile, Wexford Racecourse had to call off today's race meeting - one of the venue's biggest of the season - because of the amount of rain that fell, leaving the course waterlogged.
"Just over the past 24, 48 hours we're after having 35, 40mm of rain and in the previous week there was probably 100mm of rain and the track just wouldn't be able to cope," track foreman Ian Carty said.
"It's a big weekend for Wexford Racecourse, it's a two-day meeting for us so it draws a big crowd usually, our best race of the year is on this time of the year as well, look it will be sad to lose it but it is what it is, we can't do anything about it really, can we?""
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https://www.rte.ie/news/2023/1031/141...
"A bridge in north Louth has partially collapsed due to flooding in the Cooley Peninusla, while parts of Newry in Co Down are under water after heavy overnight rainfall.
Met Éireann has issued further rain and wind warnings ahead of Storm Ciarán, with the UK Met Office issuing similar alerts for Northern Ireland."
Peninsula. The water may have steamed up the proof-reader's glasses.
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https://www.ecowatch.com/death-valley...
"Back in August, Death Valley National Park closed following flooding from Tropical Storm Hilary. The deluge inundated the park with a year’s worth of rain that filled long-dry lake beds and revitalized the landscape.
The park partially reopened on October 15 and is now dotted with lakes and blanketed with greenery and wildflowers.
“Some spectacular things happened in Death Valley following the floods we received from remnants of Hurricane Hilary back in August. Ephemeral lakes popped up around the park, which is both pretty rare and amazing!” Death Valley National Park wrote in a post on Instagram."
Backpacker tells us:
https://www.backpacker.com/news-and-e...
"When officials partially reopened Death Valley National Park on October 15, a rare spectacle was awaiting visitors: a brand-new lake in Badwater Basin.
Badwater Basin is a large salt flat that’s North America’s lowest point at 282 feet below sea level. Nearby Furnace Creek holds the record for being the hottest place on Earth after temperatures reached 134.1-degrees in 1913. (Though some scientists have cast doubt on that figure, almost all agree that Death Valley currently owns the heat record.)
Typically, Badwater Basin is extremely dry. But after Tropical Storm Hillary struck Death Valley National Park in August, water inundated the area. The storm dropped about a year’s worth of precipitation in a single day,
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In addition to hosting a new lake, Badwater Basin is also experiencing unseasonable flower blooms, surrounding the lake with yellow and orange pops of color. While the basin isn’t totally inhospitable to life—it even has its own species of endemic snail—it’s very uncommon for the basin to support flowers after spring ends due to rising temperatures and a shortage of water."
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"The NASA analysis finds that a strong El Niño could result in up to five instances of a type of flooding called a 10-year flood event this winter in cities including Seattle and San Diego. Places like La Libertad and Baltra in Ecuador could get up to three of these 10-year flood events this winter. This type of flooding doesn’t normally occur along the west coast of the Americas outside of El Niño years. The researchers note that by the 2030s, rising seas and climate change could result in these cities experiencing similar numbers of 10-year floods annually, with no El Niño required."
"climate change could result in these cities experiencing similar numbers of 10-year floods annually, with no El Niño required"This is already happening. Things like El Nino provided extra energy for other events to then happen. Now that the Earth has acquired extra energy, those triggering events are no longer needed to make things happen.
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"A deadly Pacific storm, the second "Pineapple Express" weather system to sweep the west coast of the US in less than a week, dumped torrential rain over southern California yesterday, triggering street flooding and mudslides throughout the region.
Extreme-weather advisories for floods, high wind and winter storm conditions were posted on yesterday across parts of the US state and southwestern Arizona where around 35 million people live, and authorities urged residents to limit their driving.
The national weather service documented staggering rainfall amounts from the storm, which lashed northern California on Sunday with hurricane-force gusts of wind, along with heavy rain that intensified as the system moved south on Sunday night and yesterday.
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"Nearly 30cm rain was measured over a 24-hour period on the campus of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
"We're talking about one of the wettest storm systems to impact the greater Los Angeles area" since records began, Ariel Cohen, chief NWS meteorologist in LA, told an evening news conference.
"Going back to the 1870s, this is one of the top three.""
Unfortunately this won't be the last one. Its been labeled as 1 in a thousand years, but that has become meaningless. There is more rain on the way. Places have seen up to 12 inches of rain, and up to a years worth of rain in a week. The wind is also a big problem, bringing down trees. This creates power outages, blocks roads and damages buildings. When the water recedes from flooded roads it can leave behind a thick layer of mud. The threat of land slides continues after the rain stops because the ground becomes saturated with water that can't drain out fast enough and becomes unstable.
This could change the way real estate is developed because the threat of land slides in some locations could go from remotely possible to once a year.
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"Vivienne Jeffers says that the newly published World Weather Attribution study on Midleton carried out for RTÉ Prime Time might have surprised her in the past, but not now.
The study found that the extreme rainfall over two days during Storm Babet had "more than doubled in likelihood" because of global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions.
It also found that intensity of the rainfall had also increased because of climate change.
"If you had asked me at the start of October, I would've said 'no way, weather changes all the time.’ But now I that I’ve seen it firsthand. It's devastating. The effects of what the water can do and, and how, how dangerous it is."
"I've never had a fear before, but there's up to a hundred people in this estate alone and they're all living in fear. We've seen firsthand what climate change is doing. Because in living memory, water didn't come in in here, and all of a sudden it is," she said.
The World Weather Attribution study also found that as we move towards a global temperature of two degrees above pre-industrial norms the risk and intensity of such extreme rainfall is likely to further increase.
Professor Mary Bourke of Trinity College Dublin says she worried about what the new attribution study tells us. Her expertise is in 'earth surface processes' specifically flooding.
"When I read the paper, I became very, very concerned," she said.
"We can say now that this big event is linked to climate change. And it’s why we're now getting bigger events. I don't think we've reached the biggest event directly associated with climate change."
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"The relief scheme being finalised before Storm Babet was being designed to protect against what was considered to be "a one in a hundred year" river flooding, and "one in two-hundred year" tidal flooding.
Yet, the Storm Babet’s extreme rainfall and flooding turned out to be worse than that.
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"The last major flood in 2015 didn’t affect his home, but last October’s flood overwhelmed in a matter of minutes.
"It was just an incredible amount of water in such a short period of time," he added.
"They actually [originally] built the house a foot higher than the previous flood of record. The type of flood back in October had never been seen here before.""
They built a protective wall out of sand. The outcome was totally predictable. This $600k defense against sea level rise could have lasted 3 years. It was destroyed in less than a day.
They are going to keep throwing sand at the problem instead of facing the reality of incredibly reinforced elevated shore roads, houses on stilts, or the most practical solution, move off the beach.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/600k-defen...
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https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/rus...
"Russians in the city of Orsk gathered in a rare protest on Monday, calling for compensation following the collapse of a dam and subsequent flooding in the Orenburg region near the border with Kazakhstan.
Protests are an unusual sight in Russia where authorities have consistently cracked down on any form of dissent following Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Hundreds of people gathered in front of the administrative building in Orsk, Russian state news agency Tass said, while videos shared on Russian social media channels showed people chanting “Putin, help us” and “shame”.
The floods, caused by rising water levels in the Ural River, forced more than 4,000 people, including 885 children, to evacuate in the Orenburg region, the regional government said on Sunday.
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"The total damage from the flood in the region is estimated at about 21 billion rubles (€208 million), the regional government said on Sunday.
Orsk, less than 20 kilometres (less than 13 miles) north of the border with Kazakhstan, suffered the brunt of the floods that caused a dam to break on Friday, according to Orsk Mayor Vasily Kozupitsa.
A criminal probe has been launched to investigate suspected construction violations that may have caused the dam to break. Local authorities said the dam could withstand water levels up to 5.5 metres.
On Saturday morning, the water level reached about 9.3 metres and rising, Mr Kozupitsa said. On Sunday, the level in Orsk reached 9.7 metres, according to Russia’s water level information site AllRivers."
Dubai got 5.9 to 6.26 inches of rain in one day. It doesn't sound like a lot but it is 1-1/2 to 2 year's worth of rain in one day.Terms for describing excessive rainfall are changing from once in 100 or 500 years to how much rain fell in how many months or years worth of average rainfall in day or two.
It gives the amount based on how much extra water was received.
Another factor in this event is that it happened in an arid region not accustomed to excessive rainfall. Due to changing conditions it has been predicted that the southern half of the Arabian peninsula would be getting more rain while the northern half gets less rain. Up until now the entire area had been seeing less rain per year than average and the northern areas were not getting reduced rainfalls compared to other areas.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/dubai-floo...
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Sadly some people have suffered, I'm leaving out that content. Nobody could have prepared for the totally unexpected.
https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2024/04...
"The UAE witnessed a record rainfall with 254mm falling in Al Ain yesterday in less than 24 hours, according to the national meteorology centre.
That was the most since records began in 1949, before the country was established in 1971.
Although heavy rains had eased by last night, disruptions are continuing with Emirates airline suspending check-in for passengers departing Dubai airport until midnight.
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"UAE media and social media posts showed significant damage from the torrential downpours in some parts of the country, including collapsed roads and homes inundated by water.
Social media posts showed flooded roads and car parks with some vehicles completely submerged. Sheikh Zayed Road, a 12-lane highway through Dubai, was partially flooded, leaving people stuck in a kilometres-long traffic jam for hours."
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"Rainfall is rare in the UAE and elsewhere on the Arabian Peninsula, that is typically known for its dry desert climate. Summer air temperatures can soar above 50 degrees Celsius.
But the UAE and Oman also lack drainage systems to cope with heavy rains and submerged roads are not uncommon during rainfall.
Following yesterday's events, questions were raised whether cloud seeding, a process that the UAE frequently conducts, could have caused the heavy rains.
Cloud seeding is a process in which chemicals are implanted into clouds to increase rainfall in an environment where water scarcity is a concern.
The UAE, located in one of the hottest and driest regions on earth, has been leading the effort to seed clouds and increase precipitation.
But the UAE's meteorology agency told Reuters there were no such operations before the storm.
What about climate change?
The huge rainfall was instead likely due to a normal weather system that was exacerbated by climate change, experts say.
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Global warming has resulted in "extraordinarily" warm water in the seas around Dubai, where there is also very warm air above, said Mark Howden, Director at the Australian National University's Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions.
"This increases both potential evaporation rates and the capacity of the atmosphere to hold that water, allowing bigger dumps of rainfall such as what we have just seen in Dubai.""
Interesting article worth reading in full to understand the pressure and temperature issues coming into play.
Most desert areas don't have a real system in place to handle large amounts of rain. One common approach is to have dry open channels that carry excess water out of the city.
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Texas has been getting excessive rain storms over the pas 2 months. Some areas have gotten over 2 feet of rain in 2 months. Other areas have gotten up to 12 inches in the past week, other areas have gotten 12 inches of rain in the past few days.The flooding seems to be localized but more rain is coming which could expand the flooding to larger low lying areas.
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/aust...
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https://www.ecowatch.com/kenya-floodi...
"On Thursday, James Apolloh Omenya, a 27-year-old tour guide, told CNN that the sounds of rushing flood waters had awakened him. The water had risen to his waist, and the area surrounding Talek Bush Camp was submerged.
“My driver and I were the first to wake up, so we woke up all the 14 international tourists and 25 staff and climbed ladders to some water tanks that are raised,” Omenya told CNN. “We were being rained on from around 2 a.m. to 5.30 a.m. but we couldn’t get out.”
Kenya’s Red Cross said more than 90 people had been rescued, while more than a dozen camps in the area surrounding River Talek were closed.
Locals said the rainy season had flooded parts of the Mara before, but the extent of this year’s floods was unprecedented.
Rains last year came after the worst drought seen in decades in large swaths of East Africa, reported Reuters.
Red Cross workers from Kenya were helping residents marooned by floods in Kitengela, about 20 miles from Nairobi."
For anywhere in the world the days of living on rivers without living in a suitably designed flood proof structure are probably gone.Rivers mark where the water is going to go. Even if it is an arid area it only takes one storm nowadays to deluge an area.
Many of the areas flooding in Texas appear to alongside very small streams.
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https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2024/05...
"Fast-rising water levels in the state of Rio Grande do Sul were straining dams and particularly threatening economically important Porto Alegre, a city of 1.4 million.
The Guaiba River, which flows through the city, is at a historic high of 5.04 meters (16.5 feet), well above the 4.76 meters that had stood as a record since devastating 1941 floods.
Authorities scrambled to evacuate swamped neighborhoods as rescue workers used four-wheel-drive vehicles - and even jet skis - to maneuver through waist-deep water in search of the stranded.
In addition to the 69,200 residents forced from their homes, civil defence also said more than a million people lacked access to potable water amid the flooding, describing damage as incalculable."
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"Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state...
Weather forecaster Metsul has reported that after a short respite, rains coming down over the state have begun to fill rivers in what it called a "worrying" situation.
"Accumulated precipitation is occurring in the worst possible region given the current flood scenario, along the basins and in the sources of the main rivers that are still full," said the meteorological service in a public statement.
The state is at a geographical meeting point between tropical and polar atmospheres, which has created a weather pattern with periods of intense rains or drought."
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https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shirle...
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"Torrevieja’s first ever ‘floodable park’ has opened to the public.
It measures some 4,533 square metres and descends to a depth of 3.2 metres.
Situated in the Doña Inés urbanisation, close to the N-332 highway, the area will fill with water during torrential rain."
https://www.costa-news.com/latest-new...
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https://www.rte.ie/news/2024/0602/145...
"While municipalities had days to prepare for the flooding, rescue workers still had to evacuate hundreds of people as the water cut off some areas, authorities said.
Locals in the Bavarian village of Reichertshofen near Ingolstadt, north of Munich said they had never before seen such huge amounts of water.
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"Economy Minister and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck pledged support for the affected regions during a visit and noted that climate change is causing more severe weather events.
"Natural disasters have always accompanied mankind. What we are seeing is that the frequency of these events is increasing significantly. Record floods occur every few years ... record rainfall every few years," Habeck, of the Greens Party, told broadcaster n-tv.
Parts of Europe were hit by major flooding in 2021 that killed nearly 200, with Germany bearing the brunt. The disaster was largely blamed on the consequences of climate change and prompted calls for stricter warning and safety measures."
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https://rte.social.ebu.io/ZTGNMIBJP3
"Although many months have passed, no one in this cotton-growing village has forgotten the date of September 7, 2023. Weather forecasts had warned of the arrival of a DANA (isolated depression at high levels), an exceptional phenomenon they call "omega blockade" (an exceptionally warm air mass between two cold air masses) that was going to leave a lot of water, "too much water", says Panagiotis Giannópoulos, meteorologist at the Greek Public Television (ERT).
The forecasts were more than fulfilled. The storm Daniel dumped more than 500 liters of water per square meter in the Thessaly region. In two days it rained as much as falls in England in a year.
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"Never, in the 46 years that I have," says the local priest, "have I ever seen so much water. "The flood reached the roof of the church and destroyed a good part of the cemetery", he confirms between armchairs destroyed by the flood.
When the flood came, Athanasios Kostís was about to pick cotton. Together with his partner, he cultivates some 263 hectares, mostly cotton and some corn. The water washed away his entire crop, as well as rendering much of the machinery unusable.
Greece is the main producer of cotton in the EU, 40% of which is produced on the Thessaly plateau. "It's time to start again from scratch and we don't have the strength," he confesses as he plows a land flooded months after the passage of storm Daniel and that of Elias, which arrived 15 days later. According to his calculations, the damage amounts to more than 250,000 euros.
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"It is nearby, about six kilometers away, in the municipality of Palamás. It is safer, with no danger of flooding or earthquakes. This is corroborated by Eftimios Lekkas, professor of disaster management at the University of Athens: "It is mandatory to move these settlements, and it must be done in places that are safer not only from flooding, but also from possible earthquakes".
In this expert's opinion, "Metamorphosi and Vlohos must be made more resilient so that they can face the multiple risks that we see coming with the climate crisis"."
"Located only 90 meters above sea level and surrounded by rivers, its people have suffered floods in 1953, in 1994, in 2000 and now in 2023."Due to unregulated and unrestrained land development many areas are like this and have 2 problems. The first is the increased rain fall. The second problem is that they are built in a place where they should never have been built.
In the past it could have been 50 or a hundred years before such a massive rain event occurred. Because of climate change massive rain events can happen at any time, putting all development in it's path at risk.
This village lasted this long, but it can't continue at its present location unless everything is raised way up off the ground. This would rule out farming. Or they can move.
Communities are just starting to relocate. The first problem is who is going to pay for all of this. The developing countries already want payments which are not being paid. Now people within countries being asked for money are needing money to pay for relocations within their own boundaries.
Panama is getting ready to move an island community to another location. As can be seen from the picture, the small island has buildings covering every square inch of the land. The island has been home for a couple of hundred people for around 200 years.
It is now only half a meter above sea level. Okay for calm weather, but when the winds kick up, the water rises. The cost to build new homes on the land is 12 million. There are another 62 island communities that will need to be moved eventually.
With computer modeling any community can now run a scenario with increasing amounts of rainfall to see what is going to happen. Some places will discover that they are located in a very poor location and could then decide what steps to take, even if its only an emergency evacuation plan.
Eventually the modeling services would be available for neighborhood size locations. The problem with this information is that insurance companies will start rewriting the terms of policies.
A building would have to be located in an area with the ability to quickly shed run off so it didn't accumulate. Being in an elevated location and not being in the bottom of a drainage channel would be another requirement.
https://apnews.com/article/panama-isl...
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It looked pretty dismal, like barracks. You would hope it would come with some kind of town center around a small port facility for tourist activities.
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"Manfred Drobny from Bund Naturschutz shows such an example north of Munich near the airport. Here, the River Isar flows like a canal. It was straightened in the 19th century and the banks were fortified with stones. "This separated the river from the adjacent alluvial forest," explains conservationist Drobny. Gravel banks disappeared and with them the natural habitat of many animals and plant species.
Another problem, according to the conservationist: as a result, the river flows faster and digs deeper and deeper into the riverbed. This can cause bridge piers to become unstable. And during floods, the masses of water rush much faster than it would be the case in their original state. This can exacerbate flood peaks further down the rivers.
Renaturation of the river Isar as a positive example
According to the European Environment Agency (EEA) (external link), Europe's ecosystems are in a poor state: forests suffering from drought and bark beetles, certain species of wild bees dying out, bogs being drained to make way for farmland and straightened river courses. The EU restoration law, officially known as the "Nature Restoration Law", is intended to stop this development.
Manfred Drobny explains what this can look like on a section of the River Isar further downstream, south of Moosburg. In the past, dykes squeezed the river Isar, like in a narrow corset, to run through the agricultural landscape in a way as straight as possible. Then the dyke was moved around 100 meters further away from the river. The stone bank reinforcement was removed. This allowed the river to reclaim its territory bit by bit. "The River Isar is now three times as wide here and up to four side arms have been created," explains environmentalist Drobny.
During high water, the river washed away the ground around the trees standing on the banks. As a result, several trees have fallen over and remained in the riverbed with their root plates. This creates different flow velocities and underwater shelters for young fish. The newly created gravel banks provide a habitat for insects and birds such as grey wagtails and kingfishers. Several different willow species grow on the banks."
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"Last April—even before the 2023 hurricane season started—historic flooding in Fort Lauderdale caught residents and officials by surprise. The city had to use airboats to rescue people from their homes and, on the following day, abandoned cars caught in the water lined the streets of the city's downtown.
When we hear about the threat of flooding and sea-level rise caused by climate change, that may appear like a distant future. It's not — and this week's torrential rainfall proves South Florida is not fully ready for increased water levels despite local governments and the state having spent millions of dollars to keep streets dry. Anyone driving in Downtown Miami on a rainy day can see how quickly streets flood.
This is a new reality. With hurricanes, residents have time to prepare. This week, many were caught off guard. Although flood warnings had been in place for days in parts of the region, weather forecasters alerted us too late about the worst outcomes of the storm. In the future, they may have to develop new types of warnings to convey the severity of what's to come.
The pace of sea-level rise has picked up in recent years. The financial consequences are enormous for local governments as well as residents as the cost to insure homes and vehicles rise.
Local sea level has risen about a foot in the last 80 years, with 8 inches of that total in the last 30 years, the Herald reported in May. The second foot will take only 30 years; the next foot, 20 years, according to estimates by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The average elevation in Miami is only 3 feet."
Weekly storms can now regularly go from bad to extremely severe in less than hour. Building right up to the water, or in very low laying areas, is no longer sustainable, as evidenced by the article about the rivers in Germany and the weather over the past few months. Even if the houses are elevated, which a lot of people can't afford, there is still the problem of where to put the car. Here is an interesting article about the history of land development in Florida. There used to be jokes about people buying swamp land sight unseen thinking it was a good investment, as a place to build a house. When the swamp land was filled in, the jokes disappeared and the land development began in earnest.https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/...
‘Catastrophic flooding’ in Upper Midwest prompts evacuations. Iowa is having severe flooding while the area from New England through the Great Lakes and into the Upper Mississippi Valley could be getting excessive rainfall on Sunday which could trigger local flooding.https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/23/weathe...
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Many of thee records were set as recently as March 2024 during excessive rainfall amounts. They are being broken all over again.
For many of the rivers, there is excessive erosion damage where deep gashes have been cut into the land by the rapidly flowing water. Rivers downstream are still rising as the rising water washes downstream and the rains continue as scattered showers across the region.
Iowa is at the center of the flooding which reaches into neighboring states bordering Iowa.
IOWA Record Crest (ft.) Previous Record (ft.) % Exceeded
Big Sioux River above Canton --- 1248.35--- 1246.7--- 0.1%
Big Sioux River above Harwarden--- 39.92--- 30.20--- 32.2%
Big Sioux River at Akron------ -----27.34--- 25.5--- 7.2%
Big Sioux River at Sioux City--------- 44.98--- 37.7--- 19.3%
Big Sioux River near Jefferson-------- 44.5--- 40.4--- 10.1%
Big Sioux River near Richland-------- 1128.7--- 1125.6--- 0.3%
Floyd River at Alton --------------25.95--- 22.0--- 18.0%
Floyd River at James -------------32.39--- 31.5--- 2.8%
Floyd River at Merrill -------------20.27--- 20.0--- 1.4%
Little Sioux River at Linn Grove-------- 29.98--- 24.1--- 24.4%
Little Sioux River near Milford-------- 20.37--- 20.1--- 1.3%
MINNESOTA Record Crest (ft.) Previous Record (ft.) % Exceeded
Ocheydan River near Spencer -----------16.9--- 12.9--- 31%
Rock River at Rock Rapids------------ 28.47--- 27.0--- 5.4%
Rock River at Rock Valley --------------27.64--- 22.7--- 21.8%
SOUTH DAKOTA Record Crest (ft.) Previous Record (ft.) % Exceeded
Split Rock Creek below Jasper-------------100.56 --100.4--- 0.2%
Vermillion River near Davis ----------------17.9--- 16.4--- 9.1%
Vermillion River near Vermillion------------ 32.74--- 31.8--- 3%
Vermillion River near Wakonda------------- 18.93--- 18.1--- 4.6%
West Fork Des Moines River at Emmersberg--- 15.47--- 14.8--- 4.5%
West Fork Vermillion River near Parker ------15.4 ---13.1 ---17.6%
Source: NOAA
Big Sioux River above Canton and the Big Sioux River near Richland are 4 digit numbers because that is the height above sea level.
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Some of the road damage is really bad. There are many scattered locations were roads got washed away leaving deep gouges in their place. In some places the water levels came up so fast there was no where for the water flow to spread out, it just cut channels into the land.
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Ferocious storms and torrential rains that lashed France, Switzerland and Italy at the weekend have left seven people dead, local authorities have said.
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"The civil security services said "several hundred" people were evacuated in Valais and roads closed after the Rhone and its tributaries overflowed in different locations.
Emergency services were assessing the best way to evacuate 300 people who had arrived for a football tournament in Peccia, while almost 70 more were being evacuated from a holiday camp in the village of Mogno.
The poor weather was making rescue work particularly difficult, police had said earlier, with several valleys inaccessible and cut off from the electricity network.
The federal alert system also said part of the canton was without drinking water.
Extreme rainfall also struck southeastern Switzerland last weekend, leaving one dead and causing major damage.
In northern Italy's Aosta Valley, internet users shared images of spectacular floods and swollen rivers rushing down mountain slopes."
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"Reservoirs are not solely used for electricity generation; they are becoming crucial for flood protection.
The planned "Gornerli" power plant, situated above Zermatt at the base of the Gorner Glacier, exemplifies this dual purpose. Designed with flood protection in mind, the reservoir will not only generate energy but also serve as a retention basin during storms.
The "Gornerli" project is a practical implementation of this idea. Professor Robert Boes, a hydrology expert at the federal technology institute ETH Zurich, explains that modern reservoir designs incorporate flood protection by ensuring they are never completely filled, allowing for additional water collection during storms."
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/alpine-e...
The idea of putting dams in the Alps to catch the melting glacier water has been around since 2016. In the last 2 years the rate that the glaciers are melting has sharply increased. This might finally get some interest going in funding the project. While it is mainly taking advantage of the negative aspects of climate change, sudden surges in melt offs could create disastrous conditions downstream especially if it was accompanied by heavy rainfall.
Green Group
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This is the same kind of situation where an uncontrolled fire is fueled by very high winds. A situation that can now happen anywhere at any time.
The tallest dam in the US, the Oro Dam, is in California and several years ago the land around the spillway and the emergency spillway of the dam eventually started to erode away after a very heavy rainfall.
The only thing that prevented a major catastrophe was that it had stopped raining and they only had to contend with after the rain run off water. If it had still been raining with the dam waters rising from the previous rain, most likely the land would have eroded away underneath the spillway, which wasn't holding up to well itself.
If enough of the land under the spillway had eroded away then the spillway flow would be uncontrolled and a 30 foot tall wave of water would have flooded the land below the dam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orovill...