Flooding

[Robert]

This is the result of heavy rains flooding inland areas. The rain is gone. The floods are gone, but the pollution generated by the flood remains long afterwards.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/...

[Clare]

Tragic results in the Philippines again. Mudslides, bridges washed out, homes destroyed, lives lost.

https://www.independent.ie/world-news...

[Clare]

Following the wildfires in California, the baked earth and dead trees could not absorb torrential rain. The result was flooding and mudslides known to have killed thirteen people at present.

https://www.ecowatch.com/california-m...

[Jimmy]

What I am having trouble understanding is that experts had warned about the danger of mudslides because of the fires. Was enough done to prepare for them or to try and prevent them.

[Clare]

I don't know, but it is possible that the vast area covered was too great to be addressed completely?
I saw on the RTE news that a warning was sent to vacate the homes, but not everyone heeded it.

[Jimmy]

I think the large area was part of the problem. And where do you go?

[Robert]

I guess as severe weather is able to affect larger areas more it will become more difficult to get out of the way. The sequence was fire, wind, rain, and took place over a month. Plus it was early morning hours and would you have to leave every time it starts to rain? That is until the land is covered with vegetation again? How long would that take? How far would you have to go to find land that is flat that wouldn't also be prone to flooding in extreme rain?

[Clare]

So distressing - seventeen is the known death toll now with others missing.

[Jimmy]

Here's a story about the complexity of alerts:

https://www.denverpost.com/2018/01/11...

[Clare]

Thanks, it says over 100 homes ruined and they look to have been pricey homes in nice, well treed areas. I suppose if you have never seen this happen it's hard to understand how devastating the consequences could be.

[Robert]

Santa Barbara County crews worked through the holidays to defend coastal communities from the second half of Southern California's familiar cycle of fire and flood.

But the rainfall far exceeded what they were expecting.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la...

[Clare]

Thanks, a very good look at the geology and studies of the process. This is just natural erosion of the rising mountains, then, worsened by the intense fires.

[Robert]

People might have to wait a couple of years for the soil to return to normal and the hillsides are once again covered with thick vegetation before the area becomes relatively safe from mudslides.

https://weather.com/news/news/how-lon...

[Clare]

France is experiencing severe floods and the shots we are seeing are of Paris, of course. Suburbs are completely awash, boats down the streets, but the main concern has been the treasures in the Louvre and, apparently, some wine cellars.
https://www.independent.ie/world-news...

This one includes drone footage.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-...

[Clare]

An author called Scarlet Rose Bonnet sent details of how her family survived the Houston flooding from Storm Harvey. I asked her permission to share it here and she agreed. These are her words with a link to one of her books.
Scarlet Bonnet


I live just outside of Houston, and as many of you are probably aware, we got hit with a massive hurricane at the beginning of September - Harvey. Thankfully, I didn't listen to my husband who kept telling me it was going to be just a rainstorm (who actually *STILL* insists it was simply a bad rainstorm) and I stocked up on water, groceries, and other comforts before Harvey hit. And like an idiot, I did *partially* listen to my husband and didn't evacuate our little family.

So we stayed put - on the south east side of Houston, not far from Dickinson that was practically flooded off the map. We were incredibly lucky. We were stranded in our house for about a week (the one guy who did try to leave our neighborhood flooded his engine and ruined his truck), the water made it up to our driveway, and I don't think I slept that whole freaking week because I was so anxious (one of my mom friends was one of those people who was rescued off her roof on the news), but we had no water in our house, no damage, and our power stayed on.

Our neighbors just down the road weren't so lucky. People lost *everything* and went days without power. We were also here for Ike, and it was like reliving the nightmare. After the water drained, mountains of ruined stuff (tables, couches, chairs, carpets, etc) lined the streets in entire neighborhoods from people gutting their homes to prevent mold growth. School and churches were turned into shelters for those who had lost their homes. The grocery stores that were open were completely picked clean of perishables - and once they started getting shipments in, people waited like vultures at the store to get a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, or a pound of meat. So it was a stressful time.

And just as things were opening up again, I realized our beloved kitty wasn't eating, and was lethargic. I had to wait a couple days to take him into the vet since they were still closed from the storm, and when I did, we got the bad news that he had a massive lump in his abdomen. We hoped and prayed that it was just a raging infection while I sat by his side, gave him fluids and meds and soft kitty food, but a week later, we had to say good bye and end his suffering. We were all distraught, especially my five year old.

[Jimmy]

The question becomes what is Texas doing now to prepare for the future. They elect climate change deniers. They build on flood plains. They have no state income tax, but they expect federal funding. Time to get with it and look at reality.

[Clare]

Maybe so many families have gone through these issues now that ordinary people will start to ask how this can be avoided in future.

[Robert]

The storms won't have to be special to be bigger or more often than they used to be. One question is how to build in an area that can or does flood, such as on stilts, or do you only build in the higher elevation areas. One reason why the lower areas are available for development is because previous developers knew it wasn't a great idea to build in those locations in the first place. As time goes on, people forget why an area wasn't developed and look at the areas as simply a place to make money. Since people won't stop building where you can make money, building the same old way in the same old places is going to give the same old results much often than before.

[Jimmy]

That's why some states have regulations.

[Robert]

Those regulations probably need some updating and that probably won't happen fast enough to keep up with the changing weather patterns. With today's rains, anywhere becomes a flood zone when one to two feet of water gets dumped on you. Instead of flood plain regulations managing the commercial development on or near the floodplains, it would probably be a more suitable use of resources to find places to develop away from the flood plains, something which isn't going to happen until people start seeing their buildings washing away faster than they can rebuild them.

[Clare]

I remember that article posted upthread about the process for clearing the flooded out cars. If many folks already make their living dealing with the aftermath of flooding, that's one less incentive to correct the problem.

[Robert]

Companies that clean up garbage strewn areas could probably make a good profit cleaning up an area after a natural disaster strikes so none of the garbage left behind makes it's way into the environment.

[Robert]

Spring Flooding Starting in Midwest. Spring is projected to be cooler and wet.

https://weather.com/safety/floods/new...

[Jimmy]

This article from the NY Times shows how expensive and difficult it is to fight flooding in New Orleans, one of the world's great cities. There are places all over the world that face the same problem:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...

[Clare]

Do we build infrastructure or restore wetlands? If both can't happen or are too costly and only postpone tragedy, when do we decide to abandon the city?
This author speaks from the New Orleans perspective.
Retreat from a Rising Sea: Hard Choices in an Age of Climate Change

[Robert]

With the larger size storms the decision to abandon may be made for us. The weather is leaving the manageable box we believed we had contained it in. A lot of people don't stop until they meet up with something bigger than they are. No matter how carefully we plan the runoffs, once the water reaches a certain level, all bets are off. The poles have been melting from the bottom up for half a century, maybe longer. All those satellite flybys aren't worth a plugged nickel if they can't determine the depth of the ice, no matter how much the surface area appears to increase or decrease. It's just a real simple case of why we can't judge a book by it's cover. Which incidentally is now a booming business for the book world.

[Robert]

Here is a flood in slow motion. Officials have begun buying higher ground to relocate an entire town in a bayou being swallowed by higher seas.

https://apnews.com/5974b9a7bdac415398...

[Clare]

Beyond Control: The Mississippi River's New Channel to the Gulf of Mexico

Excellent read, see my review.

[Clare]

I've tried to resist posting about Ireland's continued rain and snow this spring. But now it's getting to crisis point. Farmers can't let livestock out - like New Zealand we are a mainly grazing farm economy. We are having to import fodder because the winter stocks are gone.
Demountable flood barriers are in place in some towns to prevent their central river bursting onto the streets.
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news...

[Ken]

Thanks for the info Clare, it sounds pretty rough.

Over here in Western Canada we may run into flooding as well. Super cool April and way above normal snow levels. When it finally does warm up, it will melt quickly.

[Brian]

We just ran into this ourselves during a family trip to visit my brother in Tennessee. On our way home, we were detoured off the highway in southern Indiana because of massive traffic backups due to construction. We then spent a couple of hours driving through a maze of rural back roads, trying to find our way back to the highway. We'd follow our map app's directions until we hit a dead end where the road ahead was closed due to flooding in the wake of torrential rains; we'd divert to the "recalculated" route only to hit another road closure. The farm fields had literally been turned into lakes all around us. Can't imagine the extent of crop damage with Spring planting...

Anybody who isn't noticing the dramatic increases in extreme weather is willfully ignoring the evidence.

[Clare]

Wow! Thanks for the photo and stay safe!

[Robert]

Flash floods are not uncommon in Hawaii, they get around 8 per year. April is supposed to be the first month of the dry season which runs until Oct. So it is either late or early, probably late as the seasons seem to be shifting to later start dates.

In this case, the amount of rain was unusual, 28.15 inches in 24 hours, slightly less than the record and could be a record rainfall, but the gauge broke. The record for Hanalei, is 28.54 in 2012. A close by area, Wainiha, got 19.5 inches in 24 hours, which beat their previous record set in 1969 at 16.75 inches.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/17/weathe...

[Robert]

Report Predicts Today's Storm Surge is tomorrow's high tide

Cities experiencing flooding on sunny days

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/07/us/noa...

[Clare]

Good report, thanks.

[Clare]

Some positive news - NASA says that satellite imagery is now capable of spotting and warning of river flooding, perhaps days before the flood arrives downstream. The article mentions that some nations don't monitor major rivers or don't share information with neighbours.
A mission called SWOT will be launching in a couple of years with improved tech and modelling.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.ph...

[Clare]

The Turkish capital of Ankara was hit by flash floods yesterday; the stallholders didn't even have time to grab racks of clothes before cars swept through the streets on the water. Due to heavy rain elsewhere.

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-euro...

[Robert]

“They say this is a once-every-1,000-years flood, and we’ve had two of them in two years,” he said, calling the event “devastating.”

This has nothing to do with the approaching subtropical storm. The river rose 15 feet in 75 minutes. People all over are still rebuilding and raising money for damage done in the past two years and the next rain storm season has already started, a few days ahead of schedule, officially June 1.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/weat...

[Clare]

Okay, Robert, that website is not available in the EU anymore. Makes me wonder what they have been doing that doesn't comply with GDPR.
Zombie cookies maybe?
Anyway, I take it you are describing Baltimore. Sounds devastating.
Here in Dublin a few years back, we had two once a century pluvial events in eighteen months. The Councils wised up and made changes, raising river walls and sea front walls etc.
Previous records are no longer reliable predictors.

[Jimmy]

https://www.cnn.com/videos/weather/20...

[Jimmy]

I was in a flash flood long ago on Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert. I went to work at the base photo lab in sunlight. As I left work in sunlight, I was told roads were blocked because of flooding. I was clueless. I was like, You mean it rained? The land is so dry that one heavy rain while I was in the lab flooded the roads.

[Jimmy]

Here is more scientific information about the Maryland flash flood:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/c...

[Robert]

I find more and more websites are blocking me because I use adblocker. Even formerly free email sites are saying no free service if you use adblocker. A simple web search turns up the same information on several other sites that are not blocking ad blocker. Sometimes these articles are very old news being recirculated, who knows why it was never noticed the first time around, and those searches almost always yield more information than the original blocked article has. Perhaps someone will come up with a news feature that gives you 10 or 12 articles related to the article you are looking at automatically. Call it news with a view. Any article without links to related information [which may or may not support the articles point of view] is terribly old fashioned in this day of instant communication and widespread reporting by unrelated parties with unrelated goals.

[Jimmy]

The Washington Post and New York Times need money to survive and pay their people. So I support them. They can't do it for free.

[Clare]

These issues arise during my journalism classes.

[Clare]

Jimmy wrote: "https://www.cnn.com/videos/weather/20..."

Scary! Anyone hurt or missing?

[Clare]

A month's worth of rain fell at once in Birmingham area of UK. Selly Oak a residential suburb, had a flash flood and a senior man was killed.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018...

Extreme thunderstorms battered London and Kent to the south.
The contrast between cold and warm, moist air drove the unusual rainfall, with flood warnings in place across the Thames Valley and over to Wales.
The meterologists called it "the mother of all thunderstorms."
Makes for spectacular photos....
https://metro.co.uk/2018/05/27/mother...

[Jimmy]

Clare wrote: "Jimmy wrote: "https://www.cnn.com/videos/weather/20..."

Scary! Anyone hurt or missing?"

Surprisingly, only one man is missing after trying to help someone else:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/...

[Robert]

Maria, "the storm, which caused $90 billion in damages and is ranked as the third costliest cyclone in the United States since 1900."

The initial estimates simply did not take into account a situation where people who are dependent on electricity go with out it for months on end. The lack of prompt power restoration also indicates lack of prompt restoration for other critical features.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hurrican...

[Clare]

Months on end? Wow.