Flooding in Europe
 

Yikes, the Dutch may be accustomed to being threatened by water but day-um.

https://www.rt.com/news/529342-netherlands-floods-disaster-zone/

Geronimo 74, you all good?

Wow... :(

Germany, Belgium too.

Couple other guys around that area as well, Svandamme and a few others. Be safe.

Oh yeah and I guess I now know where the water goes when one area has a drought? It goes someplace else.

Good luck to all those effected.

Unfortunately climate change means bigger high pressure (air) systems and bigger low pressure systems. What used to mean it rained for a few days, now means it rains for a week. Instead of small amounts it's big amounts.

In New Zealand we have just had a huge rainfall (the cats and dogs, and Porsche are OK, so I'm OK). The air pressure system was so huge hot air from the Indian ocean went in a straight line across Australia, then hit cooler climates of NZ, then bucked down in rain.

It also means someone else doesn't get rain.

I'm not near that stuff, i'm closer to the sea, and live on a hill, was a top priority when I was looking to buy a house.
G-man is much closer, but not in the dangerzone as far as I know

The regions that flooded are all close to the same big river (the Meuse), but the worst of the flooding happened on the smaller side rivers feeding into the big one.
In Germany an entire village flooded with 1300 folks missing.

Most of these towns have seems floods before, but this one seems to be one of those one in 100 year floods, maybe 1 / 500 years.

There was one similar to that in 1926
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overstroming_van_de_Maas_(1926) (use chrome translate , no english version of it)
Don't have any real data to compare that one to this one yet.

So not entirely sure this is at all climate related though everybody seems to be quick to call it that.

They had plenty of warning from the weather forecasters too, down to the cities affected, and not all that much was done. And here we are in a drought... it's gonna get fun in the coming years.

One thing that is a certainty, build a city right next to a river, some day it WILL flood. Not just once, but every so often and it will be bad. Every city along the Mississippi has experienced a flood. Same for Europe and China and Russia.

All rivers have a flood, it is like living in a forest, someday there will be a forest fire. It is gonna happen. Live on the beach, someday the big storm comes and changes the beach in a way inconvenient to the people living there.

Live next to an active volcano, guess what, someday lava will flow and make it downhill.

Mother nature does is uncaring.

Nothing wrong with rt.com. As long as you know what it is...

oh no..

keep us posted. i wish the region well. i wish i could help physically.

how long until the Pelicans show up with, "anyone stupid enough to live on a flood plain....." yada yada yada,.?? :D

this neglects the fact that the rainfall rate was unprecedented

it'll get worse too

Agreed, I personally don't understand people who buy a house, and do not have floodrisk as a #1 priority in the selection criteria.
Unless it's in the Sahara, then i can understand it.

Just had a discussion on the Belgian Porsche forum Architect, basement completely flooded.. 2nd time.. last time his Spyder got written off by the insurance and now he had installed some flood gates IN his basement garage..
Said , spared no effort or expense to fix it.. yet his basement flooded again, this time his Porsche was behind the flood gate.. but his daily got flooded anyway , as it was parked in his driveway ( one that slopes down to the basement garage
I asked him why or how that works and what the logic is cause to me , spare no effort or expense would have been to move to higher ground

but it's not my fault he goes, it's the city, the sewers aren't specced right
I'm like but if you live on a hill, you wouldn't have to care aobut stinking sewers would ya

then he goes, but my water doesn't drain to the sewers , i got flooded by lower lying field

I'm like HUH?? If it's lower , WATER don't GO UP does it ?!
acted annoyed for trying to understand his problem..

None of these problems can happen if you are on a frigging hill !
Everybody beneight you will flood before you do

Guess where my house is.. Mill Street
you know where mills used to be , right? on a freaking HILL

It would take a 60 foot flood to get to my door.

The same region has seen floods before.
None of those towns have never before been flooded.

There are medieval church archives that mention massive floods in that region.

This may have been a once in 300 years flood, but it was not something that has never ever happened before in the last 1000 years since those towns got founded.
It has happened multiple times

the only thing that is unprecedented , is the accurate recording of such rainfall by modern meteorological data capture across the entire Western European continent.
That's unprecedented, that they now can tell you exactly how many ml per square meter they had over specific periods of time.

That, they did not have 100 to 1000-2000 years ago

And even if the rains may have been unprecedented ( we have no data to collaborate that)
The fact of the matter remains that towns near water will suffer floods if they do not have sufficient elevation above the water line.
People have historically chanced it
They outweighed the benefits short term to the risks longer term and water was just to damned convenient.

So historically that's where towns are, and technology could fix it and you can now live further up
But people are to pigheaded and now cling to the location because "well that's where I grew up and have my roots and where we have our town"

but it really doesn't make sense to rebuild such towns now that the climate is probably going to increase the flood risk from flash floods..

The balance tipped over long ago

The only way they could possibly manage this, is with dams upstream.

But the cost is massive
The impact on the region is HUGE
it would take massive amount of expropriations of people's homes that probably aren't in the danger zone right now, so basically you take peoples homes to protect other peoples homes...

You can't pull that off in a western democratic nation
China would decide it in the blink of an eye

oooh hydro power !!
order signed
bulldozers would start moving dirt within weeks.

The US goes through the same flooding thing every year. Florida, Louisiana, Houston, other states too.

We can protect key points, at giant expense. Can reduce risk in some areas with major projects. But most vulnerable areas will get more so.

Except not as certain as hail and tornadoes in OK.

I've searched for a map of the flood zones that gives town names, but haven't found one. Kinda worried about friend Stan Mott...Neuss?

We all have to deal with mother nature's uncaring nature. No argument, San Diego is the winner in wonderful weather most of the time contest. It's problem is just little water of it's own.

It is another fact, if there is a river, especially the large rivers where big cities grow up, there will be a flood, no matter what humans do to mitigate it. Every state in the USA, from Canada to the Gulf, along the Mississippi has endured flooding and will again. People that live on the beach will have another storm. California is way overdue for "the big one" and we can just hope is is not as bad as predicted, but it will happen.

The people living on the big Island in Hawaii will indeed see another eruption and lava flow that eats everything in it's way.

Flooding and lightning are the biggest killers in nature. That and hot weather. Modern humans are wimps when it comes to heat for some reason. My grandparents survived the dust bowl days with many of the heat records still standing today, and they had no electricity at all, so no fans even, and pump water by hand. To cook a meal they had to light a fire in the stove in the kitchen and heat things up more, and if you open the windows the dust fill the house. It must have been like living in an attic. All the wimps moved to California, the tough ones stuck around and made a living.

I honestly feel bad for those affected in the European flooding. For a wealthy country like Germany to have such devastation is hard to understand. The power of fast moving water is just incredible.