As this excess water reaches streams and rivers, they overflow, causing a flood. Frozen ground has a similar effect – acting as a conduit for water rather than a drainage system. When soil gets saturated, it stops soaking up water and, instead, acts as a pathway for the water. Heavy rainstorms and large volumes of snowmelt saturate an area’s soil and waterways with more water than they are able to handle. Many causes of floods are actually quite intuitive, once you think about them. However, when that system gets out of balance, a flood occurs, since more water enters and flows through an area’s hydrological system than that system is able to distribute through its network of waterways. From there, water returns to form new clouds, and the cycle begins again. The way that the water cycle should work is: rain falls from clouds, lands in the soil, and flows through streams and rivers to the oceans. What causes a flood?įloods result from an imbalance in nature’s hydrological system. Unfortunately, we often lack the knowledge that would keep us safe when flooding occurs, as is illustrated by the sad statistic that in recent years, approximately two-thirds of people who die in floods are in vehicles – likely attempting to drive through flood water. Since 1900, over 10,000 people have died in the U.S. history until the Septemterrorist attacks. This water swept downstream, overwhelming the industrial workers’ town of Johnstown and killing 2,209 people in the deadliest man-made disaster in U.S. The dam proved too weak to hold back the rapidly rising lake-water, and it broke, releasing a pent-up 20 million tons of water with a current so strong that it temporarily equaled the flow rate of the Mississippi River. The dam had been used to create the man-made Lake Conemaugh, part of a private recreational club used by the industrial age’s elite - people who had made their mark using technology to impose human will over nature. One example, the Johnstown Flood, took place in western Pennsylvania in 1889 when an artificial dam failed after a period of extreme rainfall. Pennsylvania, USA 1889.įlooding in modern times highlights the tension between human engineering ability and nature’s raw power.
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