While floods have many causes, there are proven flood safety and flood prevention tips to help keep families, businesses, and communities safe. Here are some steps you can take before, during, and after flooding to keep yourself and those you care about safe. The first thing you should do before a flood is assemble an emergency kit. Your flood emergency kit should include food, water, and medicine.
You should pack a supply of these items that will last each person three days. You should also put the following in your kit:. Phone Charger. First Aid Kit.
Rubber Boots and Gloves. You should also have a cell phone on hand. This way, you can communicate with your friends, family, and coworkers. Are you located in a flood plain? Knowing the answers to these questions can help you in the case of floods.
One last flood tip we recommend is to sign up for flooding notifications. Familiarize yourself with your local emergency management agency and how they communicate with your community. Do they have a mobile app you can download? Should you follow them on social media? Will an announcement about flooding air on the TV or local radio stations? Finally, for hyperlocal weather alerts that include NWS flooding notifications, current precipitation information, and rainfall totals in your neighborhood, you should look into getting a subscription to professional-grade weather tracking software.
The first level of flood watches and warnings is a flood advisory. A Flood Advisory means you should be mindful of possible flooding because a weather event is forecast to occur that could result in flooding.
A Flood Watch means you should prepare for flooding because conditions are favorable for a specific hazardous weather event to occur. A Flood Warning means a hazardous weather event with flooding is imminent or already happening. Our AEM sister company, OneRain the Rainfall Company , specializes in helping clients understand and manage their water-related missions, including flood and road weather safety.
You may be wondering, what is a Flood Warning System? According to OneRain, a complete, integrated flood early warning monitoring system solution includes all the remote site hydro-meteorological sensing instrumentation, communications equipment, central base station equipment, as well as data collection, archiving, processing, and management software designed for flood warning.
Contrail for Flood Warning is an effective OneRain software solution for flood warnings. The software continually collects and monitors rainfall, water level and flow data in streams, rivers, lakes, and dams in real time. Contrail is an enterprise-level software solution that continually collects and monitors rainfall, water level and flow data in streams, rivers, lakes, and dams in real time.
It is critical to remain safe during flood watches and warnings so as to avoid flood fatalities. A Flash Flood Warning means a flash flood is imminent or occurring. If you are in a flood prone area move immediately to high ground. You should always pay attention to these notifications and understand what the different levels mean. For businesses, access to real-time flood watches and warnings through a hyperlocal weather map like Sferic Maps can help keep employees safe and protect outdoor equipment from being damaged during a flooding event.
If a flood event is happening, there are steps you can take to stay safe. The first and most important thing to remember is to steer clear of flood waters. This is true even if you are in a car.
Flood waters can rise or gain intensity in the blink of an eye. Stay away from flood water at all costs. Another important tip that will help you survive a flood is to listen to evacuation orders from authorities. We also stress that you listen to evacuation orders the first time you hear them. Waiting even just a few minutes can be the difference between life and death.
And staying behind can put you and others at risk if you need to be rescued from rising waters. One last useful flood safety tip to pay attention to during a flood is to stay away from rooms where water covers electrical outlets.
However, there are still plenty of flooding dangers that can threaten your health and property. There are also things you should in case a flood damages your property. One of the most important safety precautions after a flood is making sure your water is safe to drink.
Local authorities will let you know if water is safe to drink or if you should boil it before using. After a flood, standing water is also a danger. While it might look tame compared to a raging flood, standing water left behind is a breeding ground for bacteria and can carry toxins or chemicals.
If you have to touch standing water for cleanup or any other reason, protect yourself with rubber gloves, boots, and other protective gear. One last flood safety tip to keep in mind for after waters recede is to wait for the all clear from local officials to return to buildings or areas compromised by the flood.
While your home or office might look safe to you, there could be major structural or electrical dangers. Always wait for the all clear. While flooding can happen anywhere in the world, there are certain places that are more prone to flooding. These locations often see the worst flooding events in history. However, there are some places that see flooding more often than others. FEMA compiled flooding data and produced a map of the U. In the Northeast, snowmelt and urban flooding are to blame for the high frequency of flooding events.
Tropical storms also contribute to flooding along the coast in the Northeast. In the desert Southwest, a lot of flooding events happen during monsoon season. In the middle of the country, the Mississippi River contributes to river flooding throughout its length. Some of the flooding in the Midwest also comes from snowmelt. In early , the Mississippi River flooded for over three months, which is longer than the famous flood of Along the Gulf Coast, flooding events are commonly caused by hurricanes and tropical systems.
Hurricane Harvey is an example of a hurricane that caused a lot of flooding along the Gulf, especially in Houston, Texas. Over the past few years, extreme flooding events have been common throughout the United States. This flooding event is known as the storm that caused California to go bankrupt. It even forced the state to move the capitol from Sacramento to San Francisco for six months while the city dried out!
This flooding tragedy was the result of a burst dam. Over 2, people perished when the South Fork Dam failed and unleashed a foot high wall of 20 million tons of water. The water came crashing down on the town with the force of Niagara Falls. This was a full 65 years before the National Hurricane Center was established.
The most destructive river flood in U. In Vicksburg, Mississippi the river was over 80 miles wide. This is quite extreme when compared to a normal day when the widest part of the river is just over 11 miles.
Some readers might remember this last flooding event on our list. Credit: NOAA. Another phenomenon that can cause extreme rainfall is called an atmospheric river. Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow conveyor belts of moisture that move through the atmosphere. Strong atmospheric rivers can deliver enormous amounts of rain and snow in California, the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, especially during the winter months.
This can lead to serious flooding and mudslides. The ABI can also determine the amount of total moisture in the atmosphere from the ground all the way to the top of the atmosphere.
This provides useful information for weather forecasters to improve predictions for heavy rains and flash flooding and help people stay safe. After flooding occurs, weather satellites can also be used to spot heavily flooded regions from space.
This flood map shows the impact of Hurricane Irma in Florida on Sept. Colors correspond to the fraction of land covered by water, ranging from green less than 30 percent to red more than 90 percent. Water and Ice. The Short Answer:. There are weather events heavy or prolonged rains, storm surge, sudden snowmelt , and then there are the human-driven elements, including how we manage our waterways via dams, levees, and reservoirs and the alterations we make to land.
Increased urbanization, for example, adds pavement and other impermeable surfaces, alters natural drainage systems, and often leads to more homes being built on floodplains. In cities, under-maintained infrastructure can lead to urban flooding. More and more, flooding factors are also linked to climate change.
Connecting climate change to floods can be a tricky endeavor. Not only do myriad weather- and human-related factors play into whether or not a flood occurs, but limited data on the floods of the past make it difficult to measure them against the climate-driven trends of floods today.
In other words, while our warming world may not induce floods directly, it exacerbates many of the factors that do. Heavier Precipitation A warmer atmosphere holds and subsequently dumps more water. As the country has heated up an average of 1. In the Northeast, the most extreme storms generate approximately 27 percent more moisture than they did a century ago.
Basically, because of global warming, when it rains, it pours more. Such was the finding of a study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA examining the record-breaking rainfall that landed on Louisiana in , causing devastating flooding.
The study determined that these rains were at least 40 percent more likely and 10 percent more intense because of climate change.
Looking forward, heavy precipitation events are projected to increase along with temperatures through the 21st century, to a level from 50 percent to as much as three times the historical average. This includes extreme weather events known as atmospheric rivers, air currents heavy with water from the tropics, which account for as much as 40 percent of typical snowpack and annual precipitation along the West Coast.
Experts predict they will intensify, bringing as much as 50 percent more heavy rain by the end of this century. Of course, heavier rainfall does not automatically lead to floods, but it increases the potential for them. And even moderate amounts of rainfall can cause serious damage, particularly in places where urban flooding is on the rise.
Meanwhile, in regions where seasonal snowmelt plays a significant role in annual runoff, hotter temperatures can trigger more rain-on-snow events, with warm rains inducing faster and often earlier melting.
This phenomenon is playing out in the western United States, where, according to the IPCC , snowmelt-fed rivers, at least since , have reached peak flow earlier in springtime. The combination of rain and melting snow can aggravate spring flooding as winter and spring soils are typically high in moisture and often still frozen, and therefore less able to absorb snow and rain runoff. Regions with higher rain-to-snow ratios, such as the Northwest, are expected to see higher streamflow —and higher flood risks.
More-Frequent Hurricanes Climate change is increasing the frequency of our strongest storms , a trend expected to continue through this century. In the Atlantic basin, an 80 percent increase in the frequency of category 4 and 5 hurricanes the most destructive is expected over the next 80 years. And stronger storms bring greater rains.
It was also slow and therefore able to dump more, a result of weakened atmospheric currents from a warmer atmosphere. Virgin Islands in , produced the most rainfall in the area of any weather event since Stronger storms can also produce gustier winds that whip up greater storm surge , which starts as much as eight inches higher than a century ago because of sea level rise. Storm surge and winds can also increase the destructiveness of waves, causing them to get bigger and penetrate further inland.
Our oceans are approximately seven to eight inches higher than they were in with about three of those inches added since alone —a rate of rise per century greater than for any other century in at least the past 2, years. In addition to amplifying storm surge because the water starts at a higher level, sea level rise increases high-tide flooding , which has doubled in the United States over the past 30 years and is expected to rapidly worsen in the coming decades.
According to the Fourth National Climate Assessment , for example, by , Charleston, South Carolina could see as many as tidal floods per year , compared with just 11 in When flooding inundates a home or community, it upends lives and introduces a litany of potential short- and long-term consequences. The most obvious include loss of life floods cause more than U. And many times, the same homes are repeatedly flooded—more than 30, properties flooded an average of five times each have been covered under the NFIP.
And not only has the NFIP been deeply in debt since Hurricane Katrina, but costly major floods are only becoming more common. An NRDC analysis found that in some cases, it would save money for the government to buy flood-damaged properties, demolish them, and not rebuild on the land. This would also allow families to move somewhere safer and avoid the hardship of additional floods. Flooding also brings contamination and disease. Floodwaters can carry raw sewage , leaked toxic chemicals , and runoff from hazardous waste sites and factory farms.
They can pollute drinking water supplies and cause eye, ear, skin, and gastrointestinal infections. When floodwaters recede, bacteria and mold may remain , increasing rates of respiratory illnesses, such as asthma.
Flooding can also contribute to mental health problems , lead to economic loss as in the form of lost business or wages , and uproot whole communities.
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