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Midwesterners have to be wondering: Will April be the cruelest month? Patterns in the Midwest this spring are eerily reminiscent of 1993 and 1994, back-to-back years of serious flooding. The great flood of 1993 caused nearly $20 billion of economic damage, damaging or destroying more than 50,000 homes and killing at least 38 people.
Parallels this year include abnormally high levels of precipitation in late winter and early spring, and early flooding in various regions. In March, Missouri, Arkansas and Illinois and the Ohio River experienced flooding. A still-unknown factor is the effect of the snow melt from upstream states on river systems this spring and summer. Wisconsin, for example, had record amounts of snow this winter.
Despite the similarity in conditions and periods of flooding nearly every year after those flood years more than a decade ago, one thing Midwesterners have not learned is “geologic reality,” says Robert E. Criss, Ph.D..
“When people build commercial or residential real estate in flood plains, when they build on sink holes, when they build on fault lines, when they build on the hillsides in L.A. that are going to burn and burn, over and over again, they’re ignoring geologic reality,” Criss says. “They’re asking for chronic problems…”“Building a levee for a community simply ‘certifies’ that this is a great place to build more things,” Criss says. “The Corps of Engineers will come in and claim it’s a 500-year levee, which is a claim they cannot make, yet routinely do. That just encourages more infrastructure to move into these areas…”
Criss says the claim that a levee will withstand floods for 500 years is “an absurd exaggeration. If some private company were making claims that they’ll sell you a car that will run for 500 years, they’d be in jail. Somehow, the government feels justified making absurd claims that have no basis.”
Are we to believe our political leaders would intentionally make absurd claims? How subversive and non-conformist.
When the New Madrid Fault near Memphis snaps again it will be a mega-disaster. All those brick buildings with no reinforcement.
I seriously hope that the federal government has some pontoon bridges ready to deploy across the Mississippi River for when the bridges collapse in the quake.
Unfortunately Dr. Criss doesn’t quite understand the terminology the Corp uses in declaring a levee a “500-year” levee. They mean that it is designed to withstand a flood with a 500-year recurrence frequency. That means on average, you can expect that type of event once every 500 years. It does not mean that you will not see that event next year or the year after that. It also doesn’t mean that the levee will not be bypassed due to weaknesses upstream or that levees downstream will not change the flood conditions.
As a wise professor once told me, “just because somebody has PhD behind their name doesn’t mean that they know anything.
Anyone who would spend money to build anything that MUST be protected by a levee is stupid. I have zero sympathy for anyone who lives near a river that they KNOW is going to flood someday.
The moronic federal flood insurance program only exacerbates the problem by allowing the mopes to rebuild on the same doomed land again and again and again.
Don
Yep and rebuilding a city below sea level after it flooded is smart use of Taxpayers money too.
#2 – It may be great to cavil in cute criticisms; but, Dr. Criss knows exactly what the ACE “definitions” mean – and why they choose terminology designed to aid their political partners in raiding the Federal budget.
Back in the late 70’s early 80’s I recall a whole town was moved out of one of a flood plain because every year it would be submerged. I don’t know why this prof is pointing out us cheese heads! Just because we consume the most alcohol doesn’t make us fools!
“Serious flooding 100 years ago”
and
“Wisconsin, for example, had record amounts of snow this winter.”
It looks like the folks in Wisconsin actually fell for the Global Warming hoax.
Second day in a row for this one…
Behold the power of cheese… and massive amounts of beer.
Nevertheless, the title of the article misses the mark: Midwesterners understand these cycles quite well. It’s the federal government that continues to offer flood insurance to those that live in flood plains, allowing problems to repeat themselves.
You want “dumb”, take a look at the people building out on the “islands” outside Stockton, California. Those “islands” are below the level of the channels surrounding them, and the levees are over 100 years old.
Stockton used to flood every year, back around 1950. All that’s needed is a heavier than usual snow pack in the Sierra Nevadas, and it’s “glub glub glub”.
#5 – You may be an ace at artful alliteration, but #2 is correct. There is no other way to interpret Dr. Criss’ statements than he doesn’t understand what the term “500-year levee” means.
Midwesterners? Hell, no area in this country is immune from denial. The southeast builds and rebuilds in hurricane zones constantly. The majority of the southwest is a mostly-waterless, uninhabitable-by-humans wasteland without the diversion of the entire Colorado River basin.
And here in my home state of West Virginia dozens of towns are parked into either narrow valleys that flood whenever two+ inches of rain falls in a twenty-four hour period, or are situate on the rare flat land that abuts – you guessed it – a river. Following massive floods of the Tug River in 1977 and 1985, the ACE built, at a cost of approx. $400 MILLION, flood walls to protect the tiny burgs of Williamson and Matewan (I used to live in Williamson; it wasn’t worth saving). Part of the enormous cost also went to “raise” houses outside the floodwalls by creating a new ground level that isn’t supposed to be used for anything and lifting and placing the original house on top of said level, often at a cost well in excess of the original value of the home. Of course, all this did was give the homeowner an extra floor, which is often turned into living space filled with expensive fixtures (usually the TV room, with a nice flat-screen for the NASCAR, or a game room, complete with pool table).
Sheesh. I’m all for property rights in principle, but when caveat emptor and moral hazard are removed, well, all bets are off.
The first earthquake I was even in was in Southern Illinois… and it was pretty big… Then I learned about the fault see #1… It’s not that Midwesterners don’t learn it’s that you can’t do much about it… and the forces are titanic! hey.. I’ll take California any day..
Just wait until the Appalachian Fault that runs down the Hudson River lets loose and destroys NYC. All that falling glass from the sky…
Head on down to your local newsstand and pick up a copy of the 2008 Farmers Almanac. There’s an article in there about “Crazy 8’s” and how severe weather seems to occur during years that end in 8.
Just a quick rundown:
1748 – The Whitest Winter on Record
1888 – One of the Deadliest-ever storms in the prairie states
1898 – Various Severe Weather anomalies
1908 – 34 Tornadoes throughout the Southern states in a 3 day period
1918 – 42.5 inches of snow in Chicago. That record still stands
1928 – More than 1,800 people die in floods due to dikes breaching caused by a Cat. 4 Hurricane
1938 – Hurricane in Long Island, New York, and Rhode Island kills more than 600
1948 – The Columbia River remained above Flood levels for 51 straight days.
1958 – 72 inches of snow fall in a 24 hour period in Montana
1978 – 2 paralyzing storms in the midwest and North East. Pools are reported frozen over in Los Angeles
1988 – Record breaking high temps throughout North America, losses as a result reported at around $39 Billion
1998 – Several severe icing events throughout the North East
So, what does 2008 hold? If history is any indication, watch out.
#12, Bill, California’s quakes are in the middle of a corrugated area, and that stiffens the ground.
The New Madrid fault is in the middle of a trampoline a thousand miles across. Wheee! More bounce for the buck for sure.
As a native Wisconsinite, I was a bit surprised to hear my home state being mentioned as the pinnacle example in this posting. Anyone from Wisconsin will testify that we understand bizarre weather patterns all too well (ie., 106 degree weather in the summer of ’95, followed by -27 degree weather in early ’96). We often joke, “if you don’t like the weather in WI, wait 15 minutes.”
And as mentioned before, every state has locales where “geologic reality” is ignored. Every state has natural disasters. Every state, in short, has unfortunate events due to weather. No locale is immune.
It’s a matter of developers who find a cheap plot of land in a flood plain and build beautiful houses there.
“If you build it, they will come.”
I recall aerial photos taken in California of large buildings in Los Angeles being built “straddling” a fault line clearly visible on the ground. Don’t know if those buildings are still there or not, “but” when people/developers cannot make rational decisions, it does benefit the public for the government to do it for them as in establishing rational zoning laws. No dwellings in flood plains, across active fault lines, in the path of projected lava flows and what not.
That means much of New Orleans should be turned into public parks.
I’ve lived in the midwest my whole life and have never been anywhere near anywhere that needs to worry about flooding. To suggest that the whole midwest is flood-prone is a bit of an exaggeration.
18 makes a good point; there are plenty of high places with good drainage in the midwest, and many of them have good groundwater too boot.
In our neck of the woods, it was all swamp 100 years ago with just a few islands from glacial debris. Well, they started digging some ditches to drain the water and now we have extremely good farming soil. Only they let some of the ditches go without cleaning so they are filled up with sand.
I know several people who have wet ground. My sump usually only runs in the wet spring and occasionally in the fall. It has run almost continuously since last winter. But I am still drier than many.
The Midwest has well defined flood zones, otherwise known as areas likely to flood in any 100 year period. Any real estate agent has access to the maps, and should warn clients away from those areas.
However, you really can’t predict where tornadoes will hit, other than anywhere in Tornado Alley (most of the Midwest, the South, and Texas). National Geographic printed a map showing tornado paths over their recorded history in the US. Much of those areas were covered in tornado paths. Tornadoes also hit elsewhere; downtown Salt Lake City got hit just a few years ago.
On earthquakes: there’s a huge area in the Midwest, South and East, centered on New Madrid MO, that was affected by the New Madrid earthquake in the early 19th century. If that fault slips again as an 8.0 or 9.0 quake, St Louis and Memphis are going to be pancaked (from the quake and its effects on the Mississippi River), and many other cities are going to be badly damaged. The Science, History, and Weather Channels have run specials about the risk.
Makes about as much sense as building below sea level in New Orleans.