Spring is the time of year where green begins to show its color once again. Trees bud, flowers blossom, and lawns turn from hibernation brown to beautiful mixtures of green.
Spring is also the time for mountain snowpacks to start melting, heavy rains from springtime thunderstorms to fall, and creeks and rivers to reach their peak runoff flows.
Flooding is one of the deadliest natural disasters to happen on this planet. One flood in 1931 killed an estimated 1 to 4 million people in China.
A flood that happened in 1889 in Johnstown, PA is still one of the United State’s most deadly natural disasters when flood waters killed an estimated 2, 200 people.
There are several types of floods: riverine, estuarine, coastal, catastrophic, and muddy are the general subcategories.
Riverine floods can occur as either slow or fast. Slow riverine floods occur when runoff from sustained rainfall or rapid snow melt causes a river’s channel to exceed its capacity.
Fast riverine floods, often called flash floods, occur due to heavy rainfall from a thunderstorm or a sudden release of water from an upstream impoundment created by a dam, landslide, or glacier.
Estuarine floods are those that are caused by a combination of sea tidal surges and storm-force winds.
Coastal floods are similar to estuarine floods but are caused by severe sea storms or another sea hazard such as a tsunami.
Catastrophic floods are caused by a significant and unexpected event such as a dam failure or can be caused by another hazard such as an earthquake or volcanic eruption.
Muddy floods are caused by runoff from cropland.
Neil Opperman
Meteorologist/Weather Producer
