Houston Floods, again These two photos show the Brazos River just west of Houston, Texas; the upper

Houston Floods, againThese two photos show the Brazos River just west of Houston, Texas; the upper was taken in 2013 with the river at normal levels, while the lower image was taken on May 28 of this year. Much of Texas is again facing huge rainfall totals and associated flooding this spring, after having been in a major drought only two years ago. The Brazos River crested (reached its greatest expected flood depth) on June 2nd, with a depth of 16.71 meters. At that time, the river was more than a meter higher than the previous record flood for this river.From a geologic perspective, it’s particularly interesting to see how in the lower image the flood outlines classic river features such as abandoned meanders. In fact, if this area wasn’t held together as farmland, it’s entirely possible that a flood this big could cause permanent shifts in the river’s course. Floods often break through levees on meandering rivers and allow the rivers to straighten, but farm owners tend to not be thrilled when that happens because it can cut their fields off on a side of the river that is suddenly much harder to reach.As the atmosphere warms, it is able to hold more moisture and once consequence is damaging, multi-day rain events like the one hitting this part of Texas. It can be difficult to come up with measurements covering entire states over the past century since not all severe rainfall events were recorded prior to the development of modern radars. However, cities have generally better records and Houston Texas is seeing roughly 167% the number of severe rainfall events it was seeing in the 1950s when atmospheric CO2 levels were lower. Not all cities will see clear increases; some cities will find their atmosphere to be even drier, while others will see their rainfall patterns shift north and south. For now, this part of Texas seems to be in the crosshairs for swinging rapidly between way too little rain and way too much.-JBBImage credit: USGS/NASAhttp://go.nasa.gov/1U338rYReference:http://bit.ly/1Sn8s5ap.s. This isn’t just hitting Texas today, France is also dealing with some severe flooding. If I get a good satellite picture of that, there will be another post on their floods. -- source link

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