News about floods.

Google news search , provides all the recent online news articles about floods from all over the world.

United States Federal Emergency Agency (FEMA.gov) Current Flood information

NSW State Emergency Service (SES) for Floods

 Here are some useful links to resources and general information about floods

• NASA Natural Hazards: Floods
• The history of floods in South Australia from the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), Australia.
• BoM Floods and their causes in Australia
• US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Floods Education

How do floods occur?

Floods are caused by excess water filling areas from a few main sources:

• Rain fall (from Monsoon weather, cyclones or hurricanes)
• Rivers rising
• Ice melting
• Tides due to the moon
• Tsunamis

Some areas may be more suceptible to floods due to the ground being fully saturated and unable to allow water to flow out faster than what is coming in.

Some floods are artificial or man-made. For example dams will flood an area in order to store water or for hydroelectric power.

How do floods cause damage?

There are two main types of damage caused by floods:

plain water damage.
this damage basically soaks everything, sometimes it can dissolve foundations and make the ground unstable and muddy.

rushing water damage.
this is damage due to the water crashing into buildings, cars and other things, this is flood water that often kills people and animals.

Storms can build up and dump large amounts of rain water thousands of kilometres away and a wall of water can overwhelm anything in its' path.

How do floods progress?

Floods can progress at different speeds.

• Fast floods or flash floods often occur in deserts where it rains in one place and the water starts to rush to an area further down stream.
  
  During fast flowing water floods, debris can also crash into other objects or collect on other objects producing large projectiles that can cause further damage.

• Gradual floods, some floods may take a few days to build up to dangerous levels. Others may take a few years.

Slow floods can sometimes weaken the soil beneath structures and cause them to collapse.

What causes so much rain?

In some areas, floods are common because they are close to the equator and rainfall is very common. Other places are affected by monsoons, very heavy down pours at certain times of the year.

Another cause of long periods of rain are weather patterns like La Niña. This causes wetter weather during some years more than others.

What is the history of floods?

Floods have existed for as long as water has been on Earth. Some of the first humans to have dealt with floods probably took place some 3 million years ago.

In more recent times, floods have played a part in various historical times. For example the historical importance of the flooding of the Nile in Ancient Egypt.

Floods tend to be very local so it's best to search for country name or area specific floods.

 

Floods have been a part of historical culture for quite some time.

A famous example of flood is the one in the Bible. People aren't too sure exactly how big it was but there certainly could have been some local flooding that looked pretty impressive at the time.

New: The history, myths and early science related to floods

The future of floods

Floods are likely to be of a major concern in the future especially with larger population living near water such as coasts or rivers. Of possible concern is the idea of a rise in sea levels (due to the melting of ice in Antarctica) and the possible flooding of entire pacific island nations or of flooding along major costal cities. image: wikipedia Global warming is likely also to increase the amount of water vapour in the air. This extra water ends up falling and causing more areas to flood.

The future of floods is really about trying to: predict when floods are likely to occur. create flood resistant buildings, perhaps creating floating houses, or houses on stilts create flood resistant communities, ie avoid towns or cities being too close to flooded areas.

Here is a future idea for a city/building that is flood resistant.This floating ark would be able to survive floods. This is a concept by Remistudio with the assistance of the International Union of Architects’ program Architecture for Disasters Relief. source: news.com.au