by The Guadalupe River in Comfort, Texas, rose from hip height to three floors over just two hours and sent water with the weight of the Empire State building about every minute that he stayed on his comb.
The power of the flood is often more powerful and surprising than people imagine.
Comfort offers a good lens to take into account the terrible power of the water wall of a flood of falls, since it is downstream, where the rain branches of the river met. The coat of arms was to the highest, which have ever been recorded at the point, which appears so quickly that it can “forgive our brain”, said James Doss-Gollin, assistant professor for civil and environmental engineering at Rice University.
The Texas flood hit through buildings, carried cars away and tore robust trees out at the roots, whereby the rubble dropped in twisted stacks when the water finally closed. It killed more than 100 people, led to a rescue rate and missed dozens of others. The deaths were concentrated in Kerr County, an area in which Camp Mystic, the destroyed girls’ warehouse, comprises in which the water noticed early and with little.
Water is able to destroy such a destruction because it is difficult and can move quickly. Only one cubic foot water – imagine a box that weighs a little larger than the size of a basketball – weighs about £ 62 (28 kilograms). When the river culminated with comfort, 177,000 cubic feet – or £ 11 million (£ 5 million) flowed every second.
“If you have this little lead time … it means that you can hardly wait until the water level rises,” said Doss Gollin. “You have to take proactive measures to bring people to safety.”
Water as heavy as a jumbo jet
A small amount of water – less than many think – can sweep people, cars and houses away. Six inches (15.2 centimeters) are enough to throw people off their feet. A few foot with rapidly moved water can take an SUV or a truck away, and cars can move even less.
“Suppose you are in a normal car, a normal limousine, and a half -instinct comes and urges you to the back of the car. This is the kind of strength you are talking about,” said Venkataraman Lakshmi, professor of the University of Virginia and President of the Hydrology department of the American Geophysical Union.
And with comfort it took a little more than 15 minutes for so much water to arrive that it could not only float a large pickup, but also in danger – water like a jumbo jet that moved from every second.
At this point “we are earlier vehicles, houses and things that can be affected,” said Daniel Henz, manager for flood warning programs in the flood control district of Maricopa County, Arizona, an area that gets dangerous scary floods.
The water not only presses objects, it also swims, and that can actually be more scary. The feeling of being pushed can be felt immediately what a person lets know that she is in danger. According to Upmanu Lall, a water expert at Arizona State University and Columbia University, the upward power cannot be felt.
“The buoyancy happens – it is like yes, no situation. If the water reaches a certain depth and it has a certain speed, they will be cut off (their feet) and float at the same time,” he said.
The mechanics of a flood of fall
The landscape created the conditions for what some witnesses described as quickly moving water wall.
According to S. Jeffess Williams, a high -ranking scientist, who emeritus, from the US Geological Survey, in which the US Geological Survey, as a senior scientist, absorbed the US Geological Survey, was a lot of limestone, covered by a thin layer of soil in the hilly country.
A flood of falls generally begins with an initial lead wave and builds up when rain rushes across the landscape and into the river basin. It can rise quickly, but the water still takes some time to converge.
The water crumpled cars in stacks, twisted steel and knocking trees, as if they were grasses. Pictures grasped the chaos and the randomness of the violence of water.
And then, not as fast as it climbed, but still quickly, the river resigned.
Five hours after his comb in comfort, it had already dropped 3 meters (3 meters), which revealed his damage in retreat. A few days after the climb, a person was able to stand with his head over the river again.
“Everything can just happen, very, very quickly,” said Henz.
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Associated Press Writer Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed.
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