Eight people have been confirmed dead following flooding in Houston, Texas this week, with around a thousand homes flooded and 70 000 more left without electricity. Houston has suffered a series of flooding events in the last year, but this weeks rains have been considered exceptional, with 44.7 cm of rain falling on the city on Monday 18 April 2016, and floodwaters in places twelve meters higher than the previous highest levels recorded.
Rescue workers helping evacuees in Houston, Texas, this week. David Philips/AP.
Rainfall in Texas is driven principally by evaporation of water from the Caribbean, an area which has been suffering exceptionally high temperatures this year. However the flooding has also been linked to rapid urban expansion in the Houston area, which is built on an area of historic coastal wetlands. Samuel Brody of the Center for Texas Beaches and Shores at Texas A&M University at Galveston has calculated that the area of soil covered by paving in Houston has expanded by 25% in the last 15 years, preventing rainwater from draining into the soil and raising the dangers of flooding in the city.
See also...
Storms and floods kill at least 43 people in the US over Christmas period. AT least 43 people have died across the southern and midwest United
States over the past week as the country has been hit by a series of
severe floods and storm events. Multiple deaths have been recorded...
Flooding and winter storms thought to have killed at least fourteen in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. At least fourteen people are thought to have died as flooding and...
Hurricane Patricia: The most severe storm ever recorded causes widespread flooding but relatively few casualties. Hurricane Patricia formed as a tropical depression over the eastern
Pacific Basin in mid-October 2015, before increasing rapidly in
intensity on 22 October...
Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.
