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Selects: How Floods Work · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi, everybody.
• 0:01
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna take you on a trip through time back
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: to January sixth, twenty twelve, when the world was supposed
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: to end. Wait, was that when the world was supposed
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: to end? I think that's when the world was supposed
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: to end. I don't even remember. Now, that's how bs
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: that myan calendar thing was. At any rate, I'm annoyed now.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: So I'm just gonna go ahead and let you listen
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: to how floods work. Bloods are a terrible tragedy. We
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: explain how they literally happen in this episode. Welcome to
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: Charles W Chuck Bryant, and that makes this Stuff you
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: Should Know. The podcast the Saturated podcast.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: This week super Saturated Floody Podcast. Yep. I don't know
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: why this came to mind.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: I didn't see any flood that happened on the New
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Is it just I think I happened across it searching randomly,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: and I thought.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: It's a good one.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Ye haven't covered that one yet.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: Flooded stuff always creeps me out. Oh yeah, yeah, I
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: think it goes back to my days in Toledo as
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: a young boy. Many times growing up in my house
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: on Beverly Drive, there were there the mommee would flood
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: and my basement would flood as a result, and sometimes
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: it would come all the way up to like the
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: top step. Really yeah, and I just think about, like
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: all my dad's tools down there, like underwater, weren't supposed
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: to be. It was just really creepy because you just
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: opened the door and step on the landing and then
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: there's just water. You can kind of see, like the
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: top couple of steps that was you know, suggested all
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: the other stuff that was down there. So I think
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: since then, I've always like been fascinated and creeped out
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: by the idea of things that are supposed to be
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: above ground submerged like ships when we talked about the
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: Bermuda Triangle, like a plane, yeah, down there in the trench,
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: never to be found.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Like, yeah, that's creepy.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, same thing with floods. Man, It didn't.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: It doesn't creep me out like that, but I get.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: It, okay, So Chuck, Yes, I take it you are
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: familiar with flooding.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: I am.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: Do you remember the one in ninety four done in Albany,
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: the Great Flood, the Flint River flood. No, oh man,
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: it was all over the news.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Like they were like in Albany, Georgia. Yeah, I don't
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: remember that.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: There were caskets, like four hundred caskets were loosed and wow,
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: we're just kind of floating around. They were they had
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: this weird tendency to congregate toward trees or around trees,
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: and they so people started lashing them too, that because
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: they had to have a court order to even grab
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: the caskets. But apparently it was the second worst cemetery
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: disaster in the United States. Couldn't find the fourth course
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: nineteen ninety four.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, I was in Athens at the time. I was.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: I was not up on news.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: It was a big it was a big, big thing
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: price but it was really creepy. You can see pictures
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: of like caskets just kind of floating around.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah. They recently found a human school that they think
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: was part of the remains that was moved by the flood.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Jeez.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing how out of the news loop I
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: was while I was in college. Yeah, because it was
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: pre internet. Yeah, I didn't get the paper. I was
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: in college, who gets the paper and reads it.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: I knew people who sold the paper.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: I didn't have TV, so yeah, I knew about class
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: and working at Mexcali grill and sleeping late and all
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: of the kinds of things that I can't talk about.
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: That's awesome.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: I remember the Gulf War that happened.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: Well because of that Internet that came after your college years,
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: like two decades after your college years. You can see
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: video of the news footage from nineteen ninety four. So
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: you're fine stepping back in time.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I will do so.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: Well, let's talk about flooding, Chuck. First, I guess to
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: understand floods, we need to give a brief prime of
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: the hydrological cycle. Yes, we do, if you ask me.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: There's been about the same amount of water on Earth
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: for a long long time.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought this is fascinating.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it hasn't always been in the same place
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: as we know.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: No, and it's not the same water necessarily, right, There's
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: a constant loss and gain of water.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, every day you lose water obviously to the atmosphere.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: Where like the solar rays and other cosmic radiation just
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: blasts water vapors into like nothing you're gone by longer.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Water. Sorry, as that is going on.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Volcanic activity in the core or not the core necessarily,
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: but in the inner Earth is releasing water and it
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: about balances out on a day to day basis.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: But did you know that volcanos release water?
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Sure? After I read this.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we even did a Volcano's Work podcast and I
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: don't remember talking about it releasing water.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: But I don't either.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: When water is generated or introduced into the upper Earth
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: in the atmosphere, it comes from volcanos. Thank Sixty percent
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: of volcanic gas is water vapor.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: So it about balances out on a day to day basis,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: which is pretty remarkable.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, almost as if it's happening that way for a reason.
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: I know. Are you familiar with the anthropic principle?
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: No, what's that?
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: We'll talk about it sometimes.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Right, Oh, it's not directly relating to this.
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: No, it's about the concept of why everything is so
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: falling and has fallen so perfectly into place that we
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: are able to notice this and say, wait a minute,
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: it almost seems like we're supposed to be here, right,
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: And the anthropic principle is like, yeah, and there's like
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: five million other worlds out there that didn't happen like that,
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: so we aren't there to say, wow, it's almost like
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: everything fell into place, so we're supposed to be here.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well see you just told me about it right now, done,
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: trick to you.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: Water can be all around the Earth in three different forms,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: as everyone knows. You have liquids, rivers, oceans, lakes, rain,
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: solids we've talked about and this this kind of collects
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: a lot of our podcast in a way, like the
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: clouds and now we're talking about the Antarctica. Lots of
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: frozen water that case at the poles the Antarctica, or
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: it can be gas.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Which is water vapor in the air.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Yes, and it's all moved around by the wind thanks
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: to the sun.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: And remember I can't remember which podcast we talked about
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: it in, whether it was the sun or clouds or something.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: But wind is created by the exchange of air. Is
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: warm air is heated at the surface and rises, Yes,
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: cooler air rushes in to fill that vacuum. Yeah, there's
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: your wind, pal Yeah.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: And then well once that warm air rises, though, it's
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: also going to get colder and form little droplets of
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: water which form together to form clouds, which we went
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: over in fluffy little clouds, right.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because the sun heats the ocean surface, that evaporates,
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: like you said, it rises, forms clouds, and then eventually
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: clouds become pregnant with rain and rain falls down, right,
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: that's right. As the rain falls down it fills waterways, rivers, streams,
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: that kind of thing underground waterway first. Yeah, but for
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: the most part, some of it does go to fill
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: aquifers and that's storage, but the vast majority of it
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: makes its way back to the oceans, where the process
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: begins again and everything is complete in the circle of life.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: The cool thing here is wind is pretty consistent across
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: the globe. Wherever you live, your weather is pretty consistent.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: You might think if you live in Atlanta, like, oh,
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: that's crazy in December here at sixty five degrees. But
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: by and large, if you look at the big picture,
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: your weather systems are pretty consistent on a day to
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: day basis, although in the case of flooding, anything can
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: happen on any given day to knock things out of whack.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: Right, So you have a storm comes about, a thunderstorm,
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: and you're like, wow, it's a pretty bad storm because
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: you are capable. Your area is capable of experiencing a storm.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: Your area is capable of experiencing a freak storm, like
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: a huge thunderstorm. Sure that dumps so much precipitation on
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: the ground in such a short amount of time that
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: these normal waterways that have been formed to hold the
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: normal amount of water become overwhelmed. The water fills up,
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: spills over the banks, and there's your flood.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's the key what you just said there
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: is these waterways they form over a great, great period
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: of time. You don't A river doesn't just spring up
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: over the course of a year because there's a lot
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: of rain.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: It takes like of several years.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it takes a long long time to sort of
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: get a feel, I guess of how much rain there
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: is generally. And so this is how big I'm gonna
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: be if I'm a river in Georgia, exactly.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: This is all I need to be except for the
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: freak occurrence in Oh my god, now it's a flood.
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: But then after the flood, it goes right back to
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: where it was before. It's not. Rivers don't tend to
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: plan their size for the worst case scenario, they're very lazy.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: That's a great way to say it, lazy, lazy rivers.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: So, like we said, the most common cause, the one
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: that people are most familiar with, the most common cause
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: of flooding is a large storm that allows an anomalous
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: accumulation of precipitation.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Whether rain could be melting ice from a mountain or snow,
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: but rain is the one we think about most often.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: And like you said, because weather and patterns are pretty
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: pretty stable over time in a lot of places, depending
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: on the season, you're going to get anomalous normal precipitation, right,
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: like monsoons seasonal flooding.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: So with a monsoon, you have in the wintertime, the
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: air over the land is colder than the air over
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: the ocean, So the air over the ocean is rising
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: in the air over the land is moving out to
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: fill it up. So that means the wind is blowing
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: out toward the ocean.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: In the summertime, the opposite is true, and so the
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: wind is blowing in toward the land and that brings
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: with it the monsoon rains.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, brings with it water.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: And this annual monsoon flooding we talked about it. We
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: didn't call it that because we're not that smart. But
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: in the how the Nile River works.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, it was and still is a very big
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: part of their how they thrived over the years was
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: they knew that the Nile would flood each year and
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: extend the water out and when it waters receded, it
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: left a nice fertile banks on which to live and
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: plant foods.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Right, And remember we talked about some of the problems
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: from the Aswan Dam and other dams that they built
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: along the Nile to control flooding. Basically say we're going
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: to release this amount of water, so can go crops
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: your and people aren't going to lose their houses to
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: the now flooding every year. That is actually one of
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: the big causes of flooding too. Damn breaks. Yeah, did
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: you see that damn video I sent you.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: I didn't have a computer.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: You didn't look. You didn't see it on your It
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: was flash. Oh it's really neat.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: I'll look at it later.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: I can't remember the name of the dam, but it's
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: in Washington State and in October of this year it
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: had like a controlled demolition and they just blew a
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: hole in the bottom and all of a sudden, this
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: water search comes pouring out and fills this area up,
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: and then it starts to recede, and you see the
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: water behind the dam just start to go down as
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: the water in front of the dam starts to go up.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: It's really neat looking not.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: To check that out.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Or if you're from Pennsylvania or a historian, then
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: of course you know about May thirty first, eighteen eighty nine,
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: the Johnstown flood.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't just Johnstown, by the way.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: It's known as the Johnstown flood, I think because that
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: was the largest town that it flooded.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it was.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: I think fourteen miles up stream from Johnstown was the
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: South Fork Dam, and it hit a couple of towns
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: on the way. Finally hit Johnstown six to ten inches
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: of rain in twenty four hours, to the tune of
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: a sixty foot wall of water going forty miles per hour.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Wow, rush through town.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Twenty million tons, not gallons, twenty million tons of water.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: And it was the first big disaster relief effort by
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: the Red Cross. Oh really, Yeah, I got a number
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: of twenty two hundred and nine deaths, seventeen million in damages,
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: which would be over four hundred million dollars today.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Wow, like close to a half a billion in damages.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: And Springsteen fans might remember that from the song Highway
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Patrolman he sings about the Johnstown flood.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: Really yeah, that guy, nice folk hero, isn't it?
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: He's all over it.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: We also remember we talked about in the Human Caused
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: Earthquakes episode the Van Damn. Oh yeah, in Italy a
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: landslide caused a wave to go over the dam and
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: killed two thousand people. It seems to be the number
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: when a dam breaks or for each two thousand people die.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: You know what I think it's cool is after having
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: done like four hundred plus shows, like our world is
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: starting to narrow a bit.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah. You know what's really crazy? What is we've already
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: had this discussion. Oh and now we've come back to
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: having it again. Really that's really narrow.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Well. I just think it's cool when you do a
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: podcast on flooding and it's also one about the Nile
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: in clouds and volcanoes, and I mean, we're still a
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: long way from covering and the sun. We're a long
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: way from covering everything. But our world view is narrowing
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: in a good way.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: I know, we're like menonites.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: Land plays a big part because you know, you can
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: have a lot of rain, but depending on what kind
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: of land it's falling on, it's going to affect how
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: much it floods. If it floods at all, like the
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: soil in the middle of a forest, it's going to
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: really soak up a lot of water. Hard clay or
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: rock or obviously concrete and asphalt aren't going to soak
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: up much if anything, So that's gonna lend itself to flooding.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and agricultural lands, crop lands that have been tilled,
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: they're more prone to flooding than woodlands. Do you want
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: to know why?
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, why I was wondering. You got that.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: We're about to circle right back again. But two earthworms.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: That's exactly why. That's why woodlands don't flood like farm.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Because there's more little passageways from earthworms.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: Yes, and if you till cropland, if you till the land,
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: it has a deletrious effect on the earthworm.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Popular are saying that word like that.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: Yes, the earthworm population in the area, they basically leave,
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: they take off or else they're cut in a bunch
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: of pieces.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: So it does have a very deleterious effect.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: Deletrious, delictious. What is it? Species? Now I was wrong
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: on that, called out big time. It's species. It's deletrious,
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: it's not delictrious. Say you talk about species species.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, I was wrong on species because it's there are
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: two acceptable ways of saying that.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: No, there's a right way species.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: No. No, if you look it up, it says species or species.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: I can't say anything. I can't even keep track of
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: the difference between I and I and me.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Concrete an asphalt, which I mentioned, Josh. Here in the
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Western world, there's a lot of that going on. Go
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: to a city like La which I lived in, as
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: you know, they had these concrete flood relief channels built in.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't even have to go to La you
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: can travel there via the movie Greece.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, like the La River basing. Is that what that is? Yeah?
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, that is in T two. It's in the
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: movie Them and These that you know, the where they
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: have the car race.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they call it the La River, which is kind
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: of funny.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, before they paved it with concrete, they used it
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: for the canoe scenes in a lot of the Tarzan
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: movies in the thirties.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it's all just smoking mirrors.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: Yes it is.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Mash was in Malibu, for God's sakes. Yeah.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Levees, Josh, or another reason it can flood, as we
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: all saw with the disaster with the Katrina New Orleans,
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: when the levee breaks, as Robert Plant.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: Said, got no place to stay.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: No, you don't. And do you remember earlier this year
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: when they purpose opened the Morganza spillway.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, basically they sacrificed some local crop land for a
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: lot more downriver. Yeah, And that's one of the points,
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: like the reverse of the thinking usually or well it
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: has been historically. Well, that's the point they make about
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: all levies though, is generally they're great for that area,
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: but there's generally there's going to be a problem on
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: down the line at some point. Well, the same thing
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: with concrete storm basins. It's the same. It's you're you're
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: basically just saying, all right, let's get the water through here,
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: and then when like the twer base runs out at
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: your county line, you handle it. Yeah, and here's your
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: flood county beneath us.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Well, what I couldn't find about the Morganza spillway was
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: the the effect, Like I saw like one hundred articles
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: on the fact that they're going to open it up,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: and then the only article I found post releasing, like
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: I think it was first time since nineteen seventy three
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: they opened up a lot of these gates, was like
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: a week after they said, well, it doesn't look like
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: it's going to be as bad as they thought, And
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: that's all I found.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: If it's the one I'm thinking of, it was a
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: huge cluster that was on the Army Corps of Engineers.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: They created an incorrect estimate and it really screwed up
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: a lot more land than they thought. Oh really, if
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: it's the same one I'm thinking of, it was this
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: year last year.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was spring when the rivers were rising. Yeah,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: and they said, we can't dove state New Orleans again, right,
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: so we're going to open up a lot of these gates.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: Like up in like Missouri or something right now.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: No, No, it was in Louisiana.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: Okay, Well, there was one in Missouri where they let
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: this levee loose and flooded some crop land and it
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: ended up like screwing things up all the way down
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: or over to like Tennessee. Wow, I can't remember, so
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: I guess those are two different stories.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: So if you live in Louisiana, I'd like to know
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: the effect because I know they said it wasn't as
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: bad as they thought, but I couldn't really get a
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: pinpoint of the damage.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: And I want to know what happened in Missouri.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, let's talk about the coastline.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and we didn't mention, by the way, hurricanes too.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, tsunamis.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, tsunamis. Hurricanes big problems as far as creating flood conditions.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: But yeah, the coastline, you're talking about levies and dams.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: They fall into man made ways of diverting water to
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: other people's problems. Yeah, and we've figured out ways of,
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: I guess, protecting our beautiful coastlines from mother nature. And
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: that's building walls, basically sea walls. It's like, have your
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: worst waves, you're not gonna erode this beach. But the
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: problem is is the whole process of erosion is part
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: of creating and keeping beaches healthy.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah and beautiful.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, I remember I used to go to Hunting Island,
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: South Carolina when I was a kid, and my mom
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: went not too long ago, and she said that they
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: have actually, like the whole coastline is different now from
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: when I was a kid.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: Really they have.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: They had to move a lighthouse inland because it had
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: eroded so much. But they just, you know, they let
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: it happen because it is a natural part of beaches,
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: and it's a natural like oceans, beaches, rivers, they're.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: All dynamic, right exactly.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: You know, they're all going to move earth and water,
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: and that's just the way it's supposed to be. And
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: when humans step into try and prevent that, bad things
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: can happen.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: Well, and we try to prevent it because we tend
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: to settle near water. It's each transportation.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Put's living on the beach is nice.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but I mean even with the river too,
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: it's like there's your crop land.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's your.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: Easy access to irrigation, easy transportation food water obviously. Yeah,
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: So we need to live near water, and then when
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: these natural processes happen and takes our houses away, we're like, Okay,
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: let's figure out how to how to solve this. And
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: sometimes the solution is just kind of exacerbates the problem,
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: that's right, Or creates a new one. Yeah, so we
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: just got to figure things out.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: I think we're working on it.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: This is one really cool part I thought was you
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: always see how you know a flood, floodwaters will wash
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: a car away or something and it doesn't even look
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: like that much water. Yeah, and you think, you know,
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: I d I drive my truck like through a river
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: in the North Georgia Mountains and you just plow right
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: through it. Yeah, and that's like twice as deep and
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: really rushing river.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: You say, take that nature, Yeah.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Take that nature.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: But the difference here is I thought this is really interesting,
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: is is what water wants to do is level itself out.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: So when you've got a lot of water from a
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: flood in a place where there's previously no water at all,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: it's gonna want to find its level as soon as
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: possible by rushing really hard.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: So it's just gonna be a lot more force than
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: the steady stream of a river. Yep, it's really as
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: easy as that.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: It's all there is too.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: So like a couple of feet of water can wash
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: a car away.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: Two feet two feet of water in a flood condition
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: where it's rushing from one from a higher level to
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: a lower level's balance out can wash a car away
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: that's nutty, and six inches under those conditions can knock
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: a human off his or her feet.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: And that's how people die in a flood.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: Well, I think half of the deaths associated with most
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: floods are from people trying to ford a rushing water
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: in their car, spellway in their car. Yeah, that's the
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: problem because you get carried out and you're in your
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: car and you're trapped, and that's that.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: That's sad.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: It's very sad.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Flash flooding the most dangerous of all floods.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this jogged my memory when they was talking about
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: Big Thompson Canyon, Colorado.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: I think we might have hit on that at some
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: point because it jogged my memory too.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: You want to talk about it, well, yeah.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy six, July thirty first, Colorado was celebrating
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: it's centennial and at about five or six o'clock it
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: started to rain and it was a really weird thunderstorm
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: that didn't move. It just planted itself for four hours
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: over Big Thompson Canyon. Rained twelve inches in four hours.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: And that's how much the area gets in a year. Usually.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that's crazy.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: In four hours and a twenty foot high rush of
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: river going about fourteen miles an hour by nine pm
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: washed through the canyon, and it was so like out
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: of nowhere, which is what a flash flood is. It's
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: not like, hey, you know, with the Johnstown flood, they
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: had warnings even though people didn't heed them, and most
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: of the times you know a flood's coming, but with
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: a flash flood, they were just like trapped.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: Plus there also just happened to be thousands of campers
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: down there celebrating the centennial of Colorado.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: It was well, the perfect storm.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: But the river that feeds the canyon, normally Big Thompson River,
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: is apparently normally pretty slow moving, the old Big Teddy,
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: but because of this flash flood, it was dumping two
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: hundred and thirty three thousand gallons eight hundred and eighty
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: two thousand liters of water into the canyon per second per.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Second, so that's a lot.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: So basically, a flash flood is like a flood, but
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: it's even more concentrated and the water's moving even more violently.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: I got the number between one hundred and thirty nine
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: to one hundred and forty five dead.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Five were never seen again. Geez, four hundred cars, four hundred.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: And twenty houses, and forty million, which would be about
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty million today. And interestingly, three years ago,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: this one guy was found alive in Oklahoma that they
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: thought died. He got he left town that morning and
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: like didn't tell people. Oh, and I think they were
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: the key came up in records and he was like, no,
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: I'm out here in Oklahoma. I'm just fine. Yeah, I didn't.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: He didn't even realize that he was on the death list.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Weird.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, But they still every July thirty first, they
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: still pay remembrance obviously in Colorado.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's also I mean, you think about cars being
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: washed away and people being knocked off their feet and
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: being flooded in canyons, But there's also a lot of
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: problems with flooding after the fact, Like a flood brings
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: with it a lot of silt and mud and nastiness, sewage, sewage,
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: and when the floodwaters recede once again, all that stuff
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: sticks around.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: Apparently Florence, Italy suffered a pretty big flood on the
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: Arno River.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, nineteen sixty six.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: And Florence, of course, is one of the great repositories
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: of Renaissance art, and a lot of the repositories in
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: that repository were basements and first stories, and that stuff
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: got flooded. And apparently they got a lot of the
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: stuff back to at least good quality.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: A lot of it.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: But there were I looked up, there were six hundred
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: thousand tons of mud and sewage. Oh my god, after
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: they left fourteen thousand works of art and a hunt sorry,
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: three to four million books and manuscripts and records. And
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know how many out of the fourteen thousand
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: were restored, but I bet it wasn't thirteen five hundred,
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because a lot of this stuff was completely destroyed.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: That's that's awful.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very sad.
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: At least invading hordes didn't set it on fire on purpose.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: I also killed about one hundred people, yeah, which you
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: always hear about the artwork, Like, I had to really
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: research to.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Find the amount of deaths. Really yeah, well, well not
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: that much research, but a few extra clicks.
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: I guess. And then disease is another big problem too.
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: You said, sewage chemicals. Yeah, the deceased. All of this,
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: oh yeah, is mixed together and.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: It's an albany that probably was not a fun soup.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: No, So if you are, if your area is flooded,
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: you want to basically boil any water that you're going
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: to drink, or drink bottle of water. Get one of
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: those one h air water manufacturers that sucks the water
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: vapor of the ambient air and converts it to bottled water.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, did you hear about the netty pot deaths recently? No,
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: these two people in Louisiana died and they believe it
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: was from using the netty pot, which I use on
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: a daily basis, and it got they got a brain
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: eating amba cross into their nasal passage from using contaminated water.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: To Nettie with and my friend, you know, I've been
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: netting for like six years every day, and my friends.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Like Duba that, oh would do that? If are you?
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: I was like, come on, dude, did.
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: Your friend know that he sounds like that when you say.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: I was aping him.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: He sounded much more intelligent than that. Okay, but I'm
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: not gonna stop netting.
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: Well, you have to boil the water. At least to
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: yourself that favor. I'm gonna do that, Chuck, brainy, eating
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: amba would not look good on you. I'll take my chances,
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: all right, Okay, I guess that's it.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: I got nothing else.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: I got nothing else, Flatty. You want to call out
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: for anything in particular?
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, if you live in Big Cannon or Johnstown
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: or any story. Yeah, I bet you got some some
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: personal anecdote a family member.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: Maybe yeah you can. Uh. Oh wait, wait, we haven't
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: done lest your mail yet. Man, we're aboting to jump
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: the gun.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Oh I thought you were about doing that.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: I was about to give our email that addressing. Well,
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: if you want to learn more about floods, you can
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: type in floods in the search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: And I said search bar. So it's Chuck's turn for
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: a listener mail.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Josh, I'm gonna call this request from Adam to save birds.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Before the STA Bowl?
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: Request of what?
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Request from Adam to help save birds before the bowl? Okay,
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: he has a thing going on and it ends at
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: this Stiper Bowl.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: I got you, so we want to get it out.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: I come to humbly beg a favor. Guys.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: No, he knows how to get our attention.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: He said he could apply us with beer if his
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: loyalty is not sufficient.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: In this case it is sufficient.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: I don't know beer can be mail.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: My NGO's fundraiser needs a plug. We are the Alamos
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: wild Lands Alliance and the research director there and we
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: are trying to create a reserve and a rare habitat.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: We also do research and education in a remote part
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: of north west Mexico. We run a biological field station
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: called the Navopasia Field Station.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: You can check us out on Facebook and our.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Website is www dot Alamos Wildlands dot org and that
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: is a Lams Wildlands dot org and it's a US
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: based nonprofit. It's very small, run by volunteers mostly, he says.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Run by birds, Run by birds.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: And for the second in a row, they are doing
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: a fundraiser called the bird Athon, and it's like a walkathon,
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: but instead of miles walked, people get pledges for the
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: amount of.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Bird species they see in a given day. My team
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: had one hundred and sixty three last year. Wow, one day.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: It's pretty good.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: It is a fun way to raise money for conservation
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: in a place that is unique and rare, that runs
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: from January thirtieth to February fifth. We often have a
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Super Bird Saturday when most people go out the day
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: before the Bowl, which is a football game played here
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: in the United.
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: States, American football, not European not soccer or rest of
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: the world football.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, more teams are always welcome. We have at least
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: eight now, though some have yet to register, and anyone
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: can start their own team or just donate. It's really
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: easy and it's on our website. The money goes to
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: a good cause. Is texts deductible. And here's something sad. Josh,
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: the environment and animals only get about two percent of
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: charitable giving worldwide.
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: I have to be honest, I'm surprised that the environment
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: and animals. He says, yeah, so humans get the other
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: ninety eight percent.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: I guess, so which is?
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: You know, charitable giving is good no matter what, but
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: forget about.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Our free creatures.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: It is pretty low attached or some pictures of my team,
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: the Lucha Doors.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: We wear masks and capes while birding, so it.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Kind of ties in nicely totally with the podcast we
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: did on Mexican wrestling.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Which was not this one.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: Can we post that picture?
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: I'll check and then he is his wife's team. It's
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: called the Booby, named after the blue footed booby.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: A common bird that we have done here.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: Regardless, guys, thanks to both of you for helping to
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: make being smart cool again. So please go check out
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: www Dot Alamos Wildlands dot org and sign up and
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: sponsor someone for this burdithon Superbird Saturday.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Get a team together, help these guys out.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: That's awesome. Tweet tweet Did you mention the s Bowl?
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: Did you use the actual name? Because I think we
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: can get.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: In trouble for that for saying seool.
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: I don't think you should say it. Really, yeah, we'll
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: find out.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: How can we get in trouble?
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: Like apparently they actively sue people who use that word
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: like even mentioning it. Like remember the Simpsons they never
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: mentioned what where they were going when they went to
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: that huge football game and Dolly Parton the episode that
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: Dolly Parton.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Was on, Now I have the halftime of my life exactly. Yeah, yeah,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: you're right doing all right? So we can just beat
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: that out and people be like smole, what's that right?
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: Exactly? Nice? Okay, Well, if you have an NGO that
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: you think we'd like to plug. We're happy to do
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: that from time to time. You can tweet to us,
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: especially if it's a bird ENNGO at s y SK podcast.
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: You can send us some sort of message on Facebook
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: at Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know, and
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: of iHeartRadio.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.