On 9/1/2017 3:31 PM, dpb wrote:
On 01-Sep-17 10:25 AM, Jack wrote:
...
What amazes me is how little water is around after 5 FEET of rain. If
Pgh got 5 feet of rain, everything not on a mountain top would be under
100 feet of water. We got 4 INCHES of rain in an hour once, and the
valley between my house and the next mountain got a 20 foot wall of
water that killed a bunch of people, including my uncle, when their
vehicles got washed away.
Terrain makes all the difference, indeed--we were in Lynchburg, VA, when
Camille dumped 24-30+" in 8 hours overnight in 1969 in the heart of
Nelson County in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It killed some 150-160,
liquified and washed away whole small mountains and massively changed
the landscape...but, because it's all mountainous, when the surge
passed, except in the bottoms there was virtually no standing water,
just mud and debris.
Most horrible experience of my life doing recovery work in the aftermath...
For sure. My wife's uncle lived in a valley, the same valley where my
uncle drowned when his car washed away in a flash flood. The water
filled his basement, and 3 feet in his first floor. A chest of drawers
in his basement had all the drawers filled perfectly smooth to the top
with mud. All the electric outlets which looked fine, were packed
perfectly smooth with the mud when you took off the cover plates. His
yard had at least 2 feet of mud and debris covering his grass and
garden. It was a real mess, everything stunk to high heaven, and took an
incredible amount of work to get back to normal.
My uncle, who was 84 years old, had stopped to get gas. He lived on top
of a mountain, but was getting gas at the bottom of the valley. An eye
witness said he was pumping gas when suddenly the water started pouring
over the creek next to him. He jumped in his car to drive out of it,
and a huge wall of water washed him and his car 5 miles down the valley.
Took them 4 days to find him in his car, covered in mud and debris. All
from 4 lousy inches of rain.
--
Jack
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.
http://jbstein.com