Rainfall Flood | From the Skies to the Streets
A rainfall flood is a dangerous and common weather phenomenon. Learn more about heavy rainfall and flooding here…
Rainfall flooding is the most common type of flooding, with many communities experiencing minor levels of it frequently. Many towns have had severe cases where buildings are washed away if the rain is hard enough. If a place is close to a body of water like a lake or river, around the same elevation as it, it is more prone to flooding. In this post, we will cover what factors go into how severe a flood is, how dangerous is it, and more.
This post is all about the rainfall flooding.
A Swift Rainfall Flood
How Much Rain Causes Flooding?
The first section of this post will be about how much rain causes flooding. This answer varies from place to place, with some places flooding easily at 1 inch and others only flooding sometimes at 3. For example, during monsoon season in the Southwest, 1 inch of rain is enough, but if you live in a place where the ground absorbs lots of water, then 1 inch isn’t enough.
Rainfall Flood Prone Areas
Many regions around the world are very prone to rainfall flooding. If an area has a monsoon season, like India or the Southwest, the floods by rain are widespread in the monsoon season. As mentioned before, an area is also more prone to floods if it is in a valley or next to a large body of water like a river or lake. Some cities in these places don’t have good techniques to make the water flow elsewhere either, which can result in situations like in the image above.
Rainfall Flooding Cause
When you saw the title of this section, you may have gone “That’s obvious, Rain!”, which makes sense. But this section is about what weather patterns make an area have heavy rainfall and flooding. One well-known one is the atmospheric river. The atmospheric river weather pattern brings massive amounts of rain to West Coast states like California. Low-pressure systems are a common cause of these systems of these events further inland, and more specifically extra-tropical cyclones.
Rainfall Flood Damage
The damage that a rainfall flood can be very severe. One event that caused a large amount of damage was the 2022 Yellowstone floods. This flood was brought by a large amount of storms that held enough rain to create record-breaking floods in the area. Bridges were washed away and so were roads, as seen above. The park service had to temporarily close the park from all of the rainfall damage. Learn more about flood damage here.
Rainfall Floods Climate Change
The last section of this post will be about how climate change will impact rainfall floods. Climate change can bring more precipitation to some parts of the U.S. that already get some high rain amounts. Other parts can get the same or even lower amount of rain depending on their location. One large factor that goes into this is the sea surface temperature, which gives strength to strong low pressure weather events like hurricanes and extra-tropical cyclones.
