I didn't perceive it as a black swan at all. It was more like having more snow in the winter than we are used to and therefore having roofs collapse. — yes — there was more snow than usual, but — no — it was still in tune with what would have been reasonable to assume.
Our roofs didn't collapse because of an unfantomable amount of snow, our roofs collapse because they were poorly built, badly maintained and all the money went into the fences to our neighbours instead (partly because we hate them, partly because we want to impress them).
For this kind of event, you can see the pressure building up well in advance. Often, it's not clear what's going to break, but at some point, something has to give. A real "black swan" event was Hurricane Sandy. Flooding of Lower Manhattan was not expected.
It's like saying that a valley was flooded because a dam collapsed; It's a correct description of what happened, but it doesn't explain why it happened. It would be more useful to say, for instance, that the flood happened because the central government reduced funding and the local council deferred maintenance on the dam because they considered it a low priority, resulting in a critical failure not being identified and corrected, which in turn resulted in the dam collapsing.
No, I don’t think so. In that case it would be just as accurate to describe it as roof cave in disaster, as I am sure a great deal of people died when their roofs fell down on them.
Ian's flooding zone was pretty populated. And it was tracking for a direct hit on Tampa for awhile (except for the Euro model, which was right all along), which would have been quite a flooding disaster.
You are right about the roofing issue though, like said below even a damaged roof can destroy your house. Honestly I forgot about this because flooding was such a thing for some acquaintances.
>it will be more water on a hillside than many of those hillsides can bear
A good example was the Oso mudslide. Nearby Darrington gets 80 inches a year. (Twice as much as Seattle!) March 2014, a storm drops 3 to 5 inches on soil saturated by six months of rain, and a hill lets go. Killed 43 people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Oso_mudslide
> The fact that such a major event was only scary for a week seems like a good thing?
It was scary for a week because they were down to a single remaining point of failure (Abbotsford pumping station). If that station failed (which was quite possible, due to rising floodwaters), the Fraser river would have flooded the valley, and Highway 1 would have been... Gone. Not 'flooded for a week', but 'flooded permanently'.
On the other side of the city, mudslides destroyed bridges on the Coquihalla highway - which will take at least 2 months to be made passable - and things won't be back to normal for another year.
Had the pumping station failed, and the highway flooded, it's entirely unclear what anyone could have done in that situation to keep Chilliwack supplied over the next two months.
Once-in-a-century is averaged over many centuries. Sometimes things cluster.
In 2002 parts of Europe were hit by a once-in-a-century flood [1].
In 2013 pretty much the same parts were hit by a flood that in many places were worse than the 2002 flood [2]. For instance, in Passau (on Donau), the waters were the highest since 1501 [3].
Yeah - we had 10cm of rain in 36h, and the mill is on a, uh, dynamic mountain river. It surged from its normal winter level by seven meters - our car disappeared entirely - it's nowhere downstream of us that we've been able to see, so it's probably in the Douro. The drainage basin is pretty small, which means that the water level is heavily influenced by the weather in the immediate area - in summer, it dries to a trickle, in the winter, if there's intense rain on already saturated soil, it can surge pretty impressively.
This winter the worst we had was 3cm in 24h, and the river stayed a good meter below the level of the floor of the mill, so we now have a better understanding of what kind of weather conditions constitute a danger - the rain we had at the end of 2019 was the worst in 70 years or more.
The mill itself is ancient, and built out of enormous boulders, each weighing tens of tonnes, so the structure was entirely unscathed despite being battered to hell by both the force of the water and the debris that came down - everything from trees to trash to trailers. The roof got pretty badly torn up, so we've had a tarp over it for the last year, as we intend to take it off and put a storey on top this year anyway. Overall, while it was a crisis (we waded out in thigh deep water in torrential rain, and had to walk to the nearest village as our car was already gone, cats screaming in their bag... all a bit traumatic tbh), we've turned it into an opportunity - it spurred us into building the cabin, it's shown us what the river can do and what we should therefore plan for with our projects (for instance, I moved our entire battery bank a few meters further uphill), and the damage to the roof has encouraged us to think about building upwards. It's also shown us what we can bounce back from - lost a lot of posessions, and hosing down the house and everything in it was pretty miserable. Oh, and it happened a few days before Christmas!
The cabin is about 30 meters uphill, and about half a kilometer away, on an old agricultural terrace - nightmare doing the groundwork, and getting materials in, but it's so worth it - spring is just beginning here, and I'm sat in the unfinished structure right now, watching birds flit between the treetops at window level, listening to the stream chuckling in its bed - very different to the perennial roar of the weir at the mill.
It's a challenging lifestyle, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.
It would be interesting to learn what mistakes were made on a process level here.
Were warnings from people who predicted flooding ignored for some reason, like warning of concerned NASA engineers about the safety of the Space Shuttle? Or did no one honestly predict flooding in a region covered by snow despite global warming?
There could be some valuable lessons here for participants in Long Now and similar projects.
I mean...I don't disagree about context-free doom, but unless you work from home and had nothing to do today, you were likely affected by this in some way.
Basically the entire subway and commuter rail serving millions of people was barely functional all day long, there was massive gridlock traffic because the highways flooded, many hours later three major road links out of the city (the Saw Mill, Hutchinson, and Bronx River parkways) remain closed to traffic, and there's widespread water damage to people's property–down the block from me cars floated out of the street and onto the sidewalk! Not great!
> He said he still considers it a “unique event” and doesn’t think it’s likely those homes will flood again any time soon.
Of all the things that came across in this article as disastrous this really caught me. This event wasn't "unique," something similar happened nearly 30 years ago.
The question that needs to be asked is: when will this happen again?
> It looks like the Twin Cities (MSP) have a large amount of flooding given how backed up the work crews and insurance adjusters are.
I'm from ND originally and remember that flood, and yeah, it floods here in the cities a lot. This was more due to the super: zomg cold+snow, to... zomg its 40F and the entire streets a river cause nobody cleans out the drains in the fall prior to winter so that thaws are ok.
I'll just say in St Paul, rapid thaws means almost everyones basements flood. Even on the hills, its insane how easily it happens.
Wha? Becuase stuff falls off your roof and kills them? How does that compare to tiles falling off your roof and killing people? This doesn't sound like a real thing.
Hydro storage is quite literaly a drop in the ocean, get it.
Our roofs didn't collapse because of an unfantomable amount of snow, our roofs collapse because they were poorly built, badly maintained and all the money went into the fences to our neighbours instead (partly because we hate them, partly because we want to impress them).
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