The Great Flood of 8/4/2009

While here in Frankfort, my wife called to let me know that the University of Louisville was closed due to severe flooding. This flooding happened to 31 counties, including Franklin, which just so happens to be where Frankfort is. Ironically, I am in Frankfort studying flood control methods.

Naturally, this appealed to me, and once I got home I looked up some pictures of the damage. It's amazing how destructively beautiful nature is. Fortunately, but sadly, I was not in Louisville, so I did not get to see the flooding first-hand, but I have found some pictures that show the results of a large rainfall event over a short period of time. One site I've read says there was 18-20 feet of water on campus, with the central region being under 4 feet of water. People had to be rescued by boats even. Tragically, the main public library was flooded, and tens-of-thousands of books were destroyed. Cost estimates are over a million dollars in damages.

I couldn't find the exact rainfall data, but somewhere around 5 to 7 inches of precipitation fell. Since Louisville is predominately impervious (lots of concrete and rooftops), stormwater mitigation is a serious thing in the city. There was so much standing water pressure that there are reports of manhole coverings exploding from the streets.
Finally, a word of advice to those of you that happen to ever come upon a flooded street. DO NOT attempt to cross it. I know you hear this all the time, but still people try, and people still die, too. Just a little bit of water on a roadway can move quickly and have enough momentum to turn dangerous.

By the way, the top picture is from UofL's campus, the second looks to be some road somewhere, and the bottom picture is of Churchill Downs, the home of the Kentucky Derby. For more amazing pictures and info on this flood, check out the Weather Channel, or follow here. There are some pretty wild and crazy photos and videos out there.

A final thought. During my last semester at UofL, I took a Green Engineering course, where we discussed how poorly the campus drains and how much problems it has with a simple, low frequency rain event. In this class we came up with ideas for displacing some of the stormwater runoff. It would be nice if those methods were implemented, but I'm not sure how practical they would have stood up to this storm. My understanding is that the event was around a 40-year event, so I shudder to imagine what a 100-year flood would look like.

Sorry for the frenzy of writing this. It's terribly exciting, but I'm terribly exhausted. Thankfully, I found out this neat function in Blogger that allows you to specify a date and time for when to post, which I have implemented these past three days. In fact, if you read this between the hours of 8am and 4pm EST, then I will be in class and you will have experienced first-hand Google Robot Posting.

Stay warm, folks, and dry-ish. Remember, Don't drown, turn around.

On Posting (Part 2)

I'm really too tired to post tonight, but I feel obliged to, as per yesterday's post. Today's been very busy for me. I spent around 5 hours in our stream today, doing general land surveying and walking the creek. We worked just downstream the confluence of the streams and then upstream until the road.

View Larger Map
Then I went to Kroger and picked up some things for Valentines Day. Then my landlord came o'er and fixed our water in the bathroom. Then Heroes came on. Then I bathed. Now I sit and think about all the stuff I have to do tomorrow, like get up really early and dress business appropriate, since I'm going to a Career Information meeting and meeting a potential employer. And I finished reading Brisingr tonight, too, which was a relief. Later, either tonight or tomorrow, I am going to start on Mistborn. I'm thinking tomorrow's post may be more coherent and will probably be about my thoughts on Christopher Paolini's book I just finished reading. Stay away from the green peppers, folks; they'll get you every time.

Stream & Wetland Restoration

This semester I am taking a Stream & Wetland Restoration class. In it, we focus on a local watershed and work on restoring streams to their natural conditions, or a condition that resembles natural. Last Monday, MLK day, the temperature was around 28 degrees F, and the previous days had been the coldest in Kentucky history for several years back. We had to perform a basic pebble count on the stream on that day. A pebble count allows the engineer to see how the stream is transporting sediment and rocks down the system. To perform the test, a riffle of a stream is selected. Using a grid approach, a number of rocks/pebbles are collected and the diameter is measured. The diameter must be not the largest or smallest of the rock, but the mid size diameter. For our lab, 400 pebbles were collected.

The water was so cold that after 5 or 6 pebbles were collected, our hands were numb and feeling was impossible. We had to stick our bare hands into the frigid waters repeatedly and measure the diameter. Then we would classify the rock (silt, sand, pebble, cobble, boulder) and pitch it in the opposite direction. There was also large sections of the stream with inch+ thickness of ice on it, which we traversed on and broke to collect rocks. It was reminiscent of being a child, playing on ice and snow. Extremely cold and numbing, but fun.

The class looks to be informative, and most of the time should be spent out on the stream we are working on. We'll be dealing with bank erosion problems, unnatural cuts and irregular meanders, and who knows what else. I think the class will be exciting, but I can't wait until it warms up a bit.