Flood Links

Floods are sometimes easier to predict than most natural disasters, but are no less devastating to the people caught in them. In fact, floods have caused more loss of life and property in the United States than all other natural disasters combined. Pouring rains and massive snowmelts are newsworthy on their own, but make the front page when they cause the waters to rise.

Try these Planet Diary Flood Activities:

• Hurricane Katrina's Flood Impact
  View satellite photos to explore the impact of floods from Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast states.
• Monitoring River Levels
  Discover how to find current and historical river flow and flood information. You will also find out which rivers and streams are currently at-risk of flooding.
• Floods From Tsunamis
  You'll explore tsunami wave data to understand the power of floods unleashed by the Indonesian tsunami of December 26th, 2004. Along the way, you'll take a close look at satellite images of damages from the floods.

National Weather Service Flood Warnings
View an interactive map of flood and other weather-related warnings for the United States.

Resources: Floods and Droughts
USA Today has current information on floods and droughts.

Worsening Floods
One possible consequence of global climate change is an increase in floods around the world. Greenpeace has put together a timeline of floods during the 1990s. Do these incidents indicate that flooding is worse now than ever before? You be the judge.

Climate Change and River Flooding
In 1994, Greenpeace commissioned a study on the relationship between climate change and increased river flooding. Read more about why Greenpeace thinks flooding is likely to increase.

U.S. Water News Online
Learn about issues concerning water. This site includes information on water use, water conservation, hydroelectric power, and water quality. Its articles are updated every month, and it has a long list of water Web sites.

National Weather Service Warnings Area
These flood and flash flood warnings are up to the minute. The NWS also has a monthly summary of flood warnings.

Surf Your Watershed
What is the name of your watershed? Which counties share it? Is it mostly urban or forested? This EPA resource is most useful for water quality investigations, but it can also be useful for flood investigations.

Coping with Floods
What should you do before and after a flood? This site lists pages with useful advice from North Dakota State University.

Climate Visualization (CLIMVIS)
Get colorful maps of U.S. and global temperatures, precipitation, windspeed, and more from this site. It is not up to the minute, but some of the data from the National Climatic Data Center goes back to the 1940s!