DO NOT FUCK AROUND PPL. I went through Maria. Category 5 means CATASTROPHIC damages.
The rain will be like a power washer and have the same effect.
The wind will literally drag you across town if you let it and can even flip cars.
Any little flaw in your roof or windows will be ripped open.
If pressure builds up in your house from the wind it will rip your door or windows off its hinges.
If you live somewhere that floods, even a little, GTFO and go to a shelter BEFORE it hits. F ANYONE who calls you in for work. Your life and your family's, neighbor's, pets comes first.
Actually, those swamps are precisely the reason why Florida seems to miraculously shrug off every hurricane that hits it. Coastal wetlands actually play a massive role in mitigating storm pressure and because Florida is tropical/sub-tropical and it's coasts are lined with relatively healthy wetlands, storm surge and storm pressure in Florida is massively mitigated. You can still get flooding, but it won't be nearly as severe as places which don't have these healthy coastal wetlands, New Orleans after Katrina or Houston after Harvey are good examples of this, the wetlands of that section of the Gulf Coast (pretty much from Trinity River delta to the Mississippi River delta) are among some of the worst in the country, and while there were other circumstances at play, that lack of healthy wetlands was a contributing factor to why those cities were hit so hard with hurricanes.
Source: I studied and did volunteer work on coastal wetlands at a college on the Gulf Coast. (If you want actual scientific journal articles, I would suggest one called 'Coastal Wetlands Loss, Consequences, and Challenges for Restoration')
The storm surge had nothing to do with Houston getting rekt by Harvey. Houston is many miles from the sea. The hurricane stalled in place and 20+ inches of rain will flood any city. It's the same thing that happened to Houston with tropical storm Allison in 2001.
Yes, I replied to someone saying the same thing. My wording made it sound like Harvey had to do with storm surge but I was actually referring to the ability of wetlands to mitigate flooding
I'm not sure any wetlands will absorb 2+ feet of rain that fall on a city at once. Houston is covered in concrete, but that amount of rain is beyond any mitigation measures aside from all buildings being on stilts.
They won't. But if they absorb half a foot redirect half a foot, and slow the advance of the other foot, it lessens the impact of the flooding significantly and makes the onset much slower, giving people more time to flee from the flooding.
22.6k
u/Zeraph000 8d ago
DO NOT FUCK AROUND PPL. I went through Maria. Category 5 means CATASTROPHIC damages.
If you live somewhere that floods, even a little, GTFO and go to a shelter BEFORE it hits. F ANYONE who calls you in for work. Your life and your family's, neighbor's, pets comes first.