Monday, June 23, 2008
Weather columnist Kevin Myatt: Iowa flood recalls '85 flood here
Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.
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The recent flooding in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had me thinking about what a similar disaster would look like in Roanoke.
Based on the 2000 census, the two cities are similar in size. Cedar Rapids' central city population is about 120,000, its metropolitan area population is about 192,000. The city of Roanoke's population is 95,000; its metro area has 235,000.
Each city has a fairly shallow namesake river flowing through it. The Cedar River's flood stage is 12 feet; the Roanoke River's flood stage is 10 feet.
During the recent historic flooding that displaced as many as 24,000 in Cedar Rapids, the Cedar River crested at 31.1 feet, or 19.1 feet above flood stage.
During the infamous Flood of 1985, the Roanoke River crested at 23.4 feet, or 13.4 feet above flood stage.
For all of those who remember the heartache and chaos caused by the 1985 flood, which killed 10 people in the Roanoke Valley, imagine how much worse it could have been if the water had been 5.7 feet deeper, or roughly the height of an average-sized person.
That's not a perfect comparison, as it doesn't take into account details of local hydrology and geography affecting each river. But it does put Cedar Rapids' catastrophe in some perspective.
It all seems so far removed from us as dry, crackly forest underbrush keeps burning by the hundreds of acres on mountains around us. But there will be another Roanoke River flood someday, hopefully not as severe as the most recent one on the Cedar River.
