Anyone remember a storm like this unformed as its hitting landfall yet still doing damage. This ones odd. Maybe thats why they can't get a handle on it.
intentionally flooding somebody (no matter how cheap they bought the property) without a better reason than “maybe” would be the problem. those flow rates and numbers have fluctuated over those 100 years based on how much pressure is pushing against the levees themselves. lever failure is a much, MUCH larger concern than over topping. a levee failure would mean an absolute shit ton more water pouring into whatever area was unfortunate enough to be the location of the break. overtopping would not bring near the volume of water. which would not be near as catastrophic to that area. so no, you don’t send 15’-20’ at somebody just in case the river MAYBE gets higher than any human has ever seen it, and then MAYBE a storm passes in the exact right spot at the exact right angle to push water up the river enough for 2’-3’ to pour over the top. it’s not linear. so even though we’re at record height, the river still isn’t flowing at as high of a rate as it was in 2011 when they did open it. i’ve read the numbers before, but don’t remember where. it’s so many cubic feet per minute (might be per second) when they open it.
You are actually making my point for me continuously. Waiting for failure is an archaic form of reactive management. They have realtime measurements throughout the valley that they did not have 100 yrs ago so why wait to increase the flow rate gradually? More importantly, they can decrease it as well. You keep saying maybe and flooding other people but you are using the old method based on levee failure. People up/down stream are getting tired of waiting till its too late approach.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Louisiana_floods According to the wiki it was a no name storm that got little attention leading up to it.
yeah, because levee failure is an absolute worst case possible. avoiding that is top priority. period. also, the spillways are NOT designed to prevent overtopping. they are designed to relieve pressure. pressure that is measure by the amount of cubic feet of water that flows over a period of time. not river depth. you’re wanting to open a spillway and intentionally fuck people over when it’s unwarranted. juuuuuuust in case an event that to this date has still never happened in the history of the levees (them overtopping) might possibly maybe could almost happen. never in history has all of the events we’re witnessing at this exact moment all transpired at the same time. and with an all time record high river, and storm taking the exact right (wrong) track and a potentially huge amount of rainfall, they STILL are not expecting the levees to overtop. meaning they still have had no reason to intentionally open a spillway and flood someone’s property.
