Whenever I read stories of people drowning in floods, it seems there was only a foot of rain or less. I can see how this would be extremely destructive but how does water up to your neck and higher occur?
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For an example of how a foot of rain can become ten feet of floodwater, think about a city street. Most of the area is taken up by buildings, with occasional gaps of streets. When the rain falls, most of it’s going to be falling on the roofs of those buildings, but it will flow off and into the lower ground of the street. If there’s just three square feet of roof for every square foot of road ( and that’s probably a conservative estimate for a lot of places) then that’s already four feet of floodwater that will end up on the road. Add in hills and the like, as well as rivers spilling their banks with fast flowing currents, and that’s how floodwaters can get so high and dangerous
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