My little girl is 7 and just isn’t wrapping her head around this and I need to find a better way to explain this.
She is so so smart because she saw the coverage of Helene, and heard 17″ and hot confused.
I told her the water runs from the high places to the low places, but then she asked why the water doesn’t leave the low places and why is it still flooded.
I’m bad at dumbing things down.
In: Planetary Science
17 inches doesn’t just mean ‘on the streets’ it is EVERYWHERE. Your house, parking garage, etc. The rain doesn’t discriminate.
As far as why it doesn’t leave, pipes can only have so much water in them. They are ‘gravity powered’ so it isn’t like your sewage system is ‘pulling’ the water. Lawns and such can also pull in so much water so fast and once it is ‘full’ it is full.
Now add in that flooding tends to cause other problems to occur as well. Someone’s pipes may burst (and with no ability to access the shutoff valve there is now more water constantly being pumped out to add to the amount already there) and a fire hydrant being hit by a car/other thing swept away and hey now there is A LOT of extra water being added until someone figures out how to stop it
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