How does 10 inches of rainfall cause extreme flooding like what we are seeing in Kentucky?
In: 9091
Consider a box , 1 metre high, 1 metre wide, 1 metre deep. Now fill it with water. That’s a cubic metre of water, 1000 litres. Do you think you could lift it? Doesn’t sound like much right? Wrong. One litre weighs 1kg. That box will weigh around half as much as an average car, a metric tonne to be precise.
Now also consider what happens when a river bank fails and even a few thousand cubic metres of water are released, maybe only a few cm deep, but it’ll do so much damage. This is why you see bridges being slowly destroyed by flood waters (not even considering the debris inherent when floods sweep across the land).
Now consider what you’ve asked. 10 inches of water, across an entire region. That’s what I’d like to call a metric fuck tonne of water, it must have been mind bendingly heavy.
That’s me rambling a bit, but how about a video? [Here’s Richard Hammond crushing a car with 4 cubic metres of water while talking about exactly what you’re asking about](https://youtu.be/93nBQQyHDhc)
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