Texas Flood Awareness
Water is essential for life, but in large enough quantities, water can destroy homes, businesses, and cause fatalities.
Learn all about the science of river flooding in the infographic below.
The term 500-year flood doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s only going to happen one time every 500 years.
Rather, it’s a reference to the probability of occurrence.
Check out this video to learn more:
www.youtube.com/watc h?v=eQFyaXDH42U
While most people associate river flooding with a stage, hydrologists focus on streamflows.
When hydrologists talk about streamflows, they use units of CFS, cubic feet per second.
1 CFS is approx. the size of a basketball.
Imagine 25,000 basketballs passing underneath a bridge every second, that’s 25,000 cfs!
We can’t talk about River Science without talking about a hydrograph.
A hydrograph shows the past, current, and forecast river stages, as well as associated streamflows at a select river gauge location.
