Houston is experiencing its third ‘500-year’ flood in 3 years

Re:Houston is experiencing its third ‘500-year’ flood in 3 y... by TallGuyShort on Tuesday August 29, 2017 @05:16PM (#15127667)

I actually hadn't thought about that aspect at all. I was thinking more along the lines of 'more development -> more stuff to get destroyed', but that's kinda backwards anyway because a flood would probably wipe out a bigger portion of infrastructure hundreds of years ago than it does now.

But faster run-off sounds like a good thing to prevent the flood - are you saying that more development upstream means more flooding downstream because all the run-off arrives with much lower latency and higher bandwidth, to use IT terms?

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Re:Houston is experiencing its third ‘500-year’ flood in 3 y... by pixl97 on Tuesday August 29, 2017 @06:22PM (#15128144)

Yes, lower latency is a pretty good example.

Also people tend to drain marshes and any other shallow stagnant waterways to avoid mosquitoes having breeding places. It can save us from terrible diseases, but it can make flooding worse.

[ Parent | on HN ]