If you're thinking of hurricanes (and you may not be), the location is far enough away from the coast that they wouldn't be a significant problem.

If you've not paid attention to the recent hurricane damages to the US, it wasn't just coastal cities that were hammered. Lots of places "far enough away from the coast" say lots of flooding. A hurricane doesn't just evaporate. The hurricane reverses the process back to Tropical Storm, Depression, etc while continuing to bring lots of rain minus all that wind

But why would we think Meta hadn’t assessed that particular risk?

I'm assuming you're thinking about Helene. That was a very unusual situation that had a lot to do with local topography and geology on top of a very unusual weather situation (ground-saturating rains in the week prior to a hurricane).

This area hasn't been underwater in a meaningful way since the 1927 flood of the Mississippi.

Do you think these 100 year events are going to occur more or less frequently now?

Does it matter what I think?

Any situation that floods that area is going to be well beyond 100-year floods, likely beyond 1000-year, and (like the 1927 flood) predicated on catastrophic levee failures that result in the Mississippi being over 100 miles wide.

Is it possible? Of course. Is it likely? No. Would there be much bigger issues than a server farm being offline? Yes.

The worst-case scenario from a storm that hits locally (which, e.g., the 1927 flood was absolutely not a consequence of - it was water from upstream, which climate change will weaken because of decreased snowmelt) is like Harvey over Houston (similar terrain). But this is much farther inland and could not replenish itself from the Gulf.

That said, it is in the middle of nowhere.

Looks like it's surrounded by ponds to contain potential flooding. And it's apparently getting 3 new power plants.

> While Meta has a non-binding promise to build more renewable energy, the Louisiana Legislature passed a new law that adds natural gas to the definition of green energy, allowing Zuckerberg and others to count Entergy’s gas turbines as “green.”

This means it isn't securities fraud when Meta tries to meet "climate commitments" due to the greenwashing of fossil gas generation by the state of Louisiana. Louisiana is a low regulation jurisdiction that doesn't care if most of the state ends up a Superfund site, so it is ideal to colocate data centers that are going to burn up a bunch of fossil gas there over their lifetime (when they are unwelcome elsewhere).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley

https://www.propublica.org/article/toxmap-poison-in-the-air

https://www.propublica.org/article/cancer-alley-louisiana-ep...

https://www.propublica.org/article/welcome-to-cancer-alley-w...

While I like solar & wind, when oil is drilled, natural gas is often burned off at the drill site. So if it is going to be burned, might as well make electrify from it.

"World Bank is urging energy firms to gather the gas and sell it to businesses and consumers.... Companies can use the gas in mobile electricity generating stations, to power their oil drilling sites, or as a fuel in petrochemical plants."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63051458

https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/gasflaringreduction/ga...

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cvawx7/e...

As long as it is fossil gas that would've otherwise been flared or not captured at all, I strongly agree.

And people say blood sacrifices have ended in the modern world.

A major Mississippi River flood could drown the site, but generally I’d think the risk level is fairly low.

It’s north of the Old River/Morganza flood control system. I think this would have to fail first in order for the Meta site to be in danger.

Also, if the New Madrid fault went off again, I think you’d kiss this site goodbye. But if that happened you’d have about a million higher priority concerns than a stupid data center.

Far enough away from the coast... so far.

Most DCs have SLAs with energy companies and have redundant sources from independent plants, not to mention generators and batteries.