floods

May 4, 2009 - May 6, 2009 | Anchorage, Alaska | Event Web site

Meeting topics will include meeting future water-supply needs, drought and flood co-management, ecosystem impacts, and water-management challenges.

Trends in the frequency of precipitation events in which precipitation over a 7-day duration exceeds a 1-year recurrence interval for each particular climate division. Blue circles are positive trends, red circles are negative trends. The magnitude of the trend is linearly proportional to the radius of the circle.

Meteorological and climatological flood-producing events operate at varying temporal and spatial scales.

The remnants of Hurricane Octave helped flood Tucson’s Santa Cruz River, shown here at St. Mary’s Bridge, on October 2, 1983. This storm was one of four remnant named tropical storms that affected the Southwest in 1983.

Despite the Southwest’s arid climate, rivers in the region are not immune to overflowing their banks and flooding city streets, farms, and desert. Climate change likely will increase both flash floods and regional floods, making the region’s growing population more susceptible to loses of life and property.

The Southwest is particularly vulnerable to climate change because of its aridity, and the region is projected to become even drier in decades to come.

Drizzly winter rains and raucous summer thunderstorms differ in how they affect the Southwest’s climate and landscape. This section describes some of those differences in the context of the types of storms that generate them and the resulting impact on the landscape and water resources: