Detroit Area Flooding - 08/11/2014

[DTWflyer]

DTWFlyer, I have heard about the buried rivers....grew up essentially on top of the Fox Creek. To your knowledge is there any issue about erosion/disintegration of whatever they are contained in? I am imagining one big culvert. What happens when that starts to crumble? Should we avoid real estate built atop these underground rivers?

It would really be cool if every town could afford to build stormwater systems that drain to rivers and lake, separate from their sewerage system. I think the GP Farms-City system did that awhile back. It is a worthwhile thing to establish more natural drainage patterns and to prevent sewage from being pumped into waterways during heavy rain.

Nothing to worry about what these rivers are contained in really. In most cases the natural waterway and drainage areas have been so altered they do not carry anywhere near the water they used to. A lot of that natural drainage has been pushed to the sewer systems. The fact of the matter is that SE Oakland County, eastern Wayne and Southern Macomb country are very flat, low-lying, and decades ago had a lot of wetland areas. The wetland areas that used to hold water are gone. Now the water runs off into sewers, but when there is too much the area acts like a big bath tub.

I would avoid real estate in low-lying areas, particularly along/near natural streams. Particularly of storing anything of value in the basement, let along making it a nice finished basement. You're bound to get bit once every 20 years or so.

Cities are trying to become compliant with the Clean Water Act, but the cost of building seperate systems in older inner ring areas would be astronomical. Literally having to rip-up every street and put in all new storm water sewers. Then the whole issue of having somewhere for it all to go. That is why cities like Birmingham or the Twelve Towns/Red Run area have built a series of underground retention basins and treatment systems to handle overflow.

Frankly this was a 100 year type of storm, nothing this regions sewer, drainage. and highway system has seen since the 1920s. Most of that stuff didn't exist at all then.

[mtburb]

A picture-taken by me, today, of what the parking lot of Meijer in Southgate looked like following yesterday. That store completely sold out of their entire cleaning supply inventory-literally.


It's a good thing it didn't get as bad as the ending of this:

[Jimaz]

HA! "A twister tore up the animal shelter. It was raining cats and dogs for awhile."

[Crumbled_pavement]

Well, I really lucked out. I saw very little flooding yesterday. I just had a longer than usual drive in to work, but avoided the vast majority of the flooding. I took Telegraph to Michigan on the way to work yesterday around 4:30 pm. There was the usual flooding in spots on Telegraph that happens after any significant rainfall, but nothing enormous. Looking at the pictures of the aftermath is amazing. I'm thankful and blessed that I didn't get caught up in any of the problems yesterday.

[MikeM]

Who was asking about the radar yesterday?

Loop from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.:

http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/radar/di...=2&duration=12

[Pam]

Channel 4 asks- are scrappers to blame?

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/d...eways/27433966

[SDCC]

No flooding, but traffic congestion is more than making up for it. Traffic, traffic and more traffic, I’m staying @ Rochester Road and Avon Road and I keep hitting major traffic as I run putter around the county.

[Zacha341]

I hate to purchase any of these water logged cars once they are recycled in the used car scene after being cosmetically fixed and dried out enough to start [[for a while). There was a time you could avoid an underwater lemon from avoiding certain states and cites. Now Michi is on the list... Great.

Hope some of you have vehicle flood insurance..........

[nain rouge]

To the person that said this was a "1 in 100 years" event, you have to start to wonder if climate change is part of the equation here. After all, we just had a "1 in 100" winter. Many parts of the country have experienced peculiar weather patterns, and it looks like Michigan is now falling in line with the broader trend.

As I mentioned earlier, I lost my car last year in a 696 flood during another "freak" storm [[notice the pattern here?). You have to think SOMEONE knew that these drainage systems were in big trouble, that we were a big storm away from carmaggedon. That officials are trying to point the fingers at scrappers is interesting. If scrappers are the real culprit, we have a way bigger problem then I thought. How long before they scrap all of our critical infrastructure?

[Hypestyles]

there needs to be more formalized regional cooperation to take care of the clean-up that affects all communities.

[Jimaz]

Who was asking about the radar yesterday?

Loop from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.:

http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/radar/di...=2&duration=12

That was me.

That confirmed my suspicion. Although the larger storm was moving toward the usual northeast, the leading-edge local winds were moving northwest because of the counterclockwise rotation about the low pressure center.

That is such a classic explanation of an unusual wind direction.

Well, thank you very much, MikeM!

[MikeM]

Here was the Low at 11 p.m. Monday night:

[MikeM]

Last night, the Clinton River at Fraser broke its record level set in 1947. Look how rapidly it rose:

[adamjab19]

I don't know how I was so lucky yesterday. I live in Berkley and I am pretty sure I am one of few houses in a couple,block radius that does not have furniture and carpet on the curb tonight. All I had was a six foot ring about 2 inches deep of water around my drain in the basement. My neighbors had at least 3 to 4 feet in their basements. My sump pump was running like crazy but that wouldn't have prevented the storm line from backing up. The only other thing is is that I live far enough from the catch basin on my street, I suppose I'm more elevated.....


The drive home from work was surreal though. I work 2 miles from my house and it took me 35 mins to get home and that included leaving my car a few streets from my house because the road were impassable. The buildings along Woodward looked like breakers on a coast with water sloshing up against them. Rose land park cemetery literally had an 8 inch deep river running out of its front gates. Sitting on Woodward with the water passing your car was actually kind of disorienting. I'll never forget it!

[Jimaz]

Thank you again MikeM!

[MikeM]

One more - the river flow in cubic feet/second jumped from around 200 to over 12,000 cu ft/s yesterday afternoon.

[Zacha341]

Thanks for the charts showing the extreme nature of the water rise. I was in East Dearborn this AM and right at west bound Michigan at the Evergreen curve right it was weird to see the Rouge as high as it was. So or course Hines Drive must have been toast, or shall I say mush. I wonder if Fairlane had any problems. East Dearborn had power out up thru Scheafer Rd.

[MrNittany]

Who was asking about the radar yesterday?

Loop from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.:

http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/radar/di...=2&duration=12

Thanks for the link to the radar loop! I love have documentation for events like this.


Very fascinating event from the Meteorological POV: [[1) A low pressure that is rapidly deepening [[a couple short-waves phasing together). [[2) This rapid deepening occurs as the low moves directly over the Metro area. [[3) That low pressure is not moving rapidly. [[4) This is all occurring when there is already very tropical air over the area, with dewpoints from 70 to the lower 70s. And, [[5) happening exactly in the late afternoon, when solar heating is at its maximum [[at its maximum when considering the "residual" effect; the sun is highest around 1:30 this time of year but air temp tends to peak in the 4-5 PM hour).

Remove any of those 5 elements and its heavy rain but not a historic event. I know you're a pilot and we've talked weather previously on this board: [[1) above is the real crazy element. One expects potent northern-stream short-waves in the fall, winter, and spring. But in mid-August?!?!? Very unusual!

A true "1 in 100 year" type of anomalous event.

[Hermod]

To the person that said this was a "1 in 100 years" event, you have to start to wonder if climate change is part of the equation here. After all, we just had a "1 in 100" winter. Many parts of the country have experienced peculiar weather patterns, and it looks like Michigan is now falling in line with the broader trend.

As I mentioned earlier, I lost my car last year in a 696 flood during another "freak" storm [[notice the pattern here?). You have to think SOMEONE knew that these drainage systems were in big trouble, that we were a big storm away from carmaggedon. That officials are trying to point the fingers at scrappers is interesting. If scrappers are the real culprit, we have a way bigger problem then I thought. How long before they scrap all of our critical infrastructure?

That is what everyone said when Florida got hit by four hurricanes in 2004 and then two in 2005, that climmate change was going to increase the hurricanes until the state became uninhabitable. No hurricanes since Oct 2005.

[DTWflyer]

Yes, it was a very interesting weather event and reminded me of what it was like when I endured several tropical storms/depressions when I was in the Carolinas and Virginia. Very similar to when hurricane reminants from storms that hit the Gulf Coast and were swept northeasterly across SE Michigan. Those usually dropped 1-2+ inches of rain, but over a good 12-24 hour period. Not 4-6" in 8 hours.

There is a lot of misconceptions about "pumping" as the root cause for all of the flooding. Pumps are what keeps the freeway underpasses clear of water. Pumps [[for the most part) do not operate our santiary and storm sewer system in Metro Detroit. Metro Detroit's sewer system is almost entirely a gravity-fed system. Due to topography, everything slopes downward toward Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River. All of the local collectors feed into larger interceptors, which flow to the wastewater treatment plant. Storm sewers/drains, were seperated often discharge into streams.

Yes, some of the freeway system pumps did fail - due to mechanical issues, possibly scrapping. Scrapping isn't the root cause of all the flooding like some would like you to believe. In fact, in many cases the pumps were working, but there was so much water there was nowhere to pump it to. The sewer system was so overwhelmed, water could not drain and just flowed downhill to low points.

If you draw a diagonal line across Metro Detroit from roughly Plymouth, I-696/M-10, Birmingham, through Troy, Utica, and then straight north to Romeo; that roughly matches a long-ago shoreline. Everything to the west and north of this line at one time was affected by glaciers. To the east and south, this long ago was underwater and part of lake bed. The areas under the glacier are higher ground, hills/valleys, and generally have better drainage due to more slope along the waterways. The areas to the east and south are relatively flat, used to have a lot of wetlands/swamps, and have much poorer drainage due to less slope.
An example is the Clinton River which drops about 200 feet in elevation between Pontiac and Utica. Then from Utica to Lake St. Clair drops less than 10-20 feet.

The cost to design a sewer and drainage system would be so astronomical and have so much excess capacity under normal conditions it would just be impossible to do. Do areas need improvement? Yes. Particularly the inner ring sewer systems which are only designed for 10 year type of event. Newer suburbs and systems are more like 50 year event.

I've also heard a bunch of calls for the National Guard, federal assistance, etc. Not really sure what good the National Guard would've done since the immediate danger was during the height of the storm which came on suddenly. Even then, they can't really help drain water any faster than mother nature will allow. A day or two later what would they do? They aren't going to go around and help clean out people's basements. It would be different if the water supply was compromised and there was a need to distribute water, or if people's homes were completely destroyed and they were without shelter.

What is needed is better cooperation from various state/federal groups to help provide emergency funding to repair the damaged infrastructure, clean-up the debris/trash, and to help people file claims and/or navigate the bureaucratic process with the insurance companies.

We can't even agree on funding to repair roads, which is something we all can SEE with our eyes how bad there are. Let alone try to tell people to pay for sewers and drains which literally haul away crap underground, which to most people are out of sight/out of mind.

[GPCharles]

Every home on our block in GP Park had flooded basements.

GPP separated storm from sanitary about 10 years ago. Sooo... why did our basements flood. Our floor drains [[and houses) are hooked up to the sanitary sewer. You would think that storm water shouldn't effect the sanitary sewers.

[CassTechGrad]

This picture shows the railroad underpass in Birmingham at Maple Road [[15 mile road) and Eaton, between Woodward and Coolidge around 1930. The underpass is 14 feet high and the water is almost to the top. The railroad station at the left edge of the picture is now the Big Rock Resturant. A lot of water!

[bailey]

I've also heard a bunch of calls for the National Guard, federal assistance, etc.

Fouts being the loudest among them which I found to be freaking hysterical. Fuck you teabagger, pull your city up by it's bootstraps. TAKER!

Not really sure what good the National Guard would've done since the immediate danger was during the height of the storm which came on suddenly. Even then, they can't really help drain water any faster than mother nature will allow. A day or two later what would they do? They aren't going to go around and help clean out people's basements. It would be different if the water supply was compromised and there was a need to distribute water, or if people's homes were completely destroyed and they were without shelter.

I think they could be used to augment clean up/heavy lifting of all the cars laying around. but agreed... it's not like there was mass homelessness, power outtages, or massive clean up needed.

What is needed is better cooperation from various state/federal groups to help provide emergency funding to repair the damaged infrastructure, clean-up the debris/trash, and to help people file claims and/or navigate the bureaucratic process with the insurance companies.

and it would be funny if that statement was a response to Fouts running around with his hairplugs on fire all day yesterday.

Love to help Dan, but since you're all about "pay/go" funding, it comes with a 10 cent increase to the gas tax to pay for it.

[nain rouge]

The cost to design a sewer and drainage system would be so astronomical and have so much excess capacity under normal conditions it would just be impossible to do. Do areas need improvement? Yes. Particularly the inner ring sewer systems which are only designed for 10 year type of event. Newer suburbs and systems are more like 50 year event.

It's easy to shrug this off until you get caught in a flood on a depressed freeway. It's. Not. Fun. Sure, maybe the extent of flooding seen in the most recent storm was a "1 in whatever" event, but I'm starting to think that our freeways will flood more often in the coming years. With climate change well underway, heretofore "bizarre" weather patterns will happen more often. We were banking - yet again - on everything always working out perfect.

To me, the flooding freeways is just another reason why Metro Detroit is a giant craphole of bad planning. We needed more areas like Hines Park to prevent floods, but the idiots in charge had dollar signs in their eyes. And now it's basically an unfixable problem. We made a bunch of concrete riverbed highways, and we're just hoping the floods are far enough apart that populace keeps forgetting.

Please...

[Lowell]

Thanks for the link to the radar loop! I love have documentation for events like this.


Very fascinating event from the Meteorological POV: [[1) A low pressure that is rapidly deepening [[a couple short-waves phasing together). [[2) This rapid deepening occurs as the low moves directly over the Metro area. [[3) That low pressure is not moving rapidly. [[4) This is all occurring when there is already very tropical air over the area, with dewpoints from 70 to the lower 70s. And, [[5) happening exactly in the late afternoon, when solar heating is at its maximum [[at its maximum when considering the "residual" effect; the sun is highest around 1:30 this time of year but air temp tends to peak in the 4-5 PM hour).

Remove any of those 5 elements and its heavy rain but not a historic event. I know you're a pilot and we've talked weather previously on this board: [[1) above is the real crazy element. One expects potent northern-stream short-waves in the fall, winter, and spring. But in mid-August?!?!? Very unusual!

A true "1 in 100 year" type of anomalous event.

Perfect description of a 'perfect' storm MrNittany.

Ironically I was being visited by a friend New Zealand who is retired engineer and professor of hydrology. So he got to witness a historic event and had a lot to say on the topic of risk assessment.