ATLANTA — Severe Weather Team 2 has a new tool to identify the neighborhoods that are most at risk for dangerous flooding.
Severe Weather Team 2 Chief Meteorologist Brad Nitz explains how the flood inundation mapping tool can help neighbors know when their street needs to prepare ahead of floods and storms.
Emergency teams used it to map flooding and plan for damage to infrastructure across Georgia during Hurricane Helene. Some families are still working to rebuild over a year after the multi-billion dollar disaster.
“With the alerts coming in faster and faster, we knew that the water was coming faster than we could anticipate,” said Margaret Glenn, an Atlanta homeowner.
Glenn is still waiting to return to her home after flooding from Helene caused Peachtree Creek to pour water into her basement.
When the storm hit, the stretch of Peachtree Creek running through their neighborhood crested at almost 24 feet. Her family could see the water right outside of the second floor of their home where they rode out the storm.
The flood water left her and her family stranded inside until the next morning.
“We were checking outside; we were seeing it rise,” Glenn said. “The most important thing is that my family was safe.”
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Gently flowing Georgia rivers and creeks can grow into dangerous torrents within just hours when heavy rain falls.
Peachtree Creek is monitored for flooding by river gauges that the National Weather Service uses to help communities know when flooding is imminent.
Now, data lets forecasters see projected flooding on a map before it happens, allowing meteorologists to let families know whether specific streets are at risk.
“Someone could look at a point along a river and see what graphically what that river rise was going to look like,” said Laura Belanger, a senior service hydrologist for the National Weather Service. “We’ve jumped so much farther ahead by taking that same information and trying to provide a map view of the impact area when that water rises.”
Severe Weather Team 2 uses that data when it makes a forecast to help families know when and where to watch for floods.
Forecasts like this were recently only possible for around 110,000 miles of rivers across the United States. Now new data for over 3 million miles of rivers and streams will help forecasters better understand flood impacts for neighborhoods across the country, including here in Georgia.
That expanded coverage is critical for helping more people understand when and how to prepare for flooding in their community. Now, it will help families in the future.
“I probably would not have stayed at our house knowing that we would have been trapped,” Glenn said. “We would not have stayed at out house knowing that it was going to flood to that degree.”
Whenever it floods, it’s best to stay out of the water and seek higher ground. That’s because rushing water can pose serious risks: just six inches is enough to knock someone off their feet, and one to two feet of rushing water can sweep away most vehicles.
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