Disaster! 10 Cities Most at Risk

[Snowguy716]

How about Saint Louis? They are susceptible to tornadoes, spring flooding, and earth quakes. An earth quake in the early 20th century was so powerful that it caused the Mississippi River to flow backwards for a time, flooding communities... when the ground set itself straight again, the torrent of water flowed south and devastated even more communities.

Up here where I live we have a lot more small natural disasters, and few large ones. Tornados are common in Minnesota but are generally smaller and do not affect large cities. (They tend to avoid large buildings like they avoid hills, etc.)

We're more at threat from paralyzing cold/spring flooding from heavy winter snows. Most recently, Grand Forks, North Dakota on the ND/MN border recorded their "100 year" flood event and then their 1000 year flood event the next year (96 and 97 respectively). That winter there were 4 feet of lying snow on the ground in the Red River valley region... a region so flat that when the river crested at 55 feet (from a normal summer flow of around 12 feet), it was 18 miles wide in some places. The region is so flat and windswept that the 4 feet of snow on the ground buried houses in western Minnesota, and many school districts closed for over a month because they couldn't clear roads. Some of the snow drifts lasted into June. Basically, it snowed and snowed and snowed all through November, December, and January... took a break with nasty cold in February, and then picked up again in March. The last week of March temperatures hit the 50s for a week and melted all the snow at once causing major floods in small rivers. Then on April 5th, as the river was cresting south of Fargo, a blizzard came thorugh dumping 2 inches of rain and up to 2 feet of snow over the region and then temperatures dipped below 0 freezing everything solid.

The situation in Grand Forks was much like in New Orleans this past summer. The entire city flooded and then large sections of the downtown area burned down... but here's the good news: Grand Forks has kept their spirits up and rebuilt.. and with new dykes and redevelopment of hte river front to allow more natural flooding near the river, Grand Forks thrives today. This offers lots of hope for New Orleans, if we do it right.

Minneapolis has also dealt with some bad flooding on the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. Most recently flooding occured in 1993, 1997, and 2001. The worst flooding for those rivers, however, was the summer of 1966. So, these are things that are largely predictable and people can evacuate and prepare ahead of time (unlike earth quakes, etc.)

[hood]

Also don't forget the astroid that has 20% chance of hitting Earth in 2036: B612 and NASA Dialog on how to Deal with Apophis

[satalac]

don't forget to add the rest of the cities left on ashley simpson's tour.

[cheeriokid61]

So, in short summary, everyone's going to die!

[cameronm]

You guy's should check out the weather channel on Sundays at night to watch It could happen tommorrow tv show. It explains how New York City or any major city in the United States will look like after an unthinkable disaster.

[EastSideResider]

don't forget to add the rest of the cities left on ashley simpson's tour.

HAHA!

[dpbaker]

don't forget to add the rest of the cities left on ashley simpson's tour.