If the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, where does the rain in Houston fall...?

Well. Turns out that they're calling Harvey a 1000 year flood for the area between Houston and Beaumont.

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S
 
A number of club members were flooded and are working on getting back into their homes. Some of their trees were underwater for a significant period of time. Brings up the question - what to do? Anything? Remember, it's not just fresh, clean water - it had lots of bad stuff in it like sludge and sewage. Really nasty. The trees in their garages were just completely submerged for 24 hours or so. The ones outside or tied to the benches were swept around the yard by the flood and suffered all sorts of physical insults on top of the flooding.

This is completely outside of my experience. Anything the community here can advise that I can pass on to our club membership to help their bonsai trees recover?

Scott
 
I've had trees submerged for many hours (probably not 24, though) when I left some in a low spot in the yard and we had a day of heavy rain. They didn't seem to suffer any ill effects. However, that was clean water, not the toxic stew that you are dealing with down there. Maybe the solution would be to just run clean water through the pots for a while, like you would do if you had a major salt (fertilizer) build up in the soil.
 
Hose the trees down with a mix of blue dawn soap and water. the soil as well. it should help wash and clean out a lot of crap left on them. It breaks down oil, etc... and safe. After the soap bath I would rinse them with clean water.

It may be surprising but I think many of the trees will make it fine. I'm definitely rooting for the people AND the trees to be alright!

Prayers are with you Scott and everyone else there. Looks like we might get hit this coming week with Irma.
 
Don't worry, global warming is fake news.

If it ever happens again, the president will replace the weather report with an episode of his wonderful TV programs that will enhance the intelligence of the commoner, we all want to learn, don't we? :D

He will make Texas dry again, no doubt about that :confused:

(I love country music too, it- doesn't have to be stupid)

 
markyscott said:
they're calling Harvey a 1000 year flood
Click to expand...
Yeah, we had 2 of those in 2 years here....basically destroyed a small town, after the second one, most business bailed for good....they just finished rebuilding from the first flood when the second one came.

I have a chuckle whenever I see things like "1000 year flood" like they have records dating back that far....they can just go to the book and see that every thousand years, this happened going back hundreds of millenia....lol! Gimme a break.
 
just.wing.it said:
Yeah, we had 2 of those in 2 years here....basically destroyed a small town, after the second one, most business bailed for good....they just finished rebuilding from the first flood when the second one came.

I have a chuckle whenever I see things like "1000 year flood" like they have records dating back that far....they can just go to the book and see that every thousand years, this happened going back hundreds of millenia....lol! Gimme a break.
Click to expand...

That’s not how they calculate it, JWI. The term “1000-year flood” means that, statistically speaking, a flood of that magnitude (or greater) has a 1 in 1000 (0.1%) chance of occurring in any given year.

The probabilities are calculated statistically. Consider a single river that generally flows at 1000 cfs. After a rain it (like today) it will be much higher. After a few days without rain it will be much lower. The USGS gauges all the rivers around here and they have tons of statistical data on the flow rates for each river. All they do is make a histogram of flow rates for the river and see where a given flood falls on that distribution. Let’s say a “50 year flood” is associated with 10,000 cfs. That just means that 10,000 cfs comes in at a percent rank of 2% based on the statistical flow rates of the river. During a “100 year flood”, the river might flow at 15,000 cfs - it would plot on the 1% rank. A “1000 year flood” just falls at the 0.1% rank. It’s just a statistical calculation. The more data that they have for a river, the better they can calculate the probability of an unusual event. That’s why the numbers keep changing when one of these things happen.

Scott
 
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