In case you don’t get enough storm stories from the Weather Channel’s “When Weather Changed History” series, the National Archives has produced a boxed set of DVDs, available at your local Sam’s Club or Costco:

Washington, DC…The National Archives announces the release of Natural Disasters, the first collection in a new series of boxed DVD sets entitled Our Planet Earth. Produced in partnership with Topics Entertainment, Our Planet Earth will focus on the preservation and conservation of our natural resources and the protection of our environment. The series will feature motion pictures created by the Bureau of Land Management, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Selected by film archivists from the National Archives vast motion picture holdings, Natural Disasters chronicles some of the world’s most devastating earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires, and volcanoes—random acts of nature that have altered the world’s economy, threatened and disrupted millions of earth’s inhabitants, cost thousands of human lives, and at times changed the course of history. Also recounted are the heroic efforts of relief workers to return cities to normal and the attempts of local governments to better prepare for future events.

Included among the gripping documentaries are:

• Loma Prieta Earthquake (1989), an examination of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake that destroyed the Oakland Bay Bridge and the Cypress Street Viaduct and disrupted the World Series.
• Day of the Killer Tornadoes (1978), the story of 147 deadly tornadoes that swept across Ohio, Kentucky, Alabama, and other states in a 24-hour period.
• A Hurricane Called Betsy (1966), which recounts Hurricane Betsy’s 3,000-mile trip from the Caribbean through the Bahamas, Miami, the Florida Keys, and along the Gulf Coast to New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
• Eruption of Mt. St. Helens (1980–81), featuring reenactments, personal recollections, and narration of the historic eruption of Mt. St. Helens.
• The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936), a classic film about the Dust Bowl that includes a climactic dust storm sequence in which day suddenly becomes night and the landscape changes from moment to moment.

Seeing the tag line, “24 Intense Films” gave me pause – I don’t think it’ll be on the Christmas list for our 7-year old budding meteorologist, much as he would probably enjoy them….

Here’s my favorite quote from the story:

“To what extent did you have a disaster plan to follow?

We would never have anticipated this disaster. This particular water occurrence was unprecedented. My belief, and it’s probably going to catch me a lot of flak in library circles: you have really good people assigned to high level of responsibility, coordinate well, and that you buy insurance.

You have a phone tree, right?

Yes, but any kind of disaster planning we would’ve had would’ve told us what to do with different materials and the vehicles as water was rising and, in reality, what we had was 15 minutes to save everybody’s life. That doesn’t give you time to reflect on and refer to your disaster plan. We’re not in hurricane territory, we’re not in tornado territory, and this site has not been under water since 1937. The thing I’d do going forward is to make sure evacuation is up to date, for human safety, and it was and it is. getting people out was Job Number 1.”

Basically, his “lessons learned”: Hire good people. Thankfully, it seems they have good insurance coverage; they are “confident” they will be back in the space by the end of the year. New computers are already en route!

Flickr has a good set of images here.

(*Sorry – I couldn’t resist the INXS reference opportunity – I also was/am a huge Proclaimers and Runrig fan. I went to high school in Scotland, what can I say?)

For me, the best link is an extensive bibliography of scholarly scientific resources relating to the flood, compiled by the NDSU Library. But perhaps the most sobering is an article entitled, “What Makes the Red River of the North so Vulnerable to Flooding?” It’s this kind of detailed study that is going to help avert catastrophic floods in the future, and it’s good to see someone doing the hard work these studies require.

Wishing everyone in Fargo a dry day, and fortitude as they clean up and rebuild.

USGS ND Flood map

Over 100 USGS Gaging Stations are linked through the North Dakota Water Science Center homepage.

The Flood Tracking Charts for North Dakota and Selected Tributaries can be used by local citizens and emergency response personnel to record the latest river stage and predicted flood-crest information. By comparing the current stage (water-surface elevation above some datum) and predicted flood crest to the recorded peak stages or previous floods, emergency response personnel and residents can make informed decisions concerning the threat to life and property. One statement of caution: the surface of flowing water is not flat but has a slope. Therefore, water-surface elevations along a river might not be the same as the river stages at the gaging stations.

The level of detail embedded in this is atonishing. For each gaging station, current hydrographs, a station site map, and current flow information are available, in addition to historic data and current flood stage information. One station I looked at randomly had information going all the way back to 1956.

5123400 WILLOW CREEK NR WILLOW CITY, ND