Flood

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Flood (disambiguation).

Contemporary picture of the flood that struck the North Sea coast of Germany and Denmark in October 1634.

People seeking refuge from flood in Java. ca. 18651876.

Flooding of a creek due to heavy monsoonal rain and high tide in Darwin,Northern Territory, Australia.
Jeddah Flood, covering King Abdullah Street in Saudi Arabia.

Flooding near Key West, Florida, United States from Hurricane Wilma's storm surgein October 2005.

Flash flooding caused by heavy rain falling in a short amount of time.

Dozens of villages were inundated when rain pushed the rivers of northwesternBangladesh over their banks in early October
2005. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onNASAs Terra satellite captured the top image of the
flooded Ghaghat and Atrai Rivers on October 12, 2005. The deep blue of the rivers is spread across the countryside in the
flood image.

A flood is an overflow of water that submerges land. [1] The European Union (EU) Floods Directive defines a
flood as a covering by water of land not normally covered by water.[2] In the sense of "flowing water", the word
may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Flooding may result from the volume of water within a body of
water, such as a river or lake, which overflows or breaks levees, with the result that some of the water escapes
its usual boundaries,[3] or may be due to accumulation of rainwater on saturated ground in an areal flood.

While the size of a lake or other body of water will vary with seasonal changes in precipitation and snow melt, it
is not a significant flood unless such escapes of water endanger land areas used by man like a village, city or
other inhabited area.

Floods can also occur in rivers, when flow exceeds the capacity of the river channel, particularly at bends or
meanders. Floods often cause damage to homes and businesses if they are placed in natural flood plains of
rivers. While flood damage can be virtually eliminated by moving away from rivers and other bodies of water,
since time out of mind, people have lived and worked by the water to seek sustenance and capitalize on the
gains of cheap and easy travel and commerce by being near water. That humans continue to inhabit areas
threatened by flood damage is evidence that the perceived value of living near the water exceeds the cost of
repeated periodic flooding.

The word "flood" comes from the Old English flod, a word common to Germanic languages (compare
German Flut, Dutch vloed from the same root as is seen in flow, float; also compare with
Latin fluctus, flumen). Deluge myths are mythical stories of a great flood sent by a deity or deities to
destroycivilization as an act of divine retribution, and are featured in the mythology of many cultures.