{"id":3413,"date":"2018-12-13T09:38:55","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T08:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/?p=3413"},"modified":"2018-12-13T09:38:55","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T08:38:55","slug":"deadly-flash-floods-in-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/deadly-flash-floods-in-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Deadly flash floods in 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In our recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/major-hailstorms-of-2018-across-europe\/\">blog post<\/a> about very large hail events of 2018, we mentioned that hail produces large damage. However, it is rarely deadly, in contrast to <\/span><b>flash floods<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Based on the data from\u00a0 the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eswd.eu\">European Severe Weather Database<\/a>, by 12 December, flash floods have killed <\/span><b>152 <\/b>people<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> across Europe, parts of northern Africa and the Middle-East.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While most of the heavy rainfall events were reported in central Europe, the most deadly flash floods occurred in the <\/span><b>Mediterranean area<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, including the 5 events with the highest number of fatalities, ranging from 12 to 21.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3414\" style=\"width: 1718px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/floodmap_3.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3414\" class=\"wp-image-3414 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/floodmap_3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1708\" height=\"1125\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/floodmap_3.png 1708w, https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/floodmap_3-300x198.png 300w, https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/floodmap_3-768x506.png 768w, https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/floodmap_3-1024x674.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/floodmap_3-455x300.png 455w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1708px) 100vw, 1708px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3414\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Heavy rain and deadly flash flood reports across Europe in 2018. 5 events with the highest number of fatalities are indicated.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Who was at most risk during the flash floods? Out of 35 events with more than 1 fatality we identified 16 that involved vehicles being swept away by the floods. Because not all reports include detailed description of the fatality circumstances, the ratio of events including fatalities in cars is likely even higher. The deadliest flash flood also involved a vehicle. In a tragic event on\u00a0<\/span><b>25 October<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a flash flood swept away a bus in <\/span><b>Jordan<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, killing <\/span><b>21<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> persons onboard.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Besides vehicles, several events involved a group of hikers being swept away by flash floods in the narrow canyons. The first such event occurred in <\/span><b>Israel<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, on <\/span><b>5 May<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and resulted in\u00a0<\/span><b>10<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> fatalities. On <\/span><b>\u00a01 August<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,<\/span><b> 5 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">hikers were killed on Corsica and <\/span><b>10<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> hikers drowned in the Pollino national park in Italy on <\/span><b>20 August<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This shows that data from the ESWD can be used not only to identify the areas with the highest severe weather incidence, but also to compare the impacts of severe weather phenomena or to find out which groups of people are at most risk in a given severe weather type. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In our recent blog post about very large hail events of 2018, we mentioned that hail produces large damage. However, it is rarely deadly, in contrast to flash floods. Based on the data from\u00a0 the European Severe Weather Database, by &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/deadly-flash-floods-in-2018\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3413"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3419,"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413\/revisions\/3419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}