(gentle music)
-: What led up to the flood of 2019 here in Nebraska?
There was an interesting
and kind of unique set of circumstances
that ultimately led to the flood
and the impacts that we experienced.
And it wasn't necessarily this intense storm event
that we experienced,
but it was the conditions that were set in place
that kinda set the stage to have this serious flooding.
We had a fairly wet and cold fall and winter and spring
kind of leading into it.
In general we were wetter than normal
and colder than normal.
And particularly in February,
the month kind of right leading up to the storm
we were wet and it was eighth coldest on record in Nebraska.
And there's significant snowfall around the state.
So the soils were at or near saturation.
They were frozen to a significant depth.
We had a fairly good amount of snow pack
that was sitting on the surface.
The rivers and streams
where there's a lot of ice sitting on it.
So when this storm system did come through
which dumped a pretty good amount of rain
in the eastern half of Nebraska,
then we had blizzard conditions and snowfall in the west.
But when we did get those several inches
of rain and relatively warm temperatures,
it was hitting a saturated and frozen soil,
so there was really nowhere for the water to go,
but to rise and to cause the flooding.
One thing that we can do after having experienced this
is evaluate where are our vulnerabilities.
That's one thing that an extreme event like this does
is it identifies where are you most vulnerable.
Where, the infrastructure, where did that fail
and where can we increase our resiliency?
So I think being best prepared as we can
is really critical moving forward.
(gentle music)