The real story behind that viral flood video from last week is more complicated than people think

I live near the creek that flooded in that video everyone shared on Twitter the one where the car gets swept away. People are calling it a freak storm or blaming the city for bad drains. But I talked to my neighbor who's been here 20 years and he said this creek always does this after about 3 inches of rain in under an hour. What got me is nobody mentions the new housing development up the hill that paved over a big field that used to soak up all that water. I checked the county records and that project got approved back in 2021 with zero flood impact study. So is this really a weather story or a land use story? Has anyone else seen local news skip over the backstory like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

ruby6595d agoRising Star

...and that's exactly what bugs me about the whole thing. I live about five miles from that same creek and watched the water rise from my backyard. The news kept saying "unprecedented" but every old timer in the neighborhood knew exactly what was coming. You hit the nail on the head with that housing development thing. I did some digging too and found out the developers got a variance from the county planning board because they argued the old field was mostly weeds and didn't serve any real purpose. Did your neighbor happen to mention if that creek ever flooded bad like this before they paved that hillside? I'm trying to figure out if this is just storm of the century stuff or straight up poor planning.

abby_martinez5d ago

Old timers know because they paid attention. That creek flooded in '87 and again in '98 before any of those houses were there. Everyone I talk to says the same thing - it was bad before but never came up into yards like this. Developers called that field "useless weeds" but it was doing its job soaking up water for decades. Now it's all pavement and runoff funneling straight into those basements.

baker.christopher5d ago

Ngl, that's straight up poor planning.

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