Flood runoff a murky soup

Ever wonder what happens when a flooding river hits the ocean? The ocean turns into a murky soup.

Check out this amazing satellite image of an Australian flood plume (right) as muddy water heads for the Great Barrier Reef.

Up close, the water looked like this (below left).

What are the effects of muddy water on the ocean? Floods are natural, and ocean ecosystems can tolerate high sediment loads now and then.

But bad things can happen when floodwaters dump too much freshwater on coral reefs, when runoff is contaminated with toxic chemicals, or when ocean ecosystems are stressed from high nutrient loads and routine sediment loading, death of vulnerable organisms like coral can be a result. Floods don't do this dirty work alone, but they can play a role.

This muddying of the ocean is not unique to massive floods like in Australia,a more modest flood near Seattle also turned the ocean into a murky brown soup (right).

Secchi disk measurements of the Seattle Bay showed 8 inches of visibility, way below average for winter, when visibility can approach 30 feet--see my Swim Around Bainbridge Island for some photos.

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Sharks patrolling flooded city streets?

Is it bull, or is it real? Could there really be sharks circling a butcher shop 30 km inland from the ocean following the Brisbane (Australia) floods?

Evidence of bull sharks swimming up flooded city streets seems real, but the stories of feeding behavior are probably over-hyped.

It's common to find fish in strange places during a flood, including in normally dry fields. Fish can invade fields to escape the fast flow in flooded and roaring river channels.

But I wouldn't waste my time worrying about being attacked by a nutter shark. They're probably just lost and confused and looking for a way back to the familiar ocean.

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Disastrous flood of toxic sludge in Hungary

A human and ecological disaster is flooding Hungary. Toxic sludge from aluminum production burst a dam and innundated towns with up to 2 meters of toxic, muddy water rushing through streets, around and in buildings, over fields, etc.

Several people are dead and many are injured, including burns from caustic chemicals. Streams and rivers are swamped, with downstream risks spreading who knows how far, including the mighty Danube River in the heart of Europe.

Video from Al Jazeera (below) captures the tragic scene.

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Get outta yer house, cuz I'm comin at ya!

I'm the big, bad climate change monster, and I bring big, bad things like really slow floods that bug the crap out of you until finally you end up with more than just wet feet (left). And this is Alaska so that water is COLD.

Newtok is an Alaskan village with 340 residents and they've given up, they're done, they're packing it in after thousands of years of withstanding some of the harshest weather conditions that humans tolerate. The residents of Newtok are moving to higher ground to escape flooding from climate change, if some way can be found to pay the estimated $130 million.

Who should pay? Newtok didn't cause the demise of their own village. But there's no way to tax the whole world based on CO2 production.

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Grand Canyon flood good for fish?

Open the taps and flood the Grand Canyon with a great torrent of water. What a great deal for fish, if only it happened more often.

It's like brushing the Grand Canyon's teeth, it's a good idea, and it's necessary for river health. If it happened more often, and was combined with the other flow patterns the river needs, then we'd be doing ecosystem-based management.

But as a one-off, this flood is more like a photo opportunity...er make that a video opportunity (who is that guy turning on the flood), and the Department of the Interior gets to claim credit for managing the river like a river. That's making some environmentalists hopping mad.

But hey, one flood is a good start, assuming it doesn't do more harm than good as some critics predict. It is nice to see the feds realizing that they have to at least pretend to do a good job running the faucets at the big dams.

So far, we know the fake flood created some new sandbars, which is good news.

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