how to solve flood crisis

flutered

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

More trees...

Much much more trees...

especially willow, they travel underground and soak up water, please do nt plant within 50 yards of your house

flutered

twowheelsonly wrote: »

Dredging the rivers would be a good start.

Don't know how true it is but I read somewhere recently that the Shannon hadn't been dredged since the Brits left town?? If that's true it's crazy.

Some one of our overlords recently said that dredging wouldn't make enough of a difference to make it worthwhile. I call BS on that.. If you can dredge thousands and thousands of cubic metres from a riverbed then that's thousands and thousands of cubic metres that the water can flow into to ease the pressure on the land and floodplains.

When I was growing up the River Lee seemed to have a constant dredging program going on and floods were certainly a lot less frequent and a lot less widespread than now. They still happened, but they also drained off faster.

they are back dredging in the uk after many floodings, they are spending 9b this year, mostly on dredging

flutered

ScumLord wrote: »

It goes back much further than that. Humans could almost be described as river apes. We've lived beside rivers and spread throughout most continents by following rivers (Well, that's the theory now competing with the idea that we just followed the coasts).

I don't think moving away from rivers is going to help in Ireland, you can't really get all that far away from them and flooding can happen anywhere when it's raining. Irelands full of turlock's that can fill up and flood even if it's nowhere near a river.

How is dredging going to affect all the wildlife living in the river though?

one has to make tough choices according to our leader pinnochio, which come first, 10 birds nests and their familys, or 10 houses and their familys

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

Would planting more trees along hedgerows do anything? I mean, a LOT more. I doubt a lot of forests were flooded. Dredging rivers might be another idea. Then there are other methods which I imagine are a lot more damaging such as building up the banks of rivers and/or sinking rivers deeper into the river bed.

riffmongous

Just on the Dutch note, they have some of the leading hydrology institutes in the world, it's a different situation from ours but they do have the knowledge and expertise when it comes to hydrology.

riffmongous

flutered wrote: »

one has to make tough choices according to our leader pinnochio, which come first, 10 birds nests and their familys, or 10 houses and their familys

How about the angling industry? Worth a few hundred million to the economy and could be endangered by careless action

Corpus Twisty

riffmongous wrote: »

Just on the Dutch note, they have some of the leading hydrology institutes in the world, it's a different situation from ours but they do have the knowledge and expertise when it comes to hydrology.

Oh you eejit - don't you know that's just spoofery?

Zzippy

tomwaterford wrote: »

And they might actually get around to dredging the Shannon after 90 odd years like.....either way though no matter what was done....with the rain that fell...nothing would've stopped it

topmanamillion wrote: »

Are there any engineering reports on dredging the shannon? Is it even viable or is it another local anecdote that has grown legs?
From what I've read it may help in parts and in other parts it can't be done because of wildlife and environmental factors.

The Shannon only falls 30 metres for its whole length, most of which is in the last 30km. Dredging it deeper will do nothing to speed up the flow and have little effect on increasing carrying capacity.

All the talk of dredging and hard defences like levees, walls etc is missing the point. The cause of the flooding, apart from the rainfall, is in the upper catchment. Farmers are being paid to drain all their marginal land to make it productive for raising animals. If their land isn't in "agricultural condition" they don't get the grant for that land. So all the bogland, wetland, scrub and marginal land is "improved" by clearing scrub and digging drains.
Land with native scrub woodland holds 67 times more water than grassland. Left alone, these areas are our natural reservoirs that soak up rainfall and release it slowly. Drained, they just allow the water to run off straight away. Eh voila, floods. Simon Coveney, take a bow!

We need to reverse all the land drainage, recreate natural wetlands that hold water, reconnect rivers to their floodplains, and accept that some houses on those floodplains just aren't viable into the future.

topmanamillion

flutered wrote: »

one has to make tough choices according to our leader pinnochio, which come first, 10 birds nests and their familys, or 10 houses and their familys

I'd pick the wildlife. Humans are adaptable, water flora and fauna are not. If we had paid a little more respect to the environment in the past and respected floodplains and the environment we wouldn't be in the mess we are currently in.
There's also the fact in a lot of instances dredging/banking the shannon would decimate local economies which are built around fishing and leisure.
I've read a number of pro dredging argument on this thread which seem to all take a similar theme "take material from the shannon and put it on the bank to build a defence". Absolute insanity. Various species live on the basin of the shannon and likewise on its banks.
The last figure I saw was 260 homes flooded with a similar figure in danger. It would be the height of insanity to safe guard those homes to the permanent detriment of local economies and extinction of flora and fauna.

Pretzill

There aren't any simple solutions - where I live the whole area is surrounded by trees but mostly evergreen plantations which have done nothing for the environment or the water table - planted with bad drainage ditches that cause more of a run off and add to equally poorly drained land below it. I'm all for deciduous forests though.

In this part of the country there's a lot of bogland and many small farms have land that is of poor quality - yet each year they try their damnest to improve the land - but personally I think they make it worse, clearing deciduous trees, opening new and dodgy drains - damaging natural turloughs -

Then there's questionable property development allowed in areas that are really flood plains.

I do have sympathy for people who live in 200 year old houses that are only experiencing flooding in recent years - and I can understand the reluctance to relocate - if there was an incentive to relocate these people but they benefitted from an income derived from what will turn into an area of conservation, allow them to own (which they already do) basically a portion of what would become an SAC - and any monies from wildlife tourism, fisheries, jet skiing ... derived from that portion is theirs.

You can't remake Turlough's but perhaps the landscape would find a way of sorting it out - left to its own devices.

Oh and reintroduce the beaver. (I'm talking about the animal BTW )

Mountainsandh

JupiterKid wrote: »

These floods are becoming increasingly common - IMO it's a sign and consequence of global warming. This past December was the mildest and wettest on record.
.

It's tempting and natural to automatically link climate and weather, especially since the media support and propose that stance. However El Nino is responsible for the Atlantic storms, not global warming. Global warming may have a slight influence in that it might intensify the El Nino cycle, but it isn't as important as the media Sometimes portray.

black_frosch

I'll just leave this here

Flood Map : Water Level Elevation Map (Beta)

http://www.floodmap.net

Howard the Duck

We should hold a Flood Summit every year to get all the floody countries together to come up with ideas and network and we can over charge them for food and make a tidy profit.

kjl

I think we should all get out drinking straws and between all of us we will have this flooding sorted out in no time.

jmayo

Is there anything to be said for saying another mass?

riffmongous

Mountainsandh wrote: »

It's tempting and natural to automatically link climate and weather, especially since the media support and propose that stance. However El Nino is responsible for the Atlantic storms, not global warming. Global warming may have a slight influence in that it might intensify the El Nino cycle, but it isn't as important as the media Sometimes portray.

Is there proof of this?

Mountainsandh

Well, there is no definite proof of anything when it comes to climate. We know some El Ninos were very similar to this one, but do the records go back far enough to judge evolution if there is one ? We are looking at a 5 cm strip of timeline, while the timeline itself is in multiples of meters.
So no, not really proof either way.

I'm no expert, but I'm interested, and I am reading a book by a French meteorologist who explains how climate really must be assessed on a completely different time scale to weather. He illustrates this well but it would take a long time and lots of translation for me to mention his arguments here. He does have scientific, historical data references. His name is Philippe Verdier, the book is Climat Investigation. It might be translated at some stage.
He explains just what I have said above : the media, supported and encouraged by governments (at least the French government), are linking weather events and climate, because of course, climate change is a business and a political lever as well as a reality. He's not denying climate change, but he is denouncing a lot of behind the scenes politics happening around the climate change/global warming bubble.
For example how, in France, all TV and press weather presenters were called to the Prime Minister's office on several occasions, and asked to link weather events to climate change more in their broadcasts, and create a sense of drama about it. They would normally be cautious about doing this.
He was sacked from his job on one of the major French TV channels for going against the grain.

So no, I've no proof, just what this meteorologist guy says, confirmed by various articles online which all confirm that there is no definite link between the intensity of this El Nino and global warming, although it might make it slightly more intense.
I can't dig out articles I've read a while ago right now, but check out the Smithsonian, LiveScience, and similar websites as they're the ones I usually read.

Found 2 articles for you :

There is evidence that El Ninos has been changing already. Research published in January last year showed a roughly 20 percent increase in El Nino intensity over the course of the 20th century, though it didn’t specifically attribute that change to human greenhouse gas emissions.

and this :
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/global-warming-el-nino-link-stronger-but-still-not-proven-15427

The natural climate cycle known as the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) would wreak havoc even if humans weren’t warming the planet. During its El Niño phase, the Americas get floods and torrential rains while Asia suffers drought. When it swings over to the La Niña phase, it’s the opposite. But humans are warming the planet, and a report published Thursday in Science says that both phases of ENSO have become more intense over the past century, suggesting that as warming continues, ENSO may become increasingly volatile. ... it shouldn’t be taken as definitive proof of a cause-and-effect link between global warming and a more intense ENSO, cautioned lead author Kim Cobb, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, in an interview. “Our paper comes with caveats,” she said. “We see a roughly 20 percent increase in strength in the 20th century, but it could be a coincidence.”

the_pen_turner

most people are blaming the rural situation.
it has a role to play. people are draining land and removing natural flood planes and marsh land

I think a lot of the problem is the towns and villages (cities too) . everything is concrete and roofs where all the water is ran off as quick as possible . there is no area designated to hold this water
every time you put down an acre of no permeable covering you are asking the acre next door to look after that water.
do that enough and you can see where all the extra water is coming from.


even 50 years ago there was very little in the way of solid yards and drive ways . the rain soaked away where it fell in most cases.

everybody is responsible

Irish Steve

the_pen_turner wrote: »

I think a lot of the problem is the towns and villages (cities too) . everything is concrete and roofs where all the water is ran off as quick as possible . there is no area designated to hold this water
every time you put down an acre of no permeable covering you are asking the acre next door to look after that water.
do that enough and you can see where all the extra water is coming from.


even 50 years ago there was very little in the way of solid yards and drive ways . the rain soaked away where it fell in most cases.

everybody is responsible

The biggest offenders are the local authority planning departments, and the councillors that have approved insane schemes and obscene uses of land that should never have been approved.

If you visit places like Los Angeles, where they get some periods of very intense rainfall, they have drainage culverts built that are capable of carrying the flow that happens, even when there are massive areas of concrete and the like, because they know how to deal with the conditions.

We are being flooded here because our moronic planning department have allowed massive developments upstream from us, and there's been NOTHING done for 25 years to upgrade the undersized and inappropriate mixed channel and drainage culvert that was last changed in 1990. It's no wonder that there are problems as a result, but getting anything changed is a nightmare, as they're neither responsible or accountable for their decisions, regardless of how badly they screw up.

the_pen_turner

Irish Steve wrote: »

The biggest offenders are the local authority planning departments, and the councillors that have approved insane schemes and obscene uses of land that should never have been approved.

If you visit places like Los Angeles, where they get some periods of very intense rainfall, they have drainage culverts built that are capable of carrying the flow that happens, even when there are massive areas of concrete and the like, because they know how to deal with the conditions.

We are being flooded here because our moronic planning department have allowed massive developments upstream from us, and there's been NOTHING done for 25 years to upgrade the undersized and inappropriate mixed channel and drainage culvert that was last changed in 1990. It's no wonder that there are problems as a result, but getting anything changed is a nightmare, as they're neither responsible or accountable for their decisions, regardless of how badly they screw up.

I agree that we need some sort of overflow system like a culvert to take the excess . im assuming in LA you are talking about the culverts like in the terminator film.
they are part of the answer here because they will leave a lot of the eco system alone

Alcoheda

minimum price on flood water?

topmanamillion

Alcoheda wrote: »

minimum price on flood water?

Coservatively i would say in excess of E100m.
Transport department are saying E40m+ to repair roads. Water plays havoc on tarmac and any road that has had extensive water on it will be next to useless.
Another E40m for home & businesses - lost revenue and property damage,
E20m in miscellaneous for things like grants for private flood defences and possible relocations.
There's immeasurables as well like lost work and school days,cost of extra fuel to travel diverted routes, personal trauma etc.
A lot of this is guessing and no one will really knows what damage has been done until water recedes and we may be in February or beyond before that happens.

ScumLord

flutered wrote: »

one has to make tough choices according to our leader pinnochio, which come first, 10 birds nests and their familys, or 10 houses and their familys

It's not a case of ten birds or ten people. It's the ecosystem, or allowing people to do whatever the feck they like and damn the consequences.

Dredging seems to a be a short term fix with long term consequences. I think our generation will be known as the, stick a band aid on it and pass it along to the next fool generation.

Shurimgreat

I'm not a scientist but surely the main reason for flooding is that our rivers are not drawing the water away from the land fast enough. Rivers are about the only thing that can solve flooding problems, everything else is tinkering around the edges. If our politicians had the slightest backbone they would tell the EU to p*ss off and start immediately dredging stretches of the Shannon and other major rivers. Its a national emergency at this stage and our politicians are afraid to even mention dredging rivers.

Shurimgreat

ScumLord wrote: »

It's not a case of ten birds or ten people. It's the ecosystem, or allowing people to do whatever the feck they like and damn the consequences.

Dredging seems to a be a short term fix with long term consequences. I think our generation will be known as the, stick a band aid on it and pass it along to the next fool generation.

Dredging is the only solution, there is no other solution, short, medium or long term. You need to draw water off land quickly and efficiently, particularly to avoid land saturation. You also need to stop rivers over-flowing.

ScumLord

Shurimgreat wrote: »

I'm not a scientist but surely the main reason for flooding is that our rivers are not drawing the water away from the land fast enough.

Not as far as I'm aware. In a normal varied environment the land soaks up water, it's makes use of that water. Now we've striped the land bare (as far as I'm concerned Ireland is an island devastated by human habitation) and the water just runs off it as fast as it can back to the sea.

c_man

Howard the Duck wrote: »

We should hold a Flood Summit every year to get all the floody countries together to come up with ideas and network and we can over charge them for food and make a tidy profit.

Good idea. Maybe also host a conference for drought hit countries in which we promise to share the secrets of our success in the area? No refunds.

Shurimgreat

Zzippy wrote: »

The Shannon only falls 30 metres for its whole length, most of which is in the last 30km. Dredging it deeper will do nothing to speed up the flow and have little effect on increasing carrying capacity.

All the talk of dredging and hard defences like levees, walls etc is missing the point. The cause of the flooding, apart from the rainfall, is in the upper catchment. Farmers are being paid to drain all their marginal land to make it productive for raising animals. If their land isn't in "agricultural condition" they don't get the grant for that land. So all the bogland, wetland, scrub and marginal land is "improved" by clearing scrub and digging drains.
Land with native scrub woodland holds 67 times more water than grassland. Left alone, these areas are our natural reservoirs that soak up rainfall and release it slowly. Drained, they just allow the water to run off straight away. Eh voila, floods. Simon Coveney, take a bow!

We need to reverse all the land drainage, recreate natural wetlands that hold water, reconnect rivers to their floodplains, and accept that some houses on those floodplains just aren't viable into the future.

A number of towns along rivers were flooded because the river went over the defence walls. In Clonmel, the critical point is something like 3.8 meters and once it reaches 4 meters it will overflow and flood parts of the town. Its similar in Athlone and practically every town with a river passing through it.

Now if you were to dredge the river going through Clonmel and add a metre to its depth this would make a big difference. Because of volume of water, it would have to be dredged for a distance, a mile at least. But it would give the river some leeway.

eeguy

Funny thing is that no one will want to pay for any of this.

Those who get flooded won't pay because they'll think they're owed it after years of promises and hardship.
Everyone else won't pay because they don't get flooded.

eeguy

c_man wrote: »

Good idea. Maybe also host a conference for drought hit countries in which we promise to share the secrets of our success in the area? No refunds.

Once they realise how wet it is here they'll probably relocate to Portugal.

Harry Palmr

My solutions

Buy out and remove all home owners who wish to be moved to higher ground, if you refuse the chance you are on your own.
Allow flood plains to flood (crazy idea I know) Compensate farmers for loss of productive land
Plant flood plains with millions of deciduous trees
Stop cutting the central boglands.

Nothing else.

ScumLord

ScumLord wrote: »

............ Now we've striped the land bare (as far as I'm concerned Ireland is an island devastated by human habitation) and the water just runs off it as fast as it can back to the sea.

To what extent has this been done and over what sort of timeline?

ScumLord

Harry Palmr wrote: »

My solutions

Buy out and remove all home owners who wish to be moved to higher ground, if you refuse the chance you are on your own.

Apparently the powers that be don't like looking at the houses of common people, they have a policy of hiding houses in holes. I think they put the plebs in flood plains so they have something to laugh at.

Our planning in this country is a shambles. I don't see that changing any time soon, they have the most bizarre priorities.

ScumLord

Augeo wrote: »

To what extent has this been done and over what sort of timeline?

Over centuries. But we've really ramped up the pressure in the last few decades. We have no respect for the land.

Austria!

Shurimgreat wrote: »

I'm not a scientist but surely the main reason for flooding is that our rivers are not drawing the water away from the land fast enough.

If the river is flowing fast upstream then you increase the risk of flooding downstream.

yermanoffthetv

lifeandtimes wrote: »

Have a massive tea party...order in millions of kettles and billions of tea cups and teabags and drink it all away

What happens a few hours later when everyone needs to go wee wees? :eek:

Pretzill

Austria! wrote: »

If the river is flowing fast upstream then you increase the risk of flooding downstream.

True, dredging rivers is not going to solve the problem - just make the rivers faster and cause damage to natural systems, flora and fauna - and what about ground water? I live miles for any major rivers, it's ground water that's saturating the place here. The water table is high because of all the rain, bad drainage system, bad planning, damage to natural waterways etc.

The rivers are just doing what they do. Dredging them is a temporary solution.
Sure why don't we just higher all the roads near rivers - they did that in Carrick on Shannon, then some bright spark developers build a large development of apartments and shops on a flood plain - the road that was built up is still flooding.

Zzippy

Shurimgreat wrote: »

A number of towns along rivers were flooded because the river went over the defence walls. In Clonmel, the critical point is something like 3.8 meters and once it reaches 4 meters it will overflow and flood parts of the town. Its similar in Athlone and practically every town with a river passing through it.

Now if you were to dredge the river going through Clonmel and add a metre to its depth this would make a big difference. Because of volume of water, it would have to be dredged for a distance, a mile at least. But it would give the river some leeway.

What happens a mile downstream? The water rises again cos you haven't dredged there, or there isn't enough grdient there to carry away the water, and it overflows. So you flood houses downstream, or Carrick-on-Suir.

As for Athlone, deepening the river there will have zero effect, as there is almost no gradient to work with. The vast volume of water overflowing the banks is far in excess of the extra capacity you could create by deepening the river channel.

The solution is to stop the water arriving in these towns all at once, as it does now. Re-establish the wetlands upstream. Plant huge areas with native woodland. Block the drains that carry rain off the land so efficiently into the rivers. Pay farmers to manage the land to prevent floods, not in a way that exacerbates them. Soft engineering solutions on a large scale can improve the water retaining capacity of the land and slow down the runoff into the rivers so rain is released in a controlled way.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/planting-native-trees-can-help-battle-to-control-flooding-374977.html

JupiterKid

Zzippy makes some good points. Simply dredging the rivers would just move the floods elsewhere. The catchment of rivers needs to be extensively planted with trees to help prevent runoff and flooding. "Soft" engineering can be a real solution here.

Guy:Incognito

Build a time machine and go back to when the country was being settled. Give the lads technological advances so that the settlements didnt need to be on rivers.

ressem

Zzippy wrote: »

As for Athlone, deepening the river there will have zero effect, as there is almost no gradient to work with. The vast volume of water overflowing the banks is far in excess of the extra capacity you could create by deepening the river channel.

I'd guess that it would create a 1m deep basin at the bottom of the river.
Say 1 mile (1600m) x the full river width (70-100m) x 1m
less than 160,000 m^3

The river flows at 300m^3 per second at flood times. So 480 seconds worth would fill this basin, and drop Lough Ree located just upstream (with an area of 105,000,000 m^2) by a tiny amount?.

Tearing out the weir from the south of the town might have an effect, to the detriment of everyone downstream, and the river not being navigable in a dry summer.
A weir to the north of the town to keep the water in the lake area for longer?
The Athlone bypass bridge probably has this effect, judging by the flooding to it's north.

Build a time machine and go back to when the country was being settled. Give the lads technological advances so that the settlements didnt need to be on rivers.

Of course, the problem is that this isn't a major weather event, just unusual for us. 500mm over two months.

Parts of the world suffer storms that drop 1000mm in a week. Even California was once (in 1862) flooded by 1.6m of rainfall over a month when two stormfronts collided.
After the devastation, the city of Sacramento was raised by 10-15 feet.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/atmospheric-rivers-california-megaflood-lessons-from-forgotten-catastrophe/

So should housing be built away from valleys in anticipation that sooner or later a 1 in a 100 year event like this will happen?

wexandproud

by dredging the river in localised areas as above will have no effect whatsoever on the volume of water the river can clear . all it will do is create deep areas of the river which over time will fill with silt . To have any effect the whole length of the river would need to be dredged and even then , as zzippy said , unless the gradient of the river can be increased it will have little effect. The only way to help reduce the flooding is to try and control the volume of water entering the river by various methods suggested in various posts above . By controlling the volumes entering the rivers it allows them to clear the water.

Down here on the slaney , even if the flow of the river was increased in some way , there would still be the problem of when the water meets the rising tide in wexford harbour , the worst flooding in enniscorthy usually occurs at high tide as the water cannot clear

P. Breathnach

wexandproud wrote: »

...
Down here on the slaney , even if the flow of the river was increased in some way , there would still be the problem of when the water meets the rising tide in wexford harbour , the worst flooding in enniscorthy usually occurs at high tide as the water cannot clear

Perhaps we should dredge the Irish Sea to deal with that problem.

darkpagandeath

P. Breathnach wrote: »

Perhaps we should dredge the Irish Sea to deal with that problem.

Nah, Sure we set-up a utility to deal with water. Irish water to deal with Irish Water.

wexandproud

P. Breathnach wrote: »

Perhaps we should dredge the Irish Sea to deal with that problem.

fcuk me the green party would love that:D . In theory even if it could be done it would not matter at all as sea level would remain the same and that along with slow moving rivers is the problem

P. Breathnach

wexandproud wrote: »

... In theory even if it could be done it would not matter at all as sea level would remain the same and that along with slow moving rivers is the problem

Dredging is the only solution. Keep on dredging, man, and we'll eventually get it sorted.

Hold on, hold on: I forgot that we also need pumps to move the excess water around.

roverrules

If everyone turned on their taps for an hour the water in the reservoirs would be lower and there'd be space for the rainfall to go.

Harry Palmr

We should turn wind farms into giant fan blowers and keep the rain clouds out at sea.

roverrules

Harry Palmr wrote: »

We should turn wind farms into giant fan blowers and keep the rain clouds out at sea.

And if we powered the fans with hydroelectricity we could have a use for any excess water that did make it here.

Irish Steve

Yes, I know this is AH, so some levity is to be expected and accepted, but the other side of that coin is that a significant number of people across the country have had their lives permanently changed as a result of the flooding damage that is still ongoing, and it's very possible that they will never be able to get back to the houses and lives that they have built up in some cases over many years.

There are also issues that are very little to do with the weather, and everything to do with bad, or corrupt, or inappropriate planning permissions, or a total lack of proper management of the infrastructure by the relevant departments of the local authorities, and the psychological, financial and emotional trauma that these issues have caused to some people (including myself) cannot even begin to be described, and while I can fully understand the way that some people are making light of the problems, or suggesting (sometimes) humorous ways of resolving the issues, in the long term, there are some very serious and possibly expensive issues that will have to be faced by whichever party (or coalition) is in power after the forthcoming election, and some of the solutions will be life changing for some of the people affected.

Part of the problem is that we have way too many politicians that don't even see issues beyond about 4 years out from now, and many of the infrastructure issues that are now becoming much more visible and pressing are issues that will take long term planning and financial commitments for many years, and there's no political benefit in such things.

I'd like to hope that some of the things that have been said in recent weeks by some of the political people will turn out to have real meaning, and not end up as yet more weasel words with no substance behind them. What is very clear is that for some areas of the country, some significant and complex changes are going to be needed to remove the blight of flooding fears from some areas, and in the extreme, that may well mean relocating some of the estates that were inappropriately built on flood plains, and then demolishing those estates to restore the flood plain capacity that's essential to proper management of extreme weather. That will be traumatic for significant numbers of people.

I'd also like to hope that people posting here will show a little sensitivity to the real and prolonged trauma that many are still caught up in, as there is no sign yet of an early let up of the flooding, even though we're now going to hopefully see a less stormy weather outlook for a week or two, the winter and it's potential for more problems is far from over.