Jump to content

15 Trillion gallons


Wilbur

Recommended Posts

One estimate has the final total at around 21 trillion gallons, which would be enough water to cover the entire contiguous 48 states with about .25" of water.

To put in in comparison to Katrina, the amount of water Texas received would have made the flood waters 128 feet deep in New Orleans.

The amount of water would be equal to 9 days of output from the Mississippi river.

The National Weather Service had to add a new color to their rainfall maps to accommodate Harvey.

If the total for any area hits 60 inches, it will be a one in a million years event.  Only Wilbur, Maddmaxx and Roadrunner are old enough to remember that far back.

I have seen rescue vehicles going past my office tower on the way to Houston.

Dallas is already receiving evacuees and the entire metropolitan area is coming together to create facilities to accommodate them.

 

 

  • Awesome 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I completed my IIT graduate research at the U. of Toronto in 1975, I became aware the the U.S. had smaller gallons.

I wonder if that originally came about as a business cartel effort to trick people, just like almost ALL the major brands of spaghetti sauce (Prego, Ragu, etc.) have uniformly reduced the size of their jars from 32 oz. to 28 oz. to 26 oz. and now to 24 oz.  I now have to buy an 8 oz. can of tomato sauce to add to the brand names so I have enough sauce for a pound of pasta.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, MickinMD said:

When I completed my IIT graduate research at the U. of Toronto in 1975, I became aware the the U.S. had smaller gallons.

I wonder if that originally came about as a business cartel effort to trick people, just like almost ALL the major brands of spaghetti sauce (Prego, Ragu, etc.) have uniformly reduced the size of their jars from 32 oz. to 28 oz. to 26 oz. and now to 24 oz.  I now have to buy an 8 oz. can of tomato sauce to add to the brand names so I have enough sauce for a pound of pasta.

So if we simply increase gallon size, can we decrease the impact of the flooding?

Only 2 million Wilbur gallons of rain fell sounds better to me.

  • Heart 2
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, jsharr said:

One estimate has the final total at around 21 trillion gallons, which would be enough water to cover the entire contiguous 48 states with about .25" of water.

My rough calculation indicates that a quarter inch of water over the 48 contiguous states (about 3.12 million square miles) would be achieved with just 15 trillion gallons of water. 21 trillion gallons should cover the 48 states in 0.35 inches of water.

Of course, I could be wrong.   :)

  • Confused 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, Road Runner said:

My rough calculation indicates that a quarter inch of water over the 48 contiguous states (about 3.12 million square miles) would be achieved with just 15 trillion gallons of water. 21 trillion gallons should cover the 48 states in 0.35 inches of water.

Of course, I could be wrong.   :)

I was sort of guessing as the article said .17" inches but I was not sure if that was based on 9 trillion or 15 trillion gallons.  I guess it was the 9 trillion figure.  Anyway, it is a metric crap ton of water.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

37 minutes ago, jsharr said:

I was sort of guessing as the article said .17" inches but I was not sure if that was based on 9 trillion or 15 trillion gallons.  I guess it was the 9 trillion figure.  Anyway, it is a metric crap ton of water.

3.12 million square miles equals 87 trillion square feet.  87 trillion cubic feet of water equals 650 trillion gallons of water.  Since 0.25 inches of water would represent 0.0208 cubic feet of water per square foot, the total gallons needed to cover the 48 states in 0.25 inches of water would be just 13.6 trillion gallons.  0.17 inches would equate to a little over 9 trillion gallons.  21 trillion gallons would result in almost 0.4 inches of rain over the entire country.  

An amazing catastrophic event, in any case.  Almost biblical.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, MickinMD said:

When I completed my IIT graduate research at the U. of Toronto in 1975, I became aware the the U.S. had smaller gallons.

I wonder if that originally came about as a business cartel effort to trick people, just like almost ALL the major brands of spaghetti sauce (Prego, Ragu, etc.) have uniformly reduced the size of their jars from 32 oz. to 28 oz. to 26 oz. and now to 24 oz.  I now have to buy an 8 oz. can of tomato sauce to add to the brand names so I have enough sauce for a pound of pasta.

Can you convert 21 trillion US cheater cartel gallons of rain into jars of Prego and / or Ragu for us?  Also, how much pasta are we going to need?

  • Heart 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...