NASA Satellites Capture ‘River Tsunamis’ Surging Hundreds of Miles Inland

Giant ocean waves engulfing tiny boats are the stuff of nightmares—but it turns out rivers also form flood waves that are nothing to sneeze at. That’s according to researchers from Virginia Tech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who measured three large flood waves, also called flow waves, in U.S. rivers via satellite data. They claim their approach is the first of its kind, and could inform flood mitigation and warning efforts. While tides and wind drive ocean waves, intense rain or snowmelt can trigger river waves, which consist of water surges that can span hundreds of miles. River waves are crucial to the movement of nutrients and organisms, but can also be dangerous. “Analyzing flow wave dynamics to answer questions such as, ‘How high could water levels rise during a flow wave?’ and ‘How fast do flow waves travel?’ has important implications for human safety, infrastructure design and management, and fluvial ecology,” the researchers wrote in a study published May 14 ... Read full article.