Has the Coloosahatchee river ever flooded and caused damage (Cape Coral: homes, areas)

[LifeIsGood01]

to area homes within a few blocks of it?

[rikoshaprl]

CC is only about 55 years old so "ever" is a short time. You can bet that with the right hrricane surge the pink areas will flood.
http://leegis.leegov.com/FTPData/PDF.../FIRM/FIRM.pdf

[don1945]

I don't know if it ever flooded, but I have spoken to people who were here when all the water was sucked out of it by a hurricane. They said it was so drained you could jump across the remaining water from one side to the other.

I know it sounds impossible, but they claimed to have been there and done that.

Don

[LifeIsGood01]

Originally Posted by rikoshaprl

CC is only about 55 years old so "ever" is a short time. You can bet that with the right hrricane surge the pink areas will flood.
http://leegis.leegov.com/FTPData/PDF.../FIRM/FIRM.pdf

thanks for the info.

[LifeIsGood01]

Originally Posted by don1945

I don't know if it ever flooded, but I have spoken to people who were here when all the water was sucked out of it by a hurricane. They said it was so drained you could jump across the remaining water from one side to the other.

I know it sounds impossible, but they claimed to have been there and done that.

Don

Interesting, maybe the hurricane sucked up the water to use as fuel, I don't know how they work, but it's better than flooding, I know all that has to come back down as rain, but it's better than the river overflowing and flooding homes,

[Compression]

Originally Posted by so954

Interesting, maybe the hurricane sucked up the water to use as fuel, I don't know how they work, but it's better than flooding, I know all that has to come back down as rain, but it's better than the river overflowing and flooding homes,

No, the phenomena is called, among other things, wind set up.......

It can be positive or negative. It literally depends on which way the wind is blowing. As a hurricane comes in the wind can be onshore, pushing water against the shoreline, causing the water to rise over it's normal place on the coastline.......that's called "surge". One can also find themselves on the side of the storm where the wind is blowing OFFshore, pushing the water out to sea. That was what happened for a portion of the storm during Hurricane Donna, 1960, where most of the water in the Caloosahatchee was sucked out to sea by the wind.

A hurricane isn't necessary to see this in action. A stiff westerly wind, coinciding with a full, or new moon high tide, in the spring or fall can cause minor coastal flooding in some lower lying portions of Lee county.

Hardly ever anything catastrophic however.


CN.......

[don1945]

I've seen it happen on a smaller scale. One day my Son and I were fishing up by Redfish Pass in his boat and when we went in we were in 7 feet of water. There was a storm approaching and within an hour we were sitting in 2-3 feet of water and bumping the outdrive all the way out to the channel. Then, we went to Cape Harbor for lunch and the water was so low in the canal we had to climb way up to the dock to get out of the boat.

The highest I have ever seen the water was during Charlie when the water came up over our dock in Cape Coral and was about 3 feet higher than the dock. Wind can have strange effects on water, it can either suck it away or blow it in, depending on the direction.

Don