Stopping Storms From Creating Dangerous Urban Geysers

hubie writes:

Stopping Storms from Creating Dangerous Urban Geysers:

During intense rainstorms, residents of urban areas rely on stormwater sewers to keep streets and homes from flooding. But in some cases, air pockets in sewers combine with fast-moving water to produce waterspouts that can reach dozens of feet high and last for several minutes. These so-called storm geysers can flood the surrounding area, cause damage to nearby structures, injure bystanders, and compromise drainage pipes.

In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Sichuan University, Ningbo University, University of Alberta, and Hohai University developed a computational model of stormwater piping to study storm geysers. They used this model to understand why storm geysers form, what conditions tend to make them worse, and what city planners can do to prevent them from occurring.

Perhaps the biggest cause of storm geysers is poor city planning. With extreme weather events becoming more common due to climate change, cities can often find themselves unprepared for massive amounts of rain. Growing cities are especially vulnerable. Small cities have small drainage pipes, but new streets and neighborhoods result in added runoff, and those small pipes may not be able to handle the increased volume.

[...] The authors say the best cure for a storm geyser is bigger pipes.

"The most effective preventive measure for newly planned drainage pipelines is to increase the pipeline diameter and improve system design, which reduces the likelihood of full-flow conditions and eliminates storm geysers," said Zhang.

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