If you’ve been through the confinement trapped in disaster movies, giggling as lava improbably spills down the street or open fissures in the ground, you’ll love this. Arizona authorities have shared a video of a dark, smoky river of what looks like mud oozing down a trail in Pima County, with a caption that many of us have asked in recent months: “Who had this on your 2020 hellscape bingo card? ?
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The video, posted by Pima county officials on their social media channels, was taken on July 15 at the Cañada del Oro Wash, a drainage canal on the northern county line after a “minor storm.” That ominous-looking, fast-moving dark mass is a flash flood of mud and debris after forest fires in the region. It may sound cool in an apocalyptic way, but the video was shared with the #FloodsFollowFires hashtag as a stern warning to show how fast flash floods can appear and move.
“This video was taken on Wednesday, July 15, 2020 at the Lavado Cañada del Oro in the northern county line after a minor storm,” authorities wrote on Facebook. “Even light rain can produce devastating flash floods and mudflows, often with little warning.”
Forest fires actually increase the risk of flash floods, as the soil becomes charred, dries up, and cannot absorb water. This means that even light rain can trigger devastating floods and mudflows, which not only move quickly, but collect debris (silt, rocks, even trees) along the way, causing potential damage and destruction wherever the flow causes it. I carried. Until the soil recovers and the vegetation grows again, these runoffs can occur for years.
This flash flood is likely to be runoff from the Bighorn Fire that has been burning in the extreme west of the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tuscon, Arizona, since June 5. Named after the local Bighorn sheep, the fire has now moved southeast, toward the Catalina foothills. Believed to have been caused by lightning, it is estimated to have burned 48,377 hectares (119,541 acres) so far, but is now mostly contained.
Post-fire debris flows can also destabilize and erode dirt, roads, highways, and anything in its path as it flows downhill, so don’t look to take your own camera footage in hopes of starring in your Film disaster itself, it may be a little too real and Bruce Willis from the 90s is not around to rescue you.
