The Hughes Borehole is an acid mine drainage site which is located near the southwest central borough of Portage, Pennsylvania in Cambria County.
The Hughes Borehole is an acid mine drainage site which is located near the southwest central borough of Portage, Pennsylvania in Cambria County.
During the 1920s, a bore hole was drilled in order to remove water from multiple coal mines in the area. That hole was subsequently capped during the 1950s. This proved to be an unsatisfactory maintenance situation, however, because, over time, pressure gradually built up beneath the cap. By the 1970s, that pressure had increased to such an extent that it caused the cap to blow off of the bore hole, releasing an estimated water volume of 800 to 3,500 gallons per minute into the surrounding area, [1] along with an estimated daily amount of 8,000 pounds of dissolved metals. [2]
This environmental disaster flooded a 6-acre (24,000 m2) area and polluted the nearby Little Conemaugh River.
Today, this devastated area has been compared with that of the Yellowstone Mud Pots. All that remains is bare flooded and yellowish red soil periodically spotted with dead standing trees. It also contains a large amount of green iron eating algae that adds to the color of the area. Efforts are currently underway in an attempt to mitigate the situation.
Hurricane Mitch was the second-deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record, only after the Great Hurricane of 1780 which had ~22,000 casualties. Hurricane Mitch caused 11,374 fatalities in Central America in 1998, including approximately 7,000 in Honduras and 3,800 in Nicaragua due to cataclysmic flooding from the slow motion of the storm. It was the deadliest hurricane in Central American history, surpassing Hurricane Fifi–Orlene, which killed slightly fewer people there in 1974.
A storm surge, storm flood, tidal surge, or storm tide is a coastal flood or tsunami-like phenomenon of rising water commonly associated with low-pressure weather systems, such as cyclones. It is measured as the rise in water level above the normal tidal level, and does not include waves.
The Johnstown Flood, sometimes referred to locally as Great Flood of 1889, occurred on Friday, May 31, 1889, after the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam, located on the south fork of the Little Conemaugh River, 14 miles (23 km) upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, United States. The dam ruptured after several days of extremely heavy rainfall, releasing 14.55 million cubic meters of water. With a volumetric flow rate that temporarily equaled the average flow rate of the Mississippi River, the flood killed 2,208 people and accounted for US$17,000,000 in damage.
The Conemaugh River is a 70-mile (110 km) long tributary of the Kiskiminetas River in Westmoreland, Indiana, and Cambria counties in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The name means 'Otter Creek', originating from the Unami-Lenape language word kwənəmuxkw 'otter'.
The Little Conemaugh River is a tributary of the Conemaugh River, approximately 30 mi (48 km) long, in western Pennsylvania in the United States.
The Stonycreek River is a tributary of the Conemaugh River, approximately 45 mi (72 km) long, in southwestern Pennsylvania in the United States.
Livermore, Pennsylvania is an abandoned town that was located on the Conemaugh River between Blairsville and Saltsburg in Derry Township, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. The town was abandoned and partially razed in the early 1950s following authorization by the Flood Control Act of 1936 and Flood Control Act of 1938 for construction of the Conemaugh Dam and Lake to prevent flooding of Pittsburgh. Much of the former town site now lies under the reservoir and floodplains.
A levee breach or levee failure is a situation where a levee fails or is intentionally breached, causing the previously contained water to flood the land behind the levee.
A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations.
The Quecreek Mine rescue took place in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, when nine miners were trapped underground for over 77 hours, from July 24 to 28, 2002. All nine miners were rescued.
A glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) is a type of outburst flood caused by the failure of a dam containing a glacial lake. An event similar to a GLOF, where a body of water contained by a glacier melts or overflows the glacier, is called a jökulhlaup. The dam can consist of glacier ice or a terminal moraine. Failure can happen due to erosion, a buildup of water pressure, an avalanche of rock or heavy snow, an earthquake or cryoseism, volcanic eruptions under the ice, or massive displacement of water in a glacial lake when a large portion of an adjacent glacier collapses into it.
A tidal river is a river whose flow and level are caused by tides. A section of a larger river affected by the tides is a tidal reach, but it may sometimes be considered a tidal river if it had been given a separate and another title name.
A blowout is the uncontrolled release of crude oil and/or natural gas from an oil well or gas well after pressure control systems have failed. Modern wells have blowout preventers intended to prevent such an occurrence. An accidental spark during a blowout can lead to a catastrophic oil or gas fire.
Deforestation during the Roman period was a result of the geographical expansion of the Roman Empire, with its increased population, large-scale agriculture, and unprecedented economic development. Roman expansion marks the transition in the Mediterranean from prehistory to the historical period beginning around 500 BC. Earth sustained a few million people 8,000 years ago and was still fundamentally pristine, but Rome drove human development in Western Europe and was a leading contributor of the deforestation around the Mediterranean.
Massies Mill is an unincorporated community in Nelson County, Virginia, United States. It is located on State Route 56 adjacent to the headwaters of the Tye River. The head of the Virginia Blue Ridge Railway, a now-defunct short line railroad, was once located at Massies Mill.
The 2007 Shandong coal mine flood was an incident that occurred on August 17, 2007 in Xintai, Shandong, People's Republic of China, when heavy rain caused a river to burst a levee creating a flood into two mine shafts. By 8:50 am (1:50GMT), the mine was inundated underwater.
The October 2008 Central America floods were caused by a series of low-pressure areas including Tropical Depression Sixteen, a short-lived tropical cyclone in the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season that made landfall in Honduras. Heavy rainfall began in early October 2008 while a tropical wave passed through the region. On October 14, Tropical Depression Sixteen formed just off the northeast coast of Honduras, and at the same time a low-pressure system was on the Pacific coast. Both systems increased rainfall across the region, although the depression dropped heavy rainfall close to its center when it moved ashore on October 15. Although Tropical Depression Sixteen quickly dissipated over land, its remnants persisted for several days. Another low-pressure area interacted with a cold front on October 21, adding to the rainfall in the region.
Major floods along the Mississippi River in April and May 2011 were among the largest and most damaging recorded along the U.S. waterway in the past century, comparable in extent to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and Great Flood of 1993. In April 2011, two large storm systems deposited record levels of rainfall on the Mississippi River drainage basin. When that additional water combined with the springtime snowmelt, the river and many of its tributaries began to swell to record levels by the beginning of May. Flooding occurred in Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Conemaugh Dam is a concrete gravity dam across the Conemaugh River, near the town of Saltsburg, in Pennsylvania. The dam was authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1936 and completed in 1952 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for flood protection on the Conemaugh, Kiskiminetas, and Allegheny Rivers. The dam is one of 16 flood control structures in the Corps' Pittsburgh District.
The Johnstown flood of 1977 was a major flood which began on the night of July 19, 1977, when heavy rainfall caused widespread flash flooding in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, United States, including the city of Johnstown and the Conemaugh Valley.
