Weather

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Unit 1
More about floods and thunderstorms

The weather can be particularly awful, if it rains heavily or heavy storms rip through the country.

Heavy rainfall and floods cause enormous damage world-wide and cost more human lives than we might expect. Sudden rainfall, which changes small brooks into violent wide rivers, turned the Elbe and Moldowa rivers into big lakes in summer 2002. Wide areas in Eastern Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland were flooded. People were in danger and could not be warned in adequate time. Storm tides threaten the coasts and undercut the cliffs causing landslides. In this unit we look at several sorts of flooding, the damage they cause, and why they occur. We also explain how a thunderstorm is formed.

About this page:

author: Elmar Uherek
language reviewing: Sally Taylor, University of Leeds
last update: 2005-07-15