I’ve lived in this city for most of my life and have seen quite a few floods, but I’d never noticed the phenomenon I saw on Saturday when the water receded enough to travel, but the derelict vehicles were still scattered about.
Manny had flat tires. And not just one that you could attribute to a puncture. All four, or three, or, it seemed, the two on the low side of the car when the driver had apparently tried to mount a curb before abandoning ship. I’d never noticed that post flood before.
Now most of the flooding I’ve seen has been the result of sustained heavy rains where water just builds up, whereas this recent bout came in a torrential downpour where streets and freeways flooded in mere minutes. The big difference is in the currents; the torrential rain produced floods with flash flood currents of scary velocity.
So my stab at an explanation at this point is the guess that these vehicles, when loaded with water, weigh much more and the combination of that plus the violent currents results in a situation where the most load bearing tires, designed to handle comfortable manuevering of a 2,000-3,000 pound vehicle are subjected to a now 12,000 pound monster jumping about, and this breaks the bead between tire and rim, and the air escapes.
But that’s pure WAG. Anybody know the straight dope on this phenomenon? Did I just imagine it?
VERY inter-est-ting