Santa Maria, RIO GRANDE DO SUL— On the evening of April 29, Jean Paolo Gomes Minella, a hydrologist at the Federal University of Santa Maria in southern Brazil headed to his river monitoring station an hour’s drive away from his home. It was raining, so water would be trickling into the Guarda-Mor River from all around the watershed, and he wanted to be there to measure the sediments filtering in. “We live like frogs,” Minella says, noting how his team springs into action whenever rain is forecast — most of the time. Uncharacteristically, his team had skipped the last three days of downpours, so he was anxious not to miss the fourth opportunity to collect data. Little did he know that the rains he was chasing would leave an unprecedented trail of destruction and indelible trauma. After an hour or so of data collection, at midnight, the floodwaters came. As he stood in chest-high water, Minella realized he would potentially be the only person in the world able to capture the data as the flood happened. All across Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state, rains saturated the land. Creeks, tributaries and rivers spilled over. After three days, on May 2, all that hydrological excess would march eastward into Porto Alegre, the state capital, and cause the worst flood to have ever hit the state. Much of the infrastructure across Rio Grande do Sul was damaged during the floods. Months later, some of the destruction, such as this collapsed bridge, have…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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