Hi Rik, you are now on vacation in Slovenia, near the flood zone. What do you see from your vacation spot?

We have already been in Slovenia for two and a half weeks and currently we are staying not far from Kranj, in the north-west of the country. We are in an old farmhouse along a river in a beautiful green gorge.

“We had previously heard that a nice stream passed in front of the house. This week we were in that river and the super clear water was up to our ankles. It rained all night last night and when we looked at the river this morning, it had turned into a dark, swirling stream.

‘That makes you a little nervous. Especially when a neighbor told us we couldn’t get out of the valley because of the mudslides and flooding. That means you’re stuck in a 15 kilometer long canyon between two hillsides. Then you will look at a place with different eyes. Then you start to think if your car can still be parked, where you have parked it or how to get to the roof, if necessary.

‘The owner of the house tried to reassure us by saying that the house has been standing for 250 years and has never been flooded. When I studied in Delft I learned about dike design. They are based on events that occur once every thousand or ten thousand years. So 250 years is nothing.

‘It reminded me of the German town of Schuld in the Eifel. I was there two years ago to do a report on the huge floods. That was also a town among the mountains that had been completely swallowed by a flooding river. Here too the river has little space. There are about 100 meters between two rock walls where the river flows. The river can only grow and it is not known how much rain will fall in the next few hours.’

Were you prepared for so much rain?

‘Yesterday we were still under the sun with 26 degrees in the capital Ljubljana. The weather apps indicated a 90 to 100 percent chance of rain, but we had experienced that before. Finally a downpour fell. We didn’t really see it coming.

“It wasn’t a big storm either, but it rained a lot, for a long time. In one day as much rain fell as normally falls in a month. Then you have to remember that all that rain has to flow through a funnel.’

But what does the river look like now?

‘The river has overflowed on one side, but for now we are on the right side of the river. This afternoon the water level has also dropped slightly, but before you know it the river is rapidly rising again. It was dry for a while, but now it has started to rain. We can get out of the valley again, so if we want to leave, that’s fine.’

Read more: Three dead, including two Dutch, by “biblical” floods in Slovenia

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