Venice Floods Again, Worse! Waters Rising Each Year.

source of article from BBC News

Venice warned of serious flooding 

Venice has been put on flood alert, with Italian officials warning the sea could rise 1.6m above its normal level - the highest in almost 30 years.

Many of Venice's streets, including the famous St Mark's Square, were already under water on Monday morning.

The lagoon city in the Adriatic suffers some level of flooding for about 200 days every year.

The authorities are planning to complete building an underwater dam to protect the city by 2011.

Mayor's warning

Venice's famous St Mark's Square has suffered from floods in the past

The flooding could reach as high as 1.66m above sea level by noon (1100 GMT), Venice's Centro Maree, which monitors water levels, warned on Monday.

St Mark's Square and the rest of the city's historic centre were already submerged under almost a metre of water by late morning on Monday.

The monitoring centre said the tide was being pushed by strong winds.

Mayor Massimo Cacciari urged residents to stay at home, and warned tourists thinking of coming to Venice to "think again", Italy's Ansa news agency reported.

The last time the waters passed 1.6m was in 1979, when they reached 1.66m.

In 1966, some 5,000 people in Venice were left homeless after an even higher flood hit the city.

PS to article: The unspoken question is whether the sea level rising and more frequent flooding is caused by Global Warming. As the earth has warmed, and the north and south poles have reported massive melting of the Ice Caps, experts have warned that flooding would expand world wide. Is Venice our "picture" confirmation of this process?