ABSTRACT
The water resources of Poland are rather scarce in a per capita context, among the lowest in Europe. Floods remain the main natural disaster in Poland, and are of considerable concern. The River Vistula, flowing entirely within the territory of Poland, is the longest river draining to the Baltic Sea, and is known colloquially as “the queen of Polish rivers”. Poland has a moderate climate, transitional between oceanic and continental climates. It is influenced by air masses of the Northern Hemisphere from all directions – maritime and continental, polar and tropical. Floods in Poland can be classified according to their spatial extent. During regional floods, large areas of the country are flooded. In contrast to some other countries of Europe with a less violent history, in Poland it is very difficult to obtain long time series of homogeneous observation records of meteorological and hydrological variables. The catastrophic floods were a result of a superposition of two or more factors.
