As a result of the river's low storage capacity in the catchment area in the upper reaches of the Wiese and the combination of sudden snow melts during the föhn and heavy rainfall, flooding used to occur regularly in the past causing great damage to the population, property and the countryside. The increasingly severe floods of the second half of the 19th century were put down by contemporary writers to the ruthless deforestation of woods in the Kleine and Grosse Wiese valleys and the desolate and worthless areas on the Feldberg and Belchen, which were clearly unable to retain the amount of water that they had been able to in the past.