About The Great Midwest Flood of 1993

I was asked this past week to check my weather scrapbooks for information on "THE GREAT MIDWEST FLOOD OF 1993." Your wish is my command.

To my amazement, I found a whopping 78 pages compiled over a three-month period from May through early August of 1993 that featured detailed accounts and dozens of photos of the worst disaster in the Midwest for the entire 20th Century.

Following record spring and early summer rains, the Mighty Mississippi River and many of its tributaries flooded producing more than $16 billion dollars of damage in nine states by mid July of 1993. Fifty-two towns and cities flooded. More than 70,000 people were left homeless. At least 60,000 square miles of farmland in the Midwest was practically useless, buried under millions of tons of water, mud and silt.

In Des Moines, Iowa, for example, where the Raccoon River flows into the Des Moines River, which eventually spills into the Mississippi River, the waters crested on July 11, 1993, at an all-time record 14.4 feet above flood stage.

Many homes and businesses were totally washed away by these floodwaters. The Des Moines city water supply was contaminated by raw sewage and tons of debris. The city's 250,000 residents were left without potable supplies of drinking water for 12 days. Nearly a quarter of Des Moines was without electric power for more than 10 days. The entire state of Iowa was declared "a federal disaster area."

Dozens of major bridges were washed out from late June through early August of 1993. More than 5,000 barges, loaded mostly with grains and soybeans, were stuck on the Mississippi for weeks on end. The river is normally less than a mile wide, but by early July of 1993, it had grown as wide in places as seven miles! In total, according to my weather scrapbooks, more than half of the levees along the Mississippi River and its various tributaries were broken by the surging floodwaters.

In St. Paul, Minn., in late June of 1993, the downtown airport virtually "disappeared" under several feet of water. Town after town along the Mississippi River southward past severely flooded St. Louis, Mo., saw their levees break and their houses and crops washed away. The entire town of Valmeyer, Ill., was moved to higher ground some 500 feet above the level of the Mississippi.

But, things could have been even worse. After the Mississippi River flooded to its highest levels ever in April 1927, when the river in places grew to more than 80 miles wide and displaced more than 600,000 people, Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1928.

Hundreds of protective levees, reservoirs and floodwaters were built along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. This extensive system of flood control cut the 1993 flood damage by billions of dollars, this despite the highest water levels in recorded history in many areas.

While I'm on the subject of historic floods, the deadliest flood in U.S. history was at Johnstown, Pa., on May 31, 1889.

Extremely heavy rains over a two-week period following extensive snowmelt from the harsh winter of 1888-89, burst the South Fork Dam sending a massive 35-foot wall of water, about 20 million tons, into the town of Johnstown. At least 2,200 people died.

Thank God that we live in a 'weather benign' part of the country ... peaceful Camelot!

Hope that you had a GREAT EASTER. Happy Birthday, Sharon!

NORTH IDAHO WEATHER REVIEW AND LONG-RANGE OUTLOOKS

March precipitation, following an extremely dry start with a 'burning ban' in place across North Idaho, actually turned out to be double the monthly normal rainfall at a healthy 3.82 inches in Coeur d'Alene.

The normal March precipitation since daily records began in 1895 in town has been 1.94 inches. Last March, in 2014, we gauged a whopping 5.40 inches of rain, the second most in at least 120 years.

Snowfall since Feb. 2, as of this April 2 writing, had only been 0.3 inches on Player Drive, the least ever for that particular 60-day period. Our seasonal snowfall total for 2014-15 stood at 32.8 inches at 10 a.m. on Thursday, less than half of normal. All but 11.1 inches of this total was measured in January, which was actually a tad above normal at 21.7 inches (Remember the snowbanks?). Last March, we gauged 8.9 inches of the white stuff.

Believe it or not, we could see some additional snow in our part of the country during the next week to 10 days. We had 0.1 inches of snow on April 1. Our normal April snowfall for the entire month is 0.7 inches, but that would still double the Feb. 2 to April 2 meager total snowfall in town of 0.3 inches.

Longer term, with a rather chilly upper-level wind flow pattern from the Gulf of Alaska, we are expecting a slightly cooler and wetter spring of 2015 across the region followed by a warm and dry summer season between July and September under a strong, stationary ridge of high pressure.

More updates later.

On another note, I've been receiving numerous calls about my new book, "Weather and Bible Prophecy" (What Was ... What Is ... And What's To Come). The limited run and autographed copies of the first edition, will be mailed out later this week. There is also an e-book edition available on Amazon. For more information, go to www.WeatherProphecy.com.

Cliff Harris is a climatologist who writes a weekly column for The Press. His opinions are his own. Email sfharris@roadrunner.com