Flooding on the Mississippi River
The following will count for a participation grade – 30% of your grade. Do a good job. 
https://www.classzone.com/books/earth_science/terc/content/investigations/es1308/es1308
page05.cfm go to slide 5 for information about the flood of 1927.
Statistical Comparison
Categories
Human Loss of Life
Displaced People
Financial Loss
Structural Damage
Flooded Area
River Volume
1927 Flood
1993 Flood
Photograph Analysis
From Google images, select 3 photos each of the Great Flood of 1927 and the Flood of 1993.
Make sure the image shown is of the flood you’re looking for. If in doubt, leave it out. The
Flood of 1993 is sometimes called the Midwest Flood. Read the criteria in the chart
BEFORE you select photos. EVERY box in the chart must be filled in.
Complete the chart for each of the photographs.
P=People: What types of people do you see in the photo?
O=Object: What object(s) do you see?
S=Setting: What is the setting?
E=Engagement or action: What action do you see between
the people in the photo?
R=Relationships: How are the people in the photo related
or connected to one another?
S=Summary: What is the subject of this photo or picture?
P=People: What types of people do you see in the photo?
O=Object: What object(s) do you see?
S=Setting: What is the setting?
E=Engagement or action: What action do you see between
the people in the photo?
R=Relationships: How are the people in the photo related
or connected to one another?
S=Summary: What is the subject of this photo or picture?
Comparing the Mississippi River Floods of 1927 and 1993
1. What major factors caused the Floods of 1927 and 1993?
2. In what ways were these floods similar and different?
3.
How did both floods significantly change the people and the places?
The Great Flood of 1993
Looking back
Few disasters in U.S. history match the devastation of 1993, when hundreds of levees along the
Mississippi and Missouri Rivers failed, killing 50 people and causing more than $15 billion in damage.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the 1993 flood was its duration. From May through September,
major flooding occurred across North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa,
Missouri, Wisconsin, and Illinois.
Some 50,000 homes were destroyed or damaged. And 75 towns were "totally and completely under flood
waters," according to an account by Lee W. Larson, Chief of the Hydrologic Research Laboratory at
NOAA's National Weather Service.
"It was certainly the largest and most significant flood event ever to occur in the United States," Larson
said.
There were plenty of lessons to learn.
Levees inadequate
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, water overtopped or damaged 40 of 229 federal levees
and 1,043 of 1,347 non-federal levees.
Among the other monumental effects in 1993:

Barge traffic on both mighty rivers halted for almost 2 months.

Bridges were out or not accessible on the Mississippi River from Davenport, Iowa to St. Louis,
Missouri.

Ten commercial airports were flooded.

All railroad traffic in the Midwest was halted.

The 1993 and 1994 harvests were lost.

Numerous sewage treatment plants were destroyed.
The 1993 flood was not entirely unexpected. NOAA hydrologists had warned that a wet fall in 1992 and
normal or above normal snowpack in the central United States meant flooding could be serious when
things began to thaw in 1993.
"I think everyone was ready for some short-term heavy rain and serious flooding, but nobody thought it
would last all summer," recalled Kenneth D. King, chief of hydrologic services at the NOAA National
Weather Service Central Region Headquarters in Kansas City, Mo.
Nonstop rain
The rains were unrelenting.
In a five-month stretch starting April 1, 1993, nearly 48 inches fell in east-central Iowa, where an average
of 33 inches of precipitation normally falls in an entire year.
By mid-June, soil throughout the entire region was saturated, so additional rains brought heavy runoff. In
many locations within the nine-state area hardest hit by the flooding, it rained for 20 or more days in July;
normally it rains eight or nine days during that month.
An unusual climate setup fueled the rains. A high pressure system known as the Bermuda High, which
typically sits out in the Atlantic Ocean during summer and steers hurricanes toward the United States,
was stronger than normal and moved farther to the north and west. This created a dam of air that stopped
storms in their tracks over the Midwest, preventing them from sliding to the East Coast as they normally
would.
The Missouri River crested at a record 48.9 feet at Kansas City on July 27, 1993. This water joined the
already full Mississippi River and pushed the Mississippi to a record crest of 49.47 feet at St. Louis in
Aug. 1.
Some locations on the Mississippi River were in continuous flood for six months.
Lessons learned?
One might assume some lessons had been learned. In fact, the NOAA administrator at the time, Dr.
James (Jim) Baker, assumed so, too:
"Although the Great Flood of 1993 has caused devastating human, environmental and economic impacts,
the lessons learned will guide us in providing improved services and benefits to the nation in the future,"
Baker wrote then.
But 15 years later, more homes than ever exist in the Midwest floodplains, and few projects to improve
levees have been undertaken.