Wednesday, December 15, 2021
On August 1, 1993, the Mississippi crested at a record 49.58 feet in St. Louis, near the end of a flood that covered 20 million acres in nine states.
On this day in 1993, the Mississippi River crested at St. Louis at 49.58 feet, about two and a half feet below the top of the floodwall. It was the highest stage recorded there in 150 years. The flood behind that number had been building since May, when a stalled weather pattern dropped rain on already saturated ground across the upper Midwest and kept dropping it for weeks.
By the time the water went down in September, flooding had covered more than 20 million acres across nine states. Hundreds of levees failed, at least 75 towns were completely inundated and some were never rebuilt, roughly 54,000 people were evacuated and about 50,000 homes were destroyed or damaged. Roughly 50 people died. Losses ran to 15 billion dollars or more.
Slow floods are a different animal from flash floods, and that difference is the whole lesson. Weeks of warning let people move what matters, and it also lets them talk themselves into staying because the levee has always held. The levee is a design assumption, not a guarantee, and knowing where your home sits relative to one is basic flood readiness. Whole metros carry this exposure, as the list of U.S. cities at risk of floods makes clear.
