Environment of Iowa - Floods

Floods

See also: Iowa flood of 2008, Great Flood of 1993, Flood of 1851, and Category:Natural disasters in Iowa

Major flood events occurred in Iowa in 1851, 1892, 1965, 1993, 2008. The Great flood of 1851 hit all of Iowa, and almost destroyed the nascent town of Des Moines. "The Des Moines and Raccoon rivers rose to an unprecedented height, inundating the entire country east of the Des Moines river. Crops were utterly destroyed, houses and fences swept away." After the town of Dudley was destroyed, survivors moved to higher ground and founded Carlisle. The flood of 1851 produced record levels on the Iowa River at Iowa City and the Cedar River at Cedar Rapids that stood until the Iowa flood of 2008. The flash flood of 1892 destroyed much of Sioux City. The Flood of 1965 affected eastern Iowa, from Cedar Rapids to Dubuque, with cities along the Mississippi hardest hit. The 1993 floods were widespread across the upper Midwest, causing extensive damage to Coralville and Iowa City.

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Famous quotes containing the word floods:

    The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.
    Bible: New Testament, Matthew 7:25.

    Poor verdant fool, and now green ice! thy joys,
    Large and as lasting as thy perch of grass,
    Bid us lay in ‘gainst winter rain, and poise
    Their floods with an o’erflowing glass.
    Richard Lovelace (1618–1658)

    the cold eternal shores
    That look sheer down
    To the dark tideless floods of Nothingness
    Where all who know may drown.
    Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)