Comparison With Other Colossal Floods
Channeling and levee construction altered how the floods have hit various areas along the Missouri River. Here is a comparison of Kansas City data for the three big floods since the early 19th century.
- Great Flood of 1844 – This was the biggest flood of the three in terms of rate of discharge at Westport Landing in Kansas City. It is estimated that 625,000 cubic feet per second (17,700 m³/s) was discharged in the flood. However, the crest on July 16, 1844, was almost a foot (0.3 m) lower than the 1993 flood.
- Great Flood of 1951 – The 1951 flood was the second biggest in terms of rate of discharge at 573,000 ft³/s (16,200 m³/s). The 1951 crest on July 14, 1951, was almost two feet (0.6 m) lower than the 1844 flood and three feet (1 m) lower than 1993. However, the flood was the most devastating of all modern floods for Kansas City since its levee system was not built to withstand it. It destroyed the Kansas City Stockyards and caused Kansas City to build Kansas City International Airport away from the Missouri River bottoms to replace the heavily damaged Fairfax Airport in Kansas City, Kansas.
- Great Flood of 1993 – The 1993 flood was the highest of any of the three but had the lowest discharge at 541,000 ft³/s (15,300 m³/s). While the 1993 flood had devastating impacts elsewhere, Kansas City survived it relatively well because of levee improvements after the 1951 flood.
Studies of the Flood – This 1993 flood was also used to model other natural disasters and simulate potential flood impacts in areas awaiting more extensive flood control efforts. See http://www.marshall.edu/cber/research/trp00-04.pdf for a study by Mark Burton and Michael J. Hicks.
Read more about this topic: Great Mississippi And Missouri Rivers Flood Of 1993
Famous quotes containing the words comparison with, comparison, colossal and/or floods:
“He was a superior man. He did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things. He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid. For once we are lifted out of the trivialness and dust of politics into the region of truth and manhood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The difference between human vision and the image perceived by the faceted eye of an insect may be compared with the difference between a half-tone block made with the very finest screen and the corresponding picture as represented by the very coarse screening used in common newspaper pictorial reproduction. The same comparison holds good between the way Gogol saw things and the way average readers and average writers see things.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“That scrawny cry—it was
A chorister whose C preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,
Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills be joyful together.
Before the Lord; for he cometh to judge the earth; with
righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalm XCVIII (l. XCVIII, 8–9)