The Missouri River is the longest river in the United States. Rising in the Rocky Mountains of the Eastern Centennial Mountains of Southwestern Montana, the Missouri flows east and south for 2,341 miles (3,767 km) before entering the Mississippi River north of St. Louis, Missouri. The river drains a sparsely populated, semi-arid watershed of more than 500,000 square miles (1,300,000 km2), which includes parts of ten U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. Although a tributary of the Mississippi, the Missouri River is slightly longer and carries a comparable volume of water. When combined with the lower Mississippi River, it forms the world's fourth longest river system.
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States, with 27,000 square miles (70,000 km2) inundated in depths of up to 30 feet (9 m) over the course of several months in early 1927. The cost of the damage has been estimated to be between $246 million and $1 billion, $4.2-$17.3 billion in 2023 dollars.
The Great Flood of 1993 was a flood that occurred in the Midwestern United States, along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and their tributaries, from April to October 1993. The flood was among the most costly and devastating to ever occur in the United States, with $15 billion in damages. The hydrographic basin affected an area approximately 745 miles (1,199 km) in length and 435 miles (700 km) in width, totaling about 320,000 square miles (830,000 km2). Within this zone, the flooded area totaled around 30,000 square miles (78,000 km2) and was the worst such U.S. disaster since the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, as measured by duration, area inundated, persons displaced, crop and property damage, and number of record river levels. In some categories, the 1993 flood even surpassed the 1927 flood, at the time the largest flood ever recorded on the Mississippi River.
In mid-July 1951, heavy rains led to a great rise of water in the Kansas River, Missouri River, and other surrounding areas of the Central United States. Flooding occurred in the Kansas, Neosho, Marais Des Cygnes, and Verdigris river basins. The damage in June and July 1951 across eastern Kansas and Missouri exceeded $935 million. The flooding killed 17 people and displaced 518,000.
The Marais des Cygnes River is a principal tributary of the Osage River, about 217 miles (349 km) long, in eastern Kansas and western Missouri in the United States. Via the Osage and Missouri rivers, it is part of the watershed of the Mississippi River.
Tuttle Creek Lake is a reservoir on the Big Blue River 5 miles (8 km) north of Manhattan, in the Flint Hills region of northeast Kansas. It was built and is operated by the Army Corps of Engineers for the primary purpose of flood control. Secondary functions of the project include release of water stores to maintain barge traffic on the Mississippi River during seasons of drought, maintenance of a multi-use conservation pool for fish and wildlife enhancement and recreation, and release of sufficient water in droughts to maintain water quality for downstream communities.
English Landing Park is located along the Missouri river in Parkville, Missouri, United States. The area the park now sits were once just low water areas of the Missouri River. It includes a 3-mile jogging/biking trail that follows the river's edge, several shelters for picnics, a soccer field, a baseball diamond, volleyball courts, 2 playgrounds. Recently, a small 9-hole Frisbee golf course has been added around the jogging/biking trail. There is also a busy set of train tracks that runs along the length of the park. The area of present-day English Landing Park was bought from the English Brothers by Colonel George S. Park in 1838, who was a veteran of the Texas war of independence. He purchased a riverboat landing from them as well, and that riverboat landing as well as the present-day park became a civil war port of call for slave trade. The Riverpark Pub and Eatery, which sits right next to the rail road tracks at the entrance to the park, was built in the mid-19th century as a coal-fired twin-boiler power plant that fed the entire city. The city itself was founded by Colonel Park in 1844 and by 1850 he had built warehouses and a large stone hotel. In 1853 he established one of Platte County's earliest newspapers, The Industrial Luminary. Parkville itself did not become a Civil War battlefield, but there was still mass genocide as numerous slaves tried desperately to escape across the river into Kansas for freedom. These slaves were buried in three large but unmarked cemeteries in the present-day Misty Woods subdivision. After the Civil War, the port and the riverboat landing were all but abandoned and the area slowly changed from a bustling port city to what is present-day Parkville.
The timeline of Kansas details past events that happened in what is present day Kansas. Located on the eastern edge of the Great Plains, the U.S. state of Kansas was the home of sedentary agrarian and hunter-gatherer Native American societies, many of whom hunted American bison. The region first appears in western history in the 16th century at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, when Spanish conquistadors explored the unknown land now known as Kansas. It was later explored by French fur trappers who traded with the Native Americans. It became part of the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. In the 19th century, the first American explorers designated the area as the "Great American Desert."
The Morganza Spillway or Morganza Control Structure is a flood-control structure in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is located along the western bank of the Lower Mississippi River at river mile 280, near Morganza in Pointe Coupee Parish. The spillway stands between the Mississippi and the Morganza Floodway, which leads to the Atchafalaya Basin and the Atchafalaya River in south-central Louisiana. Its purpose is to divert water from the Mississippi River during major flood events by flooding the Atchafalaya Basin, including the Atchafalaya River and the Atchafalaya Swamp. The spillway and adjacent levees also help prevent the Mississippi from changing its present course through the major port cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans to a new course down the Atchafalaya River to the Gulf of Mexico. The Morganza Spillway, operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was opened during the 1973 and 2011 Mississippi River floods.
Floods in the United States before 1900 is a list of flood events that were of significant impact to the country, before 1900. Floods are generally caused by excessive rainfall, excessive snowmelt, and dam failure.
Great Flood is a phrase used to describe the central event in any catastrophic flood. Some may be of the flood myth, whether historically accurate or mythological, while others are severe floods from around the world.
The Missouri River Valley outlines the journey of the Missouri River from its headwaters where the Madison, Jefferson and Gallatin Rivers flow together in Montana to its confluence with the Mississippi River in the State of Missouri. At 2,300 miles (3,700 km) long the valley drains one-sixth of the United States, and is the longest river valley on the North American continent. The valley in the Missouri River basin includes river bottoms and floodplains.
The Great Flood of 1851 occurred after record-setting rainfalls across the Midwestern United States and Plains from May to August, 1851. Hardest hit was the State of Iowa, with significant flooding extending to the Lower Mississippi River basin. Historical evidence suggest flooding occurred in the eastern Plains, from Nebraska to the Red River basin, but these areas were sparsely settled in 1851. Heavy rainfall also occurred in the Ohio River basin.
Major floods along the Mississippi River in April and May 2011 were among the largest and most damaging recorded along the U.S. waterway in the past century, comparable in extent to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and Great Flood of 1993. In April 2011, two large storm systems deposited record levels of rainfall on the Mississippi River drainage basin. When that additional water combined with the springtime snowmelt, the river and many of its tributaries began to swell to record levels by the beginning of May. Flooding occurred in Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
The Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway is a flood control component of the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project located on the west bank of the Mississippi River in southeast Missouri just below the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The construction of the floodway was authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1928 and later modified by the Flood Control Act of 1965. Its purpose is to divert water from the Mississippi River during major flood events and lower the flood stages upstream, notably at Cairo, Illinois.
The project design flood is a hypothetical "maximum probable" flood of the Mississippi River used by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to aid in the design and execution of flood protection in the Mississippi Valley.
The Mississippi flood of 1973 occurred between March and May 1973 on the lower Mississippi River. The flooding was the third most severe along the U.S.'s Mississippi River during the 20th century.
The 2011 Missouri River floods was a flooding event on the Missouri River in the United States.The flooding was triggered by record snowfall in Rocky Mountains of Montana and Wyoming along with near-record spring rainfall in central and eastern Montana. All six major dams along the Missouri River released record amounts of water to prevent overflow which led to flooding threatening several towns and cities along the river from Montana to Missouri; in particular Bismarck, North Dakota; Pierre, South Dakota; Dakota Dunes, South Dakota; South Sioux City, Nebraska, Sioux City, Iowa; Omaha, Nebraska; Council Bluffs, Iowa; Saint Joseph, Missouri; Kansas City, Missouri; Jefferson City, Missouri, and St. Louis, Missouri. Many smaller towns were also at risk, suffering the same fate as the larger cities if not worse. According to the National Weather Service, in the second half of the month of May 2011, almost a year's worth of rain fell over the upper Missouri River basin. Extremely heavy rainfall in conjunction with an estimated 212 percent of normal snowpack in the Rocky Mountains contributed to this flooding event.
Flooding in the Mississippi River Basin during the winter, spring, and summer of 2019 caused at least 12 deaths and economic losses in 19 states totaling in excess of $20 billion. Estimated damages in the Midwestern United States alone had reached $12.5 billion by April 2019. Flood damages totaling $6.2 billion were reported in the 11 states bordering the Mississippi River. In addition to property and crop losses and infrastructure damages, commercial navigation on the Mississippi River was interrupted repeatedly by high currents, low bridge clearances, and closed locks. This delayed shipments of agricultural commodities, adding to the economic stress of crop losses caused by flooding. As of late April 2019, shipments of corn to export terminals in Louisiana were 31% lower than in same period in 2018.
