Chapter 13 Summary

The first recorded flood of the Mississippi River dates to 1543, recorded by Garcilaso de la Vega, a member of Hernando de Soto's expedition. The winter of 1926-1927 is exceptionally wet. As early as September 1927, dozens of streams from Iowa to Illinois flood. Even as the rains keep pouring down, General Edgar Jadwin, chief of the Army Corps of Engineers, states that the Mississippi levees are in acceptable condition.

Although river flows and depths in early spring are setting records across the entire drainage basin, this information is not compiled or noted by the Weather Bureau or the Mississippi River Commission. River flood height depends on many conditions - chiefly the volume of water moving and the speed at which it is moving. The slower the flow, the more dangerous the flood. Slow rivers exert pressure on levees over a longer period of time...