In mid-April 1927, 98 years ago this week, another deluge of torrential rain tipped the Mississippi River basin into a historic flood that remains among the most destructive in U.S. history.
The Mississippi River basin was soaked by a parade of heavy rain events from summer 1926 into the following fall and winter, leaving tributaries such as the Arkansas, Ohio and Red Rivers running high heading into spring.
A widespread drenching of 12 to 24 inches of rain in mid-April from Oklahoma and Missouri to Tennessee and Louisiana was the final straw in an already serious situation.
By late April, the Mississippi River set record crests in Arkansas City, Arkansas, and Greenville, Mississippi, records that still stand today. In the photo below from Arkansas City you can only see rooftops of some homes and buildings. And that photo was taken six days after the record crest, when the river was 6 feet higher. By mid May, it would set a record in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which also still stands today.
This massive volume of water would cover 27,000 square miles in parts of seven states, an area larger than the state of West Virginia. The Mississippi River was up to 80 miles wide in some areas of the floodplain due to over 140 breaches in levees.
At least 246 people were killed in the flood and from 600,000 to 750,000 were displaced, some having to live in tent camps for weeks or months after the flood. Damage from the flood was at least $230 million, with some estimates as high as $1 billion, about one-third of the nation’s budget at the time.
Amidst fear of flooding the city of New Orleans, a section of the river levee about 14 miles downstream from New Orleans at Caernarvon was breached by dynamite. But that flooded out downstream communities in Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes. It ended up being an unnecessary step, as upstream levee breaches reduced the flow of the river by the time it reached New Orleans.
This prompted Congress to pass the Flood Control Act of 1928, authorizing construction of dams, levees and other flood-fighting measures and placed flood-control management under the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
1927 Mississippi River flood
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.