Flooding disaster areas in Illinois April 2013
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Location | US Midwest |
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Deaths | Five |
Property damage | unknown |
Floods in the United States: 2001–present is a list of flood events which were of significant impact to the country since 2001, inclusive. Floods are generally caused by excessive rainfall, excessive snowmelt, storm surge from hurricanes, and dam failure.
The remains of the tropical cyclone sat and spun over eastern Texas for several days before moving eastward just inland of the Gulf coast. Heavy rains fell along the western Gulf coast that week, with storm totals of near 940 mm (37 in) near Houston and 1041mm (41 in) west of Beaumont. Damage from the storm was estimated near US$6 billion (2001 dollars), and 41 perished from the flood.
A large category 3 hurricane at landfall along the southeast tip of Louisiana, strong northerly flow behind Katrina while weakening to category 1 strength caused breaks and failures in the levees that protected the lower Ninth Ward and along other canals in New Orleans, flooding 80 percent of the city for nearly a month. The mouth of the Mississippi River saw breaks in its levee system due to storm surge. In Mississippi, a massive storm surge destroyed most structures along the coast including floating casinos, and preliminary figures show that the storm surge was higher than in Hurricane Camille of 1969. There were 1,836 fatalities, mostly from flooding.
The combination of a moisture fetch set up by Subtropical Depression 22 and Tropical Storm Tammy, as well as an additional tropical disturbance which rode up a stationary frontal zone, set up excessive rains from coastal sections of the Mid-Atlantic states through southern New England. In New Hampshire, the Monadnock region was affected, with Alstead among the hardest hit as 300 mm (12 in) of rain fell within 30 hours, allowing this month to be the wettest in the history of the Granite State. It was considered a once in 500-year flood event.