Mississippi River floods
The Mississippi River and its tributaries have flooded on numerous occasions. This is a list of major floods.
Hernando DeSoto's party was passing through a village at the confluence of the Mississippi River and Arkansas River on March 18. The ensuing flood only allowed passage by canoe and inundated fields surrounding the town.
The flooding reportedly lasted for 40 days.
From December to June the City of New Orleans was inundated.
In July, severe flooding of the Mississippi River resulted from a hurricane landfall.
All of the lower Mississippi River was inundated by flooding.
The flood of 1825 is the last known inundation of New Orleans due to spring flooding.
The largest flood ever recorded on the Missouri River and Upper Mississippi River in terms of discharge. This flood was particularly devastating since the region had few if any levees at the time. Among the hardest hit were the Wyandot who lost 100 people in the diseases that occurred after the flood. The flood also is the highest recorded for the Mississippi River at St. Louis. After the flood, Congress in 1849 passed the Swamp Act providing land grants to build stronger levees.
The flood occurred after record-setting rainfalls across the U.S. Midwest and Plains from May to August, 1851. The State of Iowa experienced 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. In June, major flooding on the Mississippi River was experienced.
The 1927 flood was the greatest flood in modern history on the lower Mississippi River. In the summer of 1926 until the spring of 1927, heavy rains fell in eastern Kansas, Oklahoma, and the Ohio Valley. The White and Little Red rivers broke through the levees in Arkansas in February, flooding over 400 km2 (99,000 acres) with 3 to 5 m (9.8 to 16.4 ft) of water. The first levee break along the Mississippi River occurred a few miles south of Elaine, Arkansas on March 29.
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