In the '51 flood the river got mean
The levee broke at a town downstream
Up on our levee where the county lines meet
Caught a couple of their boys with some TNT
The Rainmakers, "We Walk the Levee"

Quick: what natural disaster takes the most lives and causes the most damage every single year? Earthquakes? Nope. Hurricanes? Hunh-uh. Tsunamis? Wrong again.

Floods. And it's not even close.

Those of you on the hurricane or tsunami line might wonder if I'm including the aftermath of those events as floods. The answers are yes and sort of. The floods that result from hurricanes are the same as would result from any large rain, and thus deserve their own section of blame. Wind damage is easily separable from flood damage. Insurance companies are very particular about this distinction. As for tsunamis, the flood damage is separate from the surge damage, although that is much harder to parse. In any case, there are aren't that many tsunamis. There are tens of thousands of floods every year. And those numbers are the main reason floods remain at the top of the charts.

Remember the spring flood on the Mississippi? It faded as a story when the unprecedented release of water into the Atchafalaya basin didn't cause quite as much damage as expected. Nonetheless, repairs to the just the levees are expected to top $1 billion. That's $1 billion just for dirt. The cost to homes, businesses and the like will be much, much higher.

Have you seen the pictures from Minot, N.D.? Holy crap. That's one hell of a flood. Now, multiply that by one hundred (or maybe more) and you've got what's going to be happening along the Missouri River from now until September. Really. At least two months of massive flooding along one of the largest rivers on the continent. Making this even worse, the Missouri is the fastest-moving major river on the continent, which means this flood isn't simply getting things wet. It will be dragging entire towns into the muck.

How bad will the flooding be? Look at it this way. The Army Corps of Engineers is now releasing 160,000 cubic feet per second from the Gavins Point dam in South Dakota. Don't worry about getting your head around how much water that really is. Just know that the previous record for outflow release was 70,000 cubic feet per second. When your new record is 228% higher than your old record, you know something serious is going on. This would be like Kobe Bryant throwing down 228 points on some team. Yeah, it's serious.

All along the lower Missouri, people are watching levees take on more and more water. Many of the levees are tall enough to handle the flow, but they're made mostly of dirt. When water comes into contact with dirt, the dirt becomes mud. At some point, those levees will liquefy and fail. It is possible that almost every levee along the Missouri will fail by the time water flows decrease in--maybe--late August.

**PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT**
My wife has asked me to remind all three of my readers that you should never drive through moving water. She's covered many hurricanes (and the floods that accompany them), and she knows what she's talking about. I've seen far too many pictures of cars and trucks driving through floodwater. This is a very bad idea.
**END PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT**

What does this amount of flooding mean? Well, downtown Kansas City is on a hill. It'll be fine. But the low-lying areas (including all of the city of North Kansas City, large portions of non-downtown Kansas City and a fair portion of Kansas City, Kansas) are probably going under water. No one wants to admit this now (and I hope that it doesn't come to pass), but I think that it's likely.

Kansas City gets off easy, though, compared to the St. Louis suburbs. Back in 1993, the Missouri River was above flood stage for 94 days in St. Charles, Mo. The 1993 flood cost merely $15-20 billion, with a large portion of that damage being done in the low-lying areas outside of St. Louis.

There is some good news from 1993, however. A lot of the levees in central Missouri that failed during that flood were not rebuilt, which means that a lot of this floodwater will flow out of the channel and reduce the overall effects of the flood. At least, that's what people are hoping.

**SECOND PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT**
My wife would like for me to emphasize that when I say that driving through moving water is "a very bad idea" that I mean people get killed doing this. When your car is caught in a flood, you will endure a nasty death, one that includes a moment or two of sheer terror before you violently drown. Like I said, driving through moving water is a very bad idea.
**END SECOND PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT**

A lot of the snow up in the mountains of Wyoming and Montana has just begun to melt. That melt is what feeds the mighty Missouri. And there was a lot of snow last winter--record amounts in many places. If the upper Mississippi experiences any kind of significant summer rain, August around the Old River Control Structure (the $6 billion monstrosity regulating the flows of the Red, Atchafalaya and Mississippi rivers that was the reason for the flooding discharge earlier this spring) will be very interesting, indeed.

Floods aren't sexy. They're the embodiment of a slow-motion apocalypse. But if John the Revelator had lived in Minot instead of the Middle East, he would have had the Earth being consumed by water rather than fire. As the folks in the Midwest know, Hell is cold and wet.

Jon Worley loves rivers, even when they flood.