“Prophetic vision, vivid imagination”: The 1927 Mississippi River flood
Abstract
The 1927 flood in the Lower Mississippi River was the most destructive flood in American history, inundating more than 70,000 km2 of land, resulting in approximately 500 fatalities and leaving more than 700,000 people homeless. Despite the prominence of the 1927 flood, details on the flood, and the storms that produced the flood, are sparse. We examine the hydrometeorology and hydroclimatology of the 1927 flood in the Lower Mississippi River through downscaling simulations of the storms that were responsible for catastrophic flooding and through empirical analyses of rainfall and streamflow records. We use Twentieth Century Reanalysis fields as boundary conditions and initial conditions for downscaling simulations using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. We place the hydrometeorological analyses of the 1927 storms in a hydroclimatological context through analyses of the Twentieth Century Reanalysis fields. Analyses are designed to assess the physical processes that control the upper tail of flooding in the Lower Mississippi River. We compare the 1927 flood in the Lower Mississippi River to floods in 1937 and 2011 that represent the most extreme flooding in the Lower Mississippi River.
- Authors:
-
- Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1565405
- Grant/Contract Number:
- NNX10AI46G
- Resource Type:
- Journal Article: Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Water Resources Research
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 51; Journal Issue: 12; Journal ID: ISSN 0043-1397
- Publisher:
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; Environmental Sciences & Ecology; Marine & Freshwater Biology; Water Resources; flood; hydroclimatology; Mississippi River; hydrometeorology
Citation Formats
Smith, James A., and Baeck, Mary Lynn. “Prophetic vision, vivid imagination”: The 1927 Mississippi River flood. United States: N. p., 2015.
Web. doi:10.1002/2015wr017927.
Smith, James A., & Baeck, Mary Lynn. “Prophetic vision, vivid imagination”: The 1927 Mississippi River flood. United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/2015wr017927
Smith, James A., and Baeck, Mary Lynn. 2015.
"“Prophetic vision, vivid imagination”: The 1927 Mississippi River flood". United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/2015wr017927. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1565405.
@article{osti_1565405,
title = {“Prophetic vision, vivid imagination”: The 1927 Mississippi River flood},
author = {Smith, James A. and Baeck, Mary Lynn},
abstractNote = {The 1927 flood in the Lower Mississippi River was the most destructive flood in American history, inundating more than 70,000 km2 of land, resulting in approximately 500 fatalities and leaving more than 700,000 people homeless. Despite the prominence of the 1927 flood, details on the flood, and the storms that produced the flood, are sparse. We examine the hydrometeorology and hydroclimatology of the 1927 flood in the Lower Mississippi River through downscaling simulations of the storms that were responsible for catastrophic flooding and through empirical analyses of rainfall and streamflow records. We use Twentieth Century Reanalysis fields as boundary conditions and initial conditions for downscaling simulations using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. We place the hydrometeorological analyses of the 1927 storms in a hydroclimatological context through analyses of the Twentieth Century Reanalysis fields. Analyses are designed to assess the physical processes that control the upper tail of flooding in the Lower Mississippi River. We compare the 1927 flood in the Lower Mississippi River to floods in 1937 and 2011 that represent the most extreme flooding in the Lower Mississippi River.},
doi = {10.1002/2015wr017927},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1565405},
journal = {Water Resources Research},
issn = {0043-1397},
number = 12,
volume = 51,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Nov 30 00:00:00 EST 2015},
month = {Mon Nov 30 00:00:00 EST 2015}
}
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