New old flood news

LAWRENCEBURG REGISTER, January 1886

FLOODS ON THE OHIO RIVER

The St. Louis Republican says a paper in the American Naturalist by William Hosea Ballou asserts that there are two great flood ranges in the United States, lying at right angles -- one marked by the line of the Mississippi, the other by the line of the Ohio -- and of the two, the Ohio flood range is the more destructive -- "the most terrible on the earth's surface."

"All atmospheric destruction by tornado, simoon, whirlwind, and waterspout and all the damage done through subterranean upheavals by volcano and earthquake do not compare with the ravages of the floods of this river."

The explanation of this is found in the river's parallel position to the Equator, which brings about the melting of the snows in the valley, and the precipitation of the spring rains at once. At this time, says the writer, "the Ohio is not a tributary of the Mississippi; the latter is its confluent."

Its gigantic projectile of water, often 100 feet high, 600 feet broad and about 300 miles long, is hurled on its mission of obliteration, sweeping before it cities, towns, forest, farms, levees, livestock, shipping and humanity.

He estimates that $500 million has been expended in the effort to protect the riparian country from these floods and repair their damages, and individual losses are twice as much more. This estimate ($1,500,000,000) appears beyond all reason, and it is probably an exaggeration.

Still, there is no doubt that the Ohio River floods are the most destructive agency in this country. Along the Lower Mississippi, from Cairo down to the coast -- a distance of nearly 1,200 miles -- the inhabitants treat reports of the annual June flood in the Missouri and Mississippi with little concern; but the reports of the February rise in the Ohio fill them with terror and dismay.

The first part of a rise in the Missouri and Mississippi will pass into the Gulf a month before it reaches New Orleans, and the entire flood will be distributed along a line of 1,200 miles. 

But an Ohio River flood is a mountain of water sent out in a week, rushing down the valley with irresistible force and inundating thee farms on both side of the river.

The serious nature of these floods presses upon us the necessity for protecting the country against them, and this, the writer says, is to be effected by the construction of reservoirs by means of dams in the hill country where the headwaters of the river take their rise, and the planting of forests around the sources of these tributary streams.

The forests would protect the snow and ice from the rays of the sun, and make melting gradual, and the reservoirs would hold back a portion of the water and reduce the volume of the flood.

Note: Sounds like a great idea.