How bad was it?

A short article I found by accident while looking for something else:

Torrential rains over a 5 day period lead to record flows on southeast Kansas rivers.

By: Janet Spurgeon

Record flooding occurred on the Fall River at Fredonia, Verdigris River at Independence and Coffeyville and on the Neosho River at Erie.

The new record crest on the Fall River at Fredonia literally blew the old record out of the water. On June 30th at 11 AM, the river crested at 41.12 ft with a corresponding flow near 91,465 cfs. This flow is almost double the flow of 49,000 cfs that corresponed to the previous crest of 36.17 ft on 4/16/1945.

At Independece on the Verdigris river, the new record crest of 52.40 ft occurred on July 1st at 8 AM. This is nearly 22 ft above flood stage! As the flood stage here is 30 ft. The previous record of 47.60 ft was on 5/19/1943. With this much volume of water, the river has remained above flood stage for almost a week. The river is forecasted to fall below flood stage on Saturday morning of the 7th of July.

Downstream from Independence, Coffeyville also broke their previous crest record of 26.75 ft set on 5/7/1961. The new record crest of 30.7 ft occurred on the evening of July 1st at 6 PM. The river is expected to fall below flood stage the afternoon of the July 7th.

On the Neosho River at Erie, the highest crest that could be obtained from our river observer was 40.60 ft on July 2nd at 7 AM. For a time, the gage could not safetly be reached as the roads were inundated to reach the staff gages. The old record of 36.96 ft was on 11/05/1998.

This story was brought to you by the National Weather Service - Wichita, Kansas.

Second hand rumors from the guy who got it first hand from Kansas DOT people manning the roadblocks in the flood area:

Emergency workers are being pulled out of several flood areas due to "intestinal upsets" (probably from coliform bacteria in the residual flood waters? - i.e it's full of Sh*t). KS Department of Health reports a shortage of Tetanus vacine needed before allowing people to return to assess damage, although adequate supplies should be available soon. Estimates running to >3,500 homes destroyed in a 3-state area. The Coffeyville KS oil spill continues to drift downstream, although much of it seems to have been filtered out on vegetation.

Locals report "the fishin' is good if you can find the right spot."

John