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– News Coverage of the Mississippi/Ohio River Floods – January 26, 1937 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
As news reports come in of the impending blizzard sweeping into the Northeast later on today, I ran across this set of recordings covering another big weather story for this day. It was January 26, 1937 and the big story for that day were the floods in the Ohio Valley, the result of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers swelling their banks and cascading into towns, villages and cities. It reached as high as 78 feet above flood stage when it finally hit Cincinnati.
In what was considered the worst flood of the 20th century, the waters devastated much of the Mid-West with considerable loss of life and damage to farms and industry.
As The Associated Press Reported it the day it was happening:
The greatest flood of all time on the Mississippi river, rolled up by the mighty volume of water pouring down the still-rising Ohio, vas predicted last night. Lt. Col. Eugene Reybold, district chief of army engineers at Memphis, told a conference of levee men, railroad officials and National guardsmen: “A super flood is on the way. There will be fifty-five feet in Memphis before the water now in sight from the Ohio moves out.” He predicted a crest almost ten feet above the highest ever recorded.
As he spoke, the Ohio, creeping ever higher to unprecedented levels along the 950-mile stretch of. its rich valley from Pittsburgh to Cairo, 111., rolled slowly southward toward the lower Mississippi’s ten-year-old untested levee system. Cincinnati, Louisville, Paducah, Ky., Evansville, Ind., and many other cities in the Ohio valley had been hard and tragically hit. Altogether more than half a million residents were homeless. The dead numbered around 100..
Not to pull a “so you think YOU’VE got it bad” type of scenario, here are reports just to let you know it could always be flood waters to go along with your freezing winds and zero-visibility blowing.
Stay warm – think of Summer.
Here are those live reports direct from the scene of the Mississippi/Ohio River Floods for January 26, 1937.
