We often discuss the aspects of summer that most people associate with the season: warm and hot weather, grilling food, going to the beach, riding your motorcycle, or crusing along the open waters in your boat. But there’s one MAJOR aspect of summertime that sometimes gets overlooked, and that’s flooding. Now we usually discuss flooding in the spring time, since that’s when all of the winter weather is coming to an end and the snow up north is heading our way in the form of rising river banks and streams.
Coupled with the pretty nasty thunderstorms we usually get in the summertime, CT homeowners insurance customers can face some ugly perils if they aren’t properly prepared and/or insured. Now we’ll leave the nitty- gritty insurance jargon for another time, so for today and tomorrow, we’re going to go through the top ten worst floods/ storms that the United States has experienced in the last twenty or so years.
*these aren’t in ranking order of most expensive damage
1) Nor’easter of 1992 on the New Jersey Coast- Nor’easters are never a good thing for the greater northeast region of the United States, unless you’re a skier of course. But anyway, this nasty storm caused terrible winds and lots of flooding, resulting in over $346 million in damage, literally the entire length of the NJ coast line.
2) Torrential Spring Rains in 1995 around New Orleans. It’s amazing what a thunderstorm can do to an area that is technically below sea level. Accumulating over half a billion in damage, the heavy rains that came through NOLA in May of ’95 totalled 24 inches of rainwater. That’s two FEET!
3) Melting Snow and Some Rain caused massive flooding in the Great Northwest. Totaling over $61 million in damages, the great amounts of snow that this region receives in the winter time has to go somewhere come spring, and that’s just what happened in the late winter of 1996 in the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. The two main waterways in the region flooded significantly, cause some steep damages.
4) More rain and melting snow in North Dakota and Minnesota in the spring of 1997. The combination of these two wet weather phenomenas crippled towns along the Red River for more than a week. Total damages: approx. $160 million.
5) $228 million worth of heavy rain damage to the Delaware River Basin. This one occurred in the early summer of 2006, and the heavy, heavy rain that the area received produced horrendous flash flooding that actually broke records. Apparently the flood crests surrounding rivers and streams in the basin were unlike anyone who was from the area had ever witnessed. Pretty crazy stuff indeed.
Come on back tomorrow to find out what the five remaining storms are… they are all doozies!