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Callao, Missouri | Fifteen inches of rain at a time as a "matter of routine" is pretty remarkable for living in a state that has about a 32" ANNUAL rainfall average. Can you summon these powers at will?
What Harp and others have tried to explain is that some of these examples are no different than losing your house to a twister. Except in this case, the twister struck about 10 miles upstream from you. I did quite a bit of crop checking the night before our waters of destruction hit. The beans were almost a foot tall and pretty at 6pm. The creek was low, and there were probably sandbars showing. By 8am almost the entire field was under water. The levee had been overflowed and hwy 36 (four lane) was soon shut down in both directions.
A lot of the problems weren't caused by chancing a levee holding while at flood stage. This was a sudden, unexpected event. You would of had to be Johnny-on-the-spot at 1am to have a chance. If you were connected to high ground via dirt road, even that would have been too late. Even parking on the levees might not have saved you, it went right over.
By the way, the field that I mentioned above had just been reclassified by the RMA from AAA risk ground to normal because of little loss history to flooding and protection via levee (which had been there for as long as I can remember). It had flooded before, but not this fast.
The Chariton river was calm the night before. By 9am, it was about 3ft from the bank. It did eventually make it slightly out the banks by the afternoon.
Scott
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A couple of pitiful pictures...
