326 ANNUAL, KEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 8 



by 97,247 of these families. Private contributions of cash and 

 supplies to the American Red Cross totalled $28,000,000; while the 

 Federal Government spent $13,000,000 and loaned $7,000,000. A 

 conservative estimate of the flood cost is $417,000,000, not including 

 the value of some 300,000,000 tons of top soil that the Soil Conserva- 

 tion Service estimates was carried away from the Ohio watershed. 

 The flood of 1937 must be considered the greatest American flood on 

 record. 4 



This unprecedented flood on the Ohio and lower Mississippi Rivers, 

 coming so soon after the extraordinary floods of March-April 1936 

 in the middle and north Atlantic States, compels an examination of 

 the relation of floods to weather in an effort to solve or mitigate their 

 menace. What are the meteorological features of previous great 

 floods, such as those of 1913, 1922, and 1927 in the Mississippi Basin; 

 of still earlier general floods, such as those of 1882, 1889, 1903; of the 

 less widespread but remarkable overflows that followed excessive 

 rains in July 1935, November 1927, July 1916, and June 1915? What 

 flood-control measures do meteorological considerations most favor? 

 And are flooding rains predictable? 



* Swenson, Bennett, The Ohio and Mississippi River floods of January- February 1937, Monthly Weather 

 Rev., Suppl. 37, 55 pp., 30 figs., 1938. See also, Devereaux, W. C, The Ohio River flood of 1937, Bull. 

 Amer. Meteorol. Soc, vol. 19, pp. 330-333, 1938. The flood, chiefly from the standpoint of water supply 

 and sanitation, is extensively discussed in the Journ. Amer. Water Works Assoc, pp. 1230-1307, Sept. 1937. 



