Twenty-first-century Floods

Jones County

The 2010 flood photo album from the Great Jones County Fair provides a vivid record of how high water can transform people’s activities and expectations.  Buildings where animals were normally housed and vegetables displayed and where people competed were empty of human, animal, and plant life and full of water.

            But 2010 was not the only, recent, high water year in Jones County.  2008 had been a record setter with the Wapsipinicon cresting at 26.2 feet.  On June 26, 2013 officials were fearing that the Wapsi would rise to 27 feet 10 inches, higher than 2008 and well above the 14 feet flood stage.  This was the result of between one and six inches of rain falling in the county in the previous 24-hour period.  Officials advised people not to go to affected areas, especially Anamosa, Olin, Oxford Junction, Wyoming, and the rural areas of Jones County.  Roads were closed; bridges out.  It would have been all too easy to drive into high water, higher than it first looked.  At least in 2013—unlike in 2008—Jones County could look to less affected neighboring counties for assistance.

            The following year Jones County was back among a list of 22 Iowa counties named in an August 7, 2014 Presidential Disaster Declaration due to the effects of severe storms, tornadoes, straight-line winds and flooding from June 26 to July 7 of that year.

            In early September of 2018 the Wapsi rose 10 feet in three days.  The river was not as high as it had been in 2008 or 2013, but the National Weather Service, on September 5, was predicting a crest of 22.4 feet, the sixth highest recorded and just a fraction less than the fifth highest record achieved in 2016 with 22.74 feet. Flood stage at Anamosa is 14 feet.

            That September officials and residents in Anamosa said they were ready, with sand-bagging materials on hand. Nearby in historic Stone City that sits lower on the river, people were more cautious.  On the one hand, the rising water was a threat to the old building that housed the General Store Pub.  On the other hand, as pub employee Kyle Kilburg explained, “if you can get a good look at the river from the General Store deck, there’s going to be people here.”   

Sources: on-line: Great Jones County Fair Flood Photo Album; Stacey Murray, “Flood waters could top 2008 record,” Journal-eureka, June 26, 2013; Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management Division, August 7, 2014; Aaron Scheinblum, “Businesses, city officials prepare for high levels along Wapsipinicon River,” KCRG 9.2, September 5, 2018.