FLOOD06680

• County: Statewide
• Basin: Statewide
• Title: Flood Damage in the United States, 1926-2000
• Date: 6/1/2000
• Prepared By: NOAA
• Floodplain - Doc Type: Flood Documentation Report

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for this time period are highly unreliable (see Section 5), Therefore, eslimates for 1980--1982 are
not included in the reanalyzed data sets, and we judge that data published by NWS for this period
is of consistently lower quality than in other years.

A few general comments can be made about 1980-1982, Flood damage descriptions in
Stonn Data, which were sparse in previous years, became even rarer in 1980--1981. The
information that does exist for the period suggests that 1980 and 1981 were extremely dry years
in most parts of the country, so flood damage was probably small compared to other years
(Wagner 1982, USGS 1991, notes in NWS files), On the other hand, descriptions in Stonn Data
suggest that flood damage rose to a higher level in 1982, perhaps close to the average level of
that time,

B. Annual National Flood Damage Estimates (1926-1979, 1983-2000)
Since flood damage estimates for 1983 through 2000 are available only for fiscal years
(October-September), it is desirable to compile the entire national flood damage data set using
fiscal years, Fortunately, in its annual flood damage summary for 1975, Climatological Data
National Summary (NWS 1977, vol. 13, p, II7) published national flood damage estimates by
month for the years 1925 to 1975, Therefore, we were able to calculate national annual damage
totals based on fiscal years for 1926-1979, creating a consistent form for the full national data
set.

Table 3-1 shows annual damage estimates for the United States, by fiscal year, in
millions of current dollars and in millions of inflation-adjusted 1995 dollars, The implicit price
deflator used to adjust for inflation is also shown in the table,

C. Annual Flood Damage Estimates for the States (1955-1979, 1983-2000)
Annual damage estimates for each of the 50 states are given in Appendix B, The
estimates for 1955 through 1975 are taken from Climatological Data National Summary (NWS
1977, vol. 13, p, 121), and are based on calendar years, Estimates for 1976-1979 are based on
our reanalysis of available data (described above), and are presented by calendar year to be
consistent with the earlier data, The estimates for 1983-2000 are taken from Anny Corps of
Engineers Annual Damage Report to Congress (1993, 2001), and are based on fiscal years
(October-September),

D. Annual Flood Damage Estimates in River Basins (1933-1975)
The NWS and U,S, Weather Bureau compiled annual damage estimates by river basin
from 1933 through 1975, publishing them first in the Monthly Weather Review (1933-1947) and
later in Climatological Data National Summary (1948-1975), To make these estimates
accessible to users, we organized them by large river drainages in a uniform format for the full
time period,