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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Appendix A

COMPILATION OF DAMAGE ESTIMATES FOR 1976-1979

Monthly damage estimates by river basin in 1976 and 1977 were published in
Climatological Data National Summary. NWS staff prepared some 1978 and 1979 estimates
which were summarized in Weatherwise (Marrero 1979, 1980). We augmented these estimates
with unpublished information housed at NWS-IDC, including reports from regional NWS
offices, preliminary tabulation sheets, and notes made by NWS employees. Wherever possible,
we also compared damage estimates from NWS-IDC files with reports on specific floods by
other agencies, including US ACE, USGS, and NOAA. Final estimates were chosen using the
following rules:
. In order to change any estimates in the NWS tabulated data set, a published source had to
provide good reason to doubt the NWS estimates and the published source had to provide
more reliable estimates.
. There were instances when we had to choose between two or more estimates. In general,
we chose published source estimates over NWS "grey" sources.
. Asterisks were added to the estimates wherever published sources indicated that a
damaging flood occurred but provided no estimates.

1976 Flood Damage Estimates
Reconstructed 1976 damage estimates by state and month are shown in Table A-I. Data
sources are as follows:
. September in California is from the NOAA Cooperative Observer (NOAA 1976).
. July in Colorado is from a USGSINOAA report (1979).
. May in Oklahoma is from a report conceming flood hazard mitigation in Oklahoma
(Patton 1993).
. All other damage estimates are from NWS notes and summaries archived at NWS-IDC,
which had been compiled for publication in Climatological Data National Summary, but
had not been published.

1977 Flood Damage Estimates
Reconstructed 1977 damage estimates by state and month are shown in Table A-2. Data
sources are as follows:
. The following totals are from USACE reports: October in Arizona (US ACE, Los Angeles
District 1978) and December in Oregon and Washington (USACE, Portland District
1978).
. The estimate for a flood in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri in September
of 1977 is from NOAA (1977) and USGS (1991) reports.
. 1977 damage totals for Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia have been changed based
on information on April flooding in Appalachia from a TV A flood report (TV A 1978).
. All other damage estimates are from NWS notes and summaries archived at NWS-IDC.

1978 Flood Damage Estimates
Reconstructed 1978 damage estimates by state and month are shown in Table A-3. It was
more difficult to piece together the flood estimates for 1978 and 1979 than for 1976 and 1977.

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