After the Rains
LIFE IN DAVENPORT, IOWA, REVOLVES around the Mississippi River. Downtown overlooks the broad waterway here, where, due to a bend, the 2,300-mile-long river flows east to west rather than north to south. The extensive parks along the waterfront host baseball games and music festivals, and tourists disembark mid-cruise to visit breweries, museums, and shops. The Mississippi is usually a source of pride, but this spring locals watched it with wariness. The fat, brown river began to swell in March, the muddy water advancing farther into the city with each passing day, driven by snowmelt and heavy rain. Within a week the water level had climbed nine feet, and it didn’t stop. It surged past 15 feet—flood stage, when water spills into areas not usually inundated—and kept going, cresting at a record-high 22.7 feet on May 2.
As the water rose, it drowned the parkland lining the city’s nine-mile riverfront. The torrent turned the band shell and baseball stadium into islands, and transformed the crowns of shade trees that dot what is usually acres and acres of grass into emerald buoys. Nearly a trillion gallons of water pooled in Nahant Marsh, a restored wetland just west of downtown. One of the temporary HESCO barriers—movable metal structures that stave off river water—abruptly gave way in late April, flooding a few blocks of the business district and sending emergency responders scrambling to evacuate buildings. More than seven weeks passed before the water receded to below 18 feet, trouncing the previous 31-day record.
Davenport is just one of dozens of communities in eight states
