10/09/2026
Two floods. Same river. Same height. Totally different stories.
In July, the South Skunk River at Ames crested at 23.25 feet after a cloudburst dumped 2.6 inches on the airport in a single hour — a once-in-90-years kind of rain.
In October, it crested at 23.04 feet. Within three inches of July. But the rain that time? Ordinary. Under 2 inches in a day.
So how does an ordinary storm make the same flood as a rare one?
The answer is in the ground. By fall, the subsoil across the watershed was far wetter than normal, crops had stopped pulling water out of it, and nearly half the rain ran straight off to the river. In July, less than a third did.
We dug into the river gauges, radar rainfall, soil moisture and satellite data to tell the story — with interactive maps and charts you can explore yourself. Check out the story in the link below.
