The river's record before the record · 1982 and 1993

15 MARCH 1982 AND 6 JANUARY 1993

The St. Joseph River's documented crest history at South Bend, as the gauges carry it, is shorter than the city's memory of floods — and the gap is printed plainly: Until February 2018, the highest crest ever recorded at South Bend stood at 10.90 feet, and it was reached twice: on 15 March 1982 and again on 6 January 1993. The March 1982 flood was the basin's benchmark event of the late twentieth century: the U.S. Geological Survey's report on the floods of that month documents rapid melting of a snowpack holding two to six inches of water, coinciding with moderate rain, across northern Indiana, southern Michigan and northwestern Ohio — millions of dollars in property damage and four lives lost across the three states, with the St. Joseph River's flooding carrying a recurrence interval of about fifty years. At South Bend the river reached the 10.90-foot mark on 15 March; eleven years later, in a winter rise, it reached exactly the same mark again on 6 January 1993, and there the record rested for twenty-five years, until February 2018 broke it — the flood told in its own entry below.

One expected entry in this record is not there, and its absence is stated rather than filled: No crest for South Bend in 1908 is carried in the gauge record this build could reach. The basin's documented flood of 1908 belongs to the gauge upstream at Elkhart, where the Geological Survey's peak-flow table carries a discharge of 26,000 cubic feet per second on 8 March 1908 — still the largest discharge in that gauge's file, greater than the 21,100 cubic feet per second Elkhart recorded in February 2018. A South Bend crest for 1908 may exist in records beyond the ones reached here; until it is produced, this history prints the city's crest record as the gauges state it: 10.90 feet, twice, and then 12.70. The river's whole story — the bend, the races, the dams, the East Race — is the Rivers section's, when it is built; what belongs here is the measured line the floods of 2016 and 2018 have to be read against.

Sources:

1. National Weather Service, Northern Indiana (IWX), "Heavy Rain & Flooding Event Summary: February 19th–21st, 2018" — at South Bend the 2018 crest of 12.70 feet "breaks the previous record of 10.90 feet on January 6, 1993"; The Weather Channel, 23 February 2018 — the previous record of 10.9 feet "from Jan. 6, 1993, and March 15, 1982."
2. Glatfelter, Butch and Stewart, Floods of March 1982, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio, U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 83-4201 (1984) — the snowpack melt of two to six inches of water equivalent with moderate rainfall, the millions in damage and four lives lost across the three states, and the St. Joseph River's flooding at a recurrence interval of about 50 years.
3. U.S. Geological Survey, peak streamflow table for station 04101000, St. Joseph River at Elkhart — the historic peak of 26,000 cubic feet per second on 8 March 1908 and the 21,100 cubic feet per second of 22 February 2018, printed here as Elkhart's figures, upstream, and not South Bend's.