Word: height
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...have been lashing the upper Midwest and swelling the rivers for the past three months, in amounts often difficult to believe (an inch in only six minutes last week at Papillion, Nebraska). Otherwise the crest could be even higher than predicted; continued rain caused forecasts of the expected maximum height at St. Louis to be raised a full foot within two days late last week. On Saturday, thunderstorms dropped an additional 5 in. of rain on central Iowa. A dangerous second crest could chase the big one down the Mississippi, and secondary rivers could burst their banks in areas...
...even with few or no additions, the Great Flood of '93 is already one of the all-time monsters. It might go down as the worst of all in the U.S. by many measures: height of flood crest, area inundated (close to 17,000 sq. mi., vs. 12,700 in the awesome flood of 1937 along many of the same rivers) and property damage. Government estimates skyrocketed in little more than a week from $500 million to as much as $8 billion, and the final tally might be higher still...
...late 20th century flooding in the U.S. has been a decline in deaths proportionate to the area inundated, but a startling rise in property damage, due to increased building and farming on the floodplains and inflation in dollar values. Beyond that, all is as uncertain as the exact height of the flood crest and the precise time it will pass St. Louis. A 1955 book, A Treasury of Mississippi River Folklore, quotes an obscure orator, one S.S. Prentiss, as saying, "When God made the world, He had a large amount of surplus water which he turned loose and told...
...knows what the real numbers will be. There are many being cast about, but they swirl like the river. The first estimates run to $1.2 billion in flood damage. Barge owners claim $1 million a day in lost business. Meanwhile, the river's height is nearing the records set in 1965. In Davenport, Iowa, the waters were 7 ft. above flood level. In St. Louis they were 10 ft. above. There the precipitation over the past six months has been more than twice the amount in the same period in 1992. The past eight months have been the wettest...
Terrence McNally, the playwright of this austerely sentimental journey, is a longtime toiler in the vineyards of the theater who increasingly finds himself the height of hot. His libretto for the Broadway musical Kiss of the Spider Woman won a shower of awards including a Tony; his AIDS teleplay, Andre's Mother, won an Emmy; his domestic tragicomedy, Lips Together, Teeth Apart, has been a hit on both coasts, and Frankie and Johnny became a movie with Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer. In his early hits Next and The Ritz, McNally revealed his fevered comic sense, satiric wit, robust skepticism...