1979 Easter flood

The 1979 Easter flood was one of the most costly and devastating floods to ever occur in Mississippi, United States, with $500–700 million in damages ($0 billion in 2020 dollars). It was the result of the Pearl River being overwhelmed by severe rain upstream. Floodwaters sent the Pearl River 15 feet above flood stage. More than 17,000 residents of Jackson, Flowood, Pearl, Richland, and other settlements in the Jackson metropolitan area were forced from their homes. The flooding of the Pearl River placed most of the streets of Jackson, the state's capital city, under several feet of water. This flood resulted from a storm system that was the same storm system that, just a few days earlier, produced the Red River valley tornado outbreak that is particularly well-known because of the devastating Wichita Falls, Texas tornado that killed 42, injured over 1,700, left an estimated 20,000 homeless, and caused, in 1979 dollars, approximately $400 million in damages.

The river
The Pearl River is 490 miles long. It begins in Winston County, Mississippi and ends at the Mississippi Sound. Northeast of Jackson, the man-made Ross Barnett Reservoir is formed by a dam in the Pearl River. It flooded due to abnormally high rainfall in the preceding months (up to 150% more than usual). The water level reached a record-setting 43.28 feet on April 17, 1979.



Present
Flood stage at Jackson in 1979 was considered to be 18 feet (relative to the gauge datum on Pearl River), but as of 2004, this stage was set as 28 feet.