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Iowa: Risks & Trends

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Same standard as every other page on this site: every figure below is independently sourced, and figures that vary across sources, or measure genuinely different things, are flagged as such rather than collapsed into one number that looks more precise than the underlying data actually supports.

The 2008 flood: Cedar Rapids’s record crest

MetricFigure
Cedar River crest at Cedar Rapids 31.12 ft (previous record: ~20 ft)
Area of Cedar Rapids flooded 10 sq mi (14% of the city)
Cedar Rapids residents displaced 18,000+
Statewide residents displaced (16 counties) 38,043
Homes flooded (Cedar Rapids) ~6,000 (1,300 later demolished)
City facilities damaged 310
Statewide damage $10 billion
Deaths 0

The 2020 derecho: the costliest thunderstorm event on record

MetricFigure
Date August 10, 2020
Path length ~700-770 mi (South Dakota to Ohio)
Peak winds (Cedar Rapids area) 140 mph
Iowa deaths 4
National damage total $11.2 billion, the costliest thunderstorm event on record in the U.S.
Cedar Rapids area damaged ~75 sq mi, nearly every building
Cedar Rapids trees lost ~676,000 (~70% of the tree canopy)
Iowa farmland destroyed ~6 million acres (~20% of the state's farmland)
People in the overall damage footprint 20 million+
Peak power outages 1 million+ customers, some for 2+ weeks

What these two have in common

Separated by 12 years, the 2008 flood and the 2020 derecho both struck Cedar Rapids specifically with force well beyond anything the city’s existing infrastructure and expectations were built for, one redefining the city’s flood-crest record by more than 11 feet, the other flattening the majority of its urban tree canopy in a matter of hours. Together they demonstrate that a single Midwest city can face both catastrophic water risk and catastrophic wind risk within the span of a little over a decade.

Sources