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Mississippi: 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.

Hurricane Katrina (2005): the Mississippi Gulf Coast

MetricFigure
Landfall Second landfall near the LA/MS state line, August 29, 2005
Storm surge, Biloxi/Gulfport area 26-28 ft above normal tide, the highest measured in U.S. history at the time
Surge penetration inland 6-12 mi along bays and rivers
Mississippi deaths 231-238 (sources vary on the exact figure)
Structures destroyed, beachfront Biloxi/Gulfport/Long Beach/Pass Christian ~90% of all structures between the beach and the railroad
National damage total $125 billion (all affected states)

Why Mississippi's Katrina looks different from Louisiana's

Louisiana’s page on this site covers Katrina as a levee and floodwall engineering failure that flooded New Orleans over days. Mississippi’s coast had no comparable levee system to fail; the storm surge itself, among the highest ever measured in the country, simply overran entire waterfront towns directly. Same storm, two structurally different disasters.

The 2011 Smithville tornado: the other Mississippi EF5

MetricFigure
Date April 27, 2011
Rating EF5
Peak winds 205 mph
Maximum width 3/4 mi
Deaths 23 total along the path, 16 in Smithville itself
Injuries 137
Structures destroyed/damaged in Smithville 117 destroyed, 50 damaged
Damage $14.4 million (2011 USD, Smithville-area figure)

The same outbreak Alabama's page covers

The Smithville tornado struck the same day as Alabama’s Hackleburg-Phil Campbell and Rainsville EF5s, all part of the April 2011 Super Outbreak, the largest tornado outbreak in U.S. history. Mississippi’s Philadelphia tornado was the outbreak’s fourth EF5; see Alabama’s Risks page for the outbreak’s full national context rather than repeating it here.

Sources