Floods punctuated by drought: Developing an early warning system for the missouri river basin in the midst of alternating extremes

The Missouri River is an enigma. Despite over a century of human attempts to understand and control it, the longest waterway in the United States remains perplexing and mysterious. The river eludes the efforts of modern technology to tame it fully and continues to provide water of uncertain quantity and quality. It either furnishes too much of it, as it did during the disastrous floods of 1844, 1881, 1943, 1951, and 1993, or too little of it, as was the case during the severe droughts of the 1860‘s, 1890‘s, 1920‘s, 1930‘s, late 1980‘s through early 1990‘s, and early 2000‘s. Lawson 2009.