A prediction of a forty-nine-foot crest in the river, expressed without any reservation, seemed to imply that the flood would hit forty-nine feet exactly; the fifty-one-foot levees would be just enough to keep them safe. Some residents even interpreted the forecast of forty-nine feet as representing the maximum possible extent of the flood.11 An oft-told joke: a statistician drowned crossing a river that was only three feet deep on average. On average, the flood might be forty-nine feet in the Weather Service’s forecast model, but just a little bit higher and the town would be inundated. The
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