“It was the worst such catastrophe to ever hit the region”

On November 3, 1955, the Connecticut Flood Recovery Committee’s final report declared, “Connecticut was the hardest hit victim of the worst flood in the history of the eastern United States.” ¹ The state endured Nature’s fury in two major floods, one on August 19 and the second on October 16. Both were results of torrential rains.

On August 13 Hurricane Connie dropped four to six inches of rain on Connecticut. Five days later, another hurricane, Diane, dropped an additional fourteen inches of rain in a thirty-hour period between Thursday morning and Friday noon. The floods came on the 19^th. The greatest loss of life and destruction to property occurred along the Mad and Still Rivers in Winsted, the Naugatuck, the Farmington, and the Quinebaug in the Putnam-Killingly region. Governor Abraham Ribicoff personally visited the scenes of destruction. President Dwight Eisenhower declared Connecticut a disaster area. The survivors, however, hardly had time to recover when the second flood took place. From October 14 through the 16th, heavy rains once more saturated the state. Gale winds and high tides resulted in new destruction along the shore in towns such as Norwalk. Again Governor Ribicoff visited sites of destruction, and the President issued a second declaration designating Connecticut as a disaster area.

http://www.cslib.org/flood1955.htm

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h/t to Sparks