Midwest/Iowa Flooding

[cstrunk]

Quite surprised there hasn't been more discussion about the ongoing flooding in the midwest. Iowa (along with many other places) have been getting hit hard by heavy rains. Many of the major rivers in Iowa are predicted to crest at record or near-record level. Saylorville Reservoir north of Des Moines is releasing large amounts of water now expecting the Des Moines River to crest just 6" shy of the record set in 1993... and depending on how much it rains in central/northern Iowa tonight, it could be worse.

www.kcci.com has been keeping updates posted on their website.

 

[Josh Richardson]

Ha, its funny you posted this because I was just thinking the same thing. Record flooding has been occurring all over Central and Eastern IA in particular. Mason City broke its record by 3 feet, and was without water all week long until today...we now have water strictly for toilet and showers as it is not safe enough to drink. Go to www.globegazette.com to see pictures from Mason City and all across North Iowa. Record flooding has also been seen in Charles City and further down the Cedar River into Cedar Falls/Waterloo. We had left Mason City to come down here to Des Moines until the water was back on and now here in Des Moines flooding is occurring with more rain on the way over the next few days. Looking to head back to Mason City today.

Actually, KCCI that you mentioned is right across the street from where Im at right now here in the Eagle Ridge Subdivision of Johnston/Des Moines. The river is behind the houses across the street and they had been going live from here earlier and I believe are going to be out here all day.

 

[Ryan Wichman]

I saw today that there was a civil emergency message sent out for Cedar Rapid for an evacuation. I don't know much about the area, how often do parts of the city near the river have to be evacuated?

 

[Josh Richardson]

The message I saw was for Palo which is a small town outside of Cedar Rapids, Im not sure how often Cedar Rapids has evacuations but none of this would surprise me at this point considering the damage and levels the Cedar River has been at to the north so far.

 

[Derek Weston]

I saw today that there was a civil emergency message sent out for Cedar Rapid for an evacuation. I don't know much about the area, how often do parts of the city near the river have to be evacuated?

Palo, a small town on the NW fringe of Cedar Rapids, is being evacuated. My parents have a garage rented for storage there... visited a couple nights ago and didn't think the water would make it that far. I may be wrong. I do believe the Cedar River in Eastern Iowa will easily beat 93 and set its all time record.

My town of Iowa city is likely to lose it's most used entrances and exits.

This is really something for the record books. And it will only get worse after the rain we ought to have here Wednesday night into Thursday.

A couple of good websites to keep up on the flooding:
Iowa weather site: http://www.iowastorms.com/weather/html/index.php
Quad Cities flood page: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/crnews/display_story.php?wfo=dvn&storyid=14389&source=0
Local news in eastern Iowa: http://www.kcrg.com/

 

[MatthewCarman]

This has been realy bad. The South Skunk River is completely over it's banks and Interstate I-80 goes right over the river. I would not be suprised if part of the interstate is shut down if we get several more inches of rain in this area. I was told the water is close to the Interstate and the town of Colfax by the Interstate has severe flooding ongoing there. Taking the back road from Newton to Pella is no good as the road is completely flooded just after Reasnor for several miles. They have the road closed so nobody can use it. The SK river actually looks like a lake right now. I bet the NorthSkunk River is also flooding bad right now.

This is alot worse than the flooding we had last year in August and I would not be suprised if this was worse than 1993 in several areas. With 1-3 inches of rain possible tonight and more rain possible Sunday the flooding looks to continue for the time being.

 

[Tony Perkins]

Here is some video I took last weekend of the outflow of the dam, what a torrent. Raft anyone? It's higher now.

http://www.blueskybust.com/dates/2008/2008-06-07-Sailorville_Dam/

 

[John Farley]

I grew up in Waterloo, so I have been following the situation there online. The crest this morning apparently broke the old record by about 3 and a half feet. I remember those floods in the 1960s and I don't think we ever thought those records would be broken - even in 1993, they weren't. Although the floodwalls held downtown, parts of the downtown area have nonetheless been flooded due to seepage, groundwater, etc. There are places that have water now that never have before.

 

[Jim Saueressig]

The City of Palo IA has declared a mandatory evacuation to begin immediately for the entire city of Palo. Link

Cedar Rapids Begins Mandatory Evacuations Link

Sounds like a lot of these up that way...

 

[Joel Wright]

Lets hope the models are incorrect in their QPF forecasts for Iowa over the next few days. HPC has much of Iowa targeted for heavy rain as well.

The scary part is models can underestimate rainfall totals with MCS events. Storms like to backbuild and "train" over the same areas a lot this time of year. Hopefully the storms over the next few days can remain relatively progressive and not dump copius amounts of rain on any given location.

 

[Josh Richardson]

Yeah, Joel is right. We are going to have storms just adding insult to injury. Luckily, the rainfall has been better the last couple days to the point where Mason City is getting back down to around 9 ft, however, due to the upcoming rains it seems we will hit between 12 and 13 ft again in the next few days. At least that is still below record levels, I see downstream DSM gauges are showing crests not coming for a few days as well due to the forecasted rains upcoming.

 

[Angie K Holliday]

I grew up in Keokuk, Iowa, so I'm watching this really closely too. My mom is still up there, and it's affected by the Des Moines River and the Mississippi. The road between there and here has already been closed once this year for flooding, and it sounds like that's going to get worse with all the rain up north.

 

[Bill Schintler]

Flooding in Iowa City, IA

I live here and flooding is projected to be the worst in history, surpassing that of 1993 - even with no additional rainfall from this point on. And significant rainfall is on the way tonight. Water has been flowing over the Coralville Dam at the Coralville Reservoir, upstream from Iowa City along the Iowa River, for about 24 hours at this point. The projected river crest is in nine days (with NO additional rainfall).

In Iowa City, the peak outflow from the dam was 28,200 cfs in 1993, when the area experienced unprecedented flooding. For this event, the projected outflow was revised to 40,000 cfs with a crest on Tuesday. That forecast was made prior to the 2-4 inches of rainfall that fell in much of the upstream Iowa River basin last night. This will probably be by far the worst flooding the Iowa City area has ever seen....

- bill

 

[Joel Wright]

Not sure if the current situation is good or bad. There is a healthy line of storms in central Iowa right now, but it seems fairly progressive. Just moderate stratiform/anvil rains behind it. I don't think this is anything more than what was anticipated in flood forecasts at this point. So far no backbuilding, repeated storm development hitting any one location(s) too badly. Hopefully this is what the river/flood forecasters were expecting.

The new 00z models rolling in look similar to the previous runs. This should at least keep current forecasts from going up anyway.

 

[Doug Raflik]

My home town of Waupun, Wisconsin...

Doug Raflik