Drenching downpours to elevate flood risk this weekend

AccuWeather

Much of the eastern U.S. can expect heavy rainfall that will elevate the risk of flooding this weekend. Among the states at risk of renewed flooding are Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and Ohio.

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00:00flooding. You can see the 10-year historical average for weather fatalities, 48 for tornadoes,

00:05but 103 for flooding. And that's why we want to bring in one of our experts. Joining me right now

00:10is AccuWeather flooding expert Alex Szczesowski. Alex, thank you so much for being with us on

00:15AccuWeather Early, where we're going to break down the huge flooding threats. And this is fresh in a

00:19lot of people's mind because you're saying just a month ago, this is what we were dealing with

00:23in Kentucky. Yeah, it was pretty much a month ago to the day. We had significant flooding in central

00:28and eastern Kentucky. That was the apex of it. We have another flooding event coming up here.

00:33We don't think it's going to be necessarily quite as extreme as that, but we are going to have

00:38significant flooding with this, and most of that's going to stem from flash flooding, we think, this

00:43time. If you look at the past 30-day rainfall, you can see where some of that heaviest rainfall

00:48was centered up across Kentucky. And we also were coming off of ground being frozen. There was some

00:54snow up in the mountains, some snow cover on the ground. So that kind of added into that.

00:59So if we step forward here, we take a look at the drought monitor. There's actually some

01:03significant areas here where we can use the rain. There's been some wildfire activity going on,

01:07significant wildfire activity. So this rain coming in is going to certainly help that.

01:12And some of the dry ground here is also going to help the amount of rain that we're going to

01:16get here a little bit, kind of cancel it out. But that's not going to be the case everywhere.

01:20And so if we take a look at what we're expecting here in terms of flooding

01:25tomorrow, or on Saturday, the dark green area is the area of greatest concern where we could have

01:31widespread flash flooding in there. I think we're looking at a general 2 to 4 inches of rain in that

01:36dark green zone, 1 to 2 inches surrounding that. But within that dark green zone, there's a

01:41potential for 6 inches of rain to fall, and some of that could fall within 6 hours. So you're

01:46definitely going to get urban flooding from this. You're definitely going to get small stream

01:50flooding from this. Any low water crossings there or secondary roads along these small

01:54streams could be very dangerous. You don't want to try to cross them in this situation.

01:58There's also going to be some river flooding with this, mostly with the secondary rivers that kind

02:02of feed into the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. Those secondary rivers here will see some

02:08significant rises with this, and that'll eventually work their way down the Ohio and Mississippi with

02:12some subtle to moderate rises. If we step forward here to Sunday, the main action then

02:19shifts to the I-81 and I-95 corridors. Travel probably along I-81 is going to be the worst.

02:26We think probably Sunday midday into the afternoon. Then along I-95, you're probably

02:31looking at urban flooding problems here later Sunday afternoon into Sunday evening. Those

02:36will be the worst times to be on the road when there can be significant ponding and very poor

02:40visibility due to some gusty thunderstorms and also some torrential rainfall that's going to be

02:44sweeping through. Accular flooding expert Alex Zasowski, thank you so much again for joining

02:49us and bringing your expertise about the flooding that we'll be tracking through this weekend.

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