Persisting river flooding in Midwest with more rain this week

AccuWeather

AccuWeather Flood Expert Alex Sosnowski breaks down the persisting river flooding as of April 8 that took place along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers after days of historic rainfall in those regions.

Transcript

00:00anytime we've seen you we're still talking about flooding let's take a look at some of the current

00:05rivers and if you can help break down what all of these different dots on the screen mean

00:09basically you might have to squint a little bit here when you see red on there that's moderate

00:16flooding and when you see the purple dots those are gauge sites there where there's major flooding

00:22going on or there's going to be soon going to be major flooding if you get moderate or major

00:28flooding that means that the river is well out of its banks and unprotected areas here there's a

00:33substantial amount of inundation going on and that's just what we see here if you take a look

00:39at this map here a little bit longer if you will we're starting to see the secondary rivers now

00:44starting to recede also the the headwaters of the ohio the river is receding up around cincinnati but

00:52the farther downstream you go where the river gets wider and there's a lot more water to

00:58deal with like at cairo illinois you can see here that it's going to take a long time for that

01:05water to cycle through the ohio river is the major contributory the biggest contributory to the

01:12mississippi in a sense you can almost call the lower portion of the mississippi the ohio because

01:18most of the water that's in there is from the ohio river believe it or not but you can see there

01:23that the levels stay up here at cairo illinois for an extended period it may not be until around the

01:2820th or 22nd of the month until it starts to go down there uh you can see the the extent of the

01:35high water there at padauka kentucky uh a lot of these communities here these larger communities

01:40along the river along the ohio they don't have much development here right along the river but it's

01:45the secondary rivers that start to come into these uh we have a lot of problems uh an unprotected

01:51farmland too as you go downstream then to the mississippi river uh there you can see osceola

01:56uh on the mississippi here that the water is still coming up there and it's a very gradual process

02:02my slogan here is the mississippi doesn't do anything fast it takes a long time for that flood cycle to

02:09occur it takes weeks and we'll be talking about weeks of high water along unprotected areas of the

02:15mississippi and then finally even down to baton rouge we don't even see the uh the crest here

02:20which is going to be a major flood stage around the 20th to the 22nd of the month uh it is forecast

02:26to reach major stage down that far uh along the mississippi which is down in the delta region

02:31that that's huge i just had to double check my watch it's like it's only the 8th and you're

02:35talking about till the 20th so areas that didn't even get the heaviest rain are going to be seeing

02:40impacts from this in in weeks to come that is rather significant alex now in the short

02:45term there will be the return of some precipitation let's talk about if there will be any impacts from

02:51this there will be some impact from this there's a little bit of a concern here for some of the

02:56small streams because the ground is saturated you can have some quick runoff but this is not

03:01anything close to the type of rain that caused the flooding in the first place i don't think this

03:05is going to have much impact at all on the intermediate and large rivers it may slow the rate of recession

03:13for a day or so along some of those secondary rivers and probably very little to no impact on

03:18say the ohio or the lower portion of the mississippi in this case but there is more rain coming that's

03:24going to hamper some cleanup operations here but even though you may get some thunderstorms within

03:29some of those might be a little on the gusty side this is not going to be a prolonged event looks

03:34like it's a double batch looks like there's one coming tuesday night to wednesday and then another

03:38one coming wednesday night to thursday across the region but they're moving through we're not going

03:42to see six eight inches of rain out of this you might get an inch of rain spread out over several

03:47days and i think a lot of people may think you know the worst of it comes when the rain is coming

03:52down but we know that after the storm there are still many flood risks uh we have two different

03:57graphics let's start with the the first four here yeah there's electrical hazards uh don't forget

04:03the water was up there and probably cause some short circuits cause some damage that water is

04:08contaminated it's not just pathogens there's a lot of chemicals in that water i know in the northeast

04:13when we have flooding there's a lot of fuel oil that gets mixed in there there can be gasoline other

04:17chemical contaminants so you don't want to be drinking that water until the officials say it's safe

04:22and even then i'd still give it some extra time a lot of the structures have been damaged or weakened by this

04:27and i can't stress enough here with with the mold and mildew problem with this but from from what i've seen

04:34firsthand gone through a flood by far it's mud mud mud mud like you've never seen and the smell a lot of that

04:43stuff even though you might be able to rinse it off and it looks okay it's going to keep that odor

04:48for many years uh there's a lot of wild animals that have been displaced uh with this uh if you're if you're

04:56if you're a believer uh in in shots and stuff like that and make sure your tetanus booster is up to

05:02date i think the cutoff is 10 years uh there can still be some damage to infrastructure gas leaks

05:08and of course it's the shock uh to this uh if if you don't have uh the flood insurance with this thing

05:14uh your insurance your standard insurance policy is not going to cover this unfortunately and the

05:20mental health impact on the bottom i mean you you got into meteorology right because of flooding and

05:24that obviously is still impacting you to this day yeah it certainly is it it's a horrible shock to

05:30the system and it's it takes decades to recover financially uh if you don't have flood insurance

05:35from this thing so even though your house is paid off you say well i don't need flood insurance

05:39i think twice about that if you if you dodge the bullet here this time yeah absolutely all right

05:45accurate flooding expert alex is asking we appreciate your expertise and thank you so much again for

05:49joining us this morning my pleasure

05:51my pleasure

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