00:00Can you explain how lack of recent rainfall has affected drought and river levels in this region?
00:06Well, it's having a big negative effect. Of course, it's affecting the tug and barge
00:12operations on the Mississippi River when the water levels are low. They can't pull as many
00:16or push as many barges. And when that happens, because of the shallow water, the shoal risk
00:21and running aground, it costs a lot more to ship those goods up and down the river.
00:27But as a positive there in terms of, say, a flooding event, when you got the river levels
00:32down like they are, it's a little bit of a buffer.
00:37You can see the drought monitor right now, and this actually just got an update yesterday.
00:41Do you think the rainfall that we're going to be tracking today into the weekend will make a huge
00:46dent in this? It's going to make some of a dent in the drought. I don't want to say that it's going
00:54to be the total answer. We need to get rain on a regular basis for that. But in the past two
00:58months, a lot of the rainfall that's occurred in the area is only like 10 to 25 percent of average
01:03in Texas and Oklahoma. So this is going to help in that aspect. But you can see there when we start
01:10getting those yellows and those oranges showing up, the dark greens, some of that rain is on the
01:14heavy side there. Certainly the brighter colors are. And unfortunately, some of that may come down
01:20so fast that it just runs off. And speaking of that, are there specific areas that we're watching
01:26within the central U.S. that are going to be at a higher risk of flooding this weekend?
01:30Yes, we are, Ariel. If you see those two dark green areas, those are the kind of spots that we're
01:35homing in on, where we're probably looking at four to eight inches of rain in general. Outside of that,
01:42though, you see there's a broad area where there's two to four inches of rain. And a lot of that can
01:46occur in some downpours that may only last a couple of hours. But again, it's the runoff
01:51potential. We're not going to have problems on the major rivers with this, but it's the small streams,
01:56the urban areas, the underpasses, folks that venture over the low water crossings. We have a
02:02lot of those out in this part of the country. They can rapidly take on water. If you're camping this
02:07weekend, you got to be a little smart about that. You don't want to camp alongside the stream bed
02:14there that may look really low because that can come up fairly fast. I saw on Instagram the other
02:21day that Paul McCartney was on the banks of the Arkansas River in Tulsa, and he was kind of panning
02:26around showing how low the river levels are there. So that's an example of what's going on.
02:31All right. We appreciate that. To kind of sum it up, what do you think residents,
02:34visitors of the area, motorists need to be aware of then as we head into this weekend?
02:38Yeah. This thing for 95% of the people in this area, it's going to be more of a nuisance.
02:44Okay. If you have outdoor plans, you're traveling through here, you got problems here. It's going
02:47to slow you down on the roads. Got to watch for ponding. Again, those underpasses, that water can
02:53be rapidly rising in there. You think you can make it through. It looks like it's fairly shallow,
02:57but it's on the rise very quickly. That can stall your car. And if it stalls your car, you put
03:02yourself at risk. And also you can ruin your vehicle. That water gets up in there. You can do a lot
03:07of damage. So you don't want to be doing that. Just be smart about this, this weekend. In most
03:13cases, this won't be a problem, but there are dangers along the small streams here for rapid
03:17rises. And that'll continue, it looks like, into Saturday night. The thing starts to shift eastward
03:23later this weekend and early next week. And that could feed that big storm that we've been talking
03:27about on the east coast with or without Melissa's help.
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