Flooding threat for Central US

AccuWeather

Alex Sosnowski, AccuWeather's flood expert, joined AccuWeather Early to provide insights on areas in the central U.S. that face an elevated risk of flooding this weekend due to heavy rainfall.

Transcript

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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