Mississipi in flood

Rising Mississippi River Threatening Towns

Mississippi River communities scrambling Tuesday to fend off the rain-engorged waterway got discouraging news: More rains looming across much of the nation's midsection threatened to slow the potential retreat of the renegade river.

Huffington Post,

4 June, 2013

Such an outlook may not be welcomed in the northeast Missouri town of West Alton, where a makeshift levee's breach Monday fanned worries that the 570-resident town – which was mostly swept away by a flood in 1993 – would be inundated again. A voluntary evacuation advisory before the breach was fixed was heeded by just 15 percent of the town's residents, but "everyone else is ready to go at a moment's notice" if the hastily shored-up barrier shows signs of giving way, Fire Chief Rick Pender said Tuesday.

For now, he said, "everything is stable," with much of the flooding corralled in a railroad bed acting as a town-protecting channel.

"There are some spots not looking pretty (as defenses), but they're still holding the water back," Pender told The Associated Press by telephone. "Everyone is just monitoring the sandbags and barriers, waiting for this water to come down."

The latest National Weather Service forecasts suggest that was to happen later Tuesday. But more rains expected in coming days, from St. Louis north to Minnesota and westward across some of the Great Plains, stood to drop another inch of precipitation here and there, adding more water to the Missouri River and the Mississippi River into which it feeds, National Weather Service hydrologist Mark Fuchs said.

"We're not talking about huge amounts, but any amount when the soil already is wet is going to slow the rivers' retreat," Fuchs said from his St. Louis-area office. "If you take that into account, there's not going to be a big drop in the river levels any time soon."

Across the river in Illinois, in the 28,000-resident city of Alton north of St. Louis, floodwaters already forced the closure of the local casino and the scenic "Great River Road" leading out of it to the north. By late Monday, floodwaters had swamped some of the Clark Bridge linking the city to West Alton, halting traffic from making it into Missouri.

Yet there was reason for optimism: The National Weather Service as of Tuesday afternoon said the river at Alton was expected to crest that evening, some 13 feet above flood stage.

The worst was yet to come south of St. Louis near Cape Girardeau, Mo., where the river was to continue to swell higher until reaching a peak Thursday night, again some 13 feet above flood stage.

That rapid rise has produced a feverish sandbagging effort in nearby Dutchtown, where the river threatened to send water into about a third of the homes in the tiny town of about 100 people. It also was threatening to make another nearby community – Allenville, population 117 – an island. In Dutchtown, dozens of prison inmates bussed in were working shoulder to shoulder with other volunteers Tuesday, working to bolster the makeshift barrier.

"So far, the levees are doing fine," Dutchtown Alderwoman Shirley Moss said. "We still have a lot of water coming this way, and we're still all out here working. It's very treacherous, and you just don't know how much you need to do to prevent this water from coming into town.

"We're doing all we can, with all the help we can get."

Another levee break prompts call for evacuations in Missouri

Emergency officials went door to door Tuesday afternoon urging a few dozen residents of a small farming town near St. Louis to evacuate after a levee battered by floodwaters was breached.

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NBC News,

4 June, 2013

The 100- to 150-foot breach opened up on the Mississippi River side of the Consolidated North County Levee in West Alton, about 20 miles north of St. Louis in St. Charles County, said Colene McEntee, a spokeswoman for the county.

Residents of about 43 homes were urged to leave as water moved 2 miles inside the levee, she said.

The breach is one of several that have been reported in mostly uninhabited lowlands straddling the Missouri River near where it joins the Mississippi after massive storms Friday caused widespread floods.

The Army Corps of Engineers' St. Louis office said the breach follows a similar break earlier in the morning of the levee on Choteau Island near Interstate 270. So far, it said in a statement, most of the federally overseen levees in the district were still "performing as designed."

Tuesday's incident isn't related to a voluntary evacuation order issued Monday night after floodwaters overtook a temporary sandbag barricade in West Alton. Most residents chose to stay put Monday, forcing St. Charles County authorities to return after Tuesday's breach to again urge them to leave, McEntee said.

The National Weather Service said the Mississippi was cresting Tuesday at 34.4 feet at Alton — higher than the damaging floods of April, and a level that would go down in the books as the fourth highest on record.

About 350 homes in St. Charles County sustained major damage from storms on Friday, which dumped 2 to 4 inches of rain into the already flooded rivers and spun off tornadoes that caused widespread damage across Oklahoma and Missouri, the county said in a statement. Forty-five to 50 of those homes have been condemned, officials said.

Oklahomans, meanwhile, faced the possibility of more severe thunderstorms and tornadoes Tuesday as another storm system moved through the Plains and the Mississippi Valley, forecasters said.

Remember Fort Calhoun nuclear plant at Omaha, Nebraska? I reported on this 2 years ago. Most of the flooding so far is south of this, but there are some ominous warnings in this report

A Rising River Could Lead To Another Flood

Flood gates are closing and cities are preparing for another round of rising water