At least 21 people have died as a result of severe weather and widespread flooding in the nation’s midsection over the first week of April, the Associated Press reported on Monday.
The overall event was remarkably well predicted (see our April 2 advance write-up). And in the midst of severe pressure on staffing and infrastructure driven by massive cuts to NOAA budgets this year, the National Weather Service persisted, issuing many dozens of lifesaving tornado and flash flood warnings.
Relentless rounds of intense thunderstorms developed from Wednesday through Saturday along a surface front stalled from the Southern Plains to the Ohio Valley. The front whipsawed north and south as upper-level impulses passed overhead, and that oscillation may have averted even more trouble: The zones of heaviest rains shifted from day to day just enough to give most locations one or more rain-free breaks amid the four-day onslaught.
Among the locations that saw historic four-day rainfall totals were the largest cities in Tennessee and Arkansas:
- Memphis, Tennessee: 12.37 inches, surpassed only by 13.59 inches on June 7-10, 1937 (records begin 1872)
- Little Rock, Arkansas: 11.82 inches, surpassed only by 12.53 inches on May 6-9, 1892, and 11.95 inches on Dec. 24-27, 1987 (records begin 1875)
The broad, uneven spread of the heaviest rain also meant that flooding tended to be localized, so it will take time to assess the full extent of damage. Many pockets of inundated homes and businesses were strewn across the region.
Read: Why is it raining so hard? Global warming is delivering heavier downpours
The Kentucky River at the state capitol of Frankfort crested at 4 a.m. CDT Monday morning, April 7, at 48.27 feet, according to water.noaa.gov. This was less than three inches below the record crest of 48.47 feet on December 10, 1978, and just ahead of the 47.46 observed during the catastrophic Ohio River Flood of January 1937, which took 385 lives and left a million people homeless across the region. Both the 1937 and 1978 floods inundated large parts of central Frankfort, which sits in a compact valley, but a pair of floodwalls (one completed in the mid-1990s) designed for a 51-foot crest spared most of the city this time.
Record and near-record crests occurred at several other points along the Kentucky River. Just south of Lexington near Camp Nelson National Monument, the river crested at 47.04 feet, topping the previous record of 46.02 feet on May 3, 2010, across more than a century of record-keeping.
Moderate to major flooding will work its way from Kentucky southward along the Mississippi over the next week or more, as floodwaters feed into the vast river. Since snowpack was well below average this winter near the upper Mississippi, the floodwaters atop snowmelt aren’t expected to be enough to push the river into truly historic flooding downstream, though some impacts are likely in flood-prone areas. Rescuers from as far away as North Carolina helped out in hard-hit parts of the region.
Tornadoes precede the floodwaters
For the period from April 1 to 6, the Storm Prediction Center compiled 109 preliminary tornado reports after filtering for duplicates. That’s an impressive total, but well shy of record numbers for a multiday outbreak. (For comparison, the 1974 and 2011 Super Outbreaks each spawned more than 140 confirmed tornadoes within the space of 24 hours.) None of the past week’s tornadoes appear to have produced long swaths of catastrophic damage.
By far the most active tornado day was Wednesday, April 2, with 70 reports. Initial storm surveys concluded that six tornadoes on April 2-3 produced at least EF3 damage on the Enhanced Fujita Scale in parts of Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee. There were no initial findings of EF4 or EF5 damage, but survey work was halted by the multiple rounds of severe weather that extended into Sunday, so updates are possible this week.
One of the outbreak’s most intense tornadoes ground its way across northeast Arkansas near Lake City on Wednesday evening.
Jeff Masters contributed to this post.
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