ST. LOUIS – Every Wednesday, the National Weather Service (NWS) in St. Louis releases its 28-day flood forecast.
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NWS Hydrologist Mark Fuchs said the outlook for the region shows river levels in the area are not going down anytime soon. While the forecast is mostly made for navigation for barge traffic, it shows the Mississippi River at Alton's Melvin-Price Lock and Dam staying above flood stage. Fuchs said he did not expect it to get much higher, but said it will not lower much either. Predicting weather that far in advance is a tricky science at best, and NWS hydrologist Fuchs said a lot of the data comes from the National Climate Prediction Center. According to their predictions, April, May, June, July and August will all have above-average precipitation.
“I'm not real optimistic about it going below flood stage anytime soon,” Fuchs said. “We run an offline model of what the river may do with the next 16 days of precipitation. We indeed could be seeing additional significant rainfall over the next 16 days, but it's not a very precise model. There is a fair amount [of precipitation] in there, but it doesn't give accurate locations or timing.”
Precise future forecasts are not available, but Fuchs said the current model shows the potential of the river getting as high as current levels at least. He said they did not seem to show it getting as high as it was, but was sure to add it was not falling anytime soon.
“We don't have a solid answer for precipitation later this spring,” Fuchs said when asked what the future flood forecasts looked like later in the season. “The Climate Prediction Center predicts the likelihood of above average precipitation for about the Eastern three-fourths of the country – from the Rockies to the East.”
This above average prediction is for most of the United States East of the Rockies and South of Minnesota and Philadelphia. It extends through the spring and most of the summer. Given this outlook, more flooding this year seems likely.
Fuchs said this will greatly effect the Missouri River, adding it will likely stay above-normal or even high as the spring and its rains continue. He said one large event or series of events in the Upper Missouri or Upper Mississippi River Basins could cause moderate or major flooding in the Riverbend as well as St. Louis.
As of now, crests north of the Riverbend in places such as Winfield, Canton, Quincy and Hannibal have reached historic highs. Fuchs said 2019's early April flooding has taken the seventh slot in those areas' highest historical crests. He said flooding in Northwestern Missouri reached levels higher than even the Great Flood of 1993.
Historic floods have been increasingly common over the past decade. When asked why that is, Grafton Mayor Rick Eberlin said the SNY Levee District north of his town as well as a failure to dredge the Mississippi River properly by the Army Corps of Engineers was to blame. Alton Mayor Brant Walker said the historic flooding was most likely a result of climate change. Fuchs said he tends to believe it has much more to do with climate change than levees.
“Between the two of them, I won't discount climate change,” he said. “There has been more rain across the Midwest for the last 11 years. Climate change, regardless of the cause, is more likely to blame. Levees are not any higher than they were 11 years ago, and it's rain that is causing the floods, not levees.”
As for flooding for the rest of the year, Fuchs advised to “stay tuned.”
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