Farmers in key growing areas are dealing with massive flooding after unrelenting rains inundated states in the central and southeast. Storms dropped 8-16 inches of rain over the Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi river basins across a four-day stretch. While rain has left the forecast, communities are still threatened by major flooding from overtopped rivers in the region just as planting season is getting underway.
Experts say the amount of rain dropped in such a short span of time and over such a broad area is something that occurs only once every 100 to 1,000 years, historically. Much of the flooding that has occurred is due to overflowing rivers and levees. As of Monday, April 7, 18 river gauge sites were at major flood stage, and 256 locations across the central U.S. were at or above flood stage, spanning multiple rivers and tributaries.
The Kentucky River crested at Frankfort Lock at 48.27 feet Monday (4/7), just shy of the record of 48.5 feet set on Dec. 10, 1978, said CJ Padgett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Louisville, Kentucky, office. The Ohio River that same day reached its highest level in nearly 30 years. The threat is said to be far from over as water levels on the Mississippi and other waterways throughout the region are set to crest this week and into next.
Meteorologists are warning that the flood impacts could last weeks. The Ohio River at Cincinnati is not seen falling below flood stage until sometime Friday morning, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). Meanwhile, runoff from the deluge will continue to fill rivers, creeks, and other waterways. It may take as much as two to three weeks for the water surge to cycle to the Mississippi Delta region.
The flooding has some harkening back to the spring of 2019 when flooding on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers caused billions of dollars in damage and millions of acres to go unplanted. Major flooding was observed at all sites along the Mississippi, and ALL sites saw one of their top 5 crests on record. In total, the flooding of 2019 was one of the worst inland flood events in US history.
The flooding was the result of above-normal snowfall during winter 2018–2019, high snow water equivalent, saturated soils, deeply frozen ground, and heavy spring precipitation in 2019, which caused rapid snow melt in the Great Plains. Notably, the flooding in 2019 also set records for how long it lasted. The Lower Mississippi River was above flood stage for 226 days from December 2018 until August 2019, and some regions were literally underwater for nearly as long.
The duration of the flooding severely delayed planting in many areas, while others were unable to plant anything at all. Some 19.4 million acres were left unplanted in 2019, according to the USDA, the most on record. Of those prevented plant acres, more than 73% were in 12 Midwestern states that experienced flooding. South Dakota topped the list of states with prevented planting (3.86 million acres), but five other states – Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, Arkansas, and Minnesota – also had over one million acres unplanted. (Sources: NOAA, AccuWeather, Associated Press)
