We were lucky

Fortunately, yesterday's "souped up atmosphere" dropped heavy rain to our south and east, but avoided Cape Girardeau. With the exception of Wisconsin, the Upper Mississippi River was spared from heavy rain on Wednesday. Here's the rainfall estimate for the last day:

It's lucky that we avoided any flash flooding at this vulnerable time when the river is at major flood stage. The crest, still predicted for 45.0 feet, has been pushed back to tomorrow.

We're expected see more chances of rain starting Sunday and stretching on-and-off all next week. Today's Hazardous Weather Outlook from NWS Paducah advises, "THUNDERSTORM CHANCES RETURN TO THE FORECAST SUNDAY AND MONDAY...AND AGAIN WEDNESDAY NIGHT AND THURSDAY. THE BEST CHANCE FOR STORMS...INCLUDING THE POTENTIAL FOR STRONG STORMS...WILL BE SUNDAY INTO MONDAY. LOCALLY HEAVY RAINFALL IS POSSIBLE DURING ANY OF THESE TIME PERIODS."

The 7-day rainfall forecast paints about 1 inch of precipitation in Southeast Missouri, with much higher totals over Iowa and Wisconsin. As we've seen, these projections can be wildly inaccurate. The computer models underestimated last week's deluge, but completely overestimated yesterday's rain.

Continued heavy rain over Iowa, as was the case in 1993, could keep the river at major flood stage in Missouri even if we don't see much rain right here.