River expected to start rising again
The Mississippi River has fallen below flood stage at Cape Girardeau, allowing the downtown flood gates to be reopened. But that won't last long with the river forecast to jump back above flood stage on Friday and keep rising.
The culprit is heavy rain that has fallen across all of Iowa and parts of several surrounding states during the last week. Rainfall estimates show that 2-6 inch totals have been widespread over the last 7 days.
Southeast Missouri has been dry recently, but that will likely change as the computer models are cranking out copious rainfall amounts for all of Missouri during the next 5 days. Southeast Missouri is in the purple zone (1.5+ inches) while central and northern Missouri could see 4+ inches.
These models have a tendency to overestimate rainfall, but it's still an ominous trend. The wet weather could continue well into next week, with the 8-14 day projections leaning toward above-average precipitation for the upper Midwest.
This is likely to keep the Mississippi River on the rise as we head into summer. Hopefully the weather pattern bringing heavy rain to Iowa will shift; we certainly don't want a repeat of '93.
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