Weekend rain brings rise in river; forecast to drop below flood stage by Monday

Excessive rainfall last weekend north and west of Cape Girardeau has resulted in a rapid rise of the Mississippi River causing moderate flood conditions. Forecasters are predicting the river will fall almost as quickly, however, and should be below flood stage by early next week.

The river level at Cape Girardeau was 37.5 feet Wednesday morning, more than 11 feet higher than the 26.3 feet level recorded Friday morning. Flood stage at Cape Girardeau is 32 feet.

The National Weather Service in Paducah, Kentucky, pointed to a weather system that moved through the area late last week as the reason for the rapid river rise.

“We’ve had a lot of locally heavy rain, especially through the Ozarks region and parts of Southeast Missouri last Friday and Saturday, which impacted tributaries and branches feeding into the Mississippi,” said Chris Noles, a meteorologist at the Paducah weather office. “It looks like we had a definite uptick in river stages after that.”

The National Weather Service reported locally heavy rainfall amounts of between 2 and 5 inches Friday night and early Saturday morning, resulting in flash flooding throughout the region. The weekend weather system also triggered several tornadoes in Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois, including one shortly before 2 a.m. Saturday with peak winds of 125 miles per hour that damaged or destroyed several structures northwest of the junction of U.S. 61 and Interstate 55 between Cape Girardeau and Jackson.

Both gates in Cape Girardeau’s downtown flood wall, at Broadway and Themis Street, were closed earlier this week in anticipation of flood conditions.

Earlier this week, the weather service was predicting a 38.5 foot crest on the Cape Girardeau river gauge. By Wednesday afternoon the crest forecast had been revised downward to about 37.5 feet. The weather service expects the river at Cape Girardeau to fall between 1 and 2 feet per day and drop below flood stage by Monday.

This week’s crest is about 9.5 feet below the 46.36-foot crest recorded on the Cape Girardeau gauge in June, which was the fifth-highest crest ever measured at Cape Girardeau. The record crest for the Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau was 48.86 feet recorded Jan. 2, 2016.

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