Flooding causing fewer road closures in Missouri

Two major highways – Interstate 44 and Interstate 55 – reopened south of St. Louis, meaning commuters who return to work next week won’t have hourslong detours.

“Prior to levee building, the river was a wild thing and it spread out between the river bluffs”, Knaup said Monday.

By 1926, the Mississippi River Commission declared its levee system to be complete, and able to “prevent the destructive effects of floods”.

A second MSD plant along the Meramec, at Fenton, Missouri, is still out of operation.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Mississippi River Commission are coordinating closely with other government agencies, communities, stakeholders, contractors and organizations to ensure the safety and well-being of local citizens along the Ohio, Missouri, Mississippi and other rivers in the system.

For many in the flood-weary Midwest, fighting the river has become an nearly annual event. Last week, notices were posted on 20 homes warning that no rebuilding will be allowed until Jasper County assesses the property.

KOLR-TV (http://bit.ly/1OJpXzT ) reports that the number of roads closed in Missouri from recent flooding has dwindled to about 50.

That’s what the American Red Cross says it has doled out to flood-stricken people in Missouri and IL, giving 586 victims refuge along the way as of Sunday night.

Illinois Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Patti Thompson said the state’s flooding death toll increased to nine. That was the wettest December in state history and occurred during an El Nino like this winter. The pounding proved epic in some areas: The 11.43 inches that pummeled Springfield, Missouri, in December broke the city’s 1895 record for precipitation for that month. That’s also the third-highest flood level on record.

Angel said the statewide average temperature was 40.6 degrees. They say inmates have worked almost 8,200 hours and filled more than 125,000 sandbags so far.

“The healing process, the restoration process has begun”, Chris Greenhagen, pastor of the Central Baptist Church in Eureka, Missouri, one of the communities hit by flooding along the Meramec River earlier this week, said Saturday in a phone interview. As of midday Sunday at Meredosia, the IL was more than 10 feet above flood stage and pressing toward an expected crest Tuesday roughly a half-foot short of the record set in July.

The National Weather Service says major flooding conditions persist on the river Monday in the city of Havana, about 45 miles southwest of Peoria. More recently, for cost reasons, when they look at flooding they do a statistical analysis which they hope is accurate – and may or may not be – of what a hundred-year event would be and they design against that.

Marty Pope, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service’s office in Pearl, Mississippi, said that crests are lower because dams held back water in Kentucky and that less water from the Arkansas River will be dumping into the Mississippi as it crests.

Though the water is beginning to recede in the Midwest, the giant bulge in the rivers will continue downstream over the next week.

“The longer it stays up the more pressure it puts on the levees”.

The tiny southeast Missouri town of Allenville remains isolated by floods, but residents are feeling better about their plight.

According to officials, the flood waters will continue to sweep southwards in the coming days.

“They are used to being isolated and cut off, but with this record height, we’re confident some homes will get wet”, Cape Girardeau County emergency management director Richard Knaup said. “Some of the places the water just takes a while to drain out, even though the rivers have gone down”, said Bennett.

“Tatum said many more homes were affected by a flood in 2011 and expressed frustration that already approved buy-outs of more than 100 homes and small businesses related to that flooding have been stalled by an IL state budget impasse”.