In the same week that the East Coast is dropping all-time heat records and parts of the West are experiencing freak cold snaps, the middle of the country is dealing with floods. Dangerous ones.
From Louisiana to Michigan, rivers are spilling over their banks after days of heavy rainfall. Flood warnings and advisories, as well as flash flood warnings and watches, were in effect Thursday for a broad swath of the Southern Plains, the lower Mississippi Valley and the Ohio Valley, prompting road closures and water rescues, and even forcing several regions to evacuate.
The flooding has gotten particularly bad in parts of Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana, with states of emergency declared in Elkhart, Goshen, and the Lansing area, according to the Associated Press. Weather Underground meteorologist Jeff Masters told Earther that the up to four inches of rain that fell in parts of southwest Michigan this week amounted to one of the top three winter rain events on record.
This was one of the greatest winter rainfall events on record in Southern Michigan (rivaling Feb 1997). Forecast river flooding may require actions to mitigate property loss. Every river point has a different history/vulnerability/forecast. https://t.co/JEjTkJxE7u #wmiwx #miwx pic.twitter.com/bRDr6A2XrD
— NWS Grand Rapids (@NWSGrandRapids) February 21, 2018
Homes and streets are becoming inundated in South Bend, Indiana, where the St. Joseph River broke its historic flood record when it surged past 12 feet this morning. (Flood stage is 5.5 feet.) Meanwhile, the Yellow River in Plymouth, Indiana, also smashed a record, with water levels topping 17 feet (flood stage 13) and continuing to climb. Classes were canceled Thursday at Indiana University-South Bend, while Michigan State University took the unusual measure of deploying a flood barrier on campus as spillover from the Red Cedar River swamped roads and athletic fields.
It is quite a busy day in terms of weather: There is still a flash flooding concern from the southern Plains to Ohio Valley-where we do have a moderate risk. In addition, freezing rain will also be a hazard stretching from north Texas to the Upper Midwest and into the Northeast pic.twitter.com/hnyuKrXDPq
— NWS Weather Prediction Center (@NWSWPC) February 22, 2018
The heavy rainfall and floods have already been blamed for several deaths, including a 53-year-old man whose car was swept off the road by floodwaters in Oklahoma, and a one-year-old Michigan girl found dead in standing water in her family’s backyard, the AP reports.
Unfortunately, the National Weather Service says more heavy rainfall is in the cards for this part of the country, as warm, moist air from the Gulf continues to advect northward along the axis of an unusually kinky jet stream. That means the potential for even more flooding in the days to come. As the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang noted on Wednesday, the levels of precipitable moisture in the air are downright summerlike: about four times more than what is normal for February in Michigan, New York State, and Maine.
The temperatures here on the East Coast have been pretty summerlike, too, with a locked-in high pressure ridge slaying heat records from Georgia to Maine. Meanwhile, a countervailing low pressure system out west has led to wild temperature swings in the opposite direction.
Sandbags are holding back water in parts of Michigan, and flood warnings have been issued in northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin and Indiana https://t.co/Wi0IVUPkxl pic.twitter.com/yVSgZftsse
— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) February 21, 2018
Flood watches and warnings are stretching from Texas all the way to Vermont, with about 19 river gauges in the Midwest showing major or record flooding. https://t.co/r1VmhQ6m1s pic.twitter.com/KjQKLnpGYV
— ABC News (@ABC) February 22, 2018
Nothing about this week’s weather is normal, but we might want to get used to that. As climatologist Brian Brettschneider noted on Twitter yesterday, the intensity of high pressure ridges has increased substantially since the 1960s.
Summer-like temperatures, rainstorms, and even floods in the middle of winter could all be symptoms of an atmosphere thrown increasingly out of whack.
