Mississippi River cresting; water levels expected to stay high

It’s the news residents along the Mississippi have been waiting for; the river is expected to crest this week. Matt Wilson, senior hydrologist at the National Weather Service in the Quad Cities, explains what that means for local river levels.

“We are cresting in a lot of places, actually,” he said. “We’re having some pretty broad crests from this event, some of that’s just kind of due to the nature of rain events that were kind of periodically spread over the course of many weeks. Instead of getting one big event where you get a big crest and then it’s over, we’re getting kind of a broad sweeping crest. We’re seeing crests from everywhere right now; we just passed the crest up at Dubuque and we’re cresting all the way down here into the Quad Cities. The crest wave is just about here at Rock Island, maybe it’s a little bit past, hasn’t quite gotten to Muscatine yet.”

Just because the river is cresting doesn’t mean the end of flooding is in sight, said Wilson. “It’s not over by a long shot. We issued a seven-day forecast and that entire seven-day forecast, up until the 15 ^th , the end of the 15 ^th is all above major flood stage. We’re still at 18.9 feet, so we’re cresting right now, somewhere around 20.1. In a week we’ll drop about 1.2 feet and then we’ll probably have another by five to seven days after that, depends on if we get any extra rain.”

Rain is predicted for the Quad Cities in the next 48 hours, but Wilson says that’s no cause for alarm. “We do have a big rain event slated for tomorrow to Wednesday, but that has been trending east of us.” If there is considerable rain from the storm, it would come in downstream and not affect local flooding.

Hurricane Beryl is striking Texas, but Wilson said the precipitation won’t cause the Mississippi to back up and create more flooding. “It would have to drop a lot of rain to get south of us really well and flooded. We do have flooding all the way down to St. Louis, flooding up on the Mississippi all the way almost down to Cairo Ill.” Residents along that part of the river are also contending with the aftermath of the northwest Iowa flooding, as that water is making its way down the Missouri River to connect with the Mississippi at St. Louis. “Right now, everything’s flowing pretty freely down there. They’ve got a lot of extra space. They’re only at minor flood down there so there’s still plenty of areas, still plenty of space for our water to move down into the lower Mississippi.”

The water may not be coming up, but the river is still dangerous, said Wilson. “I know certain areas to our north, there’s enough debris in the river that the Coast Guard actually did close the river sections to recreational traffic. Even if your section of the river has not been closed to recreational traffic, be very careful if you are taking a boat out onto the Mississippi. I don’t recommend it; I’m pretty sure that the Coast Guard doesn’t recommend it and it’s still very dangerous. There’s a lot of extra debris and things that have been picked up along the banks and that current is running deceptively fast. It’s not until you really see something moving in it that you see how much faster it’s moving than what you’re used to seeing out there.”

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to who13.com.