Flood worries in western and northwestern Missouri have calmed since heavy rainfall in Iowa caused the Missouri River to rise. The Army Corps of Engineers is monitoring river gauges along the Missouri River basin.
Emergency Management Specialist Mike Dulin said the gauges west of Jefferson City are out of flood stage.
“So right now we’re looking like we’re in a pretty good spot,” he said. “The river’s trending in the right direction going down and out of flood stage.”
[1/2] With downward trending stages along the Missouri River, previous vessel restrictions within our district have been lifted. The Emergency Operations Center remains engaged and will continue to monitor any impact a post-tropical cyclone #Beryl would have in our area. pic.twitter.com/QknuHDXWxh
— Kansas City USACE🇺🇸 (@KC_USACE) July 8, 2024
The levee systems that participate in the Corps of Engineers program are gaining a lot of freeboard, meaning there’s a lot more dry space on those levees and the threat of overtopping goes away as that water level goes down,” he added.
However, the river gauges along the Mississippi River from the Iowa border down to Farmington are still in moderate flood stage due to recent heavy rains.
Dulin said that there were some seepage issues in northwest Missouri’s Holt County on three private levee systems.
“We had taken a flood site action there back in 2019 to place 600,000 tons of rock to fill three scour holes to try to curb the flow of water during that flood,” he explained. “It was well known that once that rock was placed, levee districts went and rebuilt their levees, it was going to seep, which it did this time as water came up.”
He said fortunately that there were no breaches.
© 2024, Missourinet.