More rain and thunderstorms are on the way to Missouri Thursday evening through possibly Saturday morning, according to meteorologist Melissa Delia with the National Weather Service in St. Louis.
“We are looking at a cold front moving through during the afternoon into the evening hours and bringing the threat for strong to severe thunderstorms to portions of north, central, and southeast Missouri,” Delia said.
The heavy rainfall has an obvious upside as Missouri is in the middle of a drought alert that was recently extended through September 1. Delia told Missourinet it’s too soon to tell if this week’s rainfall and the potential for more will put a significant dent in the drought.
“Any rain absolutely helps,” she said. “We are, watching how this rain will particularly impact the drought across the state, but where we have seen significant rain, we are expecting to see at least some improvement over…the next week or so.”
Meanwhile, the National Weather Service in Springfield says the rain is moving out of the western part of the state and is not expected to return there until Friday night at the earliest. NWS Meteorologist Mark Burchfield in Springfield told Missourinet the rounds of showers and thunderstorms have triggered flooding in western and central Missouri.
“We had an area of showers and thunderstorms that really went over the same areas for kind of a long period of time, anywhere from Nevada to Butler, and then kind of northeast up into the Sedalia, Clinton areas. And then it kind of quit just before it got into the Jeff City and Columbia areas,” he said. “So there was an area through there that received between 3 and 5 inches. However, there are a couple of rainfall amounts that were near 7 inches, and that is over a 48-hour period.”
Burchfield also said numerous rural roads across western and central Missouri are flooded. The latest closures can be found on MoDOT’s traveler information map.
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