Good afternoon, everyone. I wanted to drop by for a quick update on the high increasing threat for significant flooding from the lower Mississippi Valley into the Ohio Valley.
This has been a well telegraphed pattern for the past few weeks and is looking even more ominous as we get closer. Round of showers and storms start impacting Kentucky from west to east Tuesday night into Wednesday, with additional rounds coming through the weekend.
Given the amount of thunderstorms in the mix and a wavy, stalled out boundary, the forecast models will suffer from feedback issues. That means they go back and forth with where the axis of heaviest rains will fall. The last two runs of the GFS show this well…
Several inches of rain will likely fall across Kentucky through the upcoming weekend, leading to all modes of flooding. Rounds of flash flooding, general flooding and river flooding will likely show up. Major river flooding is very possible in this type of an environment.
I would imagine Flood Watches will go up much earlier than normal to give the public a big time heads up because it’s needed.
Here are your Monday tracking toys…
I will have a rainfall forecast on WKYT-TV starting at 4pm. See you guys back here for another update this evening. Make it a good one and take care.
Were south of the warm front, so were dry for now.
At this point I expect to see the Ohio river the highest it’s been since 1997 in Cincinnati.
Yeah, I was just reading Louisville will be at its 4th highest crest in 20 years and it might get worse.
My wife’s Louisville relatives recalled that areas well away from the Ohio were swamped in 1997. Parts of the Ford plant near the main airport (SDF) flooded, destroying hundreds of brand new Broncos. Even part of an airport runway at SDF was briefly underwater. A nearby Holiday Inn had its own floodwall, but the water rose so fast that the floodwall gates were not closed in time. Old timers said the 1997 waters rose faster than even the great 1937 Flood.
Louisville sitting at a record high of 77 degrees, thanks to the heat island at the airport.