Rain Prompts Flood Worries in Mo., Ill., Iowa

The Mississippi River, so low for much of the winter that barge traffic was nearly halted, could reach up to 10 feet above flood stage by the middle of next week in parts of Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, National Weather Service hydrologists said Wednesday.
The weather service is predicting 3 to 4 inches of rain — and perhaps more — from Kansas City, Mo., to Chicago by Friday morning, the result of an unsettled weather pattern that prompted widespread tornado and thunderstorm watches. Soil is already saturated from an unusually wet early spring, raising concerns along the Mississippi from the Quad Cities, which are along the Iowa-Illinois border, south to St. Louis.
"I'm worried," said Mark Fuchs, a National Weather Service hydrologist in suburban St. Louis. "Major flooding appears to be on the table at a lot of locations. North of St. Louis, we're looking at the kind of flooding we haven't seen since 2008."
Floods in the spring of 2008 were particularly troublesome in Iowa, where hundreds of homes were damaged in Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and other towns. Maren Stoflet, a hydrologist for the weather service in the Quad Cities, said that with the ground already soaked, all the new rain will run off into rivers.