Mississippi River Flooding 2011 – June Update

The 2011 flooding season continues. The Missouri River is making the headlines now, although thanks to a lot of recent rain the Mississippi has hit a new high for the year near St. Louis in Winfield (Lock & Dam 25, to be exact), still displaying a remarkably similar path to 2008′s flooding:

Of course, it’s currently forecast to go down rather than trek upward to 2008′s 37 footer, but it’s already exceeding the forecast and the rain is still collecting:

Stations farther upstream though, such as Louisiana, are already falling off those highs and forecast to continue to fall, so unless the amount of recent and upcoming precipitation is significantly more than expected, the worst may be behind us. The Iowa portion of the Mississippi is all back to normal, although if you click on some of those stations you can see that the Historical Records have been updated to list the 2011 flood as the 4th-6th worst on record (depending on the station),  just as I noted back in April.

The upper Missouri stations (before the two rivers join) seem to be more in the 10th-worst range. 1993 is still the record-holder in this area, followed by 2008. Farther south, of course, in Mississippi and Louisiana the flooding broke a lot of the 1937 records.

There are a lot of variations based on the depth of the historical records at different stations, the varying rain in different areas and the different levels of all the rivers that flow into the Mississippi at various points, but 2011 has definitely been a notable flood year for the region.