Major river flooding continues in the Midwest

I want to bring in our AccuWeather flood expert, Alex Sisnowski. And you know Alex, before we begin on what what has happened and what is going to happen here, let's talk about what is ongoing in these areas across Minnesota, Iowa and Northern Missouri. Well, a number of those rivers are still at major flood stage this morning and they're going to continue to stay at major flood stage here for the next day or so. That surge, that rain that's already occurred, that surge is working its way downstream. We're seeing significant rises now on the Mississippi, on the Missouri, the lower portion of Missouri. That's going to slowly progress in the days and unfortunately the next couple of weeks coming up here. So a slow moving disaster is in progress. Unfortunately, Bernie, as you've been saying all morning, as we've been saying all morning here on AccuWeather, there's more rain coming to these places. Let's take a look at Alex the last 30 days and remember and it we'll, we'll talk about the drought in a little bit. But I mean, this is what's happened the last 30 days. You start getting into that dark green shading, you're talking about rainfall 3 to perhaps even four times above the historical average. Yeah, you, you. And a lot of that rain has fallen in a week's time, and that's what's pushed these rivers out of their banks versus smaller streams. Now the SEC and then the secondary rivers. Well, now we're starting to get the major rivers involved too, in the whole mess. Now here's the problem, Alex. Let's take a look at future rainfall as we go through the rest of this week. Again, this is from today, right through Sunday. And you know, Alex, there's always a, a, a, an old forecasting line we use. It rains where it wants to rain. And this is the area where we just can't get a break, right? And if you notice here, the the rain kind of goes up into South Dakota, Minnesota, where they've had the flooding already. Rivers have crested up there. They're slowly on their way down. But I think there's enough rain coming here that you may get a double Crest, you may get a second rise on those rivers. Now, if you're looking a little bit farther to the central and southern part of your screen there, that's where the surge is happening there in in Iowa, where it's going to happen there farther to the South there on the Mississippi in the lower portion of the Missouri. So you're getting more rain on top of that as that surge is coming in. So as I've remain concerned about now I've seen the the gauge forecast here at the individual points come up quite a bit since last week, the original predictions there. I think that trend's going to continue. I think they're going to continue to run conservative because it those models that they use for the to make these predictions by the National Weather Service, they don't have all this rain figured in just yet. We can see the rain coming, but that stuff hasn't worked into all of the the equations that to use to figure out how much of the water is going to surge in these areas. So look for those levels to push even higher than what you're seeing projected this morning. That means major flooding it looks like on a portion of the of the Mississippi, perhaps a down to just north of Saint Louis. And also I think the lower portion of the Missouri is probably going to have moderate flooding and significant along the stretch along the way in there. We're going to end with this short term pain, the flooding, but boy, oh boy, long term gain. Take a look at this really quick, Alex. You could see that the drought has been totally eradicated across Iowa. There's where it was January 2nd. Here's where you are right now. AccuWeather flood expert. Yeah, go on. I'm sorry, Alex. That's good news. If, you know, if you're not in the flood zone there and you're trying to grow corn and other crops, I mean, this will certainly help at a critical time. AccuWeather flood expert Alex Sesnowski. Alex, thanks for joining us on AccuWeather EARLY.