SMITHLAND, Iowa – Katherine Barber stood on a closed section of Iowa Highway 141 and marveled at the power of floodwaters on the Little Sioux River.
Water covered everything but the roofs of nearby homes. The baseball field, dusty like a desert in a drought year, resembled a marina, with only the foul poles and scoreboard visible above water. Ms. Barber and her husband, Bill, live on nearby bluffs and were nervously optimistic that their house would survive the flooding.
“It feels so surreal,” Barber said. “It’s hard having to leave everything behind. I don’t feel 100 percent confident.”
Severe weather, thunderstorms and flooding have been hitting parts of Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska for more than a week, with major flooding affecting more than a dozen rivers and nearby communities, including one river that caused a partial breach of a dam in Minnesota, burying nearby homes.
AccuWeather said rising water levels in rivers that flow into the Mississippi River could cause major flooding in St. Paul, Minnesota, by the end of the week. High pressure systems are building over parts of the southern US, bringing thunderstorms and possibly a derecho (a violent, powerful, fast-moving, damaging storm) into the rest of the week, said Paul Pastelok, chief long-range meteorologist at AccuWeather. That means rising water levels and more flooding.
“Threats for multiple thunderstorms, including derechos, will increase across the North Central Plains and Midwest into the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley through early July,” Pastelok said.
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Hot, humid weather returned to much of the southern U.S. on Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. Highs across the region are expected to be in the mid- to upper 90s, with temperatures in the low 100s expected in parts of South Carolina and Georgia and the Southern High Plains.
Europe is also experiencing record heat. Greece has closed some of its ancient ruins and warned tourists not to “take unnecessary risks” after heatwaves caused deaths across Europe.
A forever home lost in South Dakota
In South Dakota, flash floods have affected thousands of people in Minnehaha, Lincoln and Union counties alone, forcing some residents to evacuate, causing inconvenience, damaging valuables and limiting travel. Morgan Speichinger has lived on the shores of McCook Lake in North Sioux City since 2019. It was what she thought would be her permanent home for her, her husband, their two young children and their two dogs. But rising waters in their neighborhood on Sunday evening forced the family to leave.
“This was where we were going to raise our kids and we’ve lost it,” Speichinger said. “It won’t be fixed until the roads are fixed. Our house will be destroyed by then. It’s going to be awful.”
− By Morgan Matzen and Katherine Kovalenko, Sioux Falls Argus Leader
Farmland flooding could continue for weeks
According to AccuWeather, the flooding was caused by a weather pattern that began about two weeks ago, when a series of storms dumped more than a month’s worth of rainfall on some areas in just a few days, some of which were accompanied by strong winds and hail.
AccuWeather senior meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said some farmland in the Midwest could remain underwater for weeks.
“A Slowly Developing Disaster”:Midwest rivers flood, Rapidan Dam at risk
Rapidan Dam sustained damage but is holding up
In Minnesota, the Rapidan Dam near Mankato “partially failed” late Monday but was uninjured Wednesday. The Blue Earth County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday that part of the home closest to the dam was “scraped away” by floodwaters and fell into the Blue Earth River. Homeowner Jenny Barnes told KARE-TV that the Dam Store, which her family runs nearby, is also at risk.
“It’s our livelihood. It’s everything to us,” Barnes said before the rapids engulfed her home. “There’s no stopping it. It goes where it wants to go. It takes what it wants to take.”
Authorities are monitoring the river and dam for possible downstream impacts. No plans for large-scale evacuations have been announced.
