North-central Iowa keeping eye on sky for more rain

Officials in north-central parts of Iowa are closely monitoring river levels after a weekend of heavy rain. The national weather service says parts of Calhoun, Franklin, and Wright counties got six to 12 inches of rain between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning. National Weather Service meteorologist Todd Shea says the three-day forecast includes the potential for more heavy rain. Shea says they would have put out more flood watches but instead will watch many individual thunderstorm complexes to see how they set up. There’s uncertainty where each may be, and when, and he says they’ll be watching them all week. He says today, tomorrow and Wednesday there’s the potential for more thunderstorms. “Now that we’ve kind of saturated things up,” he chuckles, “we …have to pay attention to these other thunderstorm complexes comin’ in.” Forecasters still can’t say what path the next round of storms will take, and Shea says the risk of flooding will depend on where the rain falls. He says the next round of thunderstorms could come line up along two or three different counties, and that area could handle the extra rain. But if it arrives at the same area that got two, three inches or more of rain this weekend the past weekend, we could be looking at some significant flooding. Forecasters do agree there’s a good chance for more heavy rainstorms through the middle of the week. Shea says heavy summer storms bring problems besides flooding. Occasional severe weather warnings with high winds and hail too, but he says the rainfall totals could be a headache depending on just where it falls and whether it’s in the same areas drenched last weekend. Shea says sunshine and temps in the eighties should return in a few more days, and weather should be pleasant for the holiday weekend. The meteorologist says late this week it’ll be pretty quiet, but early next week the chance for storms will return. Waterloo set a daily rainfall record with three-point-two inches yesterday. Because of the heavy rain, many rivers and creeks in the region are flowing at or near flood stage today.