Parts of Iowa have gotten more than a half-foot of rain since Tuesday, bringing high water, road closures and wet basements — and it’s still raining. Andy Ervin, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in the Quad Cities, says the rain has hardly let up in some areas for the better part of two days and there’s more rain in the forecast.
“Across all of eastern Iowa, we do have a threat for flash flooding that continues today and for extreme eastern Iowa, through this evening,” Ervin says. “We’ve got a very slow-moving disturbance that’s riding along a stationary front and if you’re in Iowa very long and you’ve heard that weather forecast, you know it means heavy rain.” He says there are no evacuations reported, but many parts of the region have been forced to put up barricades to seal off flooded streets.
“We’ve had parts of the area that’ve had anywhere from three to upwards of seven inches of rain over the past two days and there’s a pretty good threat that much of eastern Iowa today, especially north of Highway 34, could see an additional one-to-two inches of rain,” Ervin says. “That’s going to cause some flash flooding concerns and some river flooding concerns.”
He says there’s already flooding in parts of eastern Iowa. A Flash Flood Warning is in effect at 9 AM for Linn, Iowa, Benton and Johnson counties, with reports of basement flooding and road closures in the Cedar Rapids metro area.