46 million Americans face days of rain, raising flood concerns

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's flooding expert Alex Sosnowski was live on the AccuWeather Network on April 2 to discuss the flood risk in the south-central and southeastern United States.

Transcript

00:00joining me right now is AccuWeather flooding expert Alex Zasowski. Thank you so much for

00:04being with us this morning and let's get right to it because we're already seeing the heavy

00:08rainfall out there right now. Yes Ariella if you go to the radar here we can see that obviously

00:14the main focus is going to be on the severe weather during the day today into the first

00:19part of tonight. Lots of tornadoes likely going to be spawned with this and it may seem like

00:25for an instant that the flash flooding might be overdone. Our concerns for flash flooding might be

00:29overdone as this line is progressive. However if we go to the moisture loop we'll see that

00:36this is a forecast moisture loop. You can see there's a plume coming out of the Caribbean

00:41and that extends all the way across the Mississippi Valley and you're looking at

00:45several days of this going on. So the thunderstorms you're seeing today are going to stall across the

00:51Ohio and mid-Mississippi valleys. If you go to the next map here you'll see that there's a high

00:56pressure area here kind of blocking everything and then we have that atmospheric river that

01:01sets up. This is going to behave like several tropical storms passing over the same area

01:06if you're not familiar with that term atmospheric river and the end result is going to be probably

01:14three to four months worth of rain in some locations. Each one of these rounds we think

01:18there's going to be three to four rounds of intense rainfall that fall over pretty much the same area

01:23that'll result in a month's worth of rain each one and cumulatively you're then looking at

01:298 to 16 inches of rain over a large swath of the Ohio Valley extending toward the Ozarks

01:34and local amounts here can exceed 20 inches of rain all coming in four to five days. That's not

01:41going to sit well with the streams. There's going to be dangerous flash flooding. We're probably

01:46looking at the flash flood emergencies as Bernie Reyno said earlier and it's just going to continue

01:52to escalate from there. We're going to end up with significant river flooding. I think we're

01:56going to have major flooding on the Ohio rivers with this. If you can go to that. Yeah Alex let

02:01me just pause you for a second. The intensity of what we're expecting with this Ari. Yeah.

02:08We can see that how intense that this is going to be here. We're looking at

02:12this is just about as bad as it can get. We're looking at extreme

02:16dangers here flash flooding dangers anticipated here from the Ozarks to the Ohio Valley

02:22and if this really overlaps over the same small area which is possible we could have a catastrophic

02:28flooding event here. A very dangerous situation could evolve. If they end up being a little more

02:34in different spots it may be more in the high end but still there's going to be significant

02:39flooding even with that lesser scenario. I'd also like to take a look at some of the National

02:45Weather Service river gauge forecasts. Now yesterday these are pretty much not really

02:49showing much of any indication of flooding in this zone at all and now they're starting to

02:54capture this rain event. They're starting to come in line here and I think this is going to continue

02:58to escalate. So if you rely on these gauges for your to base your information on and your decision

03:03making this is probably going to continue to escalate. Those red areas on there right now

03:07are indicating moderate flooding. It's probably going to go to major flooding in a lot of those

03:12places there along the Ohio and mid-Mississippi basins with this event. There hasn't been much

03:18media coverage at all here on the flooding event. Rightfully so there's been focus on the tornadoes

03:23and that's a very dangerous situation coming up. But there's been very little information out here

03:28on the flash flooding except for AccuWeather. We started talking about this last week on the

03:33channel and our news story sources here and also our long-range guys and gals are looking at this

03:39very intensely. So keep it here we're going to have a lot more information on this over the next

03:44few days as this unfolds into the weekend. All right AccuWeather flooding expert Alex

03:48Zazowski thank you so much again for joining us. You can also see Alex and his work on accuweather.com.

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