Storms Spawn Flash Floods in Portions of the Midwest

The upper Mississippi River Valley, staggering to recover as its flooded rivers slowly recede, was hit with a new round of heavy rain Thursday that caused flash flooding, closed roads and led to evacuations.

Storms dumped up to 10 inches of rain in some sections of Minnesota and deluged parts of Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois.

“If anybody’s got a direct line to the Lord, tell him we surrender,” said Pete Staude, general manager of the newly reopened Capitol Plaza Hotel in Jefferson City.

As much as 5 1/2 inches of rain early Thursday left up to four feet of water in the hotel’s parking lot. The hotel had reopened Monday after being closed for 11 days because floodwaters blocked its doors. Guests were awakened at about 4:30 a.m. Thursday and told to push their cars out of the water, Staude said.

The National Weather Service reported rainfall of up to eight inches from about 10 p.m. Wednesday to 3 a.m. Thursday in parts of Missouri that were hit hard by flooding over the past month.

In Iowa, thunderstorms dumped as much as four inches of rain across the southern and central parts of the state Wednesday night, flooding streets in Des Moines.

The weather service warned of “significant” rises on the Raccoon River at Des Moines. Even so, the river was not expected to get near the level of July 11, when it flooded the Des Moines water treatment plant.

In Illinois, 6 1/2 inches of rain fell in 24 hours at Champaign in the east-central part of the state. Some roads were closed and basements were flooded.

And in Nebraska, slow-moving storms in the east dropped up to four inches of rain on parts of Omaha. Police officers had to free the occupants of one car that was trapped in 2 1/2-foot-deep water. Lightning struck at least one house but did not cause a fire.

Floods surged across rural roads and thousands of acres of farmland in northwest Minnesota as the rain runoff drained toward the Red River.

The upper Mississippi River Valley is just coming out of its worst flooding in decades. In many areas, the ground is saturated and rivers are still above normal.