Flooding Concerns

Much of the southern half of the state is currently under some type of a flood watch with rains continuing to move into the state. Rain is expected to continue over portions of the state into Thursday night, the ground is already saturated in most areas leading to quick run-off and thus flooding conditions coming quickly. Several river state gauges are already reporting near flooding or flooding conditions, they include the cities of Algona, Humboldt, Stratford, near Des Moines, Waterloo, Marengo, Marshalltown, Oskalooska and Hamburg. Many other cities that don't have gauges are reporting flooding and thus have flood warnings issued as well. A total of 15 counties across the state are under flood warnings, with nearly another three dozen under watches as the rains continue to fall.

Flooding should remain the top concern for the night and through the day tomorrow, without much sunshine it looks like our instability will remain fairly low and thus the severe weather threat limited. Most NWS offices and the SPC doesn't look to rule the threat completely out, but marginally severe hail and a few gusts near 60 mph could occur with any strong storms. These are likely to be few and far between...

Beyond Thursday night when the rains begin to subside we are looking at a fairly nice weekend for Friday and Saturday. Sunday should be okay as well, although a few mentions of showers for Sunday night are creeping into the forecast. More details on the weekend forecast and a tally of the rainfall amounts once this storm system has moved on past the state...