Parts of Iowa were hit by historic floods over the weekend, damaging nearly 2,000 homes and forcing people to leave their homes and declare a disaster.
At a news conference in Des Moines on Sunday afternoon, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said, “I can tell you that the damage is severe and widespread.”
It rained a lot on Saturday and Sunday, with some places getting 15 inches in two days, according to Reynolds. But rivers overflowing and flooding dry towns downstream, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Roger Vachalek.
He said that rain that had been pulled north from the Gulf of Mexico and was sitting over northwest Iowa and nearby states was then let loose when it met a cool, low-pressure wave going from west to east.
There was still no official count of the number of deaths over the weekend that were caused by bad weather.
In Tucson, Arizona, fire officials said that a driver who got stuck in monsoon floods was pronounced dead on Saturday when her body was found.
The South Dakota Highway Patrol said in a statement that an 87-year-old man died when his utility task vehicle, which is about the size of a golf cart and can go off-road, rolled down a slope formed by a washed-out road near Harrisburg on Saturday.
The National Weather Service said that areas in southern Minnesota and southeastern Dakota were also hit by heavy rain or rivers that overflowed their banks.
The rain over the weekend fell on ground that was already wet, which caused fast and widespread flooding in the northwest area of Iowa. Reynolds said that property was really hurt.
It rained a lot and swollen rivers like the Des Moines, Rock, and Little Sioux rivers enough to break flood records in 16 places in Iowa, Reynolds said.
She said that more than 1,000 people in Iowa needed a place to stay the night, that 1,900 homes across the state were damaged, and that hundreds of homes were lost.
Some places didn’t have clean water systems or sewage systems that worked on Sunday, she said. By Sunday night, disaster declarations had been made for 25 counties in Iowa.
Spencer, a city of more than 11,000 people, was cut off from the rest of the state overnight by floodwaters. Mayor Steve Bomgaars said that hundreds of people had to be moved to two city shelters.
Spencer Fire Chief Jesse Coulson said that since the first flood-related call at 5:15 a.m. Saturday, first responders from the city and nearby departments have worked together to save 383 people.
At a news meeting on Sunday, he said that one person was missing. Bomgaars also spoke. Coulson said that the lost person might be found in a flooded car once the water goes down.
Bomgaars said that the city would have a nighttime curfew again on Sunday because police would be spreading out to check on people who have been cut off by floods after the water goes down a few feet.
County and city officials thought the Little Sioux River would peak at 17.5 feet on Friday, but they said it was higher by several feet. The peak level was just a guess, though.
“The electronic gauge that the Iowa Flood Center put in was underwater,” Eric Tigges, coordinator of the Clay County Emergency Management Agency, said at the news conference in Spencer. “That makes it difficult for us to get an accurate reading.”
He and city officials think the river rose to a height of 22.1 feet, which is about 2 feet higher than the previous record set in 1953. Officials said that because of the drop in that number, some roads were open and people could leave with some planning.
Bomgaars said, “We’re going to get over this.”
In South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem called for a statewide emergency and said that Monday and Tuesday would be the worst days for floods by river.
Officials in South Dakota said in a statement that the Big Sioux River would reach its highest point on Sunday night. To build a temporary wall across the river, they closed Interstate 29 in the southeast of the state.
Heavy thunderstorms were still a possibility, and John Benson, head of Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management, told people to stay alert.
The National Weather Service said that the Des Moines River at Humboldt, a small city about 105 miles north of Des Moines, would reach its highest point on Wednesday at 17 feet. This would be more than a foot higher than its previous high point in 1969. They said it flowed more than a foot above flood stage on Sunday.
On the first weekend of summer, it rained and swollen rivers and streams were different from the rest of the country, which was still very hot. About 95 million people in the U.S. were put on heat alert on Sunday. Near-record high temperatures—5 to 15 degrees above normal—are expected to last at least through the beginning of the week.
High pressure baked the mid-Atlantic, where record high temperatures were expected on Sunday and Monday. In the meantime, the Southwest was baking in temperatures that sometimes reached triple digits, and parts of the Northeast were expecting short periods of rain and thunderstorms along with high temperatures.
Federal weather experts said that another cool wave coming in from the West would likely clash with warm, wet air over the Great Plains and the Midwest. This could lead to stronger thunderstorms.
They said that starting Monday night, rain, wind, hail, and floods could happen again in northern Iowa, northern Missouri, northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin, southwest Lower Michigan, northern Indiana, and northwest Ohio.
Benson, who is in charge of emergency management in Iowa, said of the floods, thunder, and rain, “It’s not going to stop.” “It’s going to blossom.”
