This Is The First 2023 Spring Flood Outlook For The Quad Cities
The National Weather Service Quad Cities has released their first round of Spring Flood Outlooks for 2023.
One thing that always lurks in the back of my mind any time that places above the QC get a lot of snow or ice is "Oh God...the river." I wasn't here for the terrible, biblical flood of 2019 but I've seen plenty of pictures and I know none of us want to see anything like that ever again.
As many Quad Citians have said, so far it's been a "mild winter". Of course there was the whole blizzard mess over much of the country at Christmas and we had the cold snap recently that put us in the negative temps but other than that, it's not been terrible here.
The National Weather Service of the Quad Cities has released their first round of the Spring Flood Outlook for us this year so let's review.
What Spring Flood Possibilities Could Look Like
Okay, don't go into absolute panic mode while we discuss this because we're still kinda far out. Remember all that snow? The Upper Mississippi Basin has a lot of "snow water equivalent" (snow, ice melt, winter crap, etc.) and all of that has to go somewhere so it'll likely head our way downriver.
The Spring Flood Outlook for the Mississippi River is slightly above normal.
That's not the case for every river around here though. There's not as much of a threat among local rivers in Iowa and Illinois, with several tributary rivers expected to be at near to below risk for Spring flooding. That's because there's not a deep and widespread snowmelt affecting them and snow water equivalent and snow cover aren't much different than normal.
What The River Forecast Looks Like At Rock Island
Look at this closely, this isn't saying that we'll have a 2019 repeat. It may not be anything more than driving by the river this Spring and muttering "Hmm. River looks high today."
The good news is that river levels along the Upper Mississippi watershed are running near normal, which means more capacity to handle Spring rain. The drought conditions have affected soil moisture, allowing soil to absorb more Spring rain too.
This Whole Thing Will Be Contingent On Three Factors
Don't take this straight to heart as something that's certain. The National Weather Service says that Spring flooding potential will depend on these 3 factors:
- Rate of the snowmelt
- Any additional snowfall
- Heavy Spring rains
Those will determine if any flooding will occur and if so, how severe it would be. The National Weather Service will update their Spring Flooding Outlook a couple more times. You can see the most recent one here and a breakdown of it here.