ST. LOUIS – Heavy rain Monday quickly turned streets and low-water crossings across the St. Louis region into dangerous trouble spots as some communities received nearly four inches of rain.
In Belleville, floodwaters even impacted a local pet shelter. In other areas, drivers became stranded on roads covered by water.
Mark Fuchs, a senior service hydrologist with the National Weather Service, said small streams and creeks can become dangerous in a short amount of time.
“Flash floods happen in a hurry by definition, right? They can come up very quick and go down very quick,” Fuchs said.
He explained that smaller creeks react much faster than larger rivers like the Mississippi or Missouri.
“Those creeks, the water has to go somewhere. And so, it all goes into the headwaters of some of these creeks, and the creeks go straight up,” he said. “For some of these small creeks, the water doesn’t have to go up but a few feet, and all of a sudden, you have water over the road and flowing over top of the road.”
That rapid rise can leave drivers with very little time to respond.
“If you’re driving along and you see that water, you have to make a quick decision. What do I do with this? Do I go or do I take another way? And we have a phrase in the (National) Weather Service, and we’d like people to remember it: ‘When in doubt, turn around; don’t drown,’” Fuchs said.
Although many streams across the area have already receded, Fuchs said this is the time of year when flood conditions can change quickly.
“We’re getting into that season where these thunderstorms can produce an awful lot of rain on a very small area in a very short period of time,” he said. “When you get into the summer, all bets are off. You never know exactly where that rain is going to fall.”
That unpredictability, along with how fast small creeks can rise, is why officials urge people to take flood warnings seriously.
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