Swollen river begins to recede in Missouri capital
Story Highlights• Missouri River 6 feet above flood stage in Jefferson City
• Capital gets some flooding, but not as bad as feared
• Scientists expect river to keep dropping
• They say levee breaks upstream have diverted some water
JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri (AP) -- The Missouri River neared its highest point in the state's capital city Saturday after a week of flooding towns upstream, but hydrologists said it wasn't nearly as bad as feared.
The river reached about 29 feet Saturday morning, some 6 feet above flood stage.
That was high enough to flood stretches of the riverside Katy Trail hiking and biking route and some low-lying roads, plus nearly 1,400 acres of farmland.
However, it was short of the predicted 34-foot peak, which could have wiped out many farmers' crops for the year and inundated the Jefferson City Airport.
The Missouri and other waterways have breached or topped dozens of levees across the state since heavy rain during last weekend's widespread thunderstorms that also produced tornadoes across the Plains states.
One of those tornadoes devastated Greensburg, Kansas, killing 12 people. No serious injuries or deaths had been reported in the flooding in Missouri, although Kansas and Oklahoma each reported one drowning death.
The National Weather Service forecast moderate to major flooding along the Grand River near Sumner in north-central Missouri, where flood stage is 26 feet.
The river rose to near 40 feet but had fallen slightly by Saturday morning and should keep dropping, the weather service said.
"They're getting some impact to the homes," weather service hydrologist Mark Fuchs said. "They may be escaping the worst of it."
During the 1993 flooding across the Midwest, the Grand River at Sumner reached 42.5 feet.
Fuchs, in St. Louis, said levee breaks in the western part of the state earlier this week allowed the river to spread out, relieving the pressure and the height of the water downstream as the flood crest moved eastward.
"The bigger effects do not look like they're going to happen," Fuchs said.
The most recent levee break occurred Thursday afternoon between the towns of DeWitt and Brunswick, flooding farmland, slowing traffic on U.S. 24 and damaging railroad tracks.
Another Carroll County breach south of Norborne had flooded about 15,000 acres of cropland and left about 75 rural homes surrounded with Missouri River water.
Big Lake, in Holt County in northwestern Missouri, suffered some of the worst damage in flooding Monday night and Tuesday, after several area levees were breached. Most of the rescues the Missouri State Water Patrol has conducted since flooding began have been in the Big Lake area. (Watch why one Big Lake resident insists on staying in the flooded town )
Statewide, the flooding led to the evacuation of several hundred people, including some residents of Levasy and the Ray County town of Hardin, where the 1993 flood surge toppled headstones and unearthed hundreds of caskets.
In Levasy, a breached levee left at least 15 homes with up to 8 feet of water in them, said Deputy Ronda Montgomery, a spokeswoman for the Jackson County Sheriff's Department.
State officials said two other communities -- Rushville and Napoleon -- were within 500 feet of levees that were broken or had been topped. But the damage was less extensive, Hauswirth said.
Although the river crests were lower than forecast in many areas, residents remained anxious. Many were here for the 1993 floods, among the most costly in U.S. history.
The rain-swollen rivers and streams that make up the Missouri River system are causing damage in different spots as the water makes its way eastward toward St. Louis, where the Missouri River meets the Mississippi, said Suzanne Fortin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
