2,894 first-hand accounts of flood events in Missouri, ranked by impact. Each is a NOAA-written narrative of the moment.
A series of thunderstorm complexes over a period of several days resulted in locally significant flash flooding. A cold front stalled across the Lower Ohio and Mid-Mississippi Valleys, where tropical moisture was already in place.
Read the full account →The remnants of Tropical Storm Gordon tracked from the Mississippi Coast into southwest Missouri. Widespread rainfall occurred over the Ozarks Region, with pockets of excessive rainfall leading to flash flooding.
Read the full account →The worst flooding in Madison County history struck the morning of April 3, 1999. Rainfall of 6 to 10 inches fell primarily during a 2 hour period resulting in flash flooding throughout the county. The county was declared a Federal Disaster Area.
Read the full account →Some of the worse flash flooding in recent years hit on Sunday, Mother's Day, and continued into early Monday. Around 6 inches of rain fell on ground already saturated by previous rain. For several counties, it was the worst flooding in memory.
Read the full account →A stalled frontal boundary led to multiple rounds of thunderstorms which trained over the same areas and produced intense rainfall rates and rainfall totals.
Read the full account →Torrential rainfall amounts from 6 to 12 inches occurred over a two-day period, causing an historic flood event. A very slow-moving cold front over southwest Illinois and southeast Missouri provided the focus for prolonged heavy rainfall.
Read the full account →Significant flooding developed after two more thunderstorm complexes dumped heavy rain, bringing three-day rainfall totals up to a foot in isolated locations. A large complex of thunderstorms moved southeast across southeast Missouri during the evening hours of the 29th.
Read the full account →A stalled front interacted with a moist airmass over the region as upper level disturbances moved parallel to the front, producing training thunderstorms over the region through afternoon and evening.
Read the full account →The remnants of Tropical Storm Erin produced significant flash flooding along a line from northern Jasper County to northern Laclede County. Numerous roads were washed out across Lawrence, Greene, Polk, Dallas, and Webster counties. This prompted several water rescues.
Read the full account →A complex of thunderstorms over central Missouri moved and redeveloped southeast across southeast Missouri. The activity developed near and north of an east-west oriented convective outflow boundary. The boundary sagged southward through a moderately unstable air mass.
Read the full account →Multiple rounds of thunderstorms produced very heavy rainfall across the Ozarks over the course of a week. A persistent trough over the central plains brought multiple upper level storm systems over the region which produced intense thunderstorms with very heavy rainfall.
Read the full account →Thunderstorms containing very heavy rainfall over West Central Missouri on October 4th resulted in several episodes of major flash flooding. The most deadly and costly flooding occurred in Jackson County where nine people lost their lives on the evening of October 4th.
Read the full account →The most serious flooding struck Wayne, Bollinger, and Cape Girardeau Counties, where 4 to 8 inches of rain fell, mostly in a 12-hour period. The highest totals were in northern Bollinger County, where radar estimates and unofficial measurements indicated up to 8 inches fell.
Read the full account →A large upper trough with a closed upper low slowly moved east across the Central United States March 17th through the 19th. This allowed a strong southerly flow to transport copious amounts of moisture from the deep south into the Midwest.
Read the full account →Excessive rainfall developed over southern Missouri during the evening of 17 March. A line of training convection assumed a position roughly along a line from Anderson to Ozark to Licking.
Read the full account →Multiple rounds of severe thunderstorms and extremely heavy rainfall over several days led to historic and devastating flash floods, record breaking river levels, large hail, wind damage, and at least one tornado across the Missouri Ozarks region.
Read the full account →A death occurred when an 18-year-old girl lost control of her vehicle and went off a levee which bound backwater from the Mississippi River. This death occurred around 4:30 A.M. about 9 miles east of Portageville, Missouri.
Read the full account →Widespread excessive rainfall impacted almost all of extreme southeast Kansas and the Missouri Ozarks during the overnight period of 16 February into 17 February. Widespread rainfall amounts of one to three and a half inches fell.
Read the full account →A vehicle on Interstate 55 just south of Sikeston went out of control and into the St. Johns Bayou drainage ditch. A man pulled his wife to safety from the vehicle, then he fell back into the flooded ditch. His body was swept away and not recovered for over 24 hours.
Read the full account →Thunderstorms developed explosively over the Kansas City metro area during the late morning hours. Storms continued to back-build and dump heavy rain on the area into early afternoon.
Read the full account →Excessive rainfall developed over southern Missouri during the evening of 17 March. A line of training convection assumed a position roughly along a line from Anderson to Ozark to Licking.
Read the full account →The most impactful storm system to affect the region during the month of March began during the late afternoon and early evening of the 23rd as strong to severe thunderstorms trained along and north of a front that had stalled over northwest Arkansas and south central Missouri.
Read the full account →Repeated development of storms along and north of an advancing warm front led to a large swath of greater than three inches of rain south of a line from Stockton to West Plains. This excessive rain occurred on wet soil conditions from record rainfall in February and March.
Read the full account →The flash flooding event on the 7th and early 8th, became a major flooding event across all of southern and central Missouri through the early afternoon of May 9th.
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