Flash Flood — Lincoln, Missouri

2022-07-26 · near Olney, Lincoln, Missouri

Event narrative

Up to 11 inches of rain fell between a 6 to 10 hour period causing flash flooding. The heaviest rain was across the far southern portions of Lincoln County. Numerous roads were flooded including Route J south of Troy, Route C west of Old Monroe, and Route MM. Also, a culvert was washed out on Route U between Fred Norton Road and Giles road. Several water rescues were performed. One driver was northbound on Highway J just south of Big Creek in the early morning hours and could not see the flooded roadway in front of her. Before she knew it she was in the water and could not back out of it. The vehicle began to float and fill with water. She called her husband, told him where she was at and asked for him to call 911. She managed to get out of one of her back doors and slip out, grabbing a branch just before her vehicle was completely submerged. It took two and a half hours for the fire rescue to get a boat to the location and rescue her from the tree she was clinging to. She was uninjured. With the other rescues, no one was injured as well.

Wider weather episode

During the early morning of Tuesday, July 26th, 2022, a complex of training thunderstorms set up roughly along the I-70 corridor in Missouri and I-64 corridor in Illinois. Several rounds of thunderstorms with rainfall rates exceeding 2in/hr affected this area, including the St. Louis metropolitan area, through the early hours of July 26th and into the morning commute. Upwards of 11 of rain fell over the course of roughly 8 hours in an axis from Hawk Point, MO to St. Peters, MO according to radar-estimated rainfall products and several CoCoRaHS/spotter reports. A longer axis of over 8 of rain fell from northern Montgomery County in Missouri to St. Clair County in Illinois, causing multiple swift water rescues and scores of flooded interstates and homes across the St. Louis metropolitan area. St. Louis-Lambert International Airport also observed a new all-time record for daily precipitation: 8.64 of rain fell since midnight Central Standard Time (Daylight Savings Time is not used for climatological record-keeping). This value broke the previous record of 6.85, which occurred on August 20th, 1915 due to the remnants of the Galveston 1915 Hurricane. The storm-total rainfall was 9.07, but spans two days. Two fatalities were reported: one in St. Louis City, where a man drowned in his car near Skinker Blvd, and another in Hazelwood where a man drowned attempting to flee his flooded truck.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (39.1370, -91.2590)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1049495. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.