Flood — Trempealeau, Wisconsin

2010-09-23 to 2010-09-26 · near Trempealeau, Trempealeau, Wisconsin

Event narrative

Flooding occurred to rivers, creeks, streams, and low-lying areas throughout the county as very heavy rains fell over saturated soils. This caused numerous county and township road closures across the county, as well as closures of main highways including U.S. Highway 53 between Ettrick and Blair, State Highway 93 between Arcadia and Independence, State Highway 121 between Independence and Whitehall, and State Highway 95 from in the city of Blair to the Jackson County line. The city park in Blair was completely underwater, while a few businesses had some flood damage. In Whitehall, a trailer park was impacted. A 60 yard stretch of railroad tracks was underwater and partially washed out near County Road J by Dodge. Throughouth the county, forty-two homes incurred minor damage and 2 homes saw major damage, while 13 businesses had minor damage and 5 had major damage. The majority of these damaged homes and businesses happened in Arcadia. Also, several schools were closed Thursday and Friday due to road closures in the districts. Although rain fell through much of the day on the 23rd, the majority had fallen by 10 a.m. that morning. Some rainfall totals around the county as of 10 a.m. CST on the 23rd include 5.00 inches at both Trempealeau and Blair and 4.89 inches near Whitehall.

Wider weather episode

A stationary front set up across central Wisconsin on the evening of September 22nd. As an unusually moist air mass flowed over this boundary, heavy rain developed and fell repeatedly across the area during the evening and overnight hours. Soils were abnormally wet for this time of year, therefore the extreme rainfall amounts that fell caused significant widespread flooding and flash flooding. Buffalo, Trempealeau, Jackson, Taylor, Clark, and Juneau counties were included in federal disaster declarations (FEMA-1933-DR).

View location on OpenStreetMap → (44.0077, -91.4454)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 259628. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.