Flash Flood — Yazoo, Mississippi

2014-04-06 · near Yazoo City Barrier A, Yazoo, Mississippi

Event narrative

A 9 year old girl was swept away by flood waters in the vicinity of 7th Street. Several roads were flooded in town.

Wider weather episode

A cold front moved through the region on April 4th and stalled along the northern Gulf Coast. Over the next several days, moisture increased over the region ahead of a strong upper level system. Beginning in the early morning hours of the 6th, bands of showers and thunderstorms moved north across the ArkLaMiss region. This continued through the day as heavy rain fell over some already saturated ground. During the late afternoon and evening hours of the 6th, the stalled front started to move slowly north as a warm front. This occurred as a surface low developed across the Texas coast and began to track northeast. This was able to bring mid 60 degree dew points into the region to just north of the Highway 84 corridor and allow for storms to become more surface based which brought a threat for damaging winds, large hail, and tornadoes.

The most significant impact from this weather system was from the prolonged heavy rainfall. Rainfall totals ranged from a widespread 2-4 inches with a few swaths of 5 to 7 inches. This sort of rainfall produced many instances of flash flooding along with significant river flooding after the rains ended. Multiple roads were washed out in some locations from the copious amounts of rain that fell along with many other roads covered with water. The Strong River at D'Lo, in Simpson County, crested at a record flood stage of 34.3 feet. Due to its close proximity to U.S. Highway 49, flood waters crept across the road and forced closure for a few days. Tallahala Creek at Laurel rose to major flood stage, cresting at 19.36 feet on April 8th.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (32.8538, -90.3956)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 507096. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.