Flash Flood — East Baton Rouge, Louisiana

2016-08-12 to 2016-08-13 · near Baywood, East Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Event narrative

Twenty to thirty inches of rainfall over a 2 day period led to widespread flash flooding in East Baton Rouge Parish. As water drained into the local rivers, record levels were recorded. Additional details of the river flooding can be found in the flood report for the parish. As floodwaters rose, hundreds of high water rescues were necessary across the parish. Portions of interstates 10 and 110 were closed due to water crossing the roadway during the flash flooding. In all, approximately 25,000 homes and hundreds of additional businesses suffered various degrees of flooding, though it's difficult to determine how many were due to initial flash flooding and how many were due to subsequent river flooding. During the flash flooding, a 68 year old man drowned when he slipped into a drainage ditch trying to escape his home in Zachary, LA Friday morning.

Wider weather episode

A slow moving low pressure system brought widespread showers and thunderstorms to the area. The system tapped into deep tropical moisture resulting in very intense rainfall across a large portion of the area. Two-day rainfall totals of 10 inches or more were common across areas generally to the west and northwest of Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas. The heaviest rainfall occurred across a swath of East Baton Rouge, Livingston, and St. Helena Parishes, where 20 to 30 inches fell over a 48-hour period, topping the 0.1% annual exceedance probability. The heavy rainfall led to widespread flash flooding and record river flooding. Many of the broken records had been set during the flooding of April 1983. In total, 12 people died in southeast Louisiana as a result of the flooding. The event was also responsible for an estimated total of ten billion dollars in damage across southern Louisiana and southern Mississippi. This estimate includes impacts of both the initial flash flooding and the resultant river flooding.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (30.7160, -90.8530)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 655492. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.