Flash Flood — Crawford, Illinois

2018-06-11 to 2018-06-12 · near Bellair, Crawford, Illinois

Event narrative

Heavy rain of 2.00 to 5.00 inches, falling onto already saturated ground, resulted in flash flooding in much of Crawford County from the late evening of June 11th into the early morning of June 12th. Several vehicles became trapped in the flood waters resulting in water rescues on rural roads in the northwest part of the county from Bellair to Oblong. Roads were also flooded in Robinson, Hutsonville and near Palestine. Much of the flooding subsided just after 4:00 am CDT.

Wider weather episode

A series of weak impulses interacted with a stationary frontal boundary extending from northeast Missouri to southwest Indiana to produce several rounds of thunderstorms across south-central Illinois from the evening of June 11th into the morning of June 12th. The strongest cells produced damaging wind gusts of around 60mph and hail as large as golf balls during the evening of June 11th. In addition, excessive rainfall rates occurring on top of already saturated soils led to localized flash flooding. The hardest hit locations were from Christian and Shelby counties southeastward to Effingham, Clay, Clark and Crawford counties, where numerous roads were closed due to high water.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (39.1744, -87.9502)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 770958. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.