Flood — Atchison, Kansas

2019-03-13 to 2019-03-31 · near Atchison, Atchison, Kansas

Event narrative

Once the Missouri River started flooding on March 9, it remained in flood through the remainder of the month. The gauge in St. Joseph, Missouri reached 32.12 feet on March 22 (preliminarily a new record). The flooding was caused by several rounds of heavy snow across the Northern Plains through the winter months, followed by a rapid warm-up and several days of heavy rain. The Missouri River Basin across the Northern Plains flooded with catastrophic consequences as numerous dams and levees failed. As the water flowed into the Missouri River upstream of Buchanan County, the river swelled and ultimately overwhelmed the levees along the river. Local fields were also submerged, which delayed the growing season in the region, but several roads were washed away across Atchison County, and I-29 from St. Joseph northward to the Iowa/Missouri border was closed until mid May. Note: The dollar valued assigned to this event is likely inaccurate as a full tally of the extent of the physical damages is unknown. The Missouri River remained in flood through the rest of the month, into April.

Wider weather episode

Several months of heavy snow across the Northern Plains set the stage for a significant and catastrophic flooding event when temperatures warmed and heavy rain fell across Nebraska and the Dakotas. While the more significant damage occurred across eastern Nebraska several counties along the Missouri River in parts of northeast Kansas saw some high impacts as well. Numerous locations along the Missouri River received major flooding, in which the impacts were aggravated by by several levy failures. These failures resulted in numerous roads across the area being completely washed away and the inundation of several small towns and residential areas. While the flash flooding threats associated with the levy failures were fairly transient, the Missouri River remained in either minor or moderate flood through the rest of the month.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (39.6041, -95.0304)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 813027. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.