The National Weather Service had 28 active Flash Flood Warnings posted Thursday morning, nearly double Wednesday’s count of 16, as the flooding threat intensified and spread into new territory across the country’s midsection.
The sharpest change overnight is the emergence of eastern Kentucky as the nation’s flooding epicenter. The Weather Service’s warnings now span roughly 30 counties across east central, northeast, south central and southeast Kentucky, including Bath, Bell, Breathitt, Clay, Elliott, Estill, Fleming, Floyd, Harlan, Jackson, Johnson, Knott, Knox, Laurel, Lee, Leslie, Letcher, Magoffin, Martin, McCreary, Menifee, Montgomery, Morgan, Owsley, Perry, Pike, Powell, Pulaski, Rockcastle, Rowan, Wayne, Whitley and Wolfe — a swath that barely registered in Wednesday’s outlook.
A second new hot spot formed around Kansas City, where the Weather Service office in Pleasant Hill issued warnings covering Johnson, Leavenworth and Wyandotte counties in Kansas, along with Cass, Clay, Jackson and Platte counties in Missouri. To the south, the Springfield office warned that thunderstorms dumped 2 to 3 inches of rain on Collins in St. Clair County, Missouri, with flash flooding ongoing or imminent; that warning ran until 9:45 a.m. CDT.
West Tennessee is also newly under the gun, with warnings covering Benton, Carroll, Decatur, Dyer, Gibson, Henderson, Henry, Lake, Obion and Weakley counties, plus Dunklin and Pemiscot counties across the state line in Missouri’s Bootheel. Iowa’s threat has narrowed but not disappeared, with Bremer and Black Hawk counties still under warning after being part of Wednesday’s broader Dakotas-focused corridor.
In all, alerts are active across 11 states and Washington, D.C. — Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wisconsin — with Kentucky and Missouri now hosting the largest clusters. The Weather Service says the pattern behind the surge is the same one driving the past several days: slow-moving thunderstorms repeatedly training over the same ground, producing rainfall rates too fast for soil and rivers to absorb.
The Weather Service is urging residents in warned counties to avoid driving into standing or moving water, noting that most flood deaths occur in vehicles — “turn around, don’t drown.” Residents outside current warnings, particularly in areas downstream of the Kentucky and Missouri clusters, should monitor later forecasts and be prepared to act quickly if warnings expand, the agency said. With the number of alerts climbing rather than falling for the first time in days, forecasters are watching whether the eastern Kentucky and Kansas City clusters continue to grow through the day or begin to ease as the current storm cells move off.