A flash flood emergency that battered the central United States through the weekend shifted its center of gravity eastward Monday, with the National Weather Service carrying 114 active flash flood warnings across 19 states — six more states than Sunday, even as the total alert count edged down from 125.
Nebraska and Iowa, which joined the warning map as the storm pushed north into the Plains over the weekend, have since dropped off. In their place, Arkansas, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia moved onto the board, marking a clear eastward progression of the moisture plume sustaining the event.
Kentucky is now the most heavily documented target in current National Weather Service data. More than a dozen counties across the central and northern Bluegrass State — Fayette, Bourbon, Clark, Franklin, Jessamine, Madison, Mercer, Scott, Shelby, Woodford, Anderson, and several others — are under flash flood or flood watches. Lexington weather sits at the core of that zone; the National Weather Service reported Doppler radar confirming heavy rainfall there as of late Monday morning and warned that rivers, creeks, and streams face flooding that is “imminent or occurring.” A separate cluster of northern Kentucky counties — Bracken, Grant, Lewis, Mason, Owen, Pendleton, and Robertson — remains under watch through 7 p.m. EDT.
Across the Ohio River, Adams, Brown, Pike, and Scioto counties in southern Ohio face the same 7 p.m. EDT deadline, with excessive runoff threatening low-lying and flood-prone locations.
In Mississippi, river flooding is ongoing on the Chickasawhay at Leakesville, with minor flood stage forecast affecting George and Greene counties; the National Weather Service Mobile office indicated the rise has not yet crested. Further south, warnings extend across the Alabama-Florida Gulf Coast border, covering Escambia and Covington counties in Alabama and Escambia, Santa Rosa, and Okaloosa counties in Florida as Gulf moisture streams onshore. Residents near Pensacola weather should monitor conditions closely through the afternoon.
The National Weather Service is reiterating its standard flood fatality warning across all zones: “Turn around, don’t drown when encountering flooded roads. Most flood deaths occur in vehicles.”
With active warnings now spanning from Washington State in the Northwest to New York and New Jersey in the Northeast, the event remains one of the more geographically dispersed flash flood episodes of the season. The shift eastward suggests the Plains — hit hardest over the weekend — may begin to recover, but forecasters have not signaled a broad end to the risk. Flood conditions are expected to persist across much of the warned area through at least Monday evening, with river levels in Mississippi likely to lag behind rainfall totals by a day or more.