Thirty-two flash flood warnings remained active Saturday across 11 states, but the storm system has reshuffled its geography overnight — dropping four states from Friday’s list while driving new warnings deep into east Tennessee and Montana’s mountain front for the first time in this multi-day event.
The National Weather Service now covers Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington. Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, and South Carolina — all on the warned list Friday — have cycled off. Their exit does not signal the end of the broader flooding threat; it marks a shift in where the heaviest rain is falling.
Tennessee bears the freshest and most concentrated impact. The National Weather Service in Morristown issued warnings Saturday morning spanning dozens of counties from the Smoky Mountains west to the Cumberland Plateau, including Knox, Sevier, Blount, Hamilton, Bradley, McMinn, Monroe, and Roane counties, among others. In central McMinn County, Doppler radar showed 2 to 3 inches of rain falling within a single hour before 6 a.m. EDT, with additional rainfall still ongoing. The National Weather Service described flooding there as “ongoing or expected to begin” across the warned area.
In south-central Kentucky, the National Weather Service in Louisville flagged Southwestern Butler County before 7:30 a.m. CDT, citing 1 to 2.5 inches already on the ground with an additional 1.5 to 3 inches expected within the hour — a rate that saturated soil cannot absorb.
Montana’s addition marks the event’s deepest reach into the western interior. Warnings there span from Cascade County below 5,000 feet north through the East Glacier Park Region, Eastern Glacier, Western Toole, and Central Pondera areas, east through Eastern Pondera, Eastern Teton, Gates of the Mountains, and across both the Northern and Southern High Plains and Southern Rocky Mountain Front. Flooding is attributed to excessive rainfall accumulation.
Indiana’s Lawrence and Martin counties remain under active warning. Louisiana and Texas continue to anchor the Gulf Coast end of the alert corridor.
The National Weather Service repeats its standard caution across all warned zones: turn around, don’t drown when encountering flooded roads. Most flood deaths occur in vehicles; nighttime conditions raise the risk further by obscuring hazard markers.
Residents in east Tennessee — including the Knoxville weather area, where Knox County is among the warned counties — face the highest current concentration of active alerts and should monitor local National Weather Service updates through midday Saturday.