Flooding along the Mississippi River north of St. Louis has forced road and ferry closures, but river levels are slowly making their way back toward normal.
“They’re going to stay up pretty high for another day or two,” Jayson Gosselin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in St. Louis, said Monday.
In the hardest-hit communities, floodwater crested over the weekend at almost nine feet above flood stage. Hannibal saw the Mississippi River reach about 8.8 feet above flood stage, while water levels hit 8.1 feet above the mark at Clarksville.
Flooding was less severe farther south. Gosselin characterized it as “above moderate” in Winfield and Grafton, and “minor” in Alton and St. Louis.
Despite “fairly high water,” Hannibal was spared property damage, according to John S. Hark, director of emergency management for the city and Marion County. He noted that the town is shielded by a floodwall and levee and that “over the years we’ve been big into the flood buyout,” swapping in green space where at-risk properties were once owned.
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Hark said he heard of sandbagging efforts near Clarksville and other communities to the south, which do not have the same levee protection as Hannibal.
Just north of the St. Louis area, flooding along the Mississippi River caused the closure of Illinois Route 96 at Mozier in Calhoun County, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation.
The agency also reported that Brussels Ferry, which crosses the Illinois River near Grafton, was also closed because of high water.
The Missouri Department of Transportation, meanwhile, listed dozens of road closures due to flooding. Affected areas stretched north to the Iowa border, and included parts of Clark, Lewis, Pike, Lincoln and St. Charles counties.
Weeks of wet weather and smaller flood events had preceded this episode, triggered by last week’s rain.
“It had been wet up to our north really since late August,” Gosselin said. “Since the river is already high, it was able to go up and reach moderate flooding.
“The good news is it’ll be cool and dry maybe for the next couple weeks,” he said. “(It’s) going to be a slow decline.”