Midwestern Flooding Just Goes On And On - Guardian
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Storms and near record rainfall have caused the region’s three major rivers to flood, inundating communities from Nebraska to Michigan and Illinois to Oklahoma, driving tens of thousands in to shelters, shutting businesses and closing interstate highways. Waters that used to surge and recede have stayed around, swamping millions of acres of farmland and devastating the planting season. The amount of land farmers are being prevented from sowing by the water is estimated to be as much as double the previous record of 3m acres of corn, set in 2013. The worst-hit states include Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Indiana.
In Nebraska, where farmers are already grappling with the effects of Donald Trump’s trade war with China, which has killed off a good part of the soybean trade, flooding is estimated to have destroyed $1bn-worth of crops and livestock.
In Iowa, bordered on either side by America’s two greatest rivers, the Mississippi and the Missouri, entire towns have been engulfed and some may never revive. At the weekend, levees failed on three rivers, flooding homes and forcing the evacuation of thousands in Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas. In other places, authorities raced to shore up protections against surging waters. Burlington was the latest city in Iowa to be swamped after its floodwalls failed and river water poured into downtown following three days of intense rain. The Mississippi has been in flood for 80 days with little sign of returning to normal anytime soon.
Across state after state, people say the same thing unprompted: they have never seen anything like it. Many can point to previous great floods but there is common agreement that it is rare to see so much water for so long across one state after another. To compound the misery, about 270 tornadoes were recorded in May, including a record 13 straight days of twisters in the second half of the month. Every one of Oklahoma’s 77 counties is under a state of emergency as the state is battered by some of the worst flooding in its history, tornadoes and powerful winds.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/03/so-much-land-under-so-much-water-extreme-flooding-is-drowning-parts-of-the-midwest
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