New NWS Outlook Shows Mississippi River Will Likely Flood This Spring

The latest Spring outlook from the National Weather Service has changed a bit from the first one.

A few weeks ago, we told you about NWS's first Spring Outlook, which showed that the Mississippi River might get a bit high because of the snow melt/ice in the Upper Mississippi Basin.

At the time, the outlook projected the Mississippi River to be slightly above normal.

This was the forecast of the river at Rock Island at the time.

The Latest Outlook Has The Mississippi River Rising

Now, instead of "slightly above normal", there's a likelihood that the river will be "well above normal" for the March-May timeframe. There's a higher probability now that the river will exceed major flood stage.

This is the latest forecast from Lock & Dam 15 at Rock Island.

It's not saying you need to prepare yourselves for a cataclysmic event. But you should probably keep tabs on what's going on upriver. Whatever happens to the river here will be contingent on the Upper Mississippi River basin. There's been more rain upriver since the NWS's last outlook and we're going to have to see how quickly snow melts in the Upper Mississippi Basin to determine what the river does here.

This is the flooding forecast map from NWS.

Now, just because the river will likely be high doesn't mean that there will be high-impact flooding. But it's something to keep an eye on going into Spring.

You can see the latest outlook from NWS Quad Cities here.