The Latest NWS Spring Outlook Shows The Mississippi River Will Probably Flood

Spring has officially begun and with it comes the heightened risk of flooding.

The National Weather Service Quad Cities has released it's last Spring Flood Outlook for this year and it's pretty likely that the Mississippi River will flood.

The NWS has released three different outlooks, each one showing an increase in flooding on the river. The first one came out in mid-February, the second came out towards the end of the month, and then the latest and last one came out today.

The key takeaways are that there's a "well above normal" flood risk for the Mississippi River this spring/summer. That does not mean that we could be looking at a 2019 repeat or a high impact flooding issue. The flood risk has gone up a bit in the last couple of weeks but we're still watching the upper Mississippi Basin to see the rate of ice melt, snow melt, and of course rain.

Here's the latest forecast for the river at Rock Island.

As for local tributary rivers in our area, the flood risk is near normal and has actually decreased in the last couple of weeks.

We do know that the snow water equivalent in the upper Mississippi Basin is "much higher than average" and has continued to grow since the last outlook was issued.

As for Davenport, there looks to be a good chance of major flooding along the Mississippi River, according to the latest graphic from NWS.

Of course, all of this will be contingent on what happens with precipitation in the north part of the river. Meanwhile, we'll keep an eye on it and what the NWS has to say.