Flash flood risk to focus on parts of central US into next week
While the manner for flash flooding will change into next week, the likelihood of dangerous conditions from torrential rainfall will continue in some areas and may increase.
AccuWeather’s Jon Porter has reported an increase in flash flooding reports in 2025. An additional flash flood risk is in store for the Midwest and parts of the mid-Atlantic over the weekend.
The zone from the central Plains to parts of the Mississippi and Ohio Valley to the Appalachians will be in the crosshairs of repeated downpours and the likelihood of flash flooding into next week, AccuWeather meteorologists warn. There will be some extension of flooding downpours into parts of the Atlantic Seaboard as well.
Gulf moisture will give the existing moisture in place over the Midwest a boost.
That moisture will then interact with a front that drops in from Canada. The front will sag southward, then lift northward as the push of the cool air to the north moves in and then departs. Ripples, or mini storm systems, will move from northwest to southeast along that front.
The result of the Gulf moisture and stalled frontal zone will unleash copious amounts of moisture in the atmosphere in the form of torrential downpours and heavy to locally severe thunderstorms.
A general 1-4 inches of rain will fall along this zone from Saturday to Monday, but there will be pockets of heavier rain with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 13 inches.
"This is a critical time for corn and other crops reaching full development in the region, which will absorb quite a bit of the rainfall," AccuWeather Meteorologist Brandon Buckingham said. "But there will likely be too much rain too fast for the fields and landscape to absorb and that can lead to significant runoff and flash flooding."
Dangerous flash flooding can be made worse in, but not limited to, areas that have recently received heavy rain from Iowa to West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.
During the most intense downpours, rainfall rates of 2-3 inches per hour can occur, which can overwhelm storm drainage systems.
While some of the most concentrated areas of flash flooding will extend from the central Plains to the Ohio Valley through Monday, isolated thunderstorms can bring highly localized flash flooding from the interior Southwest to the Great Lakes and mid-Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
During Saturday night to Sunday, a batch of heavy rain with localized flash flooding is forecast to shift across the northern Appalachians to part of New England and the upper mid-Atlantic coast as humid air moves back in following a lull.
Where the rain pours down for several hours is intense for an hour or so, some streets and highways and rural roads over the countryside could become inundated.
Next week, a potentially dangerous pattern will develop that is not only conducive for severe thunderstorms, but also repeated downpours from the North Central states to the East.
A massive area of high pressure, or heat dome, will build from the Southwest to the southern Plains. This heat dome will tend to keep storms away from the flood-ravaged Texas Hill Country.
Rounds of thunderstorms may flourish on the northern and eastern edge of this heat dome. The storms will pack the potential for not only damaging wind events, but also rounds of torrential rainfall and additional flash flooding.
It has been an incredibly busy year so far for flash flooding incidents and this year already ranks among the top for such events.
"Much of the nation's infrastructure and drainage systems were designed for rainfall patterns typical of 50 to 100 years ago—not the intense and extreme rainfall events we are now experiencing right now," AccuWeather Vice President of Forecast Operations Dan DePodwin said.
“The combination of urban development, reduced permeable land surfaces, aging drainage infrastructure and a warming climate capable of holding and releasing more atmospheric moisture is accelerating the frequency and severity of flash flood events across many parts of the nation,” DePodwin said.
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