A slow snow melt has led to a reduced flood risk predicted for southeast Iowa.

The National Weather Service Quad Cities Office recently released its third of three Spring Flood and Water Resource Outlooks for 2021, and Washington County Emergency Management Coordinator Marissa Reisen comments that warm temperatures over the past few weeks have allowed for the significant snow across the NWS service area to melt, “The risks for flooding have gone down throughout our area. What that doesn’t take into account is we did get some heavy rainfall this past week, and if we continue to see a lot of heavy rains that will obviously make an impact to the chance of river rain flooding. But based on the conditions right now, if everything stays as is and we just have normal rainfall we are at a pretty low risk of even minor flooding along the English and the Skunk River.”

Some key takeaways from the latest flood outlook is that the risk is lower this season than in previous years, and soil conditions are also making an impact. Thawing soils and near to below normal soil moisture indicates that soils will have the ability to absorb water from heavy spring precipitation. The majority of area rivers have a below normal risk of reaching flood levels of moderate or major flood severity.