Spring brings the highest water levels of the Ohio River. Adam Connelly is Water Management Team Leader of the Louisville District Corps of Engineers. His office monitors reservoirs and river water levels in the region.
Currently, he said the river level is at 29 feet and rising, due to rain that occurred upstream late last week.
"Looks like the forecasted crest is around 36 feet sometime this coming weekend," he said.
"After the flood season is over and we get into more typical summer flows, the river tends to hang out around between 13 and 20 feet."
Connelly said 2022 brought a small reprieve from the higher flood levels of the past few years.
Multimedia Journalist Tim Jagielo spoke with him on Monday.
Tim Jagielo
The last few years before 2022 were heavier, the water levels were higher, do we know why it's different? Why it was heavier the last few years and why it was little less this year?
Adam Connelly
I think for the most part, it's probably rainfall.
If you went back and looked at rainfall statistics over the past five years, my guess would be we could probably pretty closely correlate the higher river levels with higher rainfall totals. So you know, that's a given where we are in the country. What generally contributes to our flooding is rainfall more so than maybe other parts of the country.
Tim J
Why is it important to monitor the levels of the rivers, especially the Ohio River?
Adam C
Couple reasons. Number one, it has to do with being able to operate the locks and dams, that's really more of an issue when there's low flow periods, you know, those locks are there to keep a minimal amount of water in the river. And so that barge traffic can get through successfully, because there's a lot of commerce that moves up and down the river. So that's a big reason to monitor the water levels and make sure they don't get too low.
You know, when Mother Nature decides she's going to dump a bunch of rain on the the Ohio River Basin, those water levels go way up, and then you get into flooding issues.
And so, there are lots of levee systems and everything like that along the Ohio River, but there are still places that that can and do get flooded, if the water levels get high enough.
And so, folks should probably just be aware of what's going on during during periods when it's prone to flooding. And that way they can prepare and you know, need to evacuate or consider maybe going somewhere else for a week or two weeks, however long the river might be.
Tim J
What are some of the impacts of different water levels for the Ohio River communities and on properties.
Adam C
The Weather Service has the different flow level designations, flood stage is considered 42 feet of moderate flood stage is 48 feet, and the major flood stage is 52 feet. Those are all based on the impacts.
The flood level that we saw back earlier this year was just under 42 feet. So we just barely, barely touched the flood stage level. So I'm sure there was some folks that probably had some water in there in the basements potentially, and maybe some agricultural impacts.
You know, I went back and actually looked at the river levels over the past five years. And it's actually been higher than than what it was this year, each year, the past five years. So we actually got a little bit of a reprieve this year and didn't quite get as high as I had done in previous years.
Tim J
I'm not going to ask you to comment specifically on Evansville, downtown riverfront projects, but you know, the local projects going on 22 years. Can you can you comment on the importance of such programs generally, and maybe the importance of communities being linked to their rivers and understanding them and being able to see them and have access to them?
Adam C
You know, there's a lot of attractions to the waterways and a lot of business opportunities. And you know, during the summertime everybody likes to be out on the water and you know, businesses tend to throw out I think along the river but at the same time there's always the possibility of flooding and when you live around a river or a major waterway, you got to be able to understand that possibility.