From northeast Arkansas to the Ohio River, widespread flooding is having devastating impacts. Storm chaser Aaron Rigsby reports live from one small town feeling those effects.
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00:00We begin with this historic flooding in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
00:02For the latest, we're going to head to storm chaser Aaron Rigsby.
00:05He's now in Falmouth, a little downstream of areas like Frankfurt.
00:09So Aaron, what are you seeing in that community?
00:13Yeah, good evening, guys.
00:14I tell you, we've been focusing a lot on Frankfurt, Kentucky, and for good reason,
00:18but a lot of what these flooding events, these small towns like this, get hit especially hard.
00:23You can see a structure behind me that has come, you know, about halfway underwater,
00:27and there's a house just beyond this that they're only being able to access by boat.
00:32Now, I did visit a community a little bit further to the south between here and Lexington,
00:39and they were actually cut off.
00:42I would say over 50% of the town of Monterey, Kentucky was cut off due to those floodwaters,
00:48and both the ways, in and out, you can only get to by boat,
00:51and probably 50% of that little town is sitting in that water.
00:54I was asked earlier about how widespread of an event this was outside of that main area,
00:59and this just goes to show that it's not necessarily just Frankfurt, Kentucky
01:03that's feeling the effects of this relentless amount of rain,
01:06and this is round two for the year for Kentucky already,
01:09for the major flooding that we've been talking about.
01:11We had a big round earlier in the year in eastern Kentucky,
01:15and now central and northern Kentucky are feeling those amounts
01:18of the relentless rainfall that we've had this season so far.
01:21All right, Aaron, so we're looking at the videos that you have taken here from your drone,
01:25and it's just devastating here for us, so kind of put this into context for us.
01:29I mean, kind of removing the tropical storms that you have tracked here as far as flooding,
01:34how would this rank or rate as far as a non-tropical system
01:38bringing this type of devastating flooding?
01:42This is by far the most widespread non-tropical related flooding that I've covered.
01:47You know, typically with flooding events such as this,
01:49it's one or two rivers that are flooding extremely bad.
01:53This has been just so widespread really anywhere from northeast Arkansas
01:58all the way to the Ohio River along Cincinnati.
02:01We've seen record amounts of river crests in Kentucky down to Tennessee.
02:06We've seen near record heights across areas of the Ohio River and Indiana,
02:10and it's just been the same story really all downstream,
02:13and it's not going to be done yet, guys.
02:14We still have a couple more days for all this to flow down eventually to the Gulf,
02:19and there's already flood gauges that they're predicting to hit major flood stage
02:23as far down as Louisiana, who had nothing to do with this system at all really,
02:27but they're still going to feel the effects from it as it makes its way downstream.
02:32All right, well, we're going to be closely tracking those river gauges
02:35and a slow painful rise off to your west and southwest downstream.
02:39Storm chaser Aaron Rigsby, thanks for all your reporting, Aaron.