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After Heavy Rains, Floodwaters Receding In 'Lucky' Indiana

Benjamin Stäudinger
/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ontourwithben/

After peaking at 21 feet in West Lafayette, nearly twice the 11 foot flood stage, floodwaters are receding in the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers.

Indianapolis National Weather Service Hydrologist Al Shipe says storms dumped up to six inches of rain on West Central Indiana during the past week.  

But Tippecanoe and surrounding counties aren’t seeing the devastating floods sweeping through Missouri and Illinois because it was a dry fall, and local rivers had capacity to hold the rain.

“The saving grace, of course, is we didn’t have any snow on the ground prior to this to melt,” he says, “and the ground wasn’t frozen so some of it did soak in.”

Additionally, Indiana received less precipitation than originally expected.  

“Southern Indiana was supposed to get all the heavy rain. But it didn’t work out that way. The heaviest rain was over, say Missouri, and tracked over Illinois and we got a little bit of it in West Central Indiana, but it stayed west of us,” says Shipe.

Forecasters are keeping a close watch on the Wabash south of Interstate 74 as floodwaters move south from Lafayette, and swollen rivers in eastern Illinois empty into the Wabash. 

Another spot of sunlight: No rain is expected in the area for the next week. 

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