AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from northwest Arkansas as storms led to flash flooding in parts of the Heartland on Sept. 23.

Arkansas

Recent rainfall in the central United States has brought much-needed relief to drought-stricken areas, with northwest Arkansas experiencing significant precipitation. However, the heavy rain has saturated the ground, leading to flash flooding, especially in hilly and mountainous regions. 

Meteorologists note that while the risk of tornadoes remains, the primary concern has shifted to flooding, with reports of impassable roads and flooded intersections in and around Fayetteville. Emergency services are monitoring the situation as a tornado watch remains in effect for parts of the region, including Tulsa and areas to the east.

Rain brings both relief and risk to parts of the central U.S.

right now. Desperately needed rain is reaching parts of the central U. S. It's welcome news for drought stricken areas, but not without consequences. Accuweather meteorologist Tony Law back is tracking it all. He's live tonight in Fayetteville, Arkansas, with more on the impacts. But, Tony, I heard this morning you had cows behind you, and I'm not seeing any cows. Well, that's probably because they've all sunk here. I'm gonna walk away from the camera, and I know you're not going to see it from the distance here, but like this lawn here outside of this truck stop is like walking on a sponge right now. Every step I take water coming up from the ground and actually coming over the tops of my shoes at times to give you an idea just how saturated the ground here is in Fayetteville on the south side behind me. This is Interstate 49. You see the faster moving traffic in the background. This the ramp that gets onto the highway here next to the truck stop. So folks moving pretty good here. After the storms have cleared on out, they have moved down to the south and brought all of the heavy rain with them, and that has included some of the minor flooding that I have come across. We've seen worse in more of the mountainous areas, but this is just some of the stuff that I got. This is down near the Lincoln area here off the U. S. 62. We saw some heavy rain, some pretty impressive clouds. I'm gonna try to get some of that video in for the next hit, but we saw a lot of those storms form very, very quickly. We were been talking about the severe weather being tied to the outflow boundary from last night's storms that kind of draped in this area. And typically you see one of a couple of things happen in setups like this. The first case scenario and typically the worst in terms of tornadoes. You get a couple of isolated storms that develop on that outflow boundary, and they become prolific tornado producers. You see some of the strongest tornadoes come out of setups like that. But in a case like today, we saw a lot of storms pretty much go up at the same time along that outflow boundary. And then what happens is those storms kind of form into a cluster kind of move and train along that boundary as it has slowly moved to the south. And that really makes the flash flooding and the occasional damaging wind gusts. The bigger threat with that, despite the conditions that would warrant an increased potential for tornadoes again, that's all gonna be conditional on whether or not those storms remain discreet. Up until this point, that has not been the case. So it has really been more of a flooding threat we've seen here develop in northwest Arkansas. This very mountainous, hilly terrain up and through here. So flash flooding certainly an issue, especially in some of the back roads, the lesser traveled areas. Fayetteville, we've seen reports of some flooded intersections and some of the towns surrounding it as well. Nothing significant in the major metro area here. You get a little bit further out to the east and you get into more hilly, more mountainous terrain. That's when we're starting to see some of those problems, some of the impassable roads because a lot of these again are just kind of curvy, windy roads to go up and down some of these hills. Again, not talking the mountains of Colorado necessarily, but certainly not an area you would typically associate with mountainous terrain. But that is the case here in northwest Arkansas. Tornado watch does go into stay in effect till 10 o'clock. That does include Tulsa and points east to my north and I am watching some storms in the Tulsa area. That might be my next pick. So we'll be tracking those storms well into the evening up here, guys. All right, good stuff, Tony. Nice shot of good stormwater management practice there with that that concrete shoot where the water is coming down like a rapid. If not for that, that would be kind of digging a little canyon through some of the grass and the soil there.

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