There have been many flash flooding incidents recently across the U.S., and flooding expert Alex Sosnowski expects that concern to continue in the Midwest and Louisiana with the tropical rainstorm.

Louisiana

The United States has experienced a significant increase in flash flooding incidents, with experts noting an unprecedented number of flash flood warnings issued this year. Alex Sosnowski, a flooding expert at AccuWeather, attributes this trend to a combination of high atmospheric moisture and frequent weather systems that trigger heavy rainfall, particularly in the Midwest and Louisiana.

Data suggests this may be the most active year for flash flood warnings since the mid-1980s, although improved reporting and social media may contribute to higher numbers. Sosnowski explains that persistent warm, moist air combined with storm systems and fronts has led to repeated downpours. Regions along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, as well as areas near a developing heat dome, remain at risk for additional flooding and severe weather events.

Widespread flooding concerns across the U.S.

Alex, thank you so much for being with us here. You have dozens and dozens of years of experience here at AccuWeather. So do you remember a time that the U.S. has seen this much widespread flash flooding? Well, the method of reporting this has changed, of course, with the coming of age of social media. But I've been at it for 42 years. I personally can't recall this many flash flood incidents. And you can stretch that to flash flood warnings being issued by the National Weather Service in a single year. This has just been incredible. Yeah, I know you have a chart there that shows the last 10 years. Sure, because AccuWeather app users have probably realized the amount of flash flood warnings that have come through on their phone. Talk about the data that our team has been looking into that supports that. Well, again, social media kind of helps give this thing a little bit of a boost. So some of them might be artificial there. Or at least you might not have as much reporting going back earlier in the 2000s and, of course, the prior decades. But there is some evidence out there. We're still compiling data on this that if you go back to the mid-1980s, this could have been the biggest year for flash issuance of flash flood warnings and flash flood incidents that we've seen. Now, you can see that there's bumps and wiggles on this thing. You get some active years, you get some inactive years. This certainly seems to be one of the most active years, perhaps, that we've been tracking this sort of thing over the past several decades. All right, everybody's wondering why. Why has it been so wet? So can you provide a kind of simple explanation, even when you look at the 30-day rainfall? Yeah, well, there's nothing simple in the atmosphere, of course. True. There's a lot of physics involved with it. And, of course, with physics, there's the scary math, the calculus stuff. We'll keep that stuff away as we can. But you can see there's a lot of dark green showing up on here. Of course, the big anomaly there is in Texas, but it's like a mosaic. And a lot of that is in the eastern two-thirds of the country. This map here now you're showing is the water vapor loop here. That shows the amount of moisture that's available in the atmosphere. You see the thing near the Gulf. You also see the plume that caused the downpours in Kansas City. And there's still some remnants of the activity that moved off the Atlantic coast yesterday. This is all changing. Now you have the moisture content in the atmosphere. And these dark red areas, this is the precipitable water that we call. This is a potential water that can be released if there's a means to lift it. And that's the key. You can have all the human air you want, but if you can't lift it, it's just very humid. Dry air comes in and moves it away, and that's the end of it. But if you can kind of cut back, we need a mechanism to get that air to rise. And there's been a lot of those little things going on in the atmosphere this year, it seems. Little ripples in the jet stream. We've had some tropical activity, but also a lot of little storm systems, fronts coming in and attacking this moist air and causing that to lift. So I have my little scrunchie here. I don't know if you can see it. Thank you, yes we can. So this is basically a parcel of moist air. When you lift this up, it forms a cloud, okay? That cloud then begins to wring out water. And why is that? Well, warm air can hold a lot of moisture, but when you take it up into the atmosphere, it cools. This moist column cools. Cool air cannot hold the moisture, so it releases it. It forms a towering clouds, and it releases it into these tremendous downpours. They won't let me wring out the water here on my keyboard, sorry, but I think you can use your imagination. But you have to have a mechanism to get those columns of air to rise, and we certainly have plenty of that. Now, this map here, Ariel, I'll let you step into this thing here. Yeah, sure, we just want to maybe wrap up at 30 seconds about what regions we are watching here for the remainder of this week into next week. Now, multiple areas here, of course, the thing along the Gulf, there's several pockets here we're watching into Saturday, where we have some fronts coming in and attacking this warm, moist air, causing it to lift, wringing out the moisture. There's another zone here, Saturday to Monday. This is on the northern edge of a building heat dome. This can be a big trouble spot here. We can get to repeating rounds of thunderstorms coming through. We might get a derecho out of this thing as well. The setup could be right for that. A derecho is a high wind event as well. And we also have to watch along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts on the edge of this heat dome that'll be building, as Alex De Silva was alluding to. AccuLure Flooding Expert, Alex Zasowski, we appreciate you joining us, and for the props to try to explain something difficult in a little bit of an easier way to understand. We appreciate it.

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