Extreme floods cut Kentucky towns off from the world

AccuWeather

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.

Transcript

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.

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