The melting snow and record rainfall up north won’t impact the capital city, but residents are still being warned to watch for flooding along the Pearl River, with forecasters saying the potential is there every spring for another Easter Flood.
Recently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its spring outlook, which forecasts “historic, widespread” flooding along the Mississippi River basin.
The news is concerning to many Northsiders, who remember the 1979 Easter Flood that inundated much of Jackson and Rankin County, causing widespread damage.
The report stated that in Mississippi minor to moderate flooding is projected along the Yazoo and Big Black Rivers, both of which are already being impacted by the swelling Mississippi River.
Minor flooding causes “minimal or no property damage” but could impact roads, according to the NOAA report. Moderate flooding inundates some structures and roads near streams, with some evacuations of people to higher ground.
While flooding along those tributaries will have no impact on the capital city, the report says “minor to moderate” flooding is expected along the Pearl.
In fact, there’s a pretty big chance of it.
Forecasters say there is an 80.45 percent chance that the Pearl will flood north of the I-55/I-20 interchange in Jackson during that period and point to the already high levels of precipitation already received this year.
“A few weeks ago, when the maps were drawn, we had a good bit of water in the Pearl and earlier this year we had flooding on the river,” said Jeff Graschel, service coordination hydrologist with the National Weather Service’s (NWS) Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center.
“It all depends on the intensity and amount of precipitation we get in the spring. Mississippi is always susceptible to having heavy rain events in April and May.”
The report was released on March 21 and includes the probability of flooding along various river basins through May.
The Pearl already surpassed flood stage earlier this year, when heavy rains caused it to swell to 32 feet in January.
During the 1979 Easter Flood, the river crested at more than 43 feet, 15 feet above flood stage, according to NWS reports.
Graschel said it’s difficult to predict flooding on the Pearl, largely because it is not impacted by snowmelt in northern states. The Mississippi River, which starts at Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, on the other hand, is.
This winter, northern states, including Minnesota and Nebraska, received 200 percent more precipitation than normal. That rain eventually flows south, as does the moisture from snowpacks as they melt.
The Pearl, on the other hand, is impacted by rainfall in north and central Mississippi.
In December 1978 and January 1979, Mississippi received 150 percent more rain than usual, with some sections of the Pearl River drainage basin receiving more than 300 times the normal amounts, according to NWS data.
Rainfall totals for February were 50 percent higher than normal, while numbers appeared to level off in March and early April.
On April 11, a slow-moving cold front moved into the state, dumping four to five inches in Jackson. The following day, the cold front “pushed into western Mississippi,” where it dropped another eight to 10 inches of water over the Pearl’s headwaters.
The river surpassed flood stage on April 12 and continued to rise until April 17, when it crested at 43.28 feet, NWS data shows.
The Pearl runs from Philadelphia, Miss. south, eventually emptying into the Gulf of Mexico at the Mississippi-Louisiana state line.
