Rain, runoff pushing Illinois rivers to flood
CHAMPAIGN -- Last week's snow and ice created new problems on Monday as melting drifts swelled creeks and rivers around Illinois.
Water overran banks in many areas but have so far created only minor headaches -- a precautionary nursing home evacuation in Ottawa, Ill., and a few scattered rural roads closed.
That leaves people in river towns like Peoria and Vandalia watching and waiting to see how high the water goes, and wondering how long the levels will stay up. Forecasters predict waters will be slow to recede.
In Ottawa, the LaSalle County Nursing Home's 93 residents waited Monday to return after being evacuated in ambulances and school buses a day earlier, said administrator Adrienne Erickson.
The nursing home sits 30 to 40 yards from the Illinois River, and had to be evacuated because of flooding in September, too. Ottawa is about 80 miles southwest of Chicago.
"Right now the river appears to be holding steady," Erickson said, adding that she hopes residents will be able to return Tuesday morning.
National Weather Service officials predicted that further down the Illinois River, in Peoria, the river would spill out of its banks Tuesday and stay there through the week.
Flooding could be a particular problem if water carries floating chunks of ice out of the river's banks, said Peoria County emergency management director Vicky Turner.
"It kind of rams into different things," she said.
Upstream neighbors in Henry in north-central Illinois, Como on the Rock River in the northwest and Hudsonville just across the Wabash River from Indiana reported minor to moderate flooding but few problems.
In Fayette County in southern Illinois, the Kaskaskia River was 7 feet above flood stage. A few country roads were closed, but little else was affected, said county emergency manager Steve Koehler.
"Nothing other than farm land and low lying roads," he said.
The only major crop in the ground around the state was winter wheat, and that should not be drastically affected by last week's ice or the runoff that followed, said University of Illinois crop expert Emerson Nafizger.
"It probably wouldn't have killed wheat in this case because wheat was fairly dormant," he said.
In northern Illinois, rivers and creeks receded Monday after a weekend of minor flooding.
The Des Plaines River left some basements flooded in Chicago suburbs like Riverside, and forced the closure of some roads.
Around the rest of the state, rivers are expected to crest over the next few days and slowly recede, said National Weather Service meteorologist Chuck Schaffer. Some spots, particularly along the Illinois River as it makes it way southwest to the Mississippi, could hold above flood stage into the second week in January.
"It's a pretty slow responding river," he said of the Illinois. "It drains a pretty large area in central and northern Illinois. It just takes a while for all that (runoff) to get in there."