JEFFERSON CITY — (CNN) Even if it doesn’t rain another drop in Missouri, Kathy Wunderlich’s home in West Alton may still get flooded.
Recent deluges have engulfed towns, homes, fields and roads in deadly floodwater. Though the storms are gone, the rivers have kept rising from Texas to Illinois.
In West Alton, runoff pushed the Mississippi River over the levees on Tuesday, and Wunderlich was headed for higher ground, with her belongings in tow.
“We emptied out our basement of anything important, which is strictly storage anyway. We cleaned out the house of clothes. Things that can’t be replaced. Important pieces of furniture,” she told CNN affiliate KMOV.
Though Wunderlich’s situation appears acute, she is one of 17 million people nationwide that the National Weather Service said are living in areas where there are flood warnings.
Throughout the country’s midsection about 400 river gauges are over flood stage with around 45 showing major flooding, the National Weather Service said.
Many of those are in or around St. Louis. Some rivers and streams have already crested, some haven’t yet, like the Mississippi. It is expected to reach its peak late Wednesday or early Thursday in Missouri along with other area streams.
Missouri will still have “major to historic river flooding through early next week,” National Weather Service’s St. Louis office said. “Record crests expected on area rivers the next several days.”
At its peak, the Mississippi should be at its highest level ever, Gov. Jay Nixon said, beating the highest level of the great flood of 1993.
Nixon has activated the National Guard to aid first responders and provide security in evacuated areas. And residents have volunteered by the dozens to fill sand bags then pass them hand to hand to be transported or laid in place.
Late Tuesday, the Mississippi’s waters were already creeping up the sandbags laid out to protect the town of Alton, Illinois, which lies across the river from West Alton, Missouri.
Downstream, in Illinois, a prison has partially evacuated. Menard Correctional Center lies on the banks of the Mississippi, and staff anticipates minor flooding in some of its cells, when the river crests.
Authorities are keen on keeping more people from dying.
Storms have been blamed for roughly 49 deaths this past week across the country. Thirteen died in Missouri, 11 in the Dallas area, five in southern Illinois, five in Oklahoma and at least one in Georgia.
Tornadoes are being blamed for most of the deaths in Texas.
But many of the rest died after their cars were swept away by floodwater, like five international soldiers temporarily stationed in Missouri for training.
Witnesses say that they drove onto a flooded road and rushing water carried them straight away.
Others came close to suffering the same fate but escaped with their lives.
In Jefferson County, south of St. Louis, rescuers pulled a man from his car stuck in flood waters, KMOV reported. He said he had not seen the water, because it was dark.
In the same county, Shelia Seaman helped a friend move his things out of the way of rising water then they returned to get his dog. “It was too late,” she said. “We couldn’t get back across the water.”
The friend took a boat to try to rescue the dog, but rushing water washed the boat away. He survived and Seaman was able to get in touch with him.
At least 69 tornadoes have touched down in the United States in just the past week, said CNN meteorologist Pedram Javaheri.
“Typically, you see about 24 for the entire month of December,” he said.
But flooding causes many more deaths in the country than tornadoes do. And there have already been about 400 reports of rivers flooding in the country.
In some places, the rainfall hasn’t stopped for weeks. Portland and Seattle have been drenched with rain every day in December, Javaheri said.
And the United States isn’t alone. The United Kingdom and South America are dealing with their own massive flooding.
Blame it on El Niño, a warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean, mainly along the equator.
El Niños occur every two to seven years in varying intensity, and the waters of the eastern Pacific can be up to 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than usual.
El Niños can cause more frequent and intense storms, as well as massive economic damage, as the major El Niño in 1997 did.
“Globally speaking,” Javaheri said, “this is something that typically has somewhere around $30-$45 billion of damage that at least occurred the last go-around in 1997 into 1998.”
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