BY MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
Heavy rain fell across much of northwest Missouri Thursday night into Friday morning, causing multiple road closures.
MoDot Northwest District engineer Marty Liles says while they saw closures on the "normal" routes with the rain, they also saw routes not normally impacted being closed down.
"Some of the ones with this rain that we had last night, and all the larger amounds we've had, because I've seen anywhere from four to over 10 inches of rain that we've had in different regions," Liles said. "We've actually got some roads that are normally not ones that get affected by this."
Highway 36 just east of St. Joseph closed down Friday morning with water covering all four lanes. Interstate 29 in Holt and Andrew County from mile marker 84-92 was closed for several hours overnight Thursday due to flooding. It reopened just after 5 a.m. on Friday.
Liles says as they continue to monitor water receding off the roadways, and as it moves downstream, water starts to gather on other roads.
"All that water was coming from the upper basins down in there to the lower basins and started effecting 36 this morning," Liles said. "So, we're seeing a lot of that water that as it's going downstream is starting to affect the next level of roads and stuff like that."
Liles says if you happen to encounter any of these closed roadways, it's best you find another way around.
"Don't go through those waters, if there's water on the road don't go through it, it only takes a few inches of running water to wash a vehicle off," Liles says. "Another thing is obviously we've got those barricades. There's reasons for those barricades to be there. Don't be going around them."
For more information on road closures due to flash floods, you can use Modot's traveler information map.
Much of the rain fell last Thursday night and into Friday, where portions of the region saw up to a foot of rain. Flooding even prompted evacuations and rescues in the Andrew County town of Amazonia.