People living downstream of Pensacola Dam will want to be vigilant about flooding through the weekend.
"The plan for Pensacola and the projects below it, namely Hudson and Fort Gibson, is to fill the flood pools of those reservoirs as well, and then we’ll begin making a release on the downstream end of those projects at Fort Gibson and bringing that system down just like we will with the other systems with a lot of rainfall," said David Williams with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Corps will ramp up releases from Fort Gibson to 120,000 cubic feet per second, and there will be downstream flooding.
"The National Weather Service actually has responsibility to provide flood forecasts downstream, but their current forecast predicts a major flood stage at Muskogee later this week," Williams said.
The Arkansas River near Muskogee is expected to reach 34.2 feet by 1 a.m. Wednesday. Major flood stage is 34 feet.
The river will continue to swell and is anticipated to top out at 38 feet early Thursday, remaining around that level into the weekend.
The Neosho-Grand river system is dealing with heavy rains that fell locally and in Kansas.
