missouri governor jay nixon is activating the national guard today in response to widespread flooding, following days of torrential rain across the state. here he is just within the last hour. missouri is in the midst of a very historic and dangerous flooding event. the amount of rain we ve received, in and places in excess of a foot, has caused river levels not only to rise rapidly, but to go to places they ve never been before. he warns water levels are expected to exceed the historic 1993 flood levels. officials note rivers will continue to rise for at least another couple of days. an evacuation order is under way for residents in west alton, north of st. louis, after a levy
to o get folks out before it s too late. let s go live to meteorologist tom sater, who is from missouri, who knows about this all too well. talk to e me about what towns are in the danger zones. where do we stand at this hour? this is a multi-event. there are several communities dealing with the flooding. the problem is not just one river. there are many rivers. i spent the last week. it rained every day. a stationary front continued to drop one thunderstorm after another. so the watch is sure in effect. but the problem we have in st. louis is not just the mississippi river chrks is rising. and should get to the second highest levels in history. it s backing up the water from flowing into the mississippi from the missouri river. so when you look at the amount of rainfall, it s best to break it down to show you exactly the communities that we re dealing with. first of all, north of st. louis, here s along the mississippi. west alton, it s a flood prone
moving this morning, the merry go round at navy pier. the one thing going for us today, believe it or not, is temperature. it s about 30 degrees, about where we should be this time of year, after all the subzero mornings. they have had 15 mornings since december below zero, twice the average and more than subzero cold on monday. and another stormy coming in here through the midwest on tuesday. it s going to hit kc, north of st. louis here into chicago tuesday afternoon. and then another batch of bitter, cold air. so there is really no end in sight here in chicago. might as well enjoy the 30-degree weather while they can today. yeah. oh-oh o hare, 250 flights cancelled out of the airport, now lost about 2,200 flights this week at that airport. delays right now about 30 minutes. mike, if people do need to get around, you have to consider how they keep the roads safe. how are the salt supplies? any strain on that? there is a strain, especially in some of the suburbs. they have a s
now the biggest concern is flooding. the storm dumped between 8 and 11 inches of rain in some places. hundreds of roads were closed in missouri and some drivers were stranded. another huge problem, power outages. the storm damaged telephone poles, this one in st. louis caught fire as you can see. now power is out for more than 212,000 homes and businesses in several states. i want to show you the breakdown of the power outages. missouri has 90,000 customers without power. oklahoma, 86,000 outages. illinois has more than 31,000. arkansas with more than 3,000. and more than 1,000 outages in kansas. it looks like one of the worst hit places in missouri is st. charles county, north of st. louis. ush you re looking at video taken this morning of the massive damage from last night s tornadoes. the governor declared a state of emergency and now the violent storms are spawning flash floods. i m joined on the phone from st. charles county by government
about 25 miles per hour. there a developing tornado. you can see north of st. louis. that box that pops up. that tornado warning is in effect until 8:45 central time. about another 15 minutes now. there reports of damage in a town called st. ann. looks like spotters have seen the funnel cloud and there is rotation in the radar. that s the latest area in missouri now. that is under the gun with there tornado warning. they have been popping up all across the midwest. dylan, let me ask you a request about an earlier question which i just did not understand, which is the idea that the tornado, at least one of the tornadoes that touched down had two funnels. how does that happen and what does that mean. it is called a multivortex tornado. imagine the tornado has it comes down from the cloud. typical set up where the see the funnel cloud, the cloud and a fun will and it comes down and