Heavy Rains Bring Flash Flooding To Parts Of Northwestern Wisconsin

Wisconsin is drying out after a soggy Labor Day weekend. A series of storms dumped multiple inches of rain causing problems from Buffalo County all the way to Milwaukee.

Three counties and six local communities in the western part of the state have declared a state of emergency after heavy rains caused extensive flooding early Monday. Meanwhile, a mudslide closed part of Interstate 94 in Milwaukee Tuesday.

Buffalo, Trempealeau and Jackson counties and six communities along the Highway 10 corridor declared a state of emergency after storms dropped up to 7 inches of rain in places.

Tod Pritchard of Wisconsin Emergency Management said the Buffalo River was high enough to overtop a dam in the Village of Strum in Trempealeau County. The dam appears to have held, but Pritchard said highway departments have been kept busy.

“There are still quite a few roads that have either standing water on them, or the water is receding and crews need to check to make sure that the road is safe and isn’t undermined,” said Pritchard.

According to preliminary estimates from Trempealeau County Emergency Management, the high waters have caused more than $1 million in damage.

National Weather Service Meteorologist John Wetenkamp pointed to air heavy with moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and monsoons in the southwest as the culprits for the wet weather in Wisconsin.

“The last few days here we had an unseasonably humid, warm and humid air mass for early September over the area, plenty of moisture to work with in the atmosphere,” he said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story included information about power outages in Superior. Those outages were unrelated to storms in other parts of the state. It has been updated.